Today, I’ll take a look at two comics that seem to be making the fanboys pee their pants with regularity. Strangely, my pants are quite dry, thank you.
Nextwave #3
Okay, three issues in, how’s it going? Well, I guess it’s going okay. There’s some minor movement on a plot line, but most of the issue is just go-go-go action. An old cop, one week from retirement, goes on his beat. Literally. He’s a bad cop, you know, because he beats up a drug dealer, mugs a mugging victim, nightsticks a pimp. All well and fine, but that’s five pages that could have been used more effectively. Yeah, I know, Warren Ellis is trying to be witty, but he could have done the whole sequence in a lot less space. Anyhow, the cop is taken over by a cybernetic kitty.
And so you’ve got Nextwave attempting to catch the newly cyborgized bad cop, while also fending off the robotic Human Resources guys from Beyond Corp. Oh, and Dirk Anger plays Russian Roulette with a really big gun.
So, let’s see, explosions, explosions, explosions, speed lines, smoke clouds, etc. It felt like a Chuck Dixon Nightwing comic: lots of sound and fury, but rather pointless. Sure, all the cool action is quite pretty: Stuart Immonen’s art is very dynamic and fun, but three issues in and I’m not sure I care about the characters at all.
I’ll stick with this a few more issues, but I’m just not getting much out of this comic. But I’m willing to see where Ellis goes with it.
One other comment, not really related to the book’s quality. While I enjoy covers that try to do something a little different, I think that the main idea of a comic’s cover is to give some sort of consistency for the consumer. I actually forgot to buy Nextwave the week it came out because I just didn’t see it on the rack. To me, the covers don’t seem to be doing what they should be doing. However, it’s probably just me.
All-Star Superman #3
Yet another third issue (I really should have waited for Paul Pope’s Batman Year 100 #3 to come out, for the overrated trifecta of third issues, but the timing just isn’t right). Yet another overrated comic. And how’s it going?
Well, I gotta be glad that this version of Superman isn’t retreading the last 60 years of continuity, like most other reboots (what do you call a reboot of a comic that’s still going? A co-reboot? A faux-boot?). Grant Morrison seems quite happy making up his own nutty continuity, rather than giving us alternate versions of the usual Superman villains. Yes, we had Luthor, but Morrison isn’t tossing versions of Brainiac or Toyman or Doomsday into the mix, and I think the comic is much better for it. He didn’t turn it into the Dr. Quintum show as I feared, either.
The plot, in a nutshell, is that Lois has superpowers for the day, and two time-traveling super-hunk beefcakes, Atlas and Samson, try to put the moves on her. It ends with some heroes with broken arms and some kissing on the moon. It’s a fun plot, with little emphasis on villains at all (sure, there’s some throwaway villains at the beginning).
The problem with the story is that I wanted to read about Lois having super-powers for a day. And she does have them, it’s just that she does nothing with them. She flies around. That’s it. Oh, and a rock falls on her head. She doesn’t get to beat up anything or rescue anyone. In fact, she’s just a passive participant in the whole issue. She didn’t need super-powers at all: she just needed to get a ruler and have the three guys whip ‘em out.
And that’s the problem with the cover of this issue. It’s pretty, but it promises a lot more than it delivers.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 10:02 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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