Corpus Christie and the Cape Girls ~ Travis Legge of Aegis Studios sent me PDFs of issues #1-3 (as well as some of Reckoning, which I'll be reviewing next week). Corpus Christie is the story of three girls sharing a house - Christie, a goth zombie (a very composed zombie, not the eat-your-brains type), Squeak, a dominatrix with a lisp, and Purple, a wannabe-goth who loves geeky TV shows. An odd trio, you'll agree. Magic and the supernatural in general abound, but in a very laissez-faire kind of way, as Squeak and Purple being okay with having a zombie housemate suggests - not to mention the primary source of danger in the opening story arc, the voodoo roofie. Yep, you read that right - it's magic for the nightclub generation. Despite the spells and such flying about, what this brought to mind most while I was reading it was an old favourite TV show, Daria - Christie and the girls are a more dysfunctional bunch, kind of Farscape to Daria and Jane's Star Trek, but there's the same quality of scathing humour and casual cynicism to them. Franco Viglino provides the art - black and white, inked - with bold, crisp lines, giving the characters a cartoony yet acerbic look. If you liked Daria (and if you don't know what Daria is, go find out, it's awesome), this is certainly worth your time. Check Aegis's website for more details, or if you're in the USA check out Wowio.com for free downloads of the issues.
Contract #0 ~ Okay, it's black and white - but it's also 25c, so really, how is that not worth a look? This preview issue contains the first six pages of Contract #1 (which will be full colour), which I believe are also available in colour from the A First Salvo website, plus a couple of art spreads featuring unlettered work by Ariel Padilla, Yvel Guichet, and Joe Rubenstein (Padilla's pages are from issue #2, so there's a neat glimpse at things to come), and a little five-page short Contract story called 'Delicate Touch', which is basically just a teaser - most of it's a double-page splash, so it's not story-dense - but based on a cute idea for a quick scene that gave me a chuckle. If you're reading this site, you like heroines already - so I'm telling you, buy this. It's 25c, what have you got to lose?
Pilot Season: Twilight Guardian ~ This was out a while ago - I don't know if I was looking on the wrong shelf, or if it was behind some other books or what, but I didn't find it until now. I can't say I'm mustering any great enthusiasm for the Pilot Season notion this time around. Top Cow is claiming 4.1 million participants in the first one, but that's utter bullshit - they made no effort to prevent people voting multiple times, so all they know is that they got that many clicks, which could have come from 4 million people, or just a handful with basic programs to do the clicking for them. Nor did they hold true to the promise that the teams on the Pilot Season books would be the teams on the final books - almost before they'd finished shipping the books, names were changing (including the artist on Velocity, which is a damn shame as the Pilot Season Velocity art was a high point). Nor have the first season's winners - Velocity (yay!) and Cyblade (why?) - been solicited, let alone shipped.
So Twilight Guardian here isn't exactly coasting on the event's hype - more the opposite, it's got a large disappointment factor to overcome. Luckily, it's a good issue. Actually, very good - but weird, in a way that makes me cautious about recommending it. Twilight Guardian is the story of a young woman who takes it upon herself to be her neighbourhood's superhero. No powers, no random ninja skills, she just puts on a mask and walks the streets at night, hoping to make a difference. And (luckily for her, one feels) she evidently lives in a pretty quiet neighbourhood, since she's never gotten into a fight. Nor does she in this issue - the whole thing is a self-narrated examination of her character, which is a kind of charming insanity. It's a quiet, quirky read in which nothing of any importance happens, except in our heroine's head - reading it is an interesting and quite novel experience, but as I said, I do wonder how well this would work as an ongoing series. If you want to see something different, this is worth a look.
Pilot Season: Lady Pendragon ~ This is kind of a weird one - having read through it, what most came to mind was that it seemed like a comic adaptation of one of those interchangeable sci-fantasy novels with the comic-art-y covers yuo see when you browse the cheap shelves at the local geek bookshop. Short summary, the sword in the stone turns up (on Mars, for some reason), our heroine pulls it out of the stone, magic returns to the Earth, blah blah world instability nations collapse magic outlawed, and we cut to our heroine protecting a bunch of magic-using refugees clustered around Glastonbury Tor, under attack from evil Chinese army guys. It's a curiously hollow issue - Lady P. doesn't seem to have much of a character of her own, though since the first part of the issue is a rushed retelling of her origin, full of irrelevant plot points which should've been omitted for now, but weren't presumably because the author likes it all too much, and the rest of the issue is battle scenes in which the Lady just muses generically on how awful violence is, it's not like she really gets a chance to be interesting. The best part of the issue is actually the three text pages in which the writer explains why he did what he did - that's something all Pilot Season issues should have. There's apparently going to be a trade paperback of the old Lady Pendragon issues coming out this year, and that might be worth a look if it's not too pricey, but I'm not sure I really want to read a new story - this issue just doesn't provide any compelling reason to want more.
Hack/Slash #12 ~ After a slightly lengthy absence Cassie and Vlad return, and it's business as usual, as they wander into the midst of yet another monstrous massacre. This was actually the first issue I read from this week's pile, so I was coming into it fresh, but I have to admit it left me feeling a bit... I don't know, empty I guess. The majority of the issue goes on its merry way, in a kind of 'generic Hack/Slash story' way, and aside from a hilarious (but throwaway) dream sequence at the beginning, it's only the last page that does something really interesting. Perhaps the problem is that this seems to be some kind of crossover with a miniseries called 'Bump' - I haven't read that (or heard of it until now), so to me the monsters are just another enemy, not something I'm excited to see for their own sake like I would be if I knew them already. Moreover, the bulk of the issue is written by Mark Kidwell - the guy who did Bump - and his pages just don't have the finely-crafted appeal that Tim Seeley's work does. Seeley, incidentally, did the manic nightmare Cassie has that I mentioned above - that's gold. I don't know what's taking up Seeley's time, but I hope he doesn't stay away too long - Hack/Slash isn't the same without him.
Wonder Woman #21 ~ Diana's journey through strange mythic settings continues, with the man responsible - the 'Stalker' - showing up there, and revealing some more details of what's actually going on behind the scenes of seemingly-bizarre stuff like Wonder Woman in furs fighting alongside Beowulf. It's the middle of the story, so there's little payoff yet, but this issue does a good job of bringing the initial 'what the heck?' reaction into line and explaining the cold opening (pardon the pun) in a way that reveals a logical, relateable story going on. Diana herself is struggling with the effects of having encountered Stalker's soulless soul, for want of a better term - I'm not sure how I feel about this, I admit. I like the notion of her having this inner demon to fight now, but if it's going to continue beyond this particular storyline, I'm not sure how happy I'd be to see Diana's 'dark side' be something artificially grafted onto her, rather than a matter of her making choices in difficult situations, and having to live with difficult consequences as a result. Still, that's something we'll deal with when and if it happens (and I have a lot of faith in Gail Simone as a writer, so I'm not especially worried). The subplots get some attention too - Nemesis gets more involved in Diana's professional life in a complicated way, with Steel asking him to essentially investigate whether 'Agent Prince' (and Etta, for that matter) are Amazon-sympathising traitors. 'Amazons Attack' wasn't exactly a high point for this title, but it happened, and it's nice to see it having realistic consequences. And Hippolyta gets a turn, back on Themiscyra, in a scene that foreshadows things to come - this one was quite a surprise, but I'm intrigued to find out where Simone may be taking it.
Magdalena/Daredevil ~ Not a great deal to report here - this is one of those crossovers that don't have any great weight to them, and seems to have happened just because someone thought it sounded cool and no-one objected. It's a fun enough read, in a simplistic kind of way, although some of the narration goes a bit over the top in describing, in melodramatic detail, Daredevil's sensory experience, but there's really nothing of any consequence going on. The highlight of the issue is a brief scene in which Matt and Patience discuss the meaning of faith, but it's over in a heartbeat, and the rest of the time is taken up by a generic monster threat that doesn't have enough creativity behind it to seem threatening. Also, if something's wearing body armour you can't afford to damage, hit it in the head - I can't believe no-one noticed that glaring lapse in logic. Overall, if you're a huge Magdalena of Daredevil fan this might be worth a look - it doesn't seem to get either character wrong - but if your budget is tight and you're looking to make a saving, this issue would be an easy one to leave on the shelf.
Trinity #2 ~ I'm still enjoying this title - but I'm still not really planning to go beyond the first three issues. The thing is, while I'm reading it, I enjoy it a lot - the dialogue is solid and fun, the concepts are neat, and the pace is fast and invigorating - but at the end, I realise that it's basically been a lot of enjoyable fluff, with little of Trinity's core story having really happened. In this issue, for instance, the trio each encounter a threat and deal with it in their own ways - Superman by cosmic-level feats of strength, Wonder Woman by kick-ass battle skills, and Batman by being grim and focused (his sequence was a bit of an odd one, but it worked thanks to exposition courtesy of our recurring villainous duo) - but the threats turn out to be just passing whims, and in the end a lot of pages are taken up with... well, shallow fun. The backup story is likewise enjoyable, but lightweight - I'm not sure we learned a hell of a lot about 'Konvikt' that couldn't have been conveyed in far less space had they not had to fill up an issue with something. That seems to be the verdict for Trinity thus far - nice idea, but the padding, while it's enjoyable, is still padding before we get to the meat of the story.
Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust? ~ A five-story compilation issue, very much like Civil War: Choosing Sides or whatever that was, except that this is so much better. Captain Marvel's segment is set between his miniseries and his appearance in Secret Invasion #1, and fills in some of the blanks about why he's suddenly popping up blasting into Thunderbolts Mountain. Next up, Agent Brand (who was on the S.W.O.R.D. space station that got blown up) reflects on Skrull diplomacy in the lead-up to the invasion, while she's floating around in a bubble of artificial atmosphere - it's a nicely-written sequence, giving her a lot of character background in a very short space of time, and helps fill the gap before the space station survivors we saw in Secret Invasion turn up again in the main miniseries, which I've been wondering about since all attention has been on the Savage Lands and Times Square at the moment. Speaking of the Savage Lands, Wonder Man (the current one) and Beast (the one from the crashed ship) get dumped into a giant spider tunnel together during the T-Rex rampage, and engage in some nostalgia and paranoid verbal sparring as they search for a way out - the ending of this segment is clever. Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr, or something) gets a segment featuring his exploits in the Cube, and comes off as well-meaning but a bit crazy. Lastly, the Agents of Atlas get a very neat little story focusing on the Skrull invasion outside the main theatres of superhero conflict, with the Agents busily working up a French Resistance style plan of action to mess up the invasion. If you want to know how I felt about this story, put it this way: right now there's a hardcover of the Agents of Atlas miniseries out, but the moment the trade paperback hits, I'll be buying that. The other segments are all entertaining, each to their own particular interests, and (with the exception of Marvel Boy, who's yet to show up in Secret Invasion, but evidently will) all have some importance for the main miniseries. A worthwhile tie-in.
JLA: The Hypothetical Woman ~ It's not often that I buy a comic purely for the creator's name - I have my favourites, but so long as the work isn't bad I follow characters, not creators. This is a bit of an exception though - I don't mind the JLA, what with Wonder Woman (she's the only woman in the incarnation featured here), but I very much doubt I'd have bought this trade paperback of a JLA Classified story had it not been for Gail Simone's name on the cover. Her Wonder Woman writing has been phenomenal, and I'm loving her Birds of Prey work as I go through the trades there (see the February TPB-a-thon for reviews of two volumes, and there'll be more coming shortly), so even with the JLA being lukewarm for me, Simone's name makes it worth money. And she doesn't disappoint. While I'm a heroine reader (addict, even) first and foremost, I can appreciate a well-written male hero as much as anyone, and Simone makes every member of the League unique and entertaining. And of course, Wonder Woman is a pleasure to read. The storyline is quite intriguing too, hampered really only by the necessity to return to the status quo by the end of it - if this had been an open-ended arc happening now, it could have been a major shake-up story, akin to Marvel's Civil War, with the JLA facing questions about their role in global politics, and a compelling and intelligent threat that could literally bring about World War III (or IV, or whatever the DCU is up to by now). Needing to put everything back where she found it, Simone brings in more traditional superheroic elements, and they're well-handled, but it's the early issues before the return-to-status-quo stuff appears that are really striking. José Luis García-Lopéz provides punchy, enjoyable art that carries the story without being too grim and gritty - a good choice for a basically 'happy ending' Classified arc.
The Last Defenders #4 ~ This book gets a reprieve, seeing as She-Hulk is on the cover to #6 - I figured, since I had #1-3, and would presumably be buying #6 (unless she's on the cover but not in the issue, which would be a crappy trick), I might as well have the complete story, for what it's worth. Which, I'm sorry to say, continues to be not much. We're still following Kyle Richmond, aka Nighthawk, he's still bumbling around without any real plan or sense of purpose, and no-one else in the issue does anything that seems driven by any particularly identifiable motives, besides just killing time, and being jerks so that Kyle has someone to be irritated by. The thing is, the only real motive Kyle seems to have is that there should be a Defenders team - but nothing in this title so far seems to be interested in showing the reader why this is, or indeed what the Defenders are, besides just 'a bunch of heroes'. It's lazy writing, and it makes for a dull and meandering comic.
