snap judgments

Little buggy trouble here at Snap Judgments, please bear with.

I am one lucky gal.

When things get me down, when I’m starting to frown and think Marvel Comics just might have blown a gasket and gotten turned around somewhere that I don’t want to follow anymore, I am seriously seriously lucky to have one of the new Amazing Spider-Man writers come into the store and set me straight. To show me an old panel caption or two that brings a smile to my face.   To tell me things and gags in his upcoming issues that put my mind at ease and to commiserate on issues that we just don’t think live up to the mighty Marvel manner (sometimes in very frank terms).  To remind me that hey, some people are taking this way too seriously and unknowingly pull me back from being one of those people.

Yeah, people don’t talk this way, but sometimes… don’t you wish they did?

Thank you, sir.  I can’t wait for a Brand New Day.

Okay, it might be all I can say on this and it’s a positive note:

BB: I made that choice very deliberately. Don’t get me wrong – I do like to keep some things off camera or panel if that will serve a particular scene or story. But in this instance, moving this off panel would have alluded that something sexual was going on or something rapey was happening.

Rapey.  It’s like truthiness, in a way.  It almost sounds kind of funny, taking the edge of a horrible topic and making it sound kind of… cute.  Rapey!  Not rape-ish, rape-esque and rape-like or even ‘a serious violation of the character’.  No, the scene’s just not rapey!  I honestly like this new word that Bendis has added to my vocabulary.  Thanks, sir.

Yeah. So, two Avengers books this week, one on the stands and one in the Preview pile. here one was a day when I would have been happily surprised by two whole books of Avengers fun back to back but now, disappointment looms overhead.

Mighty Avengers heralds its own arrival by being inconsequential from the get-go. One of many such books, it is so terminally late as to render whatever story its telling moot before it had a chance to tell it. Astonishing X-Men threatening to kill one of the X-Men? Well, books on the stands tell me that everyone of them is fine, so the tension disappears. Think Ultron (who recently acquired the power of a thousand AND ONE exploding suns to kick the Sentry’s butt so hard) might actually do some lasting harm to anyone… anywhere? Sorry, all of the Mighty Avengers have been shown dealing with a symbiote threat in a book that came out the week before you. It’s like Marc Anthony’s wife spilling the beans on J-Lo being pregnant; all the glory is gone.

Mighty Avengers #5

God, that’s depressing. Issue #5. I know Frank Cho’s gone on record and apologized for being lazy and taking on more than he was ready for and is leaving quietly but still. This book is laaaaate. Quick recap? They’re fighting Ultron, who is a chick. Also, Iron Man and the Sentry’s wife are dead.

Right off the bat, a big fight. I really can’t say there’s anything wrong with a big ass fight. The Sentry is drawn rather beautifully grieving for his dead wife and gathering some crazy bit inside of him to go fight Ultron, but really mean it this time. In their fisticuffs, they knock Avengers tower askew. Meanwhile, Ares’s plan is to go back to the SHIELD hellicarrier the Mighty Avengers are using as a base to yell at Han Pym. Hank Pym, a man having stood shoulder to tiny shoulder with Thor, a hero who had fought Ares before as an Avenger, is rather intimidated by the big man and his half-formed ideas of how to fight the high tech menace of Ultron. Pym fills in the whole, goes low tech to override Ultron’s control of the hellicarrier, and goes in with Ares to make a really tiny virus and a really tiny Ares to go in and fight Ultron from the inside out. Other people are slowly convinced that this is an idea so crazy… it just might work!

While the heroes have been fighting the big splash page fight, Ultron has been getting nuclear launch codes and proceeds to try and launch them… I think. All I know is that she has them, succeeds on launching one that appears to kill Ms. Marvel as she saves us all from a nuclear bomb, and a bunch of little read boxes tell me “Password Override Denied”. Whether this means that the SHIELD overrides aren’t working or Ultron’s overrides aren’t working, I don’t know but somehow, someone’s gonna launch a bomb.

The Sentry cannot defeat Ultron, so Wonder Man gives it a try. Seems his ionic energy can’t do the trick either and the Wasp’s only lines and appearance in this goddamned book arrive! Doing some field leading, she tells Wonder Man (or Simon because, despite big logo fonts, codenames aren’t really used consistently with the Mighty) to get Ultron out of the city just in time to look over her shoulder on the third to the last page and say “Hank?”

Yes, never fear! Ant-Man is here! Just like on the cover of the comic, so I can’t complain because it’s pretty cool shot of Ant-Man and his insects coming to…. surrender to Ultron and take a little monologuing so Ares and his SHIELD virus-mobile can go down Ultron gullet and hopefully END THIS STORY next issue.

So really, all you need to know is that there’s a big Venom/Carnage-y event the issue after next because Ares has a plan to end this all next issue.   Thank you, Ares.

Okay, so we’ve all seen the Captain America redesign, yes? Go click, ooh and ahh, then come back.

I have to admit, aside from a little burlesque there with the black sheath slipping down to show you Cap’s all chromy insides, I don’t think it’s horrible or the best thing since sliced bread. As much as they want to make a big deal out of it, I don’t think the internet’s all that broken over something… this simple. It’s a costume and marks the change of Steve Rogers holding the torch to the next guy.

Which… come on. The black? The knife and gun? Unless Thunderbird’s taking a break from the X-Men, we all know who’s in there. Considering December will herald the last clash between Iron Man and the Winter Soldier, it only makes sense that some CHANGE COME FROM THE CONFRONTATATION. A novel idea I know, but with Brubaker at the pen, I don’t think Winter Soldier will suddenly realize he’s been wrong all this time and walk off to be arrested nor will Iron Man once again get his butt handed to him to go slink off and lick his wounds while still being in charge. No, Steve left a letter for him asking him to both save Bucky and continue the Captain America tradition and Tony’s a smart enough gut to know how ot do both at the same time and maybe earn a cookie for the effort.

Now, when talking about this at the store with my illustrious and savvy fellow employees, I got into the fact that should Bucky accept the role that’s been set for him as the new Captain America, this is some good story. For one, think about this: ever since he was a kid, he’s never really been his own man, starting out as a mascot for the WWII war effort, then manipulated into the Winter Soldier… and now given this new hat to wear as an American icon? Mind you, there’s no terrible communism or torture involved, but still, it’s a lot to think about and digest.

Plus, there would be no way that Bucky would want to wear the traditional Captain America uniform. The man was like a father to him, this shining exemplar of everything Bucky knew was right and good and all that… it’d be uncomfortable for a man like him to step into the same mold because it simply wouldn’t measure up. It’d be like wearing your dead father’s old suit, creepy and way too uncomfortable, I said, then realized once again why I think Brubaker knocks it out of the park for me.

I was worried about the way a character would feel about a change in costume.

So, like a lot of you out there, I got horrendously ill this week. Barely made it in on Tuesday to sell some comics, missed new comic day entirely which normally would be a damned shame if it wasn’t for the fact I was able to convalesce in peace as I had completely forgotten that New Avengers #35 came out, not to mention having Mighty Avengers #5 mixed in with the preview books. I didn’t have to list two bad Avengers books in with the rest of my ails!

But today, despite still being full of meds and unpleasantness, I take the bullet and dive headfirst into both. Do you dare take in what could possibly be the WORST installments of each title? Read on!

New Avengers #35

Look at that cover! Venom and Wolverine, all claws and tongue and totally NOT IN THIS BOOK. Not a lick of it anywhere, but that’s nothing new in the world of comic covers so my complaint is pretty weak and we move on. Nope, no Wolverine in this book, but do you know who is? TIGRA! This is going to be great. You see, she’s taking down Jigsaw (who’s doing much cooler things over in Moon Knight if I remember correctly) and stopping him from the rather mundane crime of robbing a bank. Two cops bust in, assess the situation and begin to freak out on TIGRA despite her clearly stating her name, codename and registration and having JIGSAW ON THE GROUND while other people are withn arm’s reach who should have given a little more validity to the facts. The cops fear of furries allows Jigsaw to get away and get his invite to the warehouse gathering of shady criminals and Greer Nelson to get slammed by the Initiative for losing her man and shipped out to Arkansas. That’s right. Two inept cops who are never seen again after they discuss how freaky it was to see a furry chick in a bikini completely ruin a superhero who’s not only been on two sets of Avengers but is a clearly registered hero, most likely sleeping with Tony Stark (hey! if the characters in the book can make that judgment call, so can I) and has at least been a cover girl for a lot of titles these days as Random Girl Hero to balance out the male:female ratio. One strike, you’re out to Arkansas, where I am SURE a furry chick in a bikini will go over a lot better.

Anyhoo, back to the shady gathering of shady figures in a shady warehouse. The Hood has gathered them all there for sale pitch on his new Supervillain Union, saying that by working together they’ll never get beaten by losers like Tigra again. Why should we follow you?, ask other more well-established Marvel characters, to which the Hood responds in cash. “Seed money” to get the apparently suffering villains back on their feet. Because they have it so hard. Flash’s Rogues under Geoff Johns this is not.

As an extra bonus, the Hood offers to do a little favor for Jigsaw, his ‘calling card to the world’. After doing a little research, the Hood tracks Greer Nelson down to Catwoman’s apartment and beats the unholy hell out of her while having her mother on a cell phone to prove he’s really a huge threat to her and her family. You mess with the Hood’s guys (which is… I guess, all the super-villains? Are they going to wear matching biker jackets to prove their allegiance?), you’re dead. Your mom? Dead. And then, he adds, you’ll have to get all emo and crap like Spider-Man because you’re the one who really killed her because you’re a ‘selfish little pig’. Not an actual superhero with contacts with the government who could hide her mother and go after some retard in a cape in the time it takes to fire up a SHIELD jet-cycle. There’s more beating while Jigsaw camcords the whole thing for YouTube, his private late night video collection and … all the rest of the villains the Hood rounded up last time… at a bar?

So, 25 grand to what is depicted on-panel as roughly 39 guys (and gal!) plus the added benefit of a semi-snuff piece featuring a B-List hero at best who’s more known for working with the Avengers than going after any of these guys proper apparently reels the whole crew in. Yay for them. Going back a couple issues, they revisit the Deathlok in a Jar they have on tap and use him to rob a bank under the Baxter Building. Just Deathlok and seven other dudes (and dudette!) break into the joint for a big ol’ pile of money. Deathlok ‘dies’ in the process.

Last couple pages are them dealing with the big Venom event that hasn’t even hit the pages of Mighty Avengers just yet, but hey! There are the Mighty Avengers on live TV in a time sequence labeled “Today” and that the Hood guy? This gives him a grand opportunity.

Where do I even start? I tried to hold back through the recap just to get through the damned thing and not throw my copy against the nearest wall in frustration. This is so forced I’m surprised Bendis isn’t hovering over my shoulder with every pages going “Huh, didja see that? See that? Didja see it?”

Okay, we know the man has a huge thing for the Hood. I haven’t read it, so I can safely assume it’s the greatest new villain since the days of Doctor Doom and Thanos, full of passion and pathos, sympathy and madness and this is totally the character the Marvel Universe needs to shake things up. Whatever. I’d just be a lot more fond of some ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’. There is nothing all that inspiring about the Hood recruitment speech. There isn’t nothing all that compelling about his leadership. There is nothing all that fearsome about his methods. He’s a mid-card crook and could be very interesting there but setting him up as this huge presence amongst characters with more comics and background under their belt than his Spawn cape has little tattery bits to make him more spooky? Not worth, what now, two or three issues? You can’t just have a guy barge on scene, announce himself as the baddest dude on the block and then consider the job a done deal. Yeah, I could have read the Hood mini series or the trade to get a better idea of this guy. but you know what? I’M READING THE AVENGERS RIGHT NOW. It’s Bendis’s job to sell me on this guy and if he’s lazy, it’s not going to work.

Now, go back to the issue and think about someone like Whirlwind or hell, poor Electro standing up at a villain potluck and screaming “We don’t have to take it anymore!!”, rallying people he’s worked with before and taking advantage of the heroes vs heroes theme that’s settled into the ol’ MU. There would at least be a little backstory, some tenure so to speak with the guy and it’d be a lot more believable to see one of their own stepping into the role of gang boss. I mean, they don’t call them the Masters of Evil for nothing right? It’s not like Zemo has the trademark on the name.

Yeah, I can give the story time and maybe he’ll turn out to be really cool five issues down the line but I’m not willing. This is a big deal, this is a rally of villainy we havent seen in a long time and I should be compelled from page one, not ‘Oh, well, maybe the book will get better eventually and I should give the story time to breathe’- HELL NO! I’m tired of it! If he was going to go to everyone individually, pitch it to them personally, flesh out what he really wants out of the deal, earn some respect, be inventive, sure. I’ll give that story whatever it needs to build me a complex and compelling villain (SEE: Alexander Lukin in Captain America). But no, this was a wham-bam-I’m in charge, look at me now and let’s get on with a symbiont invasion.

And how does he show off how cool he is in the issue? Well, last issue he kicked Wolverine’s butt so I guess that’s street cred but this issue, he doles out cash and beats up Tigra, threatening her mom. To use an analogy, there’s this term they use in professional sports entertainment called “putting over” someone by “jobbing” to them. Yes, pro wrestling is scripted and if you’re booked to perform a match just to lose, you’re jobbing. Tigra was brought into the book to lose horribly to the Hood. She got no respect from the police officers at the start of the book, no respect from the people she works for in the Initiative, and was only used in the narrative to show just how ruthless and evil the Hood can be.

But… was it really all that impressive? It was Tigra. While I may have a fondness for Greer Nelson, it’s very clear that Bendis only thinks of her as a furry chick in a bikini. Marvel’s basically used her as a placeholder in several stories where her characterization is so thin she could easily be interchanged with any other Marvel heroine. So why should I care? It’s like beating up the Paladin or Centennial or the J.O.B. Squad. It’s cheap and unimpressive. I’d also like to note that after spending four whole pages on beating up Tigra, the really impressive heist of the bank under the Baxter Building (unless the Fantastic Four don’t actually live there anymore) is given just one page.

So yeah. Craptastic issue, sorry if you bought it.  But could the next Avengers title actually be worse??

You’ll have to forgive me, but I have a wicked headcold and could use a little chicken soup/crackpot theory on comic storyline surprises.

So… Black Bolt’s a Skrull.

Yeah. I made that decision long ago when Marvel pulled the latest of its “What will you do, reader? WHAT! WILL! YOU! DO!?” taglines and made us all look at the Marvel rosters for secret squirrels err, Skrulls to figure out who to trust.

At first, I went right for Doctor Strange; an odd lack of protecting the mystic arts, proclaiming that chaos magic didn’t exist, and his running in the opposite direction of Civil War didn’t seem all that trustworthy. It would explain Bendis’s hamhanded handling of the character and be a hell of a thing to find out that the real Sorcerer Supreme got taken out and was chained up in space somewhere so he could run into Annihilation… but that’s nonsense and wishful thinking. A lot of spells have been slung around and Bendis has tried to declare the New Avengers clean… though that could all be a ruse and if I start to think that way I’m going to start dropping titles out of frustration.

Everyone’s going to point to Tony Stark, but that’s just bad storytelling. No, exceptionally bad storytelling.

I figured one of the Illuminati had to be involved and so my vote goes to Black Bolt. He’s silent and doesn’t have to exercise his power everyday, so one could slip under the radar of not having world-shattering hyper-sonics. As part of the Ruling Council, he’s got a great amount of support to figure out how to run Attilan and, as highest in the ruling food chain of the Inhumans, he’s got a pretty good connection into the Marvel Universe as a whole. Who’s going to turn down a visit from the moon nation?

And thanks to the first issue of the Illuminati mini-series, there’s even a good chance for the old switcheroo to take place right under the Illuminati’ noses. I thought that issue was far too A-Team to just slide under the radar and while consecutive issues have never reached that level of A-Team-ness, it’d be nice to get to go back to that issue for that one clue we missed while Tony Stark was stuck dragging Professor Xavier around while firing a gun.

I’ll be honest here, too: another reason why I’m calling Skrull on Black Bolt here is because it would make me feel better. I think the character is a lot better that how he’s been shown in recent books and saying he’s been an impostor is a pleasant if not corny little salve on my bruised fangirl soul. Not to get into a nerd war or anything, but I am very sorry to tell Daniel Way that there is no way that the Hulk could have beaten the monarch of Attilan so easily. Sorry, just doesn’t fly with me when, as base fact, one is a very strong hand-to-hand combatant and the other has the world’s most powerful ranged weapon known to man. The Hulk may have not been this angry before, but Black Bolt can level cities with a whisper. Sans the rest of Attilan, not to mention space physics and all that jazz, Black Bolt still should have been able flay the flesh from Hulk’s bones before he was able to get within arm’s reach. Graphic, I know, but I feel pretty strongly about this and if the reason for this oversight was that it wasn’t actually Black Bolt after all? Like I said, a little salve.

This would also explain the train wreck that was Silent War as Black Bolt seemed to have a heck of a time making the right decision through all of that. Whe, at the end of the tale, Luna goes to Black Bolt in prison and asks for some clue as to how to fix everything, we cut to a black page. Now, perhaps this wasn’t because David Hine hates me personally (which I know he actually doesn’t, please Mr. Hine, I’m not serious), perhaps it was because showing any more would have ruined a reveal that was in the works for months and wouldn’t get played out until this new Secret Invasion. Mr. Hine has said that he has a third part ending for his Kicking the Inhumans in the Nads masterpiece that is still in the works (an idea he’s “pitched“, meaning that all of that was written without a clear ending in mind making me once again nervous for editoral at Marvel) and it’d be neat to see that all of this is going somewhere.

So, yeah. Black Bolt’s a Skrull.   There ya go.

So we may not be Golden Apple or Mile High, but I have to say that Metro Entertainment gets a fair amount of celebrity customers (one of whom’s going to be writing Amazing Spider-Man soon but won’t be named until I get his permission). And while I may have shown Crispin Glover where the Daniel Clowes comics were and saw Neil Patrick Harris with who I thought was his hetero-life mate (boy, was I not surprised!) shopping for indy books, most of the real celebrities have been the little guy.

So when someone slyly pointed to a copy of Absolute Watchmen on our sheves and mouthed the words ‘I’m working on that’ to my co-worker Ish, we nearly broke out the champagne. Yep, a lovely couple (or brother and sister or good friend and good friend; after NPH, I’ve learned to be wary) from Sony came in and secretly admitted that they indeed were working on Doctor Manhattan for the upcoming film of Watchmen. The rather lovely woman had done a test print apparently and that got them in the job. On a break back home in sunny Santa Barbara, they’d be due back for work in Vancouver soon but were nice enough to stop by and totally thrill us with little to no info on the movie.

Even my ‘Blink once for yes, twice for no!’ tactic didn’t work! They did say that the movie was incredible (well… they do pay your checks) and that the comic was practically being used as storyboards for scenes in the flick. When asked about the incredible layers of complexity the book has, what with the prose, the comic within the comic and all the other things online naysayers have been touting as impossible to film, the conversation grew interesting.

Apparently, the Tales of the Black Freighter is mentioned within the script, but as to exactly how it’s incorporated into the film, he suggested that there might be different versions of the movie.

I continued to pump them for info that they simply couldn’t give out, but at least seemed to impress them with how much I knew about the book. The woman who’d made the test film of Dr. Manhattan seemed surprised and asked if I knew this much about all of the comic we sold.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes I do.”

Ever since I was a little girl, I had dreamed of my own Klingon Wedding. Oh, you think I’m joking? The bat’lehs, the blood wine, the big pointy shoes… I could see myself battling my future husband then joining forces to send the Gods into hiding. But my new Mister persuaded me otherwise and he had a fine point; as much as I think the Klingon ceremony really is rather pretty and meaningful… there has to be a limit, you know? Believe it or not, there are some situations you have to sort of man-up to and take with a modicum of decorum and solemnity… and science-fiction swords don’t fit in there.  So we had a lovely ceremony sans ritual weaponry, but I threw in my touches where I could.

Because really, the ceremony is equal parts who you are, where you came from and where you’re going. It’s a chance to stand up and get to the basics of you, the person you love and your future. There’s no magazine for that, no wedding planner with all the answers, no monetary value on creating a family, creating a legacy.

So, I have to ask: Dinah.

I mean, really?

I understand your viewpoint, that your inviting a lot of people from ‘work’ and have a lot of secrets that simply need to be kept. I think the ceremony in the JLA cave is a great idea, very touching and important. But really. Ollie was right; you look like a fetish ball. This is not the foot you want to start on for the first day of the rest of your lives. While you simply glow in the moment thanks to the marvelous work of Amanda Conner, as bright and as beautiful as every girl on the cover of Modern Bride since the dawn of time, that dress (or lack thereof) just isn’t sending the right message.

Dinah Lance did not get married, Black Canary did. She didn’t marry Olliver Queen, she married Green Arrow. And all the danger, lies, death and adventure that brings. Honestly, I was all for this wedding as DC doesn’t have the history of heroes-marrying-heroes that Marvel employs, but as a wise man once said: “Not like this!”  In trying to make this a moment for heroes, it just didn’t include the man behind the mask.

Or at least, didn’t get a chance to so far.

And you wonder why you had to stab him in the neck on your honeymoon.

Okay, strangest thing just happened:  I was watching an ad for the Hitman movie coming out this month and suddenly I found myself thinking about the video game was based on.  How I might want to look into it, maybe rent it from a Blockbuster, see what it’s like.  After all, the movie looks kind of cool and the storyline (or at least what I’ve gleaned from a commercial) is interesting enough to play around with in a first-to-third person shooter.

And that’s when it hit me:  does anyone feel that way when they see a trailer for a comic book adaptation?