Final Crisis #1 ~ ...Okay, sure. I have a lot of time for Grant Morrison - I loved his Seven Soldiers of Victory (see Spotlight) - but I'm lukewarm on this first issue. It has potential, yes - the notion of the New Gods living among us was a great idea in Seven Soldiers (far more 'god'-like than their original incarnations), the sci-fi-police goings-on with the Lanterns and the Guardians are neat ("dust for radiation prints," I like that), and any issue with Renee Montoya showing up is a good one. But the lead-up to Final Crisis has been spotty at best, so I'm a bit worried about some of the elements that don't seem to be coming together. Libra (who was appallingly written in DC Universe Zero) is a bit better, but still seems like a poor man's Bruno Mannheim from 52, and overall I'm not sure I like the apparent transformation of the Dark Faith into a one-shot plot device to get this miniseries going. (Besides, shouldn't the Question be dealing with them, instead of investigating Dark Side?) The drama with the Monitors is enjoyable, but quite generic, and I really don't understand why, if New Gods have been dropping dead left and right for months - many of them on Earth - why Orion's death is such a big deal, or how this tallies with what's been going on generally in Countdown and Death of the New Gods (I've heard a couple of comments suggesting that it just doesn't, which doesn't bode well). And the 'shock' death in this issue... well, it just seems like DC went looking for someone they didn't know what to do with, and offed him. I'll be buying the next issue, but for now, Final Crisis is coasting on the goodwill generated by Morrison's other work - and that can't be what DC were aiming for, with the first issue of their mega-event of the moment.
Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose #50 ~ Fifty issues, huh? How about that. And with Tarot's tenth anniversary the previous issue, this one is set up as a kind of primer on Tarot, her past and present, to allow new readers to jump on. And as much as earlier issues like the Witch Key arc weren't especially friendly to newbies reading Tarot for the first time - not in terms of dense continuity, but just stylistically, since their subtext-heavy writing was so different to what you find in the average comic - this one I'd be totally confident handing to anyone. Erm, provided they're old enough to see naked women, of course. This isn't just a recap issue though, not by a long shot - after a page of introduction to who Tarot is and what she does, the story moves on to the present, with plenty of new developments. Tarot's interesting love life takes an apparent turn, with her former lover Boo Cat now very much back in the fold (and bed), her whimsical live-in-the-moment nature providing an interesting contrast to Tarot's thoughtfulness. What she's thoughtful about is that the labyrinth - a throwback to an earlier issue revealing some of Raven's formative experiences - has returned, heralding a trial of some kind, and we don't have long to wait before its source becomes apparent. What seems like a routine defend-the-humans mission turns difficult when Tarot finds that the attacking magickal creatures have a genuine grievance - her role as guardian of balance between the two worlds puts her in an interesting position, because in this case protecting the humans may be the wrong thing to do. After all, the law has to be applied equally to both sides; the appearance of the Justice tarot card throughout the issue highlights this theme, and as is writer Jim Balent's tendency in situations like this, there's no obviously 'right' answer at this stage.
Adding fuel to the fire is the appearance of a new force in Tarot's world, a Swordsman of the God - counterbalance to Tarot herself being Swordmaiden of the Goddess. His accusation, not without some merit, is that Tarot takes humanity's side too easily when the worlds of men and magick come into conflict - this is something that's recurred throughout many issues, rarely in black and white terms, but there nonetheless. This is a story arc that'll continue next issue and beyond, so much is still to be revealed, but right now I can tell you I'm all kinds of interested. The Swordsman (Thornwic, he's called) has a carefully balanced presence, threatening but not overtly villainous, and there's the potential for him to be a fascinating adversary for Tarot, intellectually and philosophically rather than purely in combat, though he's no slouch there either.
If you haven't read Tarot before, and are interested in magick (with or without the 'k'), morality, sexuality, and fantasy adventure, this is an excellent issue to take a look at. You can find some more info on Tarot in her Heroine of the Month article from a little while back.
Ms. Marvel #27 ~ Carol's Secret Invasion tie-in finishes bringing us up to date on what happened prior to her showing up in Secret Invasion #1, with the Skrull agent targeting her proving quite nasty. This isn't a strong issue for Carol herself - she tries, but mostly what happens is that things go all to hell, and she's left struggling to pick up the pieces, whereupon something else goes wrong. The cover image of Carol with her uniform all tattered and torn is appropriate, as the long-running subplot of her struggles and perceived failings at being a hero seems to come to quite a head here. What's crucial is what happens now - Carol making mistakes is fine so far as it goes, but if that's all she ever is, there's a problem, and I'm starting to think that plotline has run its course. Hopefully future issues will show Carol taking on this problem she has with herself one way or another - she's been muddling along for long enough, but right now, I think she needs to have a clear victory in terms of how she sees herself, so this book can proceed from there, rather than dwelling further on material it's already dealt with. Andrč Coelho's art is a bit different to what we've been used to, with thick outlines and semi-stylises poses bringing the title into a more artsy, slightly cheesecake-y place - not to say it's not good, but it plays with Carol's figure in sexy kinds of ways more than I'm accustomed to on this title - but Chris Sotomayor's colours, as well as being very accomplished in themselves, have a normalising effect, so the pages as a whole feel more cohesive with previous issues than the pencils alone would.
She-Hulk #29 ~ It's finally here - the big reveal of why Shulkie went from top-flight lawyer to disgruntled bounty hunter, told in flashback from her cell following last issue's incarceration. It's an interesting return to law firm Goodman Lieber Kurtzberg & Book, the home of Dan Slott's She-Hulk - Peter David manages the balancing act of keeping this issue of a piece with his own work on the title, while also making the flashback scenes fit stylistically with Slott's run - he even sticks in a couple of Skrull jokes that could have come right from Slott's pen, as they poke affectionate fun at what's going on in Marvel at present. PAD writes a good Mallory Book too, achieving a subtlety to her in spite of her adversarial-comedic overtones that, I think, sometimes fell a bit short before now. Semeiks, Olazaba, and Sotomayor accomplish the same with the art, in a masterful display - the flashback sequences have a certain artistic quality them that, while not copying any one previous artist's style, manage to capture the feel of She-Hulk as drawn by the various art teams that worked with Slott during his tenure. The storyline is intriguing and twisty-turny, though quite dark in nature, and appropriately PAD's witty dialogue is toned down, with grim sarcasm the rule even moreso than usual. As well as the unveiling of a new antagonist force for She-Hulk (much of which remains murky), we get an appearance of the 'savage' She-Hulk, revealing an inkling of how PAD sees Jen and her alter ego in its various permutations - it's a reinterpretation of Slott's picture of her, but not one that conflicts with what's gone before, and I think there's a lot of promising material to deal with in future issues. All in all, if you were wanting a proper bridge between Slott's She-Hulk and David's, this is it, and it doesn't disappoint.
New Avengers #41 ~ I haven't been reading New Avengers all along, but I've picked up bits and pieces of info here and there, enough to know what's been happening, and to realise that this is one of those "Oh, so that's what was going on!" issues. The SHIELD operation in the Savage Lands gets revisited in a flashback couched in part of the battle in Secret Invasion #2, as Spider-Man (the current one, not the retro one) finds himself in the company of Ka-Zar and Shanna. Not Frank Cho's Shanna, sadly, but the Ka-Zar/Shanna material is written with a nice sense of character, and I found them a likeable pair, in spite of my initial reaction of 'What's the point of Shanna letting some Tarzan clone tag along with her?'
King-Size Hulk ~ This is one of those oversized issues Marvel does, with new material and reprints of older stories with some sort of thematic relevance to the new stuff. In this case, we get about an issue's worth of new pages featuring the new red Hulk battling Wendigo, the Abomination, and She-Hulk - all this evidently ties into the events of the current Hulk series, but since I haven't been reading that, it's a mystery to me. More importantly though, the She-Hulk segment (eight pages) is pencilled and inked by Frank Cho, and yes, I basically bought this whole issue just to have some Frank Cho Shulkie. Honestly, it's not value for money, but what's the point of being a geeky fan if you can't blow money on stuff like this? The reprints consist of a whole lot of Hulk vs Wendigo - which I haven't yet read - and a cute little issue of Avengers in which Valkyrie leads a women's lib revolution and replaces the Avengers with the all-girl Liberators. This latter was fun to read, though it shows its age all over the place - the writing is classic heavy-handed comic stuff, and the actual story is paper-thin. So all in all... I don't actually know whether to recommend this issue or not. If you really like Frank Cho and She-Hulk, give it a look, I guess.
Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter #3 ~ This is a very perculiar issue. For starters, it's a mix of prose and text-less art pages. Why this is, I'm not sure, though since no further issues have been solicited, it seems like Virgin may have pulled the plug on Shadow Hunter, and this issue is a truncated wrap-up. I can't think why Virgin would stop the title before it's even got enough issues for a single trade paperback - especially since, with the publicity Shadow Hunter got on its launch, and the phenomenal quality of the art, I have a hard time believing it could be selling so poorly that Virgin wouldn't just tough it out for three more issues in order to take a stab at some trade paperback sales. Of course, all I know is what I'm told, so unless Virgin emails me, I'm as much in the dark as you are.
Regardless of why this issue is what it is, this is what we've got. The art is by Mukesh Singh, who's provided the visuals for Shadow Hunter from the beginning (that is, the previous two issues) - Singh is an incredible talent, and Shadow Hunter's strange, ethereal notions really let him cut free and explore what he can do with a page. There's beauty in the art, in depictions of Jezzerie/Jenna, but it's nothing to do with cheesecake (as the Greg Horn cover is); there's also darkness, horror, serenity and violence, and above all there's a continual sense of borders blurring, of different worlds and aspects bleeding through into each other, such that there's no clear line between one thing and another. Some of these art pages were in the gallery in issue #0, other are new - all of them are worth the cover price of this issue, just as an art gallery. As for the prose pages... they're not bad, but the effort to achieve the kind of sophistication that's present in the art is only semi-successful, resulting in wordage that's interesting to contemplate, but rarely truly elegant and as accessible as it wants to be. Various aspects of Jezzerie's life and struggle are touched on in various semi-poetic ways - but as a continuation/conclusion of the story that began in issues #1-2, it's still pretty unsatisfying to take a linear comic book story and wrap it up with a series of stylised prose pieces. If you've read and enjoyed Shadow Hunter #1 and #2, by all means pick this up for an interesting coda to the (apparently) truncated story, but there's nothing here that'd do much for a new reader.
