New Comics -- March 11, 1998

Wednesday, 11 March 1998

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but Wednesday is new comics day. Every Wednesday (with occasional exceptions) I meet Kevin at Crossover. Recently Lisa has been joining us. Around 5 PM we head north a couple of blocks to Cosmic Comics, check out what the world of graphic literature has to offer us that week, and then retire to a local eatery.

Actually, I buy most of the comics, because Kevin gets his shipped to him and Lisa only buys The Invisibles. And there usually isn't that much out that I buy. Twelve years ago, when I was still into mainstream superhero books, I could easily buy 10-15 comics in a single week. Today, I bought five, which is a lot closer to my current average. Which five? Well...

The Books of Magic #48

It's getting close to the end of writer John Ney Rieber's reign on this title. The "Slave of Heavens" storyline has just one more issue to go, and while I'll miss Rieber, I'll be glad to see this story end. "Slave of Heavens" has suffered from just having too much stuff going on with very little explanation for any of it. The characters are being treated like playthings and I'm losing my emotional attachment to them. I'm also more than a little annoyed that some of the plot threads from earlier in the series don't look like they're going to get resolved in the remaining two Rieber issues.

Astro City vol. 2, #13

"In the Spotlight," the story of Looney Leo. A merely average issue of Astro City. For a book that takes new and interesting looks at the concept of superheroes, this issue (in which a cartoon character brought to life tells the hard-luck story of his corporeal existence) just isn't all that new or interesting. This could have been told, more or less unchanged, about any of a large number of other characters.

Essential Vertigo: Swamp Thing #19

The "Essential Vertigo" line is reprinting old issues of Vertigo (an imprint of DC Comics) books. These old issues of Swamp Thing predate the existence of Vertigo, but Swamp Thing ended as a Vertigo title, and these stories are the kind of dark modern fantasy likely to appeal to Vertigo readers.

This is the first part of "Still Waters," in which Swampie decides to hang out with John Constantine (introduced in the previous issue). I'd missed the early part of Alan Moore's run on this title when it first came out, so I'm happy to get a second chance at reading the stories at a reasonable price.

Cerebus #228

I've been really ambivalent about "Rick's Story," the latest arc of Cerebus. Parts of it -- Cerebus's internal dialogs, the artwork, the layouts, some of the characterization -- have been great, while others -- Rick's long pseudo-biblical ramblings -- have been awful. I think the two great flaws of Cerebus are Dave Sim's prose style, which is long, tedious, and not nearly as clever as he thinks it is, and Dave Sim's politics, which I find poison the story for me. There have been sequences in "Rick's Story" that work wonderfully as clever depictions of ways in which relationships between men and women can be dysfunctional, but which I can't enjoy because I know that Dave thinks of them as emblematic of male-female relationships in general.

Anyway, this particular issue was good, if strange. No long text pieces. Just a really odd, interestingly portrayed sequence that had me scratching my head until the end of the issue, at which point it made sense. And which seems to be moving the plot along.

Transmetropolitan #9

I wasn't particularly impressed by the first two issues of this book, so I didn't buy #3, which I've heard was fantastic. I started again with #5, which I liked, and I've kept up with it ever since. It's a neat over-the-top science fiction series, even if the science is weak. The general theme seems to be an exploration of what it means to be human.

Wednesdays also bring a new episode of Babylon 5. Tonight's episode ("Day of the Dead") was written by award-winning fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who wouldn't have been my choice for writing a science fiction story. The episode was, essentially, a fantasy ghost story, with at least one Stupid Science Clunker. (Just what the heck does "planetary sunrise" mean?) But it had some nice characterization and dialog. It didn't have the typical 5th season flaw of the characters slowly turning into insipid Star Trek-like clones of their former selves.