Capsule revfiews of what I felt like buying this week 6/6/12
Before Watchmen: Minutemen 1
This is likely to be both the most anticipated and most dreaded book to be released this week, depending on where you fall in the creator versus corporation battle. I myself clearly don’t have a problem with the project, and am looking forward to quite a few projects. It’s not because I’m a Watchmen fanboy, but I like to follow writers and artists who have a strong history of quality stories. Minutemen is written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke, who has never disappointed me, dating back now 12 years to his Batman graphic novel, Ego. And his work is aided by the colouring of Phil Noto, another man I have nothing but respect for.
The biggest draw-back to the issue is that it’s all set-up and character introductions. As such it feels quick and that nothing much happens, but it’s an entertaining groundwork based upon Hollis Mason’s book ‘Under The Hood’. And despite the lack of a real plot in this introduction issue, the book does run 28 pages (2 are spent for the Crimson Corsair story that will be running through the titles), giving all the characters a chance to show personality they weren’t allotted in Moore’s brief look back. At the moment I don’t care for the Comedian’s handling, as he’s my favourite from the original maxi-series, but off all the cast Eddie Blake comes off as the hardest to write. But not much, if any, of his youth was addressed in Watchmen, so I don’t have a valid complaint based on anything than my own preferences about how he comes off. I loved the celebrity angle for Sally, and the one-page tease for Dollar Bill has me really wanting to see more about him.
If you think expanding the story is wrong then there’s no reason to read it, and I won’t spend anytime trying to convince you that you should. I’m sure you’ve debated it enough on message boards and comic shops by now. But its an entertaining, informative (albeit thin) story start to the mini-series, and Darywn Cooke is all but bulletproof to me. I’ve been reading comics for much, much to long to worry about the sanctity of someone’s run being tarnished, and am eagerly awaiting next week’s story from Darwyn and Amanda Conner.
X-Factor 237
Since this week was about creator’s who are fiercely debated and protected, I thought I’d revisit Peter David and X-Factor. I haven’t read any David since 2006, when I had a very bad experience with some of his more rabid fans over what I thought would be a very minor disagreement. Without going into details, I was so aggravated with these fans that I stopped talking about his books online, and over time not wanting to discuss them my interest in reading them petered out. This had nothing to do with David himself, but part of his fanbase had left such a horrible taste in my mouth I lost interest in the man.
Nowhere in this time away from his books did his quality seem to suffer, and issue 237 looked to be a mostly character-driven, single-issue story by the cover. Cover artists David Yardin earned his paycheck with this one, since it did catch my attention and conveyed a good deal of the issues spirit. Also, road trips in comics are always great and best of all…not an Avengers vs. X-Men comic!
After another very helpful recap page, the story starts and very little of the cast is present save for Polaris, Banshee, and Wolfsbane. Which means no Strong Guy, and that makes me very sad since Guido is almost always the highlight of whatever he’s appearing in. Plotwise it’s a simple tale, heavily built on the continuity that could have been confusing, but David makes sure to cover all the highlights (lowlights?) of Rahne’s pregnancy and rejection of her child.
I enjoyed Neil Edwards pencils (I think this is the first thing of his I’ve read) and i’m a Karl Kessel fan so I’m glad to see him on inks. I just wish he would write more. One qualm I had with Edwards art was that Polaris just kept looking too young to me. I know Lorna’s not old, but for a character that pre-dates Storm and Colossus I think she she looked a tad bit more matured. There’s only four pages of what you would call action in the book, meaning a lot fell on Edwards to convey emotion well in a lot of scenes of Rahne sitting and talking, and they do look great.
Having just been reading X-Factor issues from 1993, it’s nice to see Peter David is still on top of his game. And i hope as a current fan again I’m a little less rabid then some of the others.