New Comic Review: Kiss 2016 # 1

Kiss  2016  # 1
Dynamite Entertainment
Amy Chu and Kewber Baal

I'm going to ask you to forgive the overly personal tone to this review.  Call it a quasi-review with a heavy lean on reflection.  Granted, I'm far looser in structure with my posts here at Confessions of an Old School Comics Nerd.  You're likely not expecting AP-style journalism here, nor are you going to get it.  When I'm writing for assignment, the rules are obeyed.  Here, I let my own interjections play free and when it comes to rock legends Kiss, I can't help but let them run wild.  I had a Gene Simmons doll (yeah, yeah, it was a doll back then) and I got in trouble for mimicking Paul Stanley's sex wheezes on "Do You Love Me?" without knowing I was doing anything offensive at age eight.  I used to think meeting you in the ladies room was two dudes taking a whiz in the wrong room, just for the sheer thrill of it.  "Shock Me," a phrase I muttered all day long and then on my way to sleep, until Queen's "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions" ruled the charts for an entire summer and then some.  Alive  was handed to me in the mid 1970s by my late aunt, of all people, who was mortified by them but savvy enough to know what fascinated me as a child.  I made the local news wearing Peter Criss makeup at a Fourth of July event.  I was a one kid charter member of my self-branded Kiss fan club, the "Firehouse Brigade."  You get the picture.

I've been very fortunate in my thirteen years running as a music journalist.  I've had extraordinary experiences.  I've met or spoken by phone with most of the people who stared down at me from the walls of my long-ago bedroom.  I would need to resemble the multi-armed, arachnid-true Peter Parker from long ago to tally the artists I am downright privileged  to have interviewed:  Ronnie James Dio, Alice Cooper, Nicko McBrain, three-fifths of Judas Priest, another three-fifths from Anthrax, Marky Ramone, Lee Aaron, Rob Zombie, Lita Ford, David Coverdale, even Dee Snider.  Hell, I got to freaking work  for Dee Snider conducting interviews for his House of Hair Online site.  Can you dig it?

It was the latter hub where I fielded conversations with Kiss alumni Ace Frehley and Bruce Kulick, along with the band's esteemed manager in their glory days, Bill Aucoin.  For you true believers out there, the late and genuinely kind Mr. Aucoin sounds like Stan Lee's vocal doppelganger, what a trip.  The stories he shared with me (many off-the-record and remaining thus), wow.   I even had a quick email round with current Kiss guitarist (formerly of Black 'n Blue) Tommy Thayer.  Having time with the  original  Space Ace, I found myself thankfully in the pocket instead chiming like the uber dweeb I'd expected to be.  I was pro, praise be to the writing gods, as I was with Bruce Kulick, though I took the time to thank Bruce for something very special to me as one of the gazillion kids of the Seventies who worshiped this band.

You see, I was given front row tickets to Kiss on the Crazy Nights  tour by my cousin, who was working at Ticket Master at the time.  It meant the world to me to be so close at a Kiss concert, to directly feel the heat of Gene Simmons' fireball spew, the radiating emissions caressing my face like a long overdue baptism as a diehard Kiss fan.  Coming to the show at the long-dead Capital Center on the outskirts of Washington, DC, I'd spent two weeks meticulously drawing the faces of every member of Kiss who'd been in the band upon a bed sheet.  I'm more a writer than an artist, but I took that task as a sacred duty and it remains the finest piece of art I've ever accomplished.

I draped that bed sheet over the steel barrier at front row (never realizing I would one day be prowling the business side with a camera) particularly for Gene to see.  I know he saw it as he did what he's done in and out of makeup for decades, waggle his prolonged tongue and stare in evil character through the seeming oblivion of his rock 'n roll flock.  I threw the sheet up to the stage, near the amp stacks so I wouldn't obstruct the band.  Now, I know Kiss has millions of these types of fan adoration tokens, enough to fill ten warehouses, but I was still brokenhearted when Gene knocked my bed sheet to the floor with a casual nudge of his ankle.  In retrospect, I'm no longer offended.  I see Gene as a businessman on top of rock carnival performer.  This is just who he is and without getting to know him personally, it's all I have to go on.   It was Bruce Kulick who made my everything by strutting from stage left and pointing straight down at me, having seen my dismay.  He flipped me a guitar pick and made me feel pretty goddamn special, even as I had to employ the rock fan's version of The Force by willing that plastic triangle into my mit with scores of hands raining down upon my head and shoulders.  As I said in our interview, Bruce, thank you for that moment.  I would've fought anybody to elevate from buck private to full admiral in the Kiss Army on that magical night.

Which leads us into the new millennium with Kiss, having played farewell tours (psych!) and landed in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame less than gracefully.  At least the broken fences splintered even further among the original four during the induction process seems to be in repair mode, ever-so-slightly.  Ace and Paul got together for a kickass cover of Free's "Fire and Water" on Frehley's covers album Origins Vol. 1  earlier this year.  Who knows what's possible from here, if anything?

For getting away with bloody murder selling sex jams by the hundreds over the heads of naive children, there should've been some sort of special award of merit by the Hall, if that's what you'd call merit.  At the end of the day, controversies aside, a Kiss concert will always be one to beat, no matter when you saw them play--in makeup or not, whether you had former comrades Ace Frehley and Peter Criss in front of you or the current Space Man and Cat personae played by Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer.  For that matter, you might've had Eric Carr on the kit, or Vinnie Vincent slinging axe--or Mark St. John, for that matter.  No matter the lineup or era, a Kiss show is the Ringling Brothers of rock.

I recently reviewed Kiss' Rocks Vegas  DVD/CD set for Blabbermouth.net, which should be going live anytime now.  As a longtime Kiss fan, I've had my issues over the maneuvers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have employed to keep this band rolling through four decades-plus.  Frankly, I'd walked away from the band after the Psycho Circus  album, because I'd seen the writing on the wall.  The original foursome seems unable to professionally inhabit the same working space again.  The conflicts arisen among Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss have been publicly documented.  For us old school Kiss hounds, the invitation in latter years has been to accept or reject the new order manned by Simmons and Stanley with Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer playing parts that sting to see filled by relatively newer shoes.  This, despite Singer holding the longest tenure as Kiss' drummer.  Sidebar, Revenge  (Singer's first album with the band) remains the best Kiss album in forever, albeit Sonic Boom  was a pleasant surprise.

Being a journalist, objectivity rules, thus I found myself pushing away echoes of the words "profiteering" and "facades" when I sat down with Kiss Rocks Vegas.  You can read my review where I was very flattering toward the band.  The praise was justified.  This is still  the show to beat, though I also reviewed Motley Crue's The End  concert film last week and wish I'd been there for that spectacle.  You can see the influence one had upon the other, at least in the terms of giving fans the rock rush of a lifetime.

Which is why I welcomed Dynamite Entertainment's new Kiss  comic that began a couple weeks ago.  However long you've been a Kiss fan, you're more than aware how many times these guys have broken into the medium.  The most famous is, of course, Marvel's 1977 super special, for which the band historically dropped their mingled blood into the printing ink.  Original copies of this book fetch as many duckets as DC's Superman vs. Muhammad Ali,  which likewise blew up the comics world in the same bronze age era.  Gene Simmons launching one against Doctor Doom?  Worth every bit of the buck fifty cover price, a steeper figure back then, I assure you, since we kids were paying an average thirty cents per regular issue.  Nyeh!!!

Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, Rock n' Roll Comics, Crazy  magazine, Psycho Circus, Archie Meets Kiss and now Dynamite's turn at stoking Kiss' flaming youth comics pyre higher and higher and higher....  It seems nobody can get enough Kiss comics, the same as we couldn't get enough of the Kiss trading cards which were nearly the hot sellers Star Wars (A New Hope)  cards were.

Back in the day, it a was huge deal when Kiss performed on the late night music variety show, The Midnight Special.  My mom actually got me out of bed so I could see it, being the cool woman she's always been.  Then there was the t.v. movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park,  aka Kiss:  Attack of the Phantoms.   Looking at it now (which you can peruse on Volume 2 of the Kissology  video set), gawd,  what a train wreck, but in 1979, it served to show how larger-than-life (pun intended) Kiss had become.  Nearly to the same effect as The Beatles with far less conscience, Kiss took over the whole damned world, point proven with the band blown-up in old-time layering effects like herculean titans over a rollercoaster while slinging out "Rock & Roll All Nite."

This booming Kiss idolatry of the 1970s is the central point behind Amy Chu's Kiss  2016.  While coming off initially like a rip of Terminator 2:  Judgment Day  straight down to similar playground images prior to global annihilation, Chu's book becomes more of a realization of what Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had sought from Kiss' would-be film score, Music from The Elder.

While longtime Kiss fans are likely to cringe at anything bringing up The Elder  or even Unmasked,  two albums considered the band's most daring (translation, softest), there's a curious sense of fun in what Chu is unraveling here.  It's cool spotting Kiss album cover drops like the sunglasses-toting sphinx from Hot in the Shade  to the four solo albums to a nifty morphing of The Elder's  door knocking artwork into the actual story.

The basic plot so far is thus:  an alarming handful of humans have survived a worldwide holocaust and exist deep beneath the surface in a city called Blackwell--you know, as in "Mr. Blackwell" from The Elder.  A group of futuristic teenagers want more than what's handed them in this subterranean society, thus they do what every juvenile in their position would...sneak off and investigate what lies beyond.  The proverbial escape from the island, staying in theme with The Elder.   This, despite the omnipresent threat of Protectors, who are perceived by the characters as brutish enforcers.  We might also assume it's Kiss, who are inferred in this book as "elders."

What our teen sect finds is a stowed-away greenhouse and a preserved monastery, offering clues to something bigger than their forced microcosm.  On their stolen journey, they spot multiple brands in their surroundings resembling Kiss' kabuki exteriors, even a classy nod to Eric Carr's hawk eyes on Page 5.  Hopefully there's room for Vinnie Vincent's Ankh along the way.  Read into it as you will, these marks are primarily Paul Stanley's Love Child star and Gene Simmons' Demon slashes.  The quartet stumbles through an old sewer tunnel where the faces of Kiss loom like religious artifacts.  Graffiti bearing the message "Only you have the answers" (hoisted from "Only You" on The Elder)  indicates a figurative mantra for this series.  The teens inadvertently trip off a Kiss hologram via an antique supercomputer called Morpheus (in relation to the album, the caretaker by the same name) at the end of Issue # 1, and away we go...

These manifest images of Kiss are the representative elders setting our cast into motion.  Instead of The Elder's  lone boy setting off on his dangerous journey, we get a small youth group.  One carries a knapsack with Paul Stanley's star brand, while another has a rose upon the back of her leather jacket, acknowledging "Under the Rose" from the album.  No coincidence our protagonists are to the power of four, about to undertake The Elder's  embodied odyssey.   

Dynamite did a tremendous job reviving Alice Cooper in comic form in his short-lived recurring series from a couple years ago, along with The Last Temptation  reprint.  Remember, Alice also haunted Marvel at the same time Kiss did, thus Dynamite following suit in the 2000's is a groovy kind of kismet.  If nothing else gets accomplished by this new Kiss series, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons will at least have had a small last laugh that The Elder  finally stands for something all these years later.  Just so long as this world without heroes doesn't have weeping demons.

Sidebar # 2, I can't wait to see what Amy Chu does to Red Sonja next month, much less how much of Stanley and Simmons' then-controversial vision she and artist Kewber Baal flesh out here.

Rating:  7

New Book Reviews: Lightning Round Edition Part Deux

I'm pleased by the reception of this page out there by you readers, thank you, thank you, thank yewwwwww...   Things are going well here and I've even booked an interview guest to appear at Confessions of an Old School Comics Nerd  in the near future, so keep coming back for that along with other goodies in store related to comic books.

It seems that last week's Lightning Round edition of my new book reviews was a hit, so let's have second helping, eh?

Betty Boop  # 1
Roger Langridge and Gisele Lagace
Dynamite Entertainment

Boop-oop-de-cute!  Retro is in and you don't get more retro than Ms. Boop, the queen of all animated divas.  If you can, think back upon a time when comic books were ruled by Little Lulu, Andy Panda, Fritzy Ritz, Felix the Cat, Popeye, plus long ago femme protagonists Katy Keene, Brenda Starr, Sheena and Phantom Lady.  Dynamite Entertainment returns to the platinum age of comics by sweeping Betty Boop into the 21st century...without changing a thing about her.  As one of the earliest feminists of pop culture, the enduring Betty Boop couldn't be more popular today.  In this debut issue by Roger Langridge and Gisele Lagace, Betty is hoodwinked by supreme creep Lenny Lizardlips, along with his pointy-eared wraith minions. They trick Betty's senile, would-be scientist Grampy by nudging him homeless as foreclosing reps from the hilarious The Completely Normal Bank of Normalness.  It's up to Betty, who's already skating on thin ice at the Oop-a-Doop Club to dash out from a gig and send Lenny and his scumwads running.  With zoot-tooting lyrics splashed along these pages like a vintage Betty Boop cartoon and usual cohorts Koko and Bimbo plus the swinging Scat Skellington, this revival series looks to be a way gone good time.

Rating:  8

Moonshine  # 1
Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
Image Comics

Been missing the hell out of 100 Bullets?   Yeah, me too.   Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso rekindle their magic in this new book which could readily be subtitled 100 Shotgun Shells in the Appalachians.  Azzarello never was one to waste much time getting your attention and in Moonshine,  he thrusts his New York mobster Lou Pirlo into Deliverance,  Prohibition-era.  Pirlo is in search of Hiram Holt, reputed bootlegger with a knack for the east coast's finest hooch and no qualms in showing Fibbies their gory shallow graves.  Pirlo's leash rattler, Joe "The Boss" Masseria, has sent him on a business errand with the intent of buying in to Holt's shine operation.  Holt's response is, suffice it to say, something to rival anything Masseria can dish out.  Prior to, we've learned Holt has a few familial skeletons rattling from their proverbial closets.  This early-on standoff is brutal noir as only Brian Azzarello can deliver.  Within this first issue, the story is set for a wild voodoo twist, given where Pirlo ends up after being chased away by Hiram Holt.  As the late George Jones used to wisp, whewwwwwwwww, white lightning...  Thus far out the gate, perfection.

Rating:  10

Jessica Jones  # 1
Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos
Marvel Comics

She's a Netflix hit and further destined for a spotlight in the upcoming Defenders  miniseries.  In the Marvel U, she's the estranged wife of Luke Cage, Power Man.  After running with the New Avengers, she keeps her powers on the down low these days.  Having been released from prison and attempting to resume her fruitless life as a private investigator, she's being stalked by supers close to Cage.  For someone who was written as having borne witness to the epochal moment Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, Jessica Jones, once Drew, runs a parallel life culminated from Suckville.  Not just because she and Peter have seen their mutual share of Green Goblin attacks.  Fitting that Marvel and Brian Michael Bendis re-introduces Jessica Jones to comics in another mature format series, as the character debuted in 2001 in the Marvel MAX book Alias.  Having gone under such monikers as Jewel, Knightress and Power Woman, where Bendis places Jones in this new series is being chased around by Luke Cage and his friends in search of the couple's baby.  We're thrust into a skirmish between Jessica and Misty Knight and a subsequent run-in with Spider Woman, who tries to empathize with Jones having had her own child within the past year.   As Jessica's procured a bizarre case to work, it all leads to a nerve-wracking cutoff once Cage catches up to her while on stakeout.  Brian Bendis creates an edgy and sometimes crass Jessica Jones whom we know is holding back her true potential, despite what Misty Knight draws out of her.  Can't wait to see what hell is wrought out of Jessica from Luke in the next issue.

Rating:  9

DC Rebirth:  Flash  # 8
Joshua Williamson and Carmine Di Giandomenico
DC Comics

As successful as The Flash  television series has been on The CW, it's perhaps inevitable the comic series mirrors the show to slight extent.  Our Barry Allen here is the tried and true adult Flash, doubling as forensics expert.  In the Rebirth series, we've seen the same speed force phenomenon that turned Allen into The Flash affect a generous handful of people in Central City.  Dubbed "speedsters," the Rebirth story has moved like gangbusters as a new quasi-villain emerges, Godspeed.  In some ways, the genesis of Godspeed is similar to Zoom, whom we all know from this series and the television show, killed Barry Allen's mother way back when.  Godspeed is fanatical, believes in his own twisted ideals and gives Barry a purposeful trail of corpses to thread toward his identity.  At this point in the Rebirth series, we've learned Godspeed is Barry's partner on the police force, August Heart.  August, who violently lost his brother, considers himself an avenging archangel.  Hell-bent on snuffing Zoom as long-overdue justice for Barry, it's revealed in this issue August has killed the wrong person he believed killed his brother.  Enter the second Wally West, aka Kid Flash, whom Barry is starting to groom.  Together, they take down August, forming the foundations of a Flash tag team.  Considering the original Wally West effectively launched the whole Rebirth project, it'll be interesting to see the inevitable meeting of the Wallys down the road.

Rating:  8

Cannibal  # 1
Jennifer Young, Brian Buccellato and Matias Bergara
Image Comics

The creative team describes this series as an "anti-apocalypse story."  What that means is tapping into the human psyche ala the original Dawn of the Dead,  in the midst of a calamity set inside an Everglades region.  The concept is intriguing.  A hundred year-old hibernating yellow fever is uprooted and spread in the wake of a Category 5 hurricane from 1994.  This virus triggers the uncontrollable urge to consume human flesh.  Not exactly a zombie and certainly not third world Cannibal Ferox, those who have been affected and not treated by a Y-Pak treatment are susceptible to human eating frenzies.  The kicker here in this series is that remorse for the bloody consumptions come into play.  Beneath the expository carnage is the introduction of main character Cash and his stripper lover Jolene, aka "Candy."  Writers Jennifer Young and Brian Buccellato lead their readers to believe Cash is a psycho-sexual deviant in the way he kidnaps Jolene with a bag over her head, only to have it revealed the couple simply likes a danger element to their kink.  The intent to this series is to purposefully slow cook it with an assumed shit storm of skin chomping as it goes on.  We can assume Cash is going swing this plot hard after finding Jolene missing in the midst of a ransacking at the end of the first issue.

Rating:  8

Black Panther  # 7
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Sprouse
Marvel Comics

Ta-Nahisi Coates is the laureate of comics.  Seriously.  I used to do a lot of open mike poetry and frequently at the coffee houses I read at, it was considered good form to recite others' work aside from your own, even if you were the feature.  Especially  if you were the feature, as I was a few times.  I can promise you if offered another feature slot on an open mike venue, I'll be toting one, if not two of Coates' triumphant Black Panther  books.  The kingdom of Wakanda couldn't be in better hands than this guy and Issue # 7 is split between traditional bad guy thumping and another of Coates' gorgeously-written parables en route to a tragic ending.  For the mondo team-up geeks, we have a super posse coming to the aid of King T'Challa, who is being challenged by Ezekiel Stane for his throne.  Enter "The Crew," consisting of Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Manifold and Storm, the latter sporting her rad Eighties mohawk.  Even with his hands cuffed behind his back, T'Challa is a supreme badass, and with a little help from his friends, Stane's coup is squashed handily, Marvel-style.  This naturally leads to the likelihood of a soul-powered team book and a damned good one by suggestion.  Meanwhile, T'Challa's sister Shuri continues to consult an astral form of her mother in learning more about the history of Wakanda via The Djalia, a collective subconscious recollection of the land's culture.  As a subplot, the reeling dagger comes from a betrayal upon Changamire by his son, Tetu, as this dynamic issue closes.  Just pass the Eisner here.

Rating:  9

New Book Reviews: Lightning Round Edition

I write music reviews for Blabbermouth.net, the CNN of heavy music.  Thus you can expect I have a lot to say when discussing an album as I do when profiling a lone comic book issue here.  I'm old school and write like the music journalists I read as a teenager.  Comic book reviewers, I've noticed, are chatty at-large, which is a good thing, assuming you can handle the risk of spoilers.  I love the passion involved to break down a 22-page body of work as painstaking as possible in the interest of celebrating this medium and its creators.

Still, I feel the need to challenge myself.  Brevity can work if you give enough of the goods to entice a reader or the very least be informative.  So let's put it to the test and have a lightning round review edition of new comic books hitting the market:

DKIII:  The Master Race  # 6
Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello
DC Comics

Does anybody really know where this eight part series is going?   Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello just might've bitten off more than they can chew here, or they might've been holding back all this time, waiting to dropkick their readers after a slow-cooker that's finally starting to boil.  It all seems subtly accountable to Batman v. Superman,  which of course hoisted some of its omelette-like plot to Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.  A lot of what's been presented to this point has been abandoned as the armor-plated, senior-aged Bats and Supes wage war (along with the denizens and police force of Gotham City) against the marauding Kandorian Quar and his band of Kryptonian hellraisers.  As a standalone, Issue 6 is pretty damned intense, yet it's all over with so quickly, even with the Lara-Diana scrum insert story.  Where the hell is the rehabbing Flash in all of this, and how much of a role does Carrie Kelley, escalated from the "female Robin," stand to play in the final two issues, which presumably blows the roof away?  Is Batman, with nothing to lose as an old fart, about to cross over, as the ending implies here?  Oh, wait, he still needs to be around in the future to train some kid with the last name of McGinnis to take over the mantle...

Rating:  7.5

DC Rebirth:  Aquaman  # 9
Dan Ebnett and Scott Eaton
DC Comics

If Greg Rucka wasn't kicking his peers' asses on Wonder Woman, this would the series to beat in DC Rebirth.  Dan Ebnett and Scott Eaton have been electrifying on this series and the rotating coloring and inks teams have sucked me down into the realm of the sea with their astounding grandeur.  "The Drowning" being one of the most epic story lines in modern Aquaman history, we find ourselves in "Unstoppable," as Arthur leads the forces of Atlantis against a seemingly impervious monstrosity set loose by the new Black Manta, who has usurped control of N.E.M.O.  While this plot rings alarm bells of a Doomsday in the sea, the differentiating factor has us forced to watch Aquaman take one hell of a beating in an effort to prove himself worthy independent of the Justice League.  He is, for all intents and purposes, estranged from them given prior events including a showdown against Superman in issue 6.  How Arthur wins the day despite the dogging protests of his man-at-arms, Murk, is a doozy.  This, and Wonder Woman  are my DC drug books, and the reason I don't balk at the capitalizing bi-weekly release schedule.

Rating:  8.5

Archie  # 13
Mark Waid and Joe Eisma
Archie Comics

Mark Waid is a man possessed.  How he goes from All-New, All-Different Avengers  to Champions  to Strange Fruit  to Archie  and the other titles he's responsible for is a lesson in commitment for all would-be comics creators.  Picking up the aftermath of Archie and Veronica's brutal separation in Issue # 12 of this stellar re-brand, the story focuses largely on Ronnie's assimilation into a boarding school in Switzerland, where she's set to cross paths with none other than the ruthless redheaded bombshell Cherry Blossom.  Waid writes their new-gen meeting as two reality t.v. stars from different seasons relocated across the seas.  What's been nice about Waid's interpretation of Veronica Lodge is how he's quickly evolved her from a rich girl snot into an empathetic creature who just so happens to have money.  Archie in this series has completely grounded Ronnie to this point and their agonizing pining for one another (along with Betty's disrupted life from her own affair with Sayid) is deeply moving.  The opening few pages of Archie going through the ruts imagining Veronica is still with him is wonderfully written.  With the introduction of Cherry, you just know nothing good's going to come about and sure enough, she's a royal bitch with designs on tearing Ronnie down as early as next issue.  Mark Waid has taken the core adolescence of the original series along with the maturing intrigue of The Married Life  and perfectly re-envisioned the series to the same effectiveness as Afterlife With Archie.  No zombies to be found here, but there's still no getting enough of Waid's hip new Riverdale.

Rating:  9

Han Solo  # 4
Marjorie Liu and Mark Brooks
Marvel Comics

I've been on the fence with this series the whole time and I confess much of it has to do with the fact I always had  to be Han Solo during playtime in 1977.  Han's always been my man--may Kylo Ren burn in every single frame of Episode VIII.  I hold the character to such a high standard to the point I recall even snarling here and there while reading Brian Daley's Han Solo paperback trilogy from 1979 and '80, though through adult eyes, I admit Daley did a wonderful job.  I like the premise of Marvel's Han Solo.  I'm totally down with Han and Chewie running the dangerous Dragon Void race in the Millennium Falcon as subterfuge for a mission for the Rebel Alliance.  Princess Leia having minimal faith of success in Han, yet fighting the romantic urges swirling inside her, it's Star Wars  101 captured accurately.  We're in Issue 4 and Han has already made not one, but two points-of-contact while dodging obstacles that make a run through the hedge maze in The Shining  look like amateur hour.  Still, despite a run-in with the Imperials and a lesson in humility from the race's shining star, the four-armed, amphibious Loo Re Anno, I'm not feeling that edge that makes Han Solo the scruffy-looking, nerf-herding scoundrel he is.  Marjorie Liu knows when to drop the right spots of humor and the art team of Mark Brooks, Sonia Oback and Matt Milla create terrific backdrops and colorful character interplay.  I'm just not sure about that tiger-headed Dorae, much less who the real spy upon the rebellion is.  Whatev, I'm more interested in seeing how many parsecs its takes for Han and Chewie to dust Loo Re Anno.

Rating:  7

Peepland  # 1
Christa Faust and Gary Phillips
Hard Case Crime/Titan Comics

I came to this title lured both Hard Case Crime, which released two of my favorite contemporary Stephen King novels outside of Under the Dome, Joyland  and The Colorado Kid.   Likewise, I was hooked by UK-based Titan Comics (aka Doctor Who Central), who has rapidly become one of the best indie publishers in the world with great stuff like Death Sentence, Sally of the Wasteland  and Tank Girl:  Two Girls, One Tank.  I'm always up for giving their books a shot and thus I tripped over Peepland.  Ironic I had heard The Tubes' "She's a Beauty" and Alcatrazz's "Stripper" the same day I grabbed the debut issue, since I firmly believe in kismet.  Cutting to the chase, Peepland  follows the misadventures of a Manhattan-based peep booth diva, Roxy, circa 1986.  Roxy has a suspicious videotape dumped upon her by a regular who ends up killed on the subway rails, victim of a group of goons trailing him.  The video in question appears to be a soft porn tape for Roxy and her reunited ex, Nick to grind to, but there's something amiss as the show rolls...an unintentional, real death scene.  Here's where we're left as the mystery behind Peepland  begins.  The first issue is vulgar (as are most of the Titan books I've dived into) and focused mostly on exposition until the shock drop at the end.  I'm feeling cautiously optimistic where this thing's headed.

Rating:  7.5

DC Rebirth:  Superman  # 8
Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason and Doug Mahnke
DC Comics

Alright, so Issue # 9 came out this week, I know, I know.  There's only so many hours in a day.  I feel compelled to flag the eighth issue following what was the most wonderfully simplistic Superman story I'd read in ages, "Our Town" in Issue 7.  I don't know how everyone else feels, but I'm loving the maturation of this new Super-fam Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason have gestated.  This is everything we'd hoped for in a marriage between Lois Lane and Superman.  Jon is exactly the prodigal son DC needed in order to raise a believable Superboy-in-the-making--particularly since he has the real Man of Steel (at least an alternate world's version) for a papa.  The series' opening battle with The Eradicator was decent, but more absorbing for the development of this lovable family.  "Our Town" gave Clark Kent a purported day off, spent with his family at a local state fair with the promise of no crime busting.  The punchline was delicious and Lois' reaction a gut-buster.  So when "Escape From Dinosaur Island Part 1" dropped in Issue 8, I'll admit to feeling flat about it.  There have been enough scraps against dinos in Superman's life that I was automatically skeptical about this issue.  I shouldn't have worried.  In fact, I was downright jubilant by the last page.  The story is equally simplistic as Issue # 7 and that put me into a secure place as a reader:  Jon's goofed science project sends himself and his dad into a war-torn version of Dinosaur Island.  Superman and his child continue to learn how to work together as they're attacked by giant fish and pterodactyls, all the while finding remnants and corpses from a huge battle, circa World War II.   What took my breath away was the primary casualties on Dinosaur Island was The Losers!  If you grew up reading war comics like Sgt. Rock  and The Losers, you no doubt had a geek out moment as I did here.  K, excuse me now, gotta read Issue 9 pronto.

Rating:  8

New Book Review: Reborn # 1

Reborn  # 1
Mark Millar and Greg Capullo
Millarworld/Image Comics


Separate yourself from DC Rebirth and the title of Mark Millar and Greg Capullo's new sci-fi/fantasy series, Reborn.   

Likewise, don't be deterred with a false impression this series is stuffed full of religious diatribes and puritanical cleansing.  Its protagonist is as secular as it gets, and given all that's happened within her mortal life, her rejection of God is a very real, new-gen form of fundamentalism spreading around the world--even if Bonnie Black is an elderly misanthrope.  It's no secret the church as an institution has seen better days and held a firmer grasp over humanity than it does today.  The concept of one, all-powerful deity and a subterranean devilment waiting to singe wrongdoers has been more of a control construct than people have been willing to acknowledge.  Until now.  Preacher  crossing over from Vertigo to AMC is telling of where we're at as believers in contemporary society.

Really, without the mandate of preparing one's soul for a perpetual afterlife of harmony at the threshold of heavenly nirvana, we humans would be extinct as a species.  Lawlessness, especially murder, would be the prevailing norm without a checks and balances system reinforcing that crime does time and Satan feasts on your innards once the justice system is done with you.

Keeping this in mind, Mark Millar and Greg Capullo exploit this very fact within the opening pages of their brow-raising Reborn.  It's not often you begin a fantasy series with a gory spree killing sequence, but these brothers go right for the jugular and slash it open before we're ever introduced to our lead character, Bonnie Black.  Yet there's a purpose to this gratuitous nihilism, which is immediately halted with a peek into the world we're about to enter, a fantastical realm Millar insinuates is built partially of one's own design.

Bonnie Black has lived a sad and cruel life.  She's lost her husband to the very sniper introduced in Reborn  # 1.  Her father suffered a squishy death in a steel plant, her mother dying shortly thereafter.  Bonnie Black is in the waning moments of her senior life and like any rational mortal, fears what is to come.  The writing here is magnificent as Bonnie reflects upon her finest life moments in the wake of her past tragedies and looming death.

Though a forthright cynic, we feel  her pain inside one single panel, which Greg Capullo illustrates with heartwarming innocuousness:  a young Bonnie, married, suckling her newborn, nestled beneath the nook of her husband's arm.  Mark Millar cites it perfectly for us to get where Bonnie has been and why her life's a blown tragedy:  "I'm twenty-six and feeding Barbara, loving the way she blinks as she swallows.  Loving the fact she  needs me so much.  Carson on the box.  Harry beside me.  Never happier than this perfect moment."

Instead of turning this story into a would-be "Kick the Can" or Cocoon  for comics, there's no magical youth restoration, at least in the real world.  Bonnie Black is doomed to die, but magic does  play into our story.

We've all had dreams, even nightmares, where we reunite with our departed loved ones, often in surreal settings.  The foil of mortality, however, is we awaken from those dreams, forced to face reality, compelled to keep going no matter how sensational it might've felt we've escaped our humdrum grinds forever.  Our loved ones remain departed and honestly, do we really  know if we ever rejoin them after crossing over?  There's no concrete attestation for what lies beyond, much less whether or not angels' wings come in plus-sizes and Heaven's gates are pure alloy or merely gold-plated.  Where does reincarnation come into play, assuming you subscribe that theory?

It's often said amidst idealists that when we die, we come back to the next plane in our prime.  We're not babies, we're not elderly husks, we're the full essence of ourselves, assuming we've been given the appropriate time to live to our fullest.  So we like to think.  In Reborn,  Mark Millar sweeps Bonnie Black into a Conan-meets-Terminator fantasy realm where dragons, warlords and soaring battle craft collide.  This a weird, blood-soaked world Bonnie is set to figure prominently in as it's revealed everyone's been waiting for her to arrive--in particular a bear-sized, barbarian reformation of her father.

What this series proposes at face-value is a sweeping and gruesome adventure where death is not the end, it's merely preparation for something grander and more explosive.  Beneath the surface, however, is a latent tapping into Bonnie Black's horrific experiences.  As the audience, we should expect whatever psychosis she has suffered in her life as a result of so much terror will inevitably come back to haunt her as this series rolls.  The expressionistic creatures sprawled into this opening of Reborn may be figurative, or they may be Bonnie Black's hellish new reality.  This duality makes the series intriguing off-the-bat.

Has Bonnie really died and transcended to a butcher block landscape, or is she deep in a coma, powerless to fight the demons ravaging her from the depths of precognition?  Shudder to think in either case, but what appears very much real is we're in for a messy, dramatic and potentially cathartic ride.

Rating:  9.5

New Book Review: DC Rebirth: Action Comics # 965

Action Comics  # 965
Dan Jurgens and Stephen Segovia
DC Comics


For me, Dan Jurgens is one of the most trusted writers when it comes to sustaining Superman's longevity--not that Supes is in any danger of extinction.  If anything, the congenial, spot-on introduction of Tyler Hoechlin for Season 2 of Supergirl  says The Man of Steel is in snug hands.  Even Henry Cavill, despite coming off as a mopey Robert Smith version of Superman in Batman v. Superman:  Dawn of Justice,  still captures the imaginations of today's youth with his rugged physique and snarling fisticuffs.

Jurgens, however, gets the Superman mythos better than anyone, even Grant Morrison, who turned it all upside down in glorious fashion with All-Star Superman  and J. Michael Straczysnki, who delivered a rollicking revamp with Superman:  Earth One.  Jurgens first started his long-running affair with the legend of Kal-El as a penciller on The Adventures of Superman  Annual # 1.  As a DC Comics mainstay (and chronicler for Marvel's Thor, Spiderman, Daredevil and Captain America), it spoke loudly when the imprint gave Jurgens the ball for the pivotal "Death of Superman" arc.  It was equivalent to the Pittsburgh Steelers on third and goal, calling a running play everyone knows is coming, but in the hands of Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis, you know that pigskin is breaking the goal line.

For me, it was a gimme when I saw Dan Jurgens was returning to Action Comics  on the Rebirth launch.  With the botched Doomsday scrum in Batman v. Superman,  it's appropriate Jurgens was given the reins to unleash what we're to assume is a doppelganger Doomsday (who had also appeared in the New 52) in a massive, bi-weekly brawl with a cross-dimensional Superman slowly making his way in place of the died-twice Superman of our world.  "Path of Doom" was nearly the spectacle of Doomsday's original rampage, and yet there's a maturity to Jurgens' storytelling here as a new Supes acknowledges possible mortality, having once barely beaten the Doomsday which trashed his world.  Add to the dilemma a Lex Luthor usurping the House of El seal for his own as would-be savior of Metropolis (thus becoming a mistrustful, forced hand ally) and a powerless Clark Kent, whom everyone has presumed to be the real McCoy...what a spiraling ball of confusion, cue The Temptations.

This means completely dicking with readers' heads as to what the hell is up with this other Clark Kent, physically ordinary as you or I, but still an aggressive journalist finding himself in a serious pickle.  Ironically, this Kent needs the new Superman's help as things take a tumble while he attempts to uncover shady goings-on with Geneticron.   Double-jeopardy, the Geneticron building's somehow vanished!

Jurgens has a firm grasp on the rules of Superman, which have been veritably amended in Rebirth.  Alter-Earth's Superman is in full wedlock with Lois Lane and they have a son, this lad's inevitable path aligned to become a next-gen Superboy.  As our new Superman is compelled to forgo his anonymity on this planet in light of the recent events in Justice League  and now unraveling in Trinity,  this world has become Jurgens' to tinker with.  Lord,  has he tinkered with it, and what a refreshment!  How rich is it this Clark Kent is given a Superman signal watch like the original did so many years ago with Jimmy Olson?  In lesser hands, it would've rang of schlock.  Jurgens, on the other hand, completely sells this as if he and Jerry Siegel were scripting it in the same room.

Though Action Comics  # 965 is the first breath-catcher of Jurgens' rambunctious Rebirth run, it's still set to be a game-changer.  "Lois Lane, Back at the Planet, Part 1" trails behind the recently-established Lois as she attempts to gain a piece of her old journalism life in a new world.  Like the Superman of this world, its Lois has vanished, allowing our current, motherly Lois Lane to re-enter society in an official context on the rails of Lex Luthor's bullet train to Metropolis and The Daily Planet.  

Why Dan Jurgens is such an excellent writer is how well he probes the psyches of his characters.   "Lois Lane, Back at the Planet, Part 1" is naturally told from her perspective and it's a treat watching Jurgens thread Lois amidst people she knows, intimately or by acquaintance, and yet everything is different.  Jimmy Olson, ecstatic upon Lois' return, offers to bring her "favorite" dish of lemon trout almondine.  Of course, this is his  Lois' favorite, not our  Lois'.  Lex Luthor, now owner of The Daily Planet,  is not what our Lois has come to expect (much less us veteran Superman readers) and then of course, there comes that moment,  the awkward path-crossing with a Clark Kent who is not her own.

As Jurgens switches back-and-forth between Lois' familial life in upstate New York and her risky picking-up of someone else's pieces in Metropolis, the intimacy between Lois and her Superman, along with her silent stumble-bumming at The Daily Planet  offices is beautifully orchestrated.  So too is the organic friendship between little Jon and his new friend Kathy, whom we've already established via the Rebirth Superman  title, is holding the secret of Jon's still-developing superpowers.  Every Superdude needs his own Lana Lang, of course.

For her bravado (equal to her counterpart in this world), our Lois is bound to stumble upon a major surprise, revealed upon the splash of the final page of this issue.  If you're reading the crossover Superman books (i.e. New Super-Man and Superwoman), this will come as no surprise to you.  

The second part of "Lois Lane, Back at the Planet, Part 1" is bound to be a doozie, but already skipping to November, Action Comics  looks to peel away once again with Lex and the new Superman crossing wits in "Men of Steel" and then in Superman,  Supes and Jon are slated to have a fateful first meeting as a foursome with Batman and Damian Wayne.  Hold onto your capes, kiddos.

Rating:  8.5

New Book Review: Saga # 38

Saga  # 38

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Image Comics

I've always said if Salvador Dali were alive, he would probably be Saga's  champion ahead of the rest of us.  Being a fan of surrealism and having trekked to numerous art galleries in the U.S. based on them having any original Dalis or Magrittes, I was instantly drawn to Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga, at least once I discovered Issue # 17 and began the laborious quest to complete the run.

We live in a desensitized society where it takes something of an over-the-top, horrific scale to gain the public's attention beyond the senseless murder of an elderly person in the local crime blotter, that person's extinguished life warranting little more than a mere paragraph.  It takes a mass shooting, a suicide bombing, a plane crash, something of an epic nature, before society cares, and frankly, that sucks.  A pitiful excuse, but the it's reality we're stuck with, attributable to a fast-paced, 24-7 society where we're all on the move at-large and it's enough to keep up with sports scores and the weather.

So too have we as comics readers become desensitized to death.  In this case, the older you are, the more times you've seen critical superheroes killed off by their publishers in sensational fashion, only to rise from the dead later.  It was truly a powerful thing when Barry Allen and Kara Zor-El died in DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths  back in 1985 and '86.  At the time, such proposals as killing off established heroes wasn't attempted very often, Yellowjacket and Jean Grey notwithstanding in the Marvel U.

These days, Superman's bit it a couple times and Rebirth has taken a leery turn by bringing him back, this time as an alternate Earth's version come down to ours.  So many of the capes have departed and found their way back it's always dubious now when they depart.  After Jason Todd, we'll never trust comics again when death comes allegedly knocking.

And yet we have Saga  # 38.

By now, I'm out of the spoiler zone since I've heard and seen this issue being discussed--and with great reason.  The ending to this issue is genuinely shocking.  Much as it is genuinely moving.  Brian K. Vaughan's expressionistic macrocosm of a galaxy is far weirder than Lucas or Roddenberry's.  It's a fantastical realm where monarchs are crowned with tube televisions, trans-dimensional trees sweep you away faster than a wormhole, aliens either titillate or look like atrophy is their daily norm, sexual taboos are gibed as close to the limit as can be tolerated (after you've read Sex  and Sex Criminals,  you're ripe for anything Vaughan throws at you) and you're susceptible to violently-contested clashes among fuzzy wubbies.

This is a world featuring a mocking, pink adolescent apparition, Izabel, who has settled into the story and become more than a recollected babysitter figure to Vaughan's narrator, Hazel.  Izabel, in her odd, transparent way, became the voice of reason to Saga,  the only being to keep Hazel (who is quickly growing up through this recent arc after the series took a short hiatus) from exploding, considering her bi-species parents Marko and Alana are constantly on the lam and at each other's throats, much less Hazel's.

Vaughan captures the foibles of parenthood so well, sagely coming from the clashing points-of-view of parents and their offspring.  When Hazel gnashes "If there's one thing parents suck at it, it's estimating how long any activity is going to take," there's such bloody and accurate honesty to it. Yes, we do  suck at it, me, especially.  Yeah, Nolan, I'll be done this album review in ten minutes.  An hour later, Yeah, Nolan, I'm almost done, five more minutes, kiddo.   As a father, I've had my gut checked twice within a weeks' time by Saga  # 38 and DC's Trinity  # 1.  Both Vaughan and Francis Manapul have tugged at my daddy strings with their spot-on insight into the parenting process it's prompted me to write a few private pages that look to be morphing into a short story.  Thank you, gentlemen.

It's this angst Hazel dishes out while we follow her and our motley band on their current locale of Phang, a planet "Mom and Dad thought we'd be on for a few hours at most," that leaves the reader vulnerable for the horror show to come.  We see Hazel beginning to open ties with new friends and doing what any young, barely-checked child would do:  she gets into minor mischief, this case killing alien-form lightning bugs.  As Izabel admonishes her, Hazel's recollected chuck becomes "What, like you were never a vicious little asshole when you were that age?"

Masterful writing, when you come to realize Hazel's blase, nubile attitude toward death becomes a dark prophecy leading to Izabel's final stand in this series.  I'll leave you to discover her stunning fate, but truly, Brian K. Vaughan has managed to do the impossible in this genre, and that's to deliver a death sequence that stings in the worst yet most poignant way.


Rating:  9