Showing posts with label Javier Pulido. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Javier Pulido. Show all posts

Wednesday's New Things: Justice Isn't Blind, It's a Seven Foot Tall Green Lawyer!


1. This new She-Hulk comic was announced so long ago that I forgot I was waiting for it! Seeing it on the shelves this week will be very exciting. Written by up-and-comer Charles Soule and drawn by the very talented Javier Pulido, you might call this the Hawkeyeing of Jennifer Walters. The truth is that I'm not sure that this book will have that book's appeal; Soule is much less of a known quality than Matt Fraction, Pulido isn't quite the artist that David Aja is, although presumably he draws more quickly, and the main character didn't just appear in the most successful superhero movie of all time. Hopefully, potential readers will see past all that, and the character's dated branding; between what appears to be an honest attempt at a comic book starring a female character, Soule's ability, as a practicing lawyer, to lend credibility to the writing, and Pulido's always welcome retro style, this all new She-Hulk could be both very good and deeply important. I can't find a lettered preview, but you can take a peek at Pulido's unusually spacious art here. 

2. I love the idea of The Mercenary Sea. I mean, the solicit, though vague, just drips with potential: "Action and adventure set in 1938—The South Seas. Japan has invaded China. War in Europe is imminent. Ex-bootlegger Jack Harper captains The Venture, a refitted German U-Boat, with a crew of expats, mercenaries and treasure hunters. They do whatever it takes to stay afloat, often running up against pirates, headhunters, spies, and soldiers. They’re always one step away from the greatest score of their lives...or their certain demise." The rub, though, is in the preview: leaving aside the dialogue, which somehow seems both over- and underwritten, the art seems indebted to the style of the excellent FX cartoon spy show Archer. That kind of broad stroke and colorist driven depth works on television much more than it works here; when you're not distracted by the fact that the lines are moving, they just seem stiff and imprecise. Some of the silhouette work on the third page of the preview seems to avoid these problems, but, although those panels are ok on their own, they're a snoozefest when taken together. 

3. Last week in this space, I wrote about the calculations I make when deciding whether or not to trade wait. In general, I tend to wait for miniseries; moreso than traditional serials, which are often themselves confused about whether or not they are better read in individual issues or trade paperbacks, minis, 99 times out of 100, read better when they're collected. In part, this is because the good mini is so rare; I expect that the vast majority are event tie in comics. Most everything else gets published as a graphic novel, with a few exceptions (Phongram, the initial publishing strategy of Fatale, Casanova, etc). This one, though, ties into to both the fact that CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER hits movie screens in early April and to a storyline currently being set up in Rick Remender's Captain America. By and large, Remender has attempted to stay out of Ed Brubaker's long shadow by avoiding espionage as a theme; unfortunately for him, that's the great genre of the Marvel comic book from the last ten years. It's also the only context in which a Winter Soldier solo comic book really makes any sense. With the movie imminent, Remender is stuck. Given how hit and miss his writing always is, it doesn't really make sense to trade wait this comic book; I want to read it now, I doubt I'll want to return to it later. I don't know what's up with Marvel and unlettered preview, but check out Roland Boschi's serviceable, if not great, art here.

"Everything always slips through my fingers--"

"Keemia's Castle" - "the Amazing Spider-Man" #615 and #616 from Marvel Comics 

If you can imagine something sadder than children being ripped away from their family half-unfairly by child services... well, I can't. That's the last-minute twist ending of Fred Van Lente and Javier Pulido's entry in the current huge ongoing Spider-Man storyline "The Gauntlet". Talk about heart-wrenching. How often does a Spider-Man comic move you? Well, you're talking to someone for whom Peter Parker is the ultimate model of how to be a man. So... couple times a year. This is one of those times. 


The story starts off more conventionally: a girl named Keemia has gone missing under strange circumstances, Spider-Man takes it upon himself to find her. Plus there's a double-spread in the early pages of part one devoted to the reactions of J. Jonah Jameson and Joe 'Robbie' Robertson to the major event of the previous issue: the destruction of the Daily Bugle building. These two pages had some of the most excellent character work I saw in mainstream superhero comics last year. Then, Peter Parker learns that his friend who works at the NYPD crime-lab Carlie Cooper is accused of carelessness when three murder weapons seem to "walk" right out of the office. Peter now has to find this missing child, determine whether the murders are related, and find the murder weapons to clear Carlie of the besmirchment to her name. He has to do all this while appeasing the Mayor's office staff (that is his current bill-paying job, after all) who want the loss of the murder weapons blamed on Carlie so the NYPD doesn't look inept as a whole. All in two issues! 

A big job for a little Spider-Man, as usual! Bits and pieces of the stories he hears from various people eventually leads Peter to bet on one of his old villains: the Sandman a.k.a. William Baker a.k.a. Flint Marko a.k.a. Sylvester Mann. Like I said, fairly conventional Spider-Man story. 

But even in these old-school Spidey-as-detective sequences both Van Lente and Pulido shine: Spider-Man swings through the South Bronx wearing ear muffs, a scarf, and leg warmers. Hilarious and surprisingly stylish-looking! He lets himself into the apartment of one of the victims only to be shot at by a little old lady with a shotgun! (Javier Rodriguez's colors deserve mention here, as the light-up/washout effect at the moment of the shotgun's "BWOOM" is awesome.) 

"I'm a friend--can't you tell by my big, expressive eyes?" The panel including this line, and the panels that follow in the two-page scene, are wonderful. Spidey stands lanky and tall, upside-down, on the ceiling connecting with and offering help to this stout, fierce elderly lady still holding her shotgun who has just lost her daughter and doesn't know where her great-granddaughter is. Some of the panels are straightforward, some are POV, some are in silhouette. I was simultaneously touched and tickled by this scene. 

This wonderful scene is followed by a quick meeting with long-standing supporting character Betty Brant. (She has been around since a brunette was seen at J. Jonah Jameson's front desk in "Amazing" #2 and was named in "Amazing" #4, which was the Sandman's first appearance!) This gives us another great scene in which Betty reveals to us that since "the Daily Bugle" is no more, she plans to start a BLOG (yay!) called "Bugle Girl". This scene is another two-pages, yet has too many other good points for me to list here. Suffice to say, it's another great scene. 

In a beautiful 3/4 page panel, Spider-Man gently floats down on a web-parachute to the place Betty's info sends him: Governor's Island (a small, state-owned island off Manhattan, generally closed to the public), where we finally get a bit of action! After canvassing the island, and showing us some nice architecture, Sandman traps our webbed hero in an arena-type space and their visually inventive fight tears through the place! Sandman forms his head into a set of ram's horns and charges Spidey. Spidey swings a metal grate at Marko's head and the little 'waterfalls' of sand falling off the metal bars each have little faces that all yell at him. Who's not going to think that's cool? The first issue (#615) concludes with the discovery that Marko has separated/multiplied his body into many humanoid sand-constructs. 


In the second issue (#616), we get a better perspective on these various SandMEN (and women) and we learn that Marko/Baker/Mann/heroic Sandman/evil Sandman have divided into multiple separate bodies and multiple separate personalities. (This connects nicely with the first time Sandman separated bodies in "Peter Parker: Spider-Man" #154 and #155. In that story, he broke-down into separate personas: super-ego, id, inner child, and inner female.) In fact, the only two things these myriad SandGents and Ladies can agree on is that Spidey has to be crushed and that he (they've?) found a small measure of happiness being a foster father to this girl he has 'kidnapped' and it's worth holding onto. Keemia doesn't want to leave either, as Flint Marko has made Governor's Island into a winter wonderland kingdom just for her. He is her father, the king and she is princess Keemia. A child's dream or her worst nightmare? Separating the two is difficult. (The scene in which Spidey convinces her he's not going to try to take her and then promptly scoops her up and makes a run for it, lamenting his ruse and the nature of "grittier, darker, more morally ambiguous 'super heroes' " is both funny, sad, and a genre commentary at the same time. Keemia's dialogue as she's carried through most of the issue on Spidey's back is hilarious.) 

Spider-Man has to run a 'gauntlet' (chuckle chuckle) made of Sandman's body in the form of a life-size SAND-castle and avoid the army of different Sandmans. It is at this point it becomes clear that Sandman's different personalities aren't communicating very effectively, in fact they're keeping secrets from each other. Three different Sandmen are responsible for the three murders that led Spidey on this goose chase in the first place. (Using his powers, Sandman is both the murder and the murder weapon. Mystery solved.) 

The other Sandmen claim no knowledge of this. Spider-Man states that as Sandman isn't entirely in control of... himself, not taking the girl back to her grandmother would be crazy. Sensible, yes. Sandman won't hear of anything sensible. "One day while I was visiting, just on her own-- Keemia started calling me 'Daddy!' You know what that means to a freak like me, who's never had anything permanent in his life? Everything always slips through my fingers-- like you-know-what!" William Baker has lived a conflicted life. He grew up without a father as Floyd Baker left the family while his son was very young. He became a career criminal like his father was. He used the name Flint Marko as a criminal to escape jail. He was on the wrong atomic testing site at the wrong time and found himself changed to living sand. He became a super-criminal under the name Sandman. He tried to go straight as a superhero for a time under the name Sandman (most successfully in "Amazing" #348). He used the name Sylvester Mann to escape his criminal past. Another villain found him too useful as a pawn and literally suppressed his super-ego to make him a pliable henchmen (in "PP:SM" #12). He began falling apart soon after (in "PP:SM" #22). 

This is, indeed, a man who would seek some permanence, some connection. Some family stability. Baker is defeated, screaming the name of his surrogate daughter. Spidey is free to bring Keemia home to her grandmother. Case closed, good triumphs over evil (or, in true Marvel style, good triumphs over the selfishly deranged and misunderstood), everybody goes home. Not here. This brings us to our aforementioned heart-wrenching conclusion. 

The gut punch: Child Services arrives. 

The great-grandmother was watching TV when Keemia was abducted by the Sandman. "I'm sorry, Spider-Man. I am. But... ...what did you think was going to happen?" 

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT? 

If I haven't made it clear yet, these two issues are excellent. Excellent writing, excellent art, excellent layouts, excellent colors. Plays with character continuity, yet stands alone. There is nary a misstep in the whole story. Honestly, this probably deserved to be on my "Personal Best of 2oo9" list as they were the last issues of "Amazing" in 2oo9, but I already had a Spider-Man story in there, plus there were TWO Fred Van Lente-written comics and a whole bunch of Marvel stuff and I didn't want to be accused of displaying blatant favoritism! If not for the crazy balancing act of writers and artists that came together to create "Red-Headed Stranger," this would have stolen its spot.  

Man. So damn much information to impart to you! Van Lente and Pulido pack delicious bits wherever they can and I chose to review two of their issues at once! You should check them out. All reviews I do from here on in will be of single issues unless it's a series wrap-up review! 

P.S. ~ Did I mention Paolo Rivera's covers for these two issues are awesome, too? Go look!