What I Bought 25 March 2008

I have a confession to make: in the interests of whittling down my ridiculously vast to-read pile, I gave up buying books for Lent, including graphic novels, and so I've been avoiding comics shops since Ash Wednesday in the interests of not exposing myself to an Occasion of Sin. But it's past Easter now, and the pile isn't as big as it was, so I'm free to go into comics shops if I so choose. Yesterday, I did so choose, and this is what I bought:

Floppies
Annihilation: Conquest #5 (of 6), written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Tom Raney, Scott Hanna and Frank D'Armata
In which Ultron decides to take over Adam Warlock's body and create an army of Adam Warlock-alikes so that he can go back to Earth and prove that he's better than his "father". Man, it's always about the daddy issues with Marvel heroes, isn't it? Even the robots have daddy issues. (And, seriously, if your "daddy" is Hank Pym? You don't need to invade Earth with an army of invincible clones to prove your superiority. I'm just saying.) This was terrific fun, as always, though this far into the story there's not much point in summarising it or even singing its praises -- if you're not already reading it, now is not a good time to start. Though I will just note one of the things I like about it: it's startlingly grim. It seems that Abnett & Lanning are taking full advantage of the fact that nobody cares if the entire Krull Empire gets blown up as long as all the named characters survive. (Try that out with, say, Pittsburgh, and you'd be in trouble.)

I think I missed issue #4 of this during Lent. Bother. Oh well. I'll probably get the whole thing in trade when it comes out, along with the lead-in miniseries that I didn't bother with the first time around.

Bohda Te by Jamie Smart
This seems to have some connection to Smart's earlier Ubu Bubu -- at least, the supernatural cat at the centre of it has a similar design to Ubu Bubu, and almost the same function. Bohda Te is a profoundly weird comic: a combination of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, scatological humour (the cover says "Contains offensive material", and they're not kidding), and parodic frame stories. Smart's art in Bohda Te uses a lot of solid black and grey, where Ubu Bubu used more screen tones; I think I marginally prefer the Ubu Bubu approach, though the full-page image of the giant squid being sucked down into Bohda Te against the background of a grey sea was very effective.

It's very funny indeed. I'm not sure how coherent it is -- I'll need to read it again, because my first read was a bit rushed and I think I might have missed some of the things Smart was doing. He's packed a lot of stuff into the book's 32 pages. The humour's more scatological than I like, I'll admit, but that said, I enjoyed it a lot.

Iron Man: Director of SHIELD #27, written by Daniel and Charles Knauf, art by Carlo Pagulayan, Jeffrey Huet & Dean White
The art in this title is luscious. I do appreciate a well-composed double-page spread, and the spread across pages 2 and 3 of this issue is so gorgeous you could frame it and hang it on your wall. The writing is as tight and smooth as ever. It's not flashy; it's just solid. With superhero titles, I appreciate "solid", because all too often a writer's attempts to do something out of the ordinary just backfire and create a mess that other writers have to deal with for years to come. The boundaries of the genre are very well-established by now, and pushing against them is seldom worthwhile or productive -- it takes a writer who's head and shoulders above the rest to do anything worth doing in that line. But to produce a solid, entertaining, consistent superhero story is harder than it looks, and fair play to the Knaufs for that.

RASL #1, by Jeff Smith
Everyone's already said their piece about this one. A new creator-owned comic from the creator of Bone? That'd be a must-read no matter what it was about. What intrigues me about it is how different it is from Bone. Based on this first 32-page instalment, I'm not even sure that I'd recommend Bone and RASL to the same audience. Bone was all-ages in the true sense of the word: suitable for quite young readers, but with enough complexity and depth to satisfy adults. By contrast, RASL has a not-terribly-sympathetic criminal protagonist, which alone should make its readership skew older; in this issue, he steals a painting, gets drunk, beats up a man who's pursuing him and tosses his unconscious body in a dumpster. There's no gore or nudity or swearing, but the protagonist's amorality and the hard-boiled attitude of the narrative are enough to signal that this story is not meant for kids. Between that and the variation in style -- not radical, but noticeable -- it's clear that Smith is stretching his muscles and trying something new. So far, the results are impressive, but this chapter is not enough to judge whether RASL will be the second stroke of lightning or the difficult second album. Time will tell.

Some New Kind of Slaughter #2, written by mpMann and A. David Lewis, art by mpMann
An interlaced retelling of flood myths from all over the world, examining the tight grip the image of natural destruction has on the human imagination, and the varying responses and rationalisations humans come up with in the face of an unstoppable onslaught. Intelligent and powerful.

Trades
Blade of the Immortal volume 16 by Hiroaki Samura
I would've got volumes 17 and 18 too, but I was trying to be restrained. I haven't read this yet: I am confident that it'll be another A+ super special awesome chapter of what remains my favourite long-running manga series.

North World Volume 1: The Epic of Conrad by Lars Brown
Haven't read this one either. The first few pages sold me on the concept: D&D style fantasy adventuring in a world more like our own than Tolkien's? Man, I am so there. The witty dialogue doesn't hurt, either.