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Snapshots for 10/4/04
There's no way that Don and I can cover all of the material we have for review in full reviews, so these capsule reviews will offer some brief comments on other recent releases.
BIG CITY BLUES #1
by Dara Naraghi, Dan Barlow, Dennis Murphy, Adrian Barbu, Steve Black & Rudy Lacovara (Ferret Press)
 Big City Blues is a superhero anthology that owes a pretty fair debt to Kurt Busiek's Astro City, as it looks at superheroes with a slice-of-life approach. Naraghi writes all the stories here, and the book ran about fifty-fifty with me. Each story is about the confluence of events of several characters, and while it's a clever sequence the first time around, I found it got a little tired by the time we got to the end. That said, Naraghi's ear for dialogue makes every story readable, and I especially liked seeing a Punisher clone treated as the danger he would be in real life, something that wouldn't work for the regular character but does for an analog of the character. Naraghi has also put together a pretty interesting little offering for Big City Blues, something that is becoming more common in the indy circles of comics: a soundtrack. Taking the "do it yourself" ethos that drives small press comics and expanding it into the musical arena, Naraghi has gathered together 4 Columbus-based bands to deliver 15 songs for BigCityBlues: Street Music. In his introductory notes to us, Naraghi notes that it's a diverse set of music about city life, and that's about the right description. I'm not a music critic, so all I can offer up is "I liked it" rather than a deconstruction, but the selection of music makes a pretty good complement to the stories. 7/10
BRICKTOP A1 SPECIAL
by Glenn Fabry & Chris Smith (Atomeka Press)
 Bricktop is very, very lovely to look at. It is also, from my point of view, damn near incomprehensible. There's a charming weirdness about the book, which focuses on the adventures of a strange young woman named "Losey" Wales, who never takes off her sunglasses, but at the same time the stories are so deliberately all over the map that I couldn't find the point of the book. Fortunately, Fabry and Smith's vignettes, while not entirely coherent, are kind of fun, reminiscent of a stream-of-consciousness Swingers or Go set in modern-day England. However, the real selling point of Bricktop is not in the stories, but in the ultra-detailed pencil artist by Glenn Fabry. Fabry has done gorgeous painted cover work and the interiors on several books as well, but this is the best I've ever seen his artwork look, with a real sense of place and distinctive, exceptionally detailed characters. I can't quite grasp what's meant to be going on in the stories, laden as they are with slang, phonetic accents and just bizarre, random plot elements, but I can't help but admire the artwork. 7/10
FAMILY REUNION
by Sean Stewart & Steve Lieber (Small Beer Press)
 Family Reunion is a short little 8-page comic that is more of a trailer/promo for Stewart's novel Perfect Circle than anything else. Which doesn't explain why it's great, better than a lot of full-size comics and certainly enough to get me to pick up Stewart's novel sooner rather than later. Even if you've got no interest in the novel, though, it's worth a stop at www.smallbeerpress.com to inquire about the comic, because this is another hidden gem, one of many in the small press that Steve Lieber has been involved with. Stewart and Lieber tell a quiet story about a young man at his family reunion who can see ghosts, in particular the ghost of his cousin, who died in Vietnam. The reader is drawn into this tale, which is richer and deeper than any 8-page comic has any right to be, and covers the folly of romance and young aggression, the things that stay with us in our memories and how the truth isn't always as important as some sort of peace of mind. I have to confess that a small amount of my fondness comes from a connection to Austin, the town I call home, but most of it comes from this being an exceptionally well-executed comic-book. 10/10
JUBILEE #2
by Robert Kirkman & Derec Donovan (Marvel Comics)
 And with this issue, I realize that I'd much rather be reading a book about Jubilee's aunt, who is clearly some sort of assassin or superspy, than about the lead character. The high school stuff, while entertaining enough, is the kind of thing we've seen ad nauseaum in movies and comics, and it's more than a little predictable as a result. Kirkman's dialogue gives the book more oomph than it would otherwise have, but the book really shines when Aunt Hope and her butler are on the page, and I'm far more interested in what's going on with them than what's going on with the lead character. Derec Donovan's artwork is also a mixed bag this time out, sometimes looking very strong, and sometimes looking a tad more sketchy. His take on Jubilee is also kind of odd, as she definitely looks Asian, but it almost borders on parody at times, it's so exaggerated. 6/10
QUEEN & COUNTRY #27
by Greg Rucka & Mike Norton (Oni Press)
 You would think that in a week with a full-on Queen & Country novel, a single issue might be a little bit of a letdown by comparison, but this is one of the strongest issues of Queen & Country I've read, and points toward this being another of my favorite stories in the series. Rucka and Norton deliver a spectacular, violent and tense action scene to open the book, all the more shocking because this is the type of thing that Queen & Country does only sporadically and always with real consequences, and while we're recovering from the impact of that, we start to learn more of the political implications of the plot. The complicated nature of the Minders' job, which always seems to involve someone preventing them doing the most obvious thing for arcane and yet believable political reasons, is detailed exceptionally well in another showdown between Paul Crocker and his new boss, and as a bonus, the frustration that Tara has with her new Minder and backup Chris Lankford makes for some great tension as well. 10/10
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #66
by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley & Scott Hanna (Marvel Comics)
 Damn you Bendis! Let me leave this book in peace! Stop bringing me back! Yes, folks, it's the Lander wheel of fickle taste again, as I loved this issue of Ultimate Spider-Man. Not enough to get me fully back on board the book, as the laugh a minute tone seems a little inconsistent with the death of Gwen Stacy not four issues ago, and I think that it will read kind of weird in trade paperback form as a result, but enough to make me laugh out loud consistently through this issue and remember why I fell in love with the book in the first place. I gotta admit, going in I was a bit cynical, not just because I've lost faith in the book of late but because the last thing in the world we need is yet another book with Wolverine guest-starring, but the twist Bendis puts into it here is a familiar one and yet completely new because of the two characters involved in it. I don't want to give away the gag, because it is so entertaining, but if, like me, you've been wondering where the fun in Ultimate Spider-Man went, it went here, to issue #66, skipping over most of the Carnage storyline on the way to get here. 9/10
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