Wiiiiiiiiildstorm!
It's my birthday, so that means I can talk about whatever I want, like comic books none of you have read!
The first issues of the relaunched WildCats and The Authority came out this week, both penned by Grant Morrison and drawn by Jim Lee and Gene Ha, respectively.
WildCats was meant to be out a month ago, but since Lee has only managed to scribble FOUR issues of All Star Batman in, oh let's see here, OVER A YEAR, then I think we should all be grateful that it's only as late as this. Even then, the art doesn't look nearly as polished as it does on ASB, but it's certainly pretty enough. I found this issue a mite disappointing, because save for the "a Spartan robot in every home" bit, nothing about this seemed particularly innovative or fresh, y'know, like how Morrison usually works. This really read like a WildCats enthusiasts' continutity porn; WildCats as written by Geoff Johns. Spartan and Voodoo are back in the sack! Grifter shoots some Daemonites! Hell, the villains are Kaizen Gamorra and Helspont, and I think those are the only two Wildstorm villains to have survived more than one storyline. There's nothing really WRONG with it, I suppose, but I guess I just expected a little extra kick. Really, Jog put it best: " It's WildCats, and they're superheroes. See you in two months, maybe!"
The Authority relaunch is an interesting thing. For starters, the Authority don't even appear in the first issue, although their mode of transport makes an appearance. In its heyday, The Authority was cutting-edge superheroics, pioneering the decompressed, "widescreen" all-action approach, foregoing the normal soap opera tropes for bigger and better fight scenes. Unsurprisingly, Morrison argues in this issue that those days are over. The funny thing though is that he sticks with the old decompressed format, but uses it to highlight the mundane. Instead of a splash page of a perfect superbeing smashing an enemy through a skyscraper, we get a full splash of a wife shutting the door after leaving her husband, every detail lovingly rendered by Gene Ha. The pacing might be deadly to a book that's already scheduled to come out every other month, but the Morrison/Ha combo is hard to beat. And since this book is less dense than Ha's last assignment on Top 10, it has a much better chance of staying on schedule. This first issue was right on time, which is a good sign (kind of sad to say it, but it is). Anyway, I'll be sticking with this one for now to at least glimpse the title characters, and get a better idea of what Morrison's going for.
I'm mildly let down by each of these efforts, but I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future. But looking at these books and his current Batman arc, it just shows what a special project Seven Soldiers has been. I'll probably bore you to tears with that next week.
The first issues of the relaunched WildCats and The Authority came out this week, both penned by Grant Morrison and drawn by Jim Lee and Gene Ha, respectively.
WildCats was meant to be out a month ago, but since Lee has only managed to scribble FOUR issues of All Star Batman in, oh let's see here, OVER A YEAR, then I think we should all be grateful that it's only as late as this. Even then, the art doesn't look nearly as polished as it does on ASB, but it's certainly pretty enough. I found this issue a mite disappointing, because save for the "a Spartan robot in every home" bit, nothing about this seemed particularly innovative or fresh, y'know, like how Morrison usually works. This really read like a WildCats enthusiasts' continutity porn; WildCats as written by Geoff Johns. Spartan and Voodoo are back in the sack! Grifter shoots some Daemonites! Hell, the villains are Kaizen Gamorra and Helspont, and I think those are the only two Wildstorm villains to have survived more than one storyline. There's nothing really WRONG with it, I suppose, but I guess I just expected a little extra kick. Really, Jog put it best: " It's WildCats, and they're superheroes. See you in two months, maybe!"
The Authority relaunch is an interesting thing. For starters, the Authority don't even appear in the first issue, although their mode of transport makes an appearance. In its heyday, The Authority was cutting-edge superheroics, pioneering the decompressed, "widescreen" all-action approach, foregoing the normal soap opera tropes for bigger and better fight scenes. Unsurprisingly, Morrison argues in this issue that those days are over. The funny thing though is that he sticks with the old decompressed format, but uses it to highlight the mundane. Instead of a splash page of a perfect superbeing smashing an enemy through a skyscraper, we get a full splash of a wife shutting the door after leaving her husband, every detail lovingly rendered by Gene Ha. The pacing might be deadly to a book that's already scheduled to come out every other month, but the Morrison/Ha combo is hard to beat. And since this book is less dense than Ha's last assignment on Top 10, it has a much better chance of staying on schedule. This first issue was right on time, which is a good sign (kind of sad to say it, but it is). Anyway, I'll be sticking with this one for now to at least glimpse the title characters, and get a better idea of what Morrison's going for.
I'm mildly let down by each of these efforts, but I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future. But looking at these books and his current Batman arc, it just shows what a special project Seven Soldiers has been. I'll probably bore you to tears with that next week.
posted by Jeff at 11:34 AM
3 Comments:
Happy birthday! Hooray for Jeff!
Happy Birthday....sorry I can't come to the party, I'm on equine rotations this week and my allergies are going nuts, the kitties would do bad things at this point. Have fun!!!!
Paul and I were on an equine rotation once. The spinning platform and the horse-head masks weren't so bad. It was really the elevated metal hooves we had to wear. Anyway, I feel for you, Daisy.
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