Artesia Afield & Artesia Afire ~ I just can't praise this series highly enough. Normally I only buy softcover trade paperbacks, because I'm poor and there's a lot of them, but I've got all three volumes of Artesia released so far in hardcover, because it's not just worth it, it demands it. From cover to cover these are beautiful - the art is lavish, full of style and realism and imagination, detailed and delicate, grand and sweeping. You see massive armies, huge battles, vast landscapes in these books, and they come across so clearly and vividly it's like seeing them for yourself - only better, because they're art as well as images. And the writing is some of the best I've ever seen, true epic fantasy, very heavily grounded in reality in terms of politics and warfare, but vastly imaginative in its supernatural elements. Best of all there's no conflict between them - it's not like the 300 movie, where the pseudo-supernatural stuff like the monster-Immortals were a bit tough to swallow (mind you, I still enjoyed that immensely), or Xena where the deluge of sorcery and mystical goings-on can overwhelm the attempts at more grounded stories. Here the natural and supernatural worlds work together perfectly, most especially in Artesia herself, who is a wonderful combination of human and hero. In a world where the brutality of war is all too obvious, Artesia is still the kind of leader who awes you, and who you'd follow into hell - she's inspiring from start to finish. Incidentally the next issue of the fourth Artesia story, Artesia Besieged, is solicited in this month's Previews, along with the previous Besieged issues, so that's worth having a look at too.
Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told ~ The problem with 'greatest stories ever told' is that a) they're subjective anyway, and b) the ones chosen tend to be those that are technically significant, not necessarily wonderful stories on their own terms. If I had to guess I'd say most people would get this for the reprint of Wonder Woman's old origin - and it's a fun story, an enjoyable dash of nostalgia, but looking at it in the hard light of day, there's no denying it's simplistic and kind of hokey. I mean, Wonder Woman needs to get into a hospital to see Steve Trevor, so she just happens to stumble across a nurse who looks just like her and who wants to go be with her husband in South America or something, and so two minutes after meeting she's agreeing to let Wonder Woman take her identity (which is where 'Diana Prince' comes from). It's not sophisticated storytelling - but it's the origin, and it's not like the editor of this volume could really have skipped it. The other reprints are a similar story - good, each according to their own merits, representative of their respective eras... but probably not, as a whole, the most enjoyable package of stories you could possibly get. I'd recommend this volume for fans of Wonder Woman who want to see some of her history, but if you're looking to start reading Diana's adventures and get to know her, look to one of the more recent collections (not the current series though, until Gail Simone's issues start appearing in hardcover).
Gotham Central volume one: In The Line Of Duty ~ An interesting book, this - the simple way of saying it is Law & Order in Gotham, but lest that sound flip, I can assure you I mean it as praise. It's police procedural, and it falls into neither of the traps so many procedurals do: concentrating so much on the cases that the characters become disposable, or concentrating so much on the characters that there's no time for the cases to be developed in interesting ways. Gotham Central handles both the policework and the police officers well, with a strong sense of personality in the cops features prominently in this volume, and interesting twists to the cases that work well as crime drama and as stories about normal people that happen in a superhero-rich setting. An interesting subplot is how the cops regard Batman, with varying points of view on show - at the dark end of the scale, it's easy to imagine how frustrating it must be for the police to have a costumed vigilante doing their jobs for them, with a superhuman ease they can't match. I picked this up - having heard it was good - primarily as background to Renee Montoya, but it's very enjoyable in its own right, even for a reader like me who's not especially enamoured of Gotham and its denizens.
Birds of Prey: Perfect Pitch & Blood and Circuits ~ Aside from the TV series (and the less said about that the better) this is my first encounter with the Birds of Prey, and it's pretty positive, due in large part to the writing of Gail Simone. The art is strong and attractive throughout, but it's Simone's ready wit and ability to juggle humour with seriousness, without undercutting either, that really makes it work - Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress (and the various other superheroes, mostly female, who duck in and out) are all presented as fun, lively people and serious, mature fighters, each in their own way. As I'm becoming accustomed to in reading back on DC series, the One Year Later gap breaks the rhythm that'd been going to that point, but Simone manages to work the gap into a useful story point. Cameos from all over the DC world abound, and I'd like to single out Manhunter's inclusion for particular praise - it felt just like her, in the way she worked, the way she talked and thought, everything. The only caution I'd have with this title is that I'm not sure how easily it'd read for someone who didn't at least have a rough working knowledge of the main stories of the DC world - if you're new to DC look elsewhere (52, for instance) and come back to Birds of Prey when you feel comfortable in this setting.
Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. volume two ~ The first volume of this title was a really fun, interesting, lively story of a teenage superheroine - a sub-genre that's been somewhat over-worked since the rise of Buffy, but Geoff Johns made it feel as fresh as if it had never been done before. This volume broadens the scope somewhat - having established the new Star-Spangled Kid, these issues look back to the old Seven Soldiers of Victory, the legacy that Courtney Whitmore is now a part of, and brings in some of those old heroes in various ways. It's good solid action/adventure storytelling, and delves deeper into the DC universe, with a good command of continuity (so far as I can tell, anyway), but if there's a down side, it's that Courtney's solo stories take a back seat somewhat - her school life and her best friend Mary appear, and move forward a bit, but the focus on them is much briefer than in the earlier volume. Still, it's a good value collection, and the two volumes together form a great introduction to Courtney, now Stargirl in the JSA.
Heroes for Hire volume one: Civil War ~ Based on their earlier kung fu chic Daughters of the Dragon, Gray and Palmiotti used Civil War as a booster, adding new characters and a new purpose to the Daughters to create a new incarnation of Heroes for Hire. And it... didn't really work so well. Later issued written by Zeb Wells, leading up to the dramatic World War Hulk arc, were greatly improved, but under Gray and Palmiotti the larger team doesn't function with the fluidity and charisma that Misty and Colleen did on their own in Daughters. Tarantula is an interesting addition - possibly HfH's best new creation - but characters like Orca and especially Black Cat are criminally under-used, and there's little sense of a smooth team dynamic. This volume includes two interwoven stories - the first straight out of Civil War as the Heroes for Hire try to introduce some sanity into the conflict and talk some sense into both Iron Man and Captain America, the second a more interesting sideline with alien organs being engineered for use in humans - designer superpowers, in other words - which gives an extra-terrestrial boost to one of Misty and Colleen's former foes. This isn't a bad volume - Gray and Palmiotti's work didn't really degenerate until the following arc - but if you're on a tight budget, look to Daughters of the Dragon rather than here.
Ms. Marvel volume two: Civil War ~ After the first volume set up Carol's desire to be 'the best of the best' and showed her first steps on that road, this one is all about her faltering, and how she reacts to that. The Civil War arc is one of the more smartly-written ones to tie into the event, with no clear right or wrong side (despite what blindly anti-registration readers thought at the time) - Carol's actions aren't things she's proud of, but they seem necessary and it's difficult to think of a better alternative, while her main antagonist for the arc, Arachne, is well-meaning but naive and short-sighted, working herself into an impossible situation and then lashing out, clinging to the belief that she's in the right even though her dilemma is largely of her own making. It's a fascinating situation, because Carol isn't entirely in the wrong, but she feels that she is - it's the flip side of her desire to be a great superhero, that she must take (as a wise man once said) great responsibility, and that's daunting when she sits down to look at what she's done. The following story touches on Carol's history with the X-Men, particularly Rogue, and uses the classic sci-fi/fantasy trick of externalising a character's inner battle - Carol fears that her actions have made things worse, so she gets to face a version of herself who didn't do what she did, and see that the results of inaction weren't pretty either. I wouldn't give this volume to someone just starting out, but it's capable and entertaining, and is worth picking up if you enjoyed the first volume, especially since the stories here play into the outstanding ones to follow.
Annihilation volumes 1-3 ~ It's probably a bit much to try to review Annihilation in one paragraph, but there's a lot of books to get through so I'm going to do it anyway. This is a big, bold, spectacular space opera adventure - Marvel's answer to Star Wars in a way, exactly that kind of pulp adventure/sci-fi mix. It's no surprise it caught on and reinvigorated the cosmic side of Marvel - the writing is top-notch throughout, with the various miniseries offering something for everyone. Collecting the whole thing in one place like this isn't necessarily a great thing though - the pace from start to finish of the set is inconsistent, with the lead-in miniseries focusing tightly on their characters and their personal struggles, while the Annihilation War goes on in the background. When the main Annihilation series begins, suddenly events are moving at a great pace, and the story opens up and includes vast stretches of the cosmos in its scope. Interesting as the lead-in miniseries are, the fact that it's basically Nova, Peter Quill and Moondragon who anchor Annihilation itself means that the focus shifts from one group of characters to another - we spend the build-up with Super-Skrull, Ronan, Silver Surfer, Drax and Nova, and only Nova is really central to the big showdown at the end. I also must admit that I wasn't especially impressed by the art in the core Annihilation miniseries - whether because of the penciller or inker, the lines seemed too muddy for my liking, and the habit of re-using the same image of the Annihilation Wave cruiser again and again, simply flipped from left to right occasionally, minor point as that is, did start to grate on me, and undercut the grandeur of the space battles. It's not perfect - but it is very good, and worth a look if you like space adventure, or are reading Annihilation Conquest and want to see where it all began - my appreciation of Conquest has grown immensely after reading the characters' earlier exploits in this.
52 volume one ~ 52, against all expectations, turned out to be a great story, and this is a great presentation of its first quarter. As well as the issues themselves - in which Ralph Dibney slides towards grief-induced madness, Black Adam's habitual nastiness unexpectedly finds its match in the fiesty yet gentle Adriana Tomaz, the Question recruits a despondent Renee Montoya to look into Intergang, Booster Gold self-aggrandises and is hoist on his own petard, Lex Luthor schemes his evil schemes, and Starfire, Adam Strange, and Animal Man are stuck light years from anywhere - each issue has a page of commentary from one of the creators, plus other pages of scripts, sketches and notes, including what I'll sure will be a favourite, concept sketches of the Great Ten, China's answer to the Justice League. The issue covers - which are reproduced at full size in the separate '52: The Covers' volume - are presented in a 1/2-size gallery at the back of the book (minus the news tickers, unfortunately) with the commentaries and notes serving as chapter breaks in their stead. All in all it's a great packaging of this very good story.
Bomb Queen III: Bombshell ~ This third series of Bomb Queen was one that, I have to admit, felt a bit uneven to me - unlike the previous two the focus shifts between the Queen and other co-starring characters, so it's not such a single-minded experience as before. It reads better in trade form though, with the coming together of the plotlines in New Port City seeming more prominent than their beginnings, where BQ's influence is less felt, and Jimmy Robinson sweetens the deal with new material, including a few pages of prose relating to Red Cross, New Port's long-suffering new vigilante, that I don't recall ever seeing before. There's also pages of the bonus material that appeared in the issues, including my very own Bombqueenopoly board, yay! Fun for the whole family. The next miniseries really took this one's material and kicked it into high gear, so if you've been collecting the trades so far, you won't want to skip over this one.
Girls With Slingshots volume one ~ GWS is a webcomic (which you can find here), and this volume collects the first 200 instalments, mostly four-panel strips, with double-length weekend strips. Since it's all freely available on the web, I might as well just say 'go have a look for yourself', but since I'm talkative, I'll go on to say that the strips are witty, occasionally touching without being sappy, hilarious, sexy, often kinda naughty (in a good way), and very addictive. This volume also includes some of creator Danielle Corsetto's early work, featuring the inception of several GWS characters including star-of-the-show Hazel, and a large gallery of fill-in strips, posters, sketches, and random bits of associated art and comedy. If you're still not sure whether you want to buy this: it features a talking Irish cactus plant called McPedro. If that's not enough for you, you have no sense of humour.
She-Hulk volume five: Planet Without A Hulk ~ This volume wraps up Dan Slott's run as writer of She-Hulk, in which he took her from the relative obscurity she'd languished in of late and lifted her up once more to stand among the names worth remembering of the Marvel universe. Unfortunately she doesn't quite go out with a bang - Slott had always assumed that She-Hulk would be the book he'd always stick with no matter what, and had thus planned his plotlines well in advance, but the dream-job opportunity to work on Spider-Man was too good to pass up, and so he had to call it quits on Shulkie, and wrap up or at least tie off his elaborate storylines in far less time than he'd expected. There's a lot to do - post-Civil War/Registration material, pre-World War Hulk material, the final end of the She-Hulk/John Jameson marriage, the Magistrati android posing as GLK&H's boss, Stu's apparent demise with Ditto filling in for him, and the kick-off of the antagonism between Shulkie and Tony Stark which is still playing out in the title now in Peter David's capable hands. Good as Slott is - and he's very good - even he couldn't do everything that needed to be done without the rushed nature of it being a bit obvious - he comes up with a plausible reason, in the second-to-last issue especially, for a whole lot of subplots to resolve at breakneck speed, but you never quite escape the knowledge that it's done on purpose, rather than that simply being how the story was meant to go. Slott's trademark in-jokes and rich use of continuity save the day, and in spite of the rushed storytelling, and not exactly stellar art, this is a good volume, and if you've been collecting She-Hulk trades so far, you'll want to continue.
