snap judgments

Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker leave the Immortal Iron Fist in the hands of Duane Swierczynski.
Now, on one hand, this shouldn’t be that big of a threat to the guy buying comics.  Brubaker and Fraction get right to it when asked about what it was that made Danny Rand’s adventures such a big hit and that’s getting to the core of the character.  Kung-Fu Billionaire is a brilliant place to start and as long the stories are kept to the heart of the matter, everything else follows through.   Iron Fist is such an essentially cool character, the tone of the stories that Brubaker and Fraction have told is dead solid, this is a very easy pattern for someone else to follow.  They talk about being blessed with a great editor, Warren Simons, and how he had gone to bat with Marvel for these great stories and if he’s that much of a believer in a pulp martial arts bonanza, there is more than enough hope that he won’t let the book go to a monkey with a pen.  Brubaker and Fraction recommended Swierczynski personally for the job!  This is good, right?  Right?

Yeah.

I know, it’s hard to think about the book doing half as good as it did under the rather surprising genius of the current creative team.  Swierczynski comes off in the article like a generic Marvel parrot, saying nothing but platitudes and ‘what he said’s.  I get no strength from the man; despite his rather good Punchisher: War Journal one-shot, you can’t say Cable’s been anything but underwhelming.  And when it’s Cable with a baby strapped to his chest, underwhelming is a pretty good choice of words.

Reading the comments to the interview, a lot of people look to be jumping ship.  I know I’m going to get to work tomorrow with quite a few wails and moans of woe, and that’s just from the staff.  We at Metro adore and revere Iron Fist.  Anytime a customer hasn’t heard of the kung-fu goodness, I have to go run and grab the trade an show them that last panel from the last issue where two people kick each other so hard a building explodes.  It’s another sale the moment the enthusiasm passes from us to the customer and boy, our enthusiasm is boundless.

Funny story:  I got to see Matt Fraction at WizardWorld LA this year.  In fact, he was the first thing I saw when I went into the dealer’s room; with my jaw on the floor, I slipped up to the table he was going to be signing at and proceeded to gush.  I told him how well Casanova sells at the store and how Metro loves Iron Fist and he was a very pleasant and humble man with carefully crafted ‘bed head’.  I’d been sent down to the con with a few of our bitchin’ store T-Shirts to give to store heroes and strangely wasn’t expecting Mr. Fraction as the T-Shirts were L and XL…  but I did have my store shirt.  I planned on wearing it once I got to the con and had forgotten to change into it, but there was a size Medium and there was Our Hero, so I gave him mine and might have gibbered on about the cat hair on it.   He was very nice and accepted my employee shirt and gave me his card and man, I was all professional and cool … until I realized I wouldn’t have a shirt to wear at the store next week.

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand:  Iron Fist.

I can’t say that I have all that much enthusiasm for the new writer; the new artist, Travel Foreman, on the other hand looks really different and I think he could pull it off.   Mind you, Aja’s a hard act to follow, so best of luck there.  In fact, best of luck to all of them.

They are going to need it.

I liked it.

I know, I’m just as surprised as you are.  Spoilers do follow.

There it was, recon city staring the two teams of Avengers I just couldn’t get to like no matter how many likable characters they contained.  Here was Brian Bendis, someone I thought hd jumped the shark when it came to being automatically witty and well-paced.  And Lenil Yu!  His run on New Avengers had the rest of the store in tears and myself wondering what had happened to that dashing young man on deviant art who looked cool on my computer screen.  All of this was a collision course to wackiness as this year’s Must Read event.

I just might have to read it!

First off, if you’re intertnet savvy, you already know most of what happens in this issue.  Preview pages, spoiler alerts and speculation have been flyi for quite some time on what was supposed to happen here and none of it was really wrong.  The good news is that it was all well executed and quickly paced so all the things you did know weren’t displayed as OMG SURPRISE MOMENTS!   Sure, you knew that some people would be Skrulls, others would indeed NOT be Skrulls but it was played off as part of the story, no big to-do.

Again, your mileage may vary.

What really starts to get me itchy, however, is Bendis talking about how this was all part of the master plan.  Not that I doubt that, but it’s almost sounding like an excuse.  If he just came out, said ‘Hey, this story is going to knock your ever-lovin’ socks off!’ and went home, okay.  But referencing pages of stories that I didn’t like to begin with as some sort of treasure trove of genius makes me wonder… well, it makes me wonder if he reads this blog (short answer: no.).  I’ve been meh on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes under his helm nearly from the get-go as the New Avengers fought ninja after ninja and solved nothing after nothing as they ran up to event after event.  And here we are again, only this time I have some hope as to the event they’re running into, with or without them.  Civil War needed the Avengers, World War Hulk SHOULD HAVE HAD the Avengers and here, we’ll just have to see where it leads to.

Are all of the ’70s era heroes really back from some crazy Skrull prison while they’ve been replaced all this time (and if so, WHERE IS THE GODDAMNED BLACK BOLT??)?  Is it just a late ship with Skrulls still using the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition?   And just how many goddamned sides is Spider-Woman gonna be on, anyways?

I am actually looking forward to these answers and more.  #1 has left me with a big heapin’ helpin’ of plot hooks that have sunk their tiny teeth into my flesh.

But all you need to know?  Something has landed in the Savage Land that contained, and I quote, the White Queen, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Thor, Beast, Wonder Man, the Invisible Woman, Pheonix (of the Jean Grey variety), Hawkeye, Iron Man, Vision, the Scarlet Witch, Jewel, Mockingbird, Captain FREAKIN’ America, Ms. Marvel, and Wolverine.  Both Mighty and New Avengers are there to WTF.  The following people have set about some sort of Skrull sabotage that’s taking it to Tony Stark like he was a red-headed stepchild via a Alien Computer Virus infecting… well, what looks like all StarkTech: Dum Dum Dugan and Jarvis.  Tony’s having seizures because he’s Extremis now and probably having some sort of backlash to all of that.  Hank Pym is a Skrull and has shot Mr. Fantastic with something crazy and alien.

The doo-doo has officially hit the fan.

It’s kind of cool.