The Curse Of Brimstone #3 - DC Comics

THE CURSE OF BRIMSTONE No. 3, August 2018

Selling just 15,949 units in June 2018, a disappointing drop of over four thousand copies on its previous instalment, Justin Jordan’s treatment for Issue Three of “The Curse Of Brimstone” arguably provided its audience with both a reasonably neat conclusion to the new title’s opening story-arc, and a moment of true tragedy which will doubtless haunt its titular character for the foreseeable future. Indeed, “Inferno: Finale” unquestionably packs plenty of punch within its twenty pages, as Joseph Chamberlain’s fiery alter-ego literally goes toe-to-toe with the ever-boastful Hound and Annie demonstrates a strength of will perhaps rarely seen before in a secondary cast member when she clobbers the Salesman straight into his next incarnation; “You kill me here, I am a dozen other places. It won’t matter--”

Luckily however, the co-creator of “The Strange Talent Of Luther Strode” doesn’t just use this comic to pen a straightforward fist-fight, and adds plenty of gravitas to its pulse-pounding proceedings by continually having the bizarrely-masked “persuasive operative working for… the Home Office” persistently offer the red-headed siblings deal after tempting deal. These emotional enticements, which initially start with the Faustian manipulator simply threatening to fatally slice the throat of Darren if the old man’s son doesn’t finish turning his local town into “human ash statues”, soon degenerate into bargains involving letting the demonic agent go, as well as him offering Brimstone’s sister the possibility of her not needing “to study for your nursing degree anymore”, and all add to the proceeding’s palpable tension through the possibility that at some point someone might actually yield to what’s being offered…

Coupled with the flurry of blows being exchanged between Joseph and his female super-powered adversary, plus the frail welfare of the human mutate’s evidently vulnerable father whose mortality constantly seems to lurch from one danger to another, such poignant story-telling genuinely produces a real roller-coaster of a ride, with every other turn of the page debatably causing the reader’s heart to race in anticipation of what artist Philip Tan may (or may not) pencil next. In fact at one point, just before the cold-blooded killer is momentarily surprised by Annie’s dad bodily bowling her to the ground, it actually looks as if Brimstone will be dispatched with an icy stake through the heart and his sister offered a similar deal to replace him in exchange for not bludgeoning the Salesman to death with a baseball bat.

Storytellers: Philip Tan & Justin Jordan, and Colorist: Rain Beredo

The Unexpected #2 - DC Comics

THE UNEXPECTED No. 2, September 2018

It’s difficult to believe that any reader was able to comprehensively follow Steve Orlando’s narrative for Issue Two of “The Unexpected” without them first owning either a working knowledge of this twenty-page periodical’s previous installment or a basic grasp of “the events of Dark Nights: Metal”. For whilst “Grenade Tour” undeniably supplies plenty of pulse-pounding panels packed full of urgent tension and only the sort of pace a frantic flight for survival can generate, its far from straightforward script contains little to no exposition as to what is actually happening, nor why the likes of Neon the Unknown and Firebrand are having to flee in the first place.

Admittedly, the Syracuse-born writer’s narrative does contain an early double splash summarisation of Colin Nomi’s origin story, and later it becomes relatively clear that the Bad Samaritan’s mysterious metal, which can apparently “detonate a second time” at any moment, is actually the “heavy isotope of iron” known as Nth metal. But none of this information arguably helps with a plot which sees the blind material manipulator teleport repeatedly from dimension to dimension in order to outrace Lord Onimarr Synn’s ferociously-fanged owl-minions and their female Twi'lek-lookalike “Lady Lamp”; “Manhawks! Hold the fool’s protector --! This shoat cannot keep the Nth metal isotope from me!”

Indeed, if anything this desperate dash from Red Hook, Brooklyn, to Penn City, then Vanity, Ivy Town, National City, Slaughter Swamp, and finally Blackhawk Island only muddles the various plot threads up even more, especially when Janet Fals’ accompanying dialogue concerning “whatever the hell the World Forge is”, is overshadowed by her sorcerous companion’s gobbledygook regarding his “other senses… [being] tuned to more planes of existence than most people’s”, Quench’s metal disrupting “our universe’s fundamental forces”, and another explosion which potentially “could puncture the membrane of reality like a water balloon.”

Happily, this magazine is blessed with some rather dynamically-drawn artwork by Cary Nord, whose storyboarding for Firebrand’s battle with Synn’s General Phade is undoubtedly the highlight of the publication. Clean-lined and well-animated, “the award-winning artist of comic books and graphic novels such as Daredevil, X-Men, and Conan The Barbarian” provides both plenty of gravitas to Nomi’s emotional loss at the death of his friends, Ascendant and the Viking Judge, as well as insurmountable rage in Fals’ furious assaults.

Storytellers: Cary Nord & Steve Orlando, and Inks: Wade von Grawbadger

The Unexpected #1 - DC Comics

THE UNEXPECTED No. 1, August 2018

Printed “in the aftermath of Dark Knights: Metal” and apparently described by Steve Orlando “as Seven Samurai meets The Dark Tower”, this twenty-page “manhunt ranging from Thanagar to the deepest heart of the Dark Multiverse” most assuredly lived up to its title when it first saw print in June 2018, by spectacularly killing off two of the series’ central cast members at the end of the magazine. Indeed, it was probably hard for this periodical’s 28,028 strong audience to recall a more blood-thirsty opening for a brand new book as the “malevolent” Bad Samaritan first dissolves Viking Judge’s left arm, then partially lops off one of Ascendant’s feet, and finally incinerates the super-heroic pair (along with himself) by foolishly attempting to cut Firebrand’s heart out using Turid Goldenaxe’s double-bladed weapon.

Admittedly, such sense-shattering shenanigans do help make the GLAAD Media Award-nominee’s narrative for Issue One of “The Unexpected” an increasingly gripping read, especially when Alden Quench proves himself to be so formidable a villain that he conclusively bests Neon the Unknown, as well as the element-molder's fellow super-powered team-members, one-on-one within the space of a handful of action-packed panels. But even so, the fact that the high-crowned hat wearing “citizen… who has walked between the multiverse raindrops” causes two such viciously savage murders at this comic’s conclusion proves substantially shocking, not least of all to Colin Nomi’s alter-ego, who despite his scarred blindness still realises that his friends are dead due to the fact he can “smell the burning flesh, the hair and hot metal… [but] I can’t hear them breathing… They’re dead… And I’m still here…”

Rather delightfully though, “Call Of The Unknown” doesn’t just simply focus upon this titanic tussle within the corridors and wards of a Veterans Affairs Hospital either, as the New Yorker’s script bravely attempts to start making good on his pre-publication promise to unify “the DCU” by “pulling together a lot of different stories… [and] picking up on the massive architecture of things like Final Crisis.” Such a huge task was never going to be achieved within the space of a single book, no matter how ably pencilled by Ryan Sook and Cary Nord, yet Orlando makes a seemingly suitable start by providing plenty of exposition and focus upon former dead paramedic Janet Fals, and her miraculous resurrection, courtesy of the Conflict Engine, as the fiery fist-fighter Firebrand.

Storytellers: Ryan Sook, Cary Nord & Steve Orlando, and Inks: Mick Gray & Wade von Grawbadger

Uber: Invasion #14 - Avatar Press

UBER: INVASION No. 14, June 2018

Starting with one of artist Daniel Gete’s most sickeningly ghastly images imaginable, as Battleship Zero triumphantly sits atop a devastated Russian Tank tearing its driver’s head from his blood-drenched corpse with the super-powered beast’s malformed jaws, Kieron Gillen’s script for Issue Fourteen of “Uber: Invasion” must have struck its audience as being designed to both race through the title’s numerous plot-threads as fast as possible, whilst simultaneously trying to imbue his work with as many of the horrors of this “alternate World War II” as well. Indeed, such is the sheer pace of the former computer games journalist’s narrative, that in many ways it makes the twenty-two page periodical feel as if it is deliberately tying-up loose ends before the ongoing series’ final instalment, especially when it starts chopping from events depicted in Minsk, Vladivostok, Siberia, the Kremlin, Smolensk and Italy all within the space of just over half the book.

Fortunately however, the Kerrang! Award-winner does at least momentarily pause to deliver an insight into the Third Reich’s tactics designed to thwart an Allied Zephyr Flight, and resultantly provides a welcome spotlight upon Sieglinde as she battles a formidably-sized contingent of T-34 tanks and becomes “aware of a lesion on her cheek shortly after 14:00”. Trained to follow a specifically-designed manoeuvre which leads to “a single-enhanced Blitzmensch destroyer… unleashing a broad low-intensity halo effect across the area” she inhabits, the blonde battleship's drill proves remarkably effective in instantly vaporising the ‘Flash-like’ American soldiers, and due to a haplessly brave attempt by one Yank to outwit the Nazi force’s Anti-Zephyr system, undoubtedly proves to be the comic’s highlight; “These low-level halo effects were insufficient to damage a Tank-man level enhanced human. However, a bubble of energy would still cause the death of a zephyr if it collided with one.”

Just as tense, albeit without any trace of blood or bodily mutilation, is Stephanie’s confrontation with H.M.H. Churchill. Leah’s intense anger at the secret agent’s cold-hearted willingness to previously tie Tamara to a bomb rather than risk the young girl falling into the hands of the Axis Powers has proved a genuine barrier to the pair’s subsequent relationship, and never has that divide been more evident than in this publication when General Patton demands to put the wheel-bound woman in front of a firing squad of siege guns when she refuses to “be redeployed via Turkish corridor” alone. Having explained the rationale behind the decision to split the debilitated behemoth from her child protégé, the British scientist tells the giant woman to “crush my head if you don’t trust me with her”, and then holds her breath as every anxious reader looks into the chillingly dead eyes of Cohen’s eyes and nervously turns the page…

The regular cover art of "UBER: INVASION" No. 14 by Daniel Gete

Moon Knight #196 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT No. 196, August 2018

Undoubtedly both reading and looking like an adventure from John Smith’s “Indigo Prime” series of stories “for British comics magazine 2000 A.D.” back in the early Nineties, this concluding instalment to Marc Spectator’s surreal visit inside the Collective Headspace of a malformed, absorbing multi-limbed creature must have proved as befuddling to the vast majority of its audience, as Paul Davidson’s highly-detailed panels were completely mesmerising. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more mind-blowing narrative than the one penned by Max Bemis for Issue One Hundred And Ninety Six of “Moon Knight”, as the Fist of Khonshu’s different personas join forces with the ancient deity, and utilise the help of “every you you’ve ever dreamed of” to battle the “unrulier aspects of the Collective’s personality”; “Someone needs to kick some butt around here to keep things in line.”

This creation of a Moon Knight Corps really captures the imagination with its numerous members ranging from an Elven warrioress, a formidable-looking armoured incarnation and an orb-like satellite configuration, through to a diminutive cutesy ‘Man-Bat’, and is so very well visualised by the twenty-page periodical’s “self-taught comic book artist” that many a perusing bibliophile probably wished for the idea to be given it’s very own title. Certainly, a publication focusing upon the white-cowled ‘intergalactic police force’ resolving the Oedipal complex, cracking down upon the Collective’s angst quotient or fighting its suicidal and homicidal tendencies would arguably have been worthy of some quite considerable additional ‘screen time’, especially when a giant bloated toad-like Moon Knight helps lead the ‘lawmen’ in their battle against the horned, purple ogres of Maurice’s sentient virus which has been “trying to drive the Collective insane” and been subsequently “cordoned off [in] a hidden area…”

Perhaps this magazine’s one disappointment therefore is just how quickly its quirky story-telling brings Spector’s imprisonment within “the shared mindspace” to an end, and how seemingly simple it is to achieve as well. Jake Lockley’s moustached character has clearly been itching to punch someone in the face throughout the entirety of this adventure, and resultantly his sock to their insane loincloth-wearing host’s jaw is a rather self-satisfying experience. However, the fact that the well-landed blow also results in the “mass of flesh and brains calling itself the Collective” exploding in a grisly-pencilled quantity of bloody gestalt gore which then releases all the people trapped inside, seems far too straightforward a resolution for what initially appeared so very complicated a conundrum.

Writer: Max Bemis, Artist: Paul Davidson, and Colorist: Mat Lopes

Star Wars: The Last Jedi #2 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI No. 2, July 2018

Whilst Gary Whitta’s treatment for Issue Two of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” valiantly tries to portray all the sense-shattering shenanigans of the “2017 American epic space opera film written and directed by Rian Johnson” with its depiction of the First Order preparing "to crush the rebels once and for all” courtesy of Snoke’s formidably-sized fleet, its arguably lifeless storyboarding and ‘by the numbers’ plodding pace must have made many of its 22,281 readers wondering just why they bothered purchasing the official “Marvel Worldwide” movie adaptation. In fact, due to this publication’s battle scenes set around the Resistance Cruiser the Raddus lacking much in the way of sound effects, momentous motion or more than a pair of attacking Tie Fighters, it is actually difficult to even glean just why General Organa’s flagship was so disastrously damaged by enemy “torpedos inbound”, or how in the preceding panels Po Dameron’s X-Wing is literally blown to smithereens whilst still inside its hanger bay without Leia’s forces apparently ever firing a single shot in anger..?

Certainly, this brief summarisation of the wider conflict, somewhat amateurishly-pencilled by Michael Walsh, makes Admiral Gial Ackbar’s shocking death debatably all the more ignoble, as its brevity seemingly shows “the foremost military commander of the Rebel Alliance” panicking in the face of only three enemy fighters to the point where he commands “all craft full ahead! Concentrate rear shields” so as to supposedly neutralise their threat, and subsequently then sees his opponent fatally penetrate his presumably undefended bridge with a couple missiles; “It’s been an honour serving with you all.” Such ludicrously-poor decision-making is hardly the sort of strategic thinking one would expect from a Mon Calamari who lead “a small under-equipped navy” to successfully defeat the might of Darth Sidious’ Galactic Empire.

Fortunately, the “English-born American screenwriter” does manage to at least inject a few “added parts that we didn’t see” on the ‘Big Screen’ into this twenty-page periodical’s script, most notably Organa’s steel-willed determination not to have her “lifetime spent fighting, resisting, surviving” suddenly ended in the vacuum of outer space. This particular ‘insight’ is pure Carrie Fisher’s character, and it’s resultantly easy to hear the Saturn Award-nominated actress’s voice defiantly shouting out the line “The End? Like Hell” as she briefly considers whether this is indeed to be her fate, and emphatically decides to utilise the Force to float “back to the ship” safely.

Writer: Gary Whitta, Artist: Michael Walsh, and Colorist: Mike Spicer

The Amazing Spider-Man #792 - Marvel Comics

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 792, February 2018

For those readers unable or unwilling to purchase the “Marvel Worldwide” one-shot “Amazing Spider-Man: Venom Inc. Alpha”, Dan Slott’s script to this second instalment of his “Venom Inc.” comic book event arguably must have proved a rather frustrating read, considering the twenty-page periodical disconcertingly begins just after “Peter’s best friend, Flash Thompson” was exposed to an experimental cure at Alchemax and inadvertently “transformed into the all-new Anti-Venom!” True, the Berkeley-born writer does at least provide this publication’s 61,994-strong audience with a brief summary of events at the start of the magazine, yet for those regular bibliophiles solely dedicated to buying just the New York City-based publisher’s “flagship series”, and resultantly perhaps having little recent exposure to the likes of Eddie Brock, Lee Price, the wheelchair-bound Doctor Steve and Norton Fester, the Eisner Award-winner’s narrative is a confusing, somewhat choppy piece of story-telling at best.

Happily however, that doesn’t mean that Issue Seven Hundred And Ninety Two of “Amazing Spider-Man” doesn’t have its good points. Felicity Hardy’s Black Cat Gang in particular provides plenty of pulse-pounding punches, courtesy of Maniac’s successful attempt to “make a move” on the Crime Lord’s territory being given plenty of ‘screen time’. Featuring the likes of Melter, the Brothers Grimm, Hammerhead and the Scorpion, this free-for-all is rather disappointingly one-sided, and also sadly shows some of the titular character’s foremost villains reduced to little more than impotent low-class minions. But it’s hard not to still enjoy watching Ryan Stegman’s dynamically-drawn former anvil-headed Maggia Enforcer in action once again, even if he is quickly overpowered by a symbiote and used to ‘beat down’ Mac Gargan; “Hey, Flat-Top! What’re you doing? We’re on the same si--”

Far less successful though, is Slott’s oft-times debatably pointless dialogue between Peter Parker’s alter-ego and Thompson, as well as their utterly meaningless movements. Just why Anti-Venom’s departs Alchemax Tower alongside “short, dark and slimy” with absolutely no idea as to where they’re going is incomprehensible, and somewhat smacks of simply being a contrived excuse for the American author to manufacture a motivation for Parker’s former classmate to suddenly accompany the wall-crawler back to Bobbi Morse’s empty apartment. Whilst the sheer speed with which Flash subsequently convinces Spidey to surprisingly turn away from his determined plan to finally destroy the “hostile alien organism” and bring an emotional end to “everything bad thing it’s ever done--or spawned” is staggeringly swift, especially when the web-slinger’s alternative to so drastic a course of action is to disconcertingly devise a “patent-pending symbiote tracker” instead..?

The regular cover art of "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" No. 792 by Alex Ross