You Read These With Your Eyes! – October 5th, 2011
Every week, Comics! The Blog goes through the list of new releases and we tell you which comics to plug into your mind hole. Your mileage may vary.
ANIMAL MAN #2 (DC Comics)
As the New 52 jumps into its second month, I’m interested to see where a lot of the new series go and how they sell. But let’s be honest: as much as was made out of the changes to Superman, Action Comics is a flagship comic and it’s gonna sell. It has one of the biggest names in the business writing it. Superman and Batman will be fine because, in general, dudes already know about Superman and Batman. The real face of the New 52 is going to be series like Animal Man, featuring lesser known characters and writers. This is where we’ll see the real changes and new directions, because there’s simply less inertia keeping them rolling than there is, say, in a series about a dude most people haven’t read about since 1990, if ever.
Animal Man #1 surprised me with how easily it got me to care about Buddy Baker and his life. He’s a family man, much more so than almost any other character in DC, and that means a completely different kind of story. He’s one of the few characters who’s a husband and father first, and with the reveal at the end of the first issue, it looks like that’s squarely where Jeff Lemire plans to hit him. I can’t wait.
Did you enjoy the flashback stories to Nick Fury’s first team of Avengers during recent issues of New Avengers? While it was definitely weird at times having those two simultaneous stories - past and present - running in the series, the main reason was that I enjoyed each of the stories enough that having only half an issue of each didn’t always feel like enough to tide me over for a whole month. Luckily, with this limited series, written and drawn by Howard Chaykin, I and everybody else who loved the idea of Nick Fury heading up a suave 1950s spy team will get a better look at it for entire issues at a time.
When I was a kid, not only did my dad introduce me to comics, but he also introduced me to James Bond. I grew up with those two dual loves, and seeing them played out in Chaykin‘s hybrid is going to be very exciting. If like superheroes (or the Thunderbolts) and spy fiction, check it out!
CASANOVA: AVARITIA #3 (Icon Comics)
Come on, it’s us; of course we recommend this. More later.
FINE. Listen: this comic is the only one to feature ukeleles, attack pandas and grisly metatextual murders. What more could you possibly want. Brilliant art? Gabriel Ba, reporting for duty. Boundary-pushing lettering and colouring? Look no further than Dustin Harbin and Cris Peter. Plus, of course, Matt Fraction‘s general insanity. It’s a wonderful time to be a comics fan.
I think it is absolutely wonderful that the third issue of Mystic is being released in the same week as a Casanova issue, because while each comic is, to me, at the peak of its genre, one has cusses and sex and hyperviolence and the other is Casanova.
I kid, I kid.
Really, though, the two are just about polar opposites thematically and in terms of approach, and I like that reminder this week that comics is a medium, not a genre. It can have its decidedly adult series and ones that are great for people of all ages, like Mystic. G. Willow Wilson‘s series is taking some familiar elements - steampunk environments, class struggles, orphans, magical apprentices and destiny - and spinning them into something unique and wonderful. As we see more and more of the world of the series, I fall deeper and deeper in love with the struggles of Genevieve and Giselle as they’re both tossed into struggles they never anticipated. If you like Harry Potter, the Amulet series, or just good all-ages comics, this is absolutely for you.
X-MEN: SCHISM #5 (Marvel Comics)
Schism has been an interesting comic book event, in that it has completely surprised me with almost every issue. The way things were advertised, I expected it to be this giant fistfight between Wolverine and Cyclops, with everybody else falling into one of the two factions; it wouldn’t be the first time a comics conflict between friends was presented as, “We disagree! Now we must fight!” Instead, however, Schism has given us a gradually evolving conflict, one where writer Jason Aaron has made it clear exactly why the X-Men will experience a division, and completely selling both side’ arguments. Cyclops is playing the hard-nosed pragmatist, while Wolverine is calling him on something that seems stunningly simple in retrospect: everything Logan has done for Scott in recent years was to prevent others from having to. He’ll be that devil, but only to a point. Only if they’re not turning children into soldiers, however thin a distinction it ever was with the X-Men to begin with. As we come up to the final issue of the series, we’re finally seeing the conflict get heated as their contentious past finally gets raised. What will happen? We know a big part of the endpoint, but as for the pages leading up to it? I’m excited to find out.
These are just five of the many great books being released this week! You can find the full list of comics being released here. If you have any other recommendations, let us know in the comments below.
