I am actually beginning to run low on intervals to post in, and am confident I have more material than time. Huzzah!
So, in the interest of bieng interesting, I’m going to focus on comics of some note — mostly (though not all) stuff that’s really good.
Martha Washington Dies (Dark Horse) w. Frank Miller; a. Dave Gibbons
I proudly have the various Martha Washington graphics, and one shots, on my TPB shelves, but this tale, set in 2095, is hardly worth the effort. It’s basically a recounting of MW’s life, and her last chat with folks in her resistance community in some ruined city. And then she dies, and turns into fireworks, and her followers/family go charging off to fight the barbarians. Seventeen pages. Whuh? Oh, to pad out the thing, there are some pages from Frank Miller’s original 1987 outline for Give Me LIberty. Oh, boy. An inappropriately pointless ending for a moving character.
The Mighty Avengers (Marvel) w. Bendis, a. Cho
Ultron has taken over Tony Stark’s armor and body and made itself look like Janet, but, more importantly, has declared the end of the world. Ares is cranky and fights a lot. Wonder Man and Sentry kick ass against threatening satellites, but then Ultron activates a million-zillion Iron Man armors, while it goes off and kills Sentry’s wife. Yikes! Ares kicks more ass. Ultron starts activating nuclear missile codes. Bendis has some fun dialog (enhanced by snarky thought balloons, a technique that had almost vanished from comics. ). Cho’s art is very nice. The overall story is epic but unengaging.
The New Avengers (Marvel) w. Bendis, a. Yu
Yes, yet another Avengers title. This one has the fugitive Avengers. They’re all flying back from Japan where they fought Elektra and her million-zillion ninja, only to discover that Elektra was actually a Skrull shapeshifter. Yikes! So now everyone’s paranoid that someone on the team is a Skrull, as though that possibility had never existed before. Plus there’s arguments about what to do with the body. Spider-Woman wants to give it to Tony Stark and SHIELD to alert them. Everyone else is suddenly thinking maybe Tony Stark is a Skrull, hence his acting like an ass-hat. Then the plane crashes, and Spider-Woman takes the Skrull body. Huh. Okay. Art is kind of ugly, but the story and dialog are classic Bendis.