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It's late and I've already
reviewed eight books, so let's stick to the highlights. Also among this week's comics...
ALIAS #23 - Jessica's
origin story continues, as the Silver Age trappings begin to
fade into the book's normal style. The basic idea is
really the same, that Jessica's surrounded by plot elements
from 1960s superhero origins but somehow doesn't quite fit
into the whole genre. In an odd sort of way, it is the
ideal origin story for her - she kind of fits, but there's
something about her which leaves her at odds with the
characters around her. A-
ELEKTRA #24 - And it's
last issue's story again, except this time from Elektra's
perspective. But frankly, when you take her back to
"generic killer" mode, Elektra's perspective isn't all that
interesting. She's a difficult character to make work as
a protagonist - after all, it's not a role she was designed
for - but I'm not convinced Rodi has found the angle here.
B-
LOBO UNBOUND #1 - Keith
Giffen has another stab at taking Lobo back to the core
concept of ultraviolence and extremely low comedy. It
almost seems to be trying too hard, though. It reads a
bit like somebody's made a checklist of elements of Lobo
stories from his peak and they're trying to get everything in
- though the level of violence is much lower than in the Simon
Bisley stories. Nice painted artwork from Alex Horley,
though, and the opening pages recapping Lobo's origin in the
style of Dr Seuss are fun. C+
STARTLING STORIES: THE THING -
NIGHT FALLS ON YANCY STREET #1 - You don't think that
title might be six or seven words too long, perhaps?
Anyway, this is another Evan Dorkin miniseries, this time a
Thing story played pretty much straight. I'm not at all
clear why this is in the Startling Stories imprint -
supposedly Marvel's equivalent of Elseworlds - since it seems
quite deliberately to be trying to place itself in a classic
Fantastic Four set-up. Perhaps it does something
problematic in a future issue. This first issue is
largely Dorkin and artist Dean Haspiel re-establishing the
set-up, which they do well enough, and doing the first bits of
what seems to be a noir story. Quite good, although
there's a lot of retreading old ground if you're familiar with
these characters. B+
VERTIGO POP: BANGKOK #2 -
Well, it's not exactly an advert for the Bangkok tourist
industry. In fact, it's a much more negative portrayal
than the one Vankin gave to Tokyo in his earlier Vertigo
Pop miniseries. It seems to be heading towards a
lovers-reconciliation plot, as well, slightly hampered by the
fact that I don't really like either of the lead characters.
However, the sex tourist Benny is written with enough
ambiguity to make him interesting while keeping him creepy.
B
There's another Article 10 up at
Ninth Art on Monday.
Next week, the second issue of the
Domino miniseries, and... oh, just that one. Well,
if you're being picky, X-Men: Ronin is also out next
week, but I've given up hope on that. And there's an
Exiles trade paperback as well. So I'll pick a few
other books at random, I think.
That means the late running books (none of
them by more than a fortnight) are Sentinel, X-Men
Unlimited (yes, again) and Ultimate X-Men.
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