Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #1 ~ Robo is back! I loved the first Atomic Robo miniseries as much as it's possible to love a comic that isn't about a superheroine (just my personal bias, don't mind me) - this one looks set to repeat that success, based on this opening issue. With the broad strokes of Robo's creation and life laid out in the decades-spanning first miniseries, this one takes a tighter focus, dealing specifically with one of Robo's adventures, when he was sent into Sicily in 1943 to aid the Allied invasion by taking out a force of German war-mechs stationed there. The opening sequence reveals the invasion's launch, with a sea-to-beach deployment that'll be familiar to anyone who's seen Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach sequence, and everything is jist spot-on - the dialogue, the staging of the sequence, the choice of which images go in which panel, even the omnipresent sound of the troop boat engines, rendered as a never-ending line of text sound effects at the bottom of each panel. Robo himself doesn't appear until a couple of pages later on, but this opening just sums up everything great about the comic - it may on the surface be an action/comedy about a wise-cracking robot, but no-one involved with this comic puts in anything less than 110%, so no matter what it turns its hand to - comedy, drama, action, war epic, even sentimentality - it delivers the goods. There's also a real sense of historical validity to the comic, which is kind of amazing when you consider the titular character - but it's clear that a lot of effort went into making this feel right, from the plot points to the dialogue to the artists' renditions of locations and uniforms and so on. I dare say you could give this to someone who was interested only in war comics, and after the inevitable "Atomic what?" reaction, they'd love it. So if you like war stories, or steampunk sci-fi, or action, or comedy, or awesomeness, go buy this comic. (Oh, and in addition to the 22 page main story, there's the usual guest-artist backup, four pages featuring Robo battling a giant crab, drawn by Zack Finfrock. This too is fun, go buy it.)
Neozoic #6 ~ This is a comics I've had my eye on since it made its debut - I've seen some previews (including the Atomic Robo/Neozoic Free Comic Book Day issue) and glanced at a few pages while browsing, enough to get a rough idea of it. The scenario is that humans and dinosaur co-inhabit the world, with human civilisation now a highly advanced form of its hunter-gatherer roots, kind of like if Shanna the She-Devil wore hipster jeans and read the newspaper in her time off fighting reptiles. By this issue Monati, the walled city our heroes call home, has been overrun by a subterranean humanoid race, the Talpid, and the cast of characters is scattered about, surviving and resisting as best they can depending on circumstances. Coming into this issue relatively uninformed about who was who and what was what, I found it fairly accessible - a head-shot gallery to accompany the intro text would have been nice, so I wouldn't have had to wait for people's names to be spoken before I could connect them to the backstory given on the inside cover, but it wasn't a huge problem, and overall the writing and art combine to create an accessible set of sequences, their mood and characters' attitudes clear, even if the exact events of the past five issues are still a bit vague. Compared to Robo, Neozoic is much more serious in tone - it's a street-level heroic fantasy first and foremost, and what laughs there are are more in the vein of chuckles at wry comments and suchlike, although I did get one big laugh, when I spotted a Robo shout-out in the art. Speaking of the art, it is just gorgeous - J. Korim, with Jessie Lam colouring, provide hugely evocative visuals that meld believable realism with engaging and exciting stylisation. It's good value for money, too - aside from the 24 pages of story (not including the intro page), there's another two pages of character sketches, and the cover price is still at the US$2.95 level. I'm really looking forward to news of the first trade paperback so I can get caught up on this - based on this issue, I think I may start getting it in monthly issues too.
Wonder Woman #23 ~ Wonder Woman's extra-dimensional fantasy odyssey comes to its climax with Diana battling, basically, the Devil, at the same time as she's wrangling with the effects of having lost her own soul. As a story contained within itself this arc has been enjoyable and nicely grim-epic-like, kind of a road-movie take on 300, and this issue hits the right notes with its huge fight scene, and the following coda couched within Diana's narration, in a suitably (for the story and for Diana) high-fantasy voice. As part of an ongoing title, though, I wonder if it's possibly a bit too self-contained - though I was hoping Diana's soulless anger-inclined persona wouldn't extend that much farther than this storyline (it was interesting as an experiment, but it's not the Wonder Woman I want to read long-term), it seemed to get resolved very neatly, almost a return-to-status-quo kind of situation. On that count, though, the Nemesis subplot steps in big time - not only his encounter with Donna Troy (who after Countdown to Final Crisis's misery suddenly seems like a character worth following again - trust Gail Simone's writing for that), but also the framing device of his mission, and the closing revelation that Director Steel isn't just paranoid, but all-out crazy paranoid. Now that Diana's home and herself again, I'm looking forward to seeing her position in the DMA get some serious attention. Funny, when Heinberg launched this new Wonder Woman title, I couldn't stand the DMA angle, and now I want to see more of it - just goes to show what a writer like Simone with good ideas can do.
Secret Invasion #5 ~ Marvel's big event moves past the half-way stage, and with the Skrull invasion pretty much fully established, it's time for our heroes to fight back. There are a lot of cool moments in this issue - up in orbit Agent Brand thinks fast and kicks arse, on the crashed helicarrier Maria Hill demonstrates yet again why I adore her, and at Thunderbolts Mountain, in an especially well-written scene, Normal Osborn faces the Skrull Captain Marvel and uses nothing but his wits and intellect to talk him into turning agianst his fellow Skrulls. Meanwhile there's a darkly hilarious two-page spread as the Skrulls appropriate every TV - and every media personality - on Earth to deliver their message to the population, and did I mention how awesome Maria Hill is? I love her. If there's one shortcoming to this issue, it's that the big name heroes - most of whom are still in the Savage Land - don't really seem that important to what's going on at this stage. Reed Richards (who's really angry, which is new and interesting) ties them into the main plotline a bit, but until then their bickering amongst themselves about who they can trust really doesn't seem that interesting, compared to the cool counter-attacks going on elsewhere.
I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space #2 ~ Having been kidnapped from her humdrum life on Earth, Susie is homesick, and the Lesbian Pirates come up with a plan to lift her spirits - rob a bank and spend the proceeds on a mammoth shoe-shopping spree. Well, Susie's a 50s girl, she likes shoes. It's a combination of classic pulp sci-fi - the ray guns even make 'pyew pyew' sounds - with poking fun at superheroes, in the person of Male Man, a Superman parody with an enormous chin (and hairdo) and a rather inflated opinion of himself. As with issue one (reviewed here), Megan Rose Gedris's retro/homemade art style will be a shock to the system to anyone accustomed to modern comic art, but its old-time style suits the story well, and there's a lot of subtlety in it, for all that it looks simplistic on the surface - just because it's not photorealistic doesn't mean Gedris doesn't know how to portray expressions, and she's got a particular flair for sight gags. A reminder, all six issues of Lesbian Pirates are online at the comic's website on Drunk Duck here
Final Crisis: Revelations #1 ~ Greg Rucka continues his development of Renee Montoya as the Question, this time paired with (or opposed by, rather) the Spectre, who's currently inhabiting the form of Crispus Allen, Montoya's murdered former partner at the Gotham City Police Department. Montoya I'm up to speed on - this story follows on from the events of her Crime Bible miniseries - but the Spectre isn't a character I've ever had much contact with. He/it is explained pretty well over the course of this issue, but in a nasty kind of way - although we see him do 'good' (like taking out Doctor Light, and it's about time someone did), he comes across as a barely-contained murderous psychopath who just happens, mostly, to kill bad guys. Montoya fares better, still battling the mad monks of the Dark Faith as she was in Crime Bible - this is apparently a sect of the Faith that (thankfully) isn't connected with Libra's childish antics. There's not a lot of real storyline material here, but in its place there's some fairly neat action sequences with Renee being all Lara Croft. The conclusion of the issue brings the two together, Renee and Crispus - but I have to wonder whether this title can really manage to fit into the Gotham Central themes it's drawing on, with the Spectre's silliness about the place. As an aside, I don't really see what this has got to do with Final Crisis, aside from taking place at roughly the same time - it's a bit of a 'red skies' tie-in, but then again Final Crisis is a pretty plotless mishmash so far, so perhaps that's inevitable.
Hyperkinetic #2 ~ At the end of issue #1, bounty hunters Alicia, Shirley and Milla found themselves face-to-chassis with some huge robots, and quite a bit of this issue devotes itself to the ensuing battle. Between that, and a sequence where Katiya, in a fit of well-meaning naivete, decides to go off and help her friends bring in the bounty, there's not a lot of inter-action going on - where the first issue had a lot of the four girls (and their droid Tejigi) bickering, this time they're mostly too absorbed in whatever dramas they've gotten into as a group, or individually, to pick fights with each other, so the tone shifts from smart-ass comedy to smart-ass action. The robot battle sags a bit in pacing in the middle, but overall it's fun, and a later shootout sustains itself well with dialogue and sci-fi gimmicks. Katiya's side of things has plenty of comedy, but she comes off as perhaps a bit too gullible, even for the naive one of the group - with only four issues total, I don't know that there's really going to be enough time to refine the characters much from what they're presented as up-front, so anything overdone, like Katiya's willingness to just trust the first low-life she meets, tends to stick for the whole story.
The Last Defenders #6 ~ Well, I stuck through all six issues - mainly for She-Hulk, and fortunately she appears quite a bit in this issue, so it wasn't a total waste, though she's not written with any particular flare for her character, especially not to stack up to Peter David's work in her own title. Her aside, this final issue did nothing different to what I've been saying in my reviews of the miniseries previously - we're told the Defenders are important, that they fulfil some kind of mystical role as heroes, that they're 'destined to be'... but we're never shown why. This issue pulls out all the stops, bringing in the Defenders of the future to show us how cool they are, but after five issues of setup with no substance, it just feels like the hand of the author, as if Casey, like the Wizard of Oz, is hiding behind a curtain making a big giant head (in this case Yandroth) tell us all that what we're seeing is really important, when in fact 'the last Defenders' haven't managed to sustain a six-issue miniseries, let alone a great role in the destiny of the cosmos. And I'm no Defenders fan - not that I dislike them, I've just never read any - but I can only imagine how a longtime follower of the team would feel to be told that the team they've read about, with Hulk and Namor and so on, were some kind of cosmic mistake, and that this is what the Defenders were meant to be all along. I don't like to be negative, but my honest opinion is that there are so many more interesting comics around than this - there's no way that the Defenders are going to get their own long-running title on the basis of this miniseries, so to be told that this is the beginning of something huge and important... sorry, it's just not.
Mercy Sparx #0 ~ Coincidentally, the set-up of this title seems to be quite similar to Fire and Brimstone, which I covered in last week's reviews - a demoness is sent to Earth by higher powers, to round up various ne'er-do-wells. But that's just the surface level - after all, all super-team books are basically 'some people in spandex with powers team up to beat up supervillains' - and aside from noting the amusing coincidence, I didn't find the two titles overly similar. Rather than an optimist/pessimist duo, we're following only one character this time, the titular Mercy, who's a discontented girl from Sheol, a kind of low-class hell, with a habit of hanging out in bars, being abrasive, and whose taste in boyfriends is pretty abysmal, pardon the pun. The eight pages of story in this preview issue give us a quick introduction to her, and follow her to a local haunt where she's recruited by a 'real' demon (as opposed to Sheol's bottom-of-the-barrel assortment) who claims to represent God, and hands Mercy her mission of hunting down rogue angels - whether she wants to or not, as she finds when she tells him to shove it, gets knocked out, and wakes up on Earth in human form. Well, everyone has that kind of wake-up shock after a night on the booze once in a while. There's a text page from writer Josh Blaylock, explaining how Mercy and her story came to be - which is both well-written and promising in terms of the ideas being thrown around - three pages of sketches, and six inked pages from issue one, sans colour or dialogue, depicting Mercy fighting an angel. The art - Matt Merhoff, with Eduardo Medeiros colouring - is really polished, very dynamic and refined, with a particular knack for Mercy's facial expressions, which really let her 'act' in addition to the dialogue telling us what she's thinking. At US99c this is a preview that's definitely worth your time and money to check out, and I think it shows ample promise worth sticking around for the four-issue run coming up.
