Comics This Week
When writing these mini-reviews, I’m beginning to have more and more trouble remembering what the hell I actually read the past week. These are actually from two weeks ago.
“Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 13: Hobgoblin” (Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley)
More of the usual Bendis/Bagley fare. Not as silly as the previous volume with the Wolverine body-switch, but not as horribly grim as the one before that with Carnage. Short summary: disturbed son of Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin), Harry Osborn, returns to Peter Parker’s life — huge fight ensues. Not particularly outstanding and quite easy to breeze through in one reading.
“Wanted” (Mark Millar, J.G. Jones)
The lead character’s father, part of a secret super-villain cabal that runs the world, dies and leaves him a place high in the villain pecking order. The lead character then transforms from sad ordinary 8-to-5er into The Killer, in a fantasy life where actions have no consequences and where self-gratification is the order of the day.
There’s a lot more to the story, but there’s no point ruining it — suffice to say, it’s deeper than the usual Millar power-trip story that my description might have evoked an impression of. My only quibble was that there was a ton of extra material in the book that made the story look like it’d end much later than it actually did, so the ending was a bit of an anticlimax. This also happened with the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, and in both cases, I found the respective endings unpleasantly sudden, though sensibly concluded after some thought. A good read, nonetheless — it’s not often that I feel like I want to finish reading a graphic novel in one sitting (unlike the case above), and this was just page-turning fun.
“The Pulse Volume 2: Secret War” (Brian Michael Bendis, Brent Anderson)
Bendis again, this time with Brent Anderson of Astro City fame. I’d forgotten how much I appreciated his art — functional and nicely embellished at the same time. In this volume, lead character Jessica Jones gets caught right in the middle of super-spy leader Nick Fury’s Secret War, losing boyfriend Luke Cage to inexplicable attack, injury and kidnapping. Having never read Bendis’ Secret War series, I was just as befuddled as Jones was about what the hell was going on. That’s when I realised — what an effective crossover! Bendis gets to play the man-on-the-street angle very nicely (last done effectively by Kurt Busiek in Marvels) with Jones’ lack of inside knowledge on the War, writing her into various investigative and reactive situations very effectively. Pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable this was, and now I’m really curious about what the hell Secret War was all about. Where’s the graphic novel?!
Oh, and a manic-depressive Wolverine cameos for a few pages. That certainly justifies his cover appearance.