marlowe1 | Entries tagged with brian k vaughan

191.Valperga by Mary Shelley - Ok, this one was boring. It's also the one flop of her career. Even though Shelley's most famous book was Frankenstein and that's the only book that people read today, she wrote a lot of books that were very popular in their time period. Anthony Burgess famously complained about how Clockwork Orange was his least favorite book and if he had a choice of book (or work) to be known for it would not be that one. But in some cases, it's just a strange deal that authors might be mostly forgotten except for a couple of works. So I bought this book and the Last Man (I ended up buying that one a second time because I forgot that I bought it) because I wanted to read Mary Shelley's other works when I kept reading Frankenstein.

This one is boring. One critic even accused Mary Shelley of putting her name on Percy Shelley's work in regards to Frankenstein because he couldn't believe that the same person who wrote Frankenstein wrote Valperga. Of course, that's your old institutional misogyny where women are silenced in various ways including being accused of plagiarism when they write something that people like (such as Harper Lee being accused of sticking her name on a Truman Capote book when she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird)

But this one is boring. Many times during the reading, I was going to just skip to the end or skim through. However, there were enough interesting moments that kept me reading. The basic plot is that in Italy with the Guelphs and the Ghibellines fighting it out. Castruccio is the main character. And his lover is named Euthanasia. They both read Dante which means that Dante was popular at the time even though he's contemporary. I guess I want to look up Dante and see how popular he was in his lifeetime.

But mostly Castruccio goes from young soldier to despot and Euthanasia tries to fight him but she really keeps losing. She believes in democracy and he's not having it. So he smashes her castle. And then there's another 100 pages left. And then she dies on a ship sailing to Sicily. I thought that she'd commit suicide rather than give power to her old lover but nope, she dies at sea. Which is kind of silly really. I mean she's a made up character and her name means good death (I don't think it was the popular term for assisted suicide in the 19th century)

192.Saga vol 11 by Brian Vaughan & Fiona Staples - We pick up from Hazel's father being murdered in the last issue to a time jump where Hazel's mother is dealing drugs, working the angles and even working without her wings but everything is wrong. There's a soldier that her mother travels with who has pulled some atrocities. The wars are still raging. The winged ones sent an assassin after Hazel with orders to kill everyone that Hazel has seen because Hazel has the horns and the wings. And since we know that death happens in this universe in the most devastating way, no one is safe. I'm definitely not disappointed in the return of this title but I really need more. This one ends with their home burning and Hazel crying over her dead father. I don't know where this is going but I do hope that Vaughan sticks the landing this time.

45.Komi Can't Communicate by Tomohito Oda - The entry of Ren Yamai into this series is the definite adrenaline kick that I didn't know it needed. I actually noticed her in the first volume since she threatened the protagonist in such a crazy way, but in this one the depth of her obsession with Komi is insane and hilarious. The main joke is that she sees Komi as the most wonderful and ideal woman in the world but Komi doesn't talk to her and has never talked to her and the whole premise of the book is the fact that Komi is too shy to even talk to her best friends unless absolutely necessary. But since Komi is also the prettiest girl in the high school no one even notices just how silent she is all the time. Anyhow Ren Yamai kidnaps Tandano and locks him in her room because she's offended that Komi would even talk to such a basic dude. There's other stuff but Komi is definitely a draw. Still confusing that she can only speak by writing down the words but she doesn't have an online presence. But I think that's just something you have to ignore.

46.Paper Girls 1 by Brian K Vaughan & Cliff Chiang - I don't like Y: The Last Man. I tried to like it. I really did, but even on the second reading in anticipation of the show, I can't get into it. Too many coincidences. Too many straw feminists. He's trying too hard to say something deep about human nature but failing. By contrast, I really like this one. I don't know if he's trying to do anything besides a time traveling pulp science fiction story where teenagers from the future are severely disfigured. The 1986 time period means that when a future teenager refers to his boyfriend one of the characters acts disgusted (oh the reaction to Heathers and its rampant homophobia - sorry that's just pretty accurate to the time) and the one ends with a cliffhanger of a character running into her future self. And it all begins with teenage girls trying to make a living delivering papers. I like it.

Crossposts: https://marlowe1.livejournal.com/2325256.html

76.Lucifer: Faith & Lucifer by Holly Black and Lee Garbett - The television show turned Lucifer into Castle with the occasional angelic drop in (and a revolving cast of characters who eventually started getting on with each other) but the comic written by MIke Carey was a work of genius with several strange plots going throughout. Its ending was rather perfect for the story it was telling but it seemed like it had nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, even Holly Black couldn't change my mind about Lucifer not going anywhere. This reminds me a great deal of the original run. There is a political challenge in Heaven. Apparently Lucifer has a son these days. The only difference is that God comes back wrong and full of justice without mercy. And then it ends with Lucifer planning another rebellion. I wanted to like this one much better than I did.

77. Diary of a Tokyo Teen by Christine Mari Inzer - This is actually a sweet travelogue of a book with an entry point of a teenager who is half-Japanese/half-white visiting her grandparents in Japan and taking in the sights, including ugly buildings, Japanese dance crew and ramen places. There's not much more to this comic than "here look at all this cool stuff I saw in Japan" but sometimes that's enough. She's got an optimistic voice and a clear view of everything.

78. Judas by Jeff Loveness & Jakub Rebelka - This was not the comic to read on Shabbos since it's very Christian. It was actually rather affecting as the whole point of the comic is that Judas needs to forgive Jesus while they are both in Hell. The art is beautiful and Satan is depicted as a bit of a dick. But it's rather a sweet depiction of Christianity and the modus operandi behind the whole Jesus spending three days among the dead part. Redeeming Judas from a Christian perspective is a rather modern concept and it definitely helps in making the story a little less antisemitic.

79.Mockingbird: Feminist Agenda by Chelsea Cain & Kate Niemczyk - This one only lasted 8 issues and for the collection to even warrant a collection the company had to include a story from the New Avengers which has Mockingbird getting shot for a couple issues. I read that New Avengers story and it was better in context. Anyhow this is three issues where Mockingbird is on a cruise ship that is doubling as a science fiction convention complete with cosplay and a guy with a horse's head. The story keep referencing Hulk getting killed in Civil War 2. Anyhow, it was a fun low stakes comic book story about a heroine solving a murder mystery. I like those comic books, especially when I read too many comic books about the end of the world.

80. Saga volume 4 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples - so here's the dissolution of the love story at the center of the comic book with Alana in an interactive broadcast vid that gets her money and addicted to drugs. The main character in this volume is a terrorist from the television headed people who kills the princess, kidnaps the baby prince and ends up kidnapping Hazel. This is a short and brutal chapter where the peace that's been established in between chapters (Hazel grows into a toddler) is shattered and the interplanetary war is given more context as the peoples are not fighting directly but fight through other cultures who don't like them very much.

Crossposts: https://marlowe1.livejournal.com/2310190.html

63. Battleworld: Star Lord & Kitty Pryde by Sam Humphries and Alti Firmansyah - Checking out comic books from the library can be a strange experience when you don't keep up with the titles on a regular basis. Marvel comics has gone through a Secret War, Civil War, Civil War II and a story where Captain America went full Nazi just as America elected one of the most odious pieces of shit to the White House (by the electoral college, not the popular vote). So Secret Wars apparently was a combination of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the original. It's Crisis in terms of bringing together all the alternate universe characters in one big story in order to work out some kinks from the original format (primarily for giving Miles Morales to the Marvel Universe proper). Like Secret Wars in that the format is fairly simple as everyone is on one planet fighting it out with Doctor Doom as god emperor (just like the only interesting twist in the original miniseries).

So Peter Quill and Kitty Pryde are a thing in the Marvel universe proper (as opposed to the film Marvel universe where the multiverse comes down to Universal, Sony and Fox). Only Kitty Pryde is nowhere and instead we get the Kitty Pryde who was an agent for Apocalypse in Age of Apocalypse. There's even an issue from Age of Apocalypse which reminds me of my initial impressions which were - cool concept, love the art and who the fuck wrote this thing? It's awful. Anyhow the main story of Quill and Alternate Pryde in a heist is about as low stakes as you can get and putting them together in the next story with Quill asking Pryde to marry him is just kind of dumb.

64. Sage vol 3 by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples - Ok, now this makes a little more sense. Not much since the story mostly could start here with the one-eyed fictional version of Samuel Delaney puking on the baby. Yet, I know the characters a little better. I'm more sad that the author dies and see the stakes a little more clearly. Still love how the opposite of war turns out to be fucking. War & Fucking is a Russian novel we would all want to read.

65. She-Hulk: Deconstructed by Mariko Tamaki & Nico Leon with Dalabor Talajic - She-Hulk without She-Hulk. Just Jennifer as a lawyer with a case of a woman with a monster in her apartment and a landlord that is creepy enough to try to evict her for being not so hot anymore. She-Hulk is fresh off of Civil War II which was the one where Captain Marvel was an idiot, Bruce Banner died and there was a lot of talk of fascism. Anyhow she's got severe PTSD so the whole story is about getting herself right with herself and accepting her transformation into She-Hulk again which is something she does under duress in this case. The story is tight and full of mission statements over what She-Hulk can be, even if I think that the fun She-Hulk of Hell Cat is not really going to be around.

66.The Walking Dead vol 30: New World Order by Robert Kirkman & Stefano Gaudiano - I can appreciate the fact that the Walking Dead is more of a spiral than a circle. I can appreciate the fact that even though it looks like there's only one story going on with Rick and friends finding safety only to lose it, that there's a greater narrative about rebuilding society and bringing us back to the social order. That doesn't mean that I don't find this latest iteration of the gang finding a new place to live any more interesting. Ok, so the new place is a big city of 50,000 people where the issue that arises comes on pretty quickly. If I didn't know that this struggle was the last one and that the whole series just ended, I would have guessed that this is where things were going. In fact, the story of the spoiled brat son of the matriarch was already on the television show. I don't properly remember if it was in the comic as well, but it might have been. Either way Negan kills the brat so a new world order based on what people were like before the fall kind of throws things in the mixer. So this is a pretty dull affair. Negan is gone. The new safe place is bigger but it's got many of the same tensions. The last thing anyone says is to reference New World Order. I suppose the series ending is the best thing for it.

67.Uncanny X-Men: Survival of the Fittest by Cullen Bund & Greg Land - Speaking of boring, this is one of those stories that deals with the fact that Marvel was trying to push the Immortals as the new X-Men in the most blatant way possible. The meta-story of Marvel being pissed that they couldn't do mutant stories in the regular movies while the boring X-Men movies chugged along in the Fox banner is more interesting than any story coming out of it. So that's your answer to "Why isn't Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel just a mutant?" And in universe the teragan cloud goes and kills the mutants and activates the Immortals and in this story we got Magneto fighting to save the mutants with a group trying to kill off the heroes. Also Genosha gets blown up, one of the saddest metaphors for South Africa (then Israel) to ever appear in comics gets a "I planted bombs to kill off these guys" send-off. Oh poor mutants. You will never get another Claremont.

Crossposts: https://marlowe1.livejournal.com/2309438.html

57.Old Man Logan: Warzones! by Brian Michael Bendis and Andrea Sorrentino - So Marvel decided to kill off Wolverine and then bring Old Man Logan into the Marvel universe since they were already bringing in Miles Morales. HOwever, where Miles Morales seems like a no brainer (the universe he was tied to isn't selling, he's one of the most popular new characters in decades, etc.), the introduction of Old Man Logan into the Marvel universe was a puzzle. Old Man Logan was a one shot miniseries that basically turned Wolverine into a Clint Eastwood character - traveling across America to avenge his easily fridged family - who fought a bunch of Hulks and ultimately the Red Skull because the Red Skull was president now. This book uses that world to a certain extent. Old Man Logan is still old with a failing healing factor. His friends are still dead. There are some bloody fights but in the end he ends up running into the X-Men and going to New York so yeah, Secret Wars! Also since it's a Secret Wars title Dr Doom is in charge and a god. I really didn't read the new Secret Wars so I don't know if this is stupid or clever. There is a fine line. The main thing that sells this book is the artwork. Sorrentino renders everything with the most beautiful dirty painting look. Even as the script is not exactly brilliant (it's Secret Wars tie-in starring a bad series after all), the artwork sells it. Everything is grim and fading and when Logan hits Manhattan it doesn't feel like a perfunctory entrance for a character into the Marvel universe proper. It feels like a truly terrifying moment in the life of someone who has lost everything and can't quite get what he's seeing. I actually want to know more.

58.Monstress, Vol 2: The Blood by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda - Many years ago I tried to read an independently published (either self-pub or small press - the cover was beautiful) book where the writer attempted an infodump in the first paragraph. This killed all interest I had in reading the rest of the book (and it was a pretty long book too). Monstress is the opposite issue where I don't understand who is what and where everything is supposed to be. I think this is much better than spoon feeding and infodumps but I feel lost in the worldbuilding where there are tiger pirates and cat spirits and foxes. The story Maika Halfwolf seeking answers to what happened with her mother while a Cthulu type squid monster lives in her arm is definitely something and I'm going to keep reading it, but I feel like I'm falling into a pit of various politics and factions that I can only begin to fathom. The story definitely snaps into place when she journeys to the island with the main fox demon that knew her mother. The give and take of the discussion really clarifies a great deal, even as it's supposed to be a mystery what her mother was up to. Also, the art work is beautiful.

59.Saga vol 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples - The artwork in this one is ok. It works. Also the main author that brings the couple together is based on Samuel Delany which makes me happy. A one-eyed Samuel Delany who gets shot in the leg, but still Samuel Delany. Just because Monstress (which I also love) is being reviewed in this same post, I do have to say that I think that Vaughan handles the world building better just because he gives you one very simple story to latch onto (the couple from warring worlds and their child fleeing bounty hunters and ex-lovers) in order to introduce the other areas in the world. I don't say that it always works. I still don't know what's going on with the television head people, but I don't quite feel like I'm drowning when I read it. One could also argue that Monstress has a simple story but there are so many details about pirates and warring factions and ancient demons who all have their motivations that it feels like being invited to a party where you don't know anyone and all you can do is listen to their chatter. Still Saga doesn't seem to be as ambitious. At least in the early stages. This part is simply an encounter with the in-laws, a flight from the bounty hunters and the death of the father. There are also flashbacks to how they met.