Polybagged! Some New Comics in Shops This Week
Week of Wednesday, October 6, 2021
First, I have to give a crazy big shout out to Cape and Cowl Comics in Oakland and owner Eitan Manhoff, as welcoming and positive a retailer as I’ve encountered anywhere. Here’s a video intro to Eitan and the shop, and I can confirm that the eight or nine times I’ve been there, the personable vibe and community spirit are as real in-person as on the video.
So even though I’ve been spending this here Substack following these here Substack comics, as well as trying to chronicle my perspectives of shifts in literacies, media, and readerships with advancing digital access… I still love myself a good ol’ stack of comic book floppies, still belive it’s important to support the brick-and-mortar LCS, and still want to show love to the hard-working and passionate people like Eitan who make comics a lively and inclusive community.
Some reviews of new comics in shops this week:
Amazing Spider-Man #75 (Marvel)
Zeb Wells (w), Patrick Gleason (a), Marcia Menyz (c), VC’s Joe Caramagna (l). Backups by Kelly Thompson, Travel Foreman, & Jim Campbell; and Zeb Wells, Ivan Fiorelli, & Edgar Delgado.
Spider-Man is the character who I most often want to like and follow. It’s been a while, though, since “Amazing Spider-Man” has appealed to me. This new era, post-Spencer & Ottley, is called “Beyond” and is going weekly, with a “Beyond Board” at the helm that I’m drawn to: writers Zeb Wells, Kelly Thompson, Saladin Ahmed, Cody Ziglar, and Patrick Gleason as a sort of artist lead, along with artists Sara Pichelli, Michael Dowling, and Art Adams covers. That’s a team that’s pretty suited to my tastes. And it’s been a while since any weekly or even double-shipped book has felt worth following, so I’m kind of a mark for all the marketing ploys to hook new ASM loyalists.
From this first issue, I didn’t find any of the potentially off-putting aspects to pan out as a deterrent. Meanwhile, all the things that made the book a prospect certainly shine. Patrick Gleason’s art is, as usual, uber-slick and smooth AND contains hints of cartoonyness that really appeal to me, like some of my other favorite Big 2 artists (Manapul and more recently Jimenez come to mind.) Zeb Wells writes exposition with dialogue-heavy scenes, but there’s such clarity in the voices that Peter and the rest ring true.
By “the rest,” I must mention that this plot is, at least initially, angling toward a Ben Reilly story, which means dipping into the well of Clone Saga-ish stories that have never been my cup of tea in the Spiderverse. Maybe I’m actually better served for having skipped most of that, since all I really need to know here is that Ben Reilly is a Peter Parker clone who has Peter Parker powers. That’s enough background knowledge to grasp that, with the backing of a suspicious organization, Beyond, Reilly stands to play a competitor or foil role for Peter in this run’s onset.
The main story by Wells and Gleason is pretty focused and strong, but this is an instance when the backups actually really help me get excited about what’s to come. Thompson and Foreman drop suggestions of who might be part of the expanded cast, and I’m excited for Misty Knight and Colleen Wing to be part of this bigger plot. And a brief Ravencroft backup by Wells and Ivan Fiorelli seems like just an exposition hint, but it just points to the web (ha!) of intrigue ahead for this story.
Anyway, editor Nick Lowe and the Beyond Board have my attention for at least the first arc or two. It’ll be really disappointing if this book is really disappointing. So far, so good, though.
A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #1 (Image)
Rick Remender (w), André Lima Araújo (a), Chris O’Halloran (c), & Rus Wooton (l)
I hesitated on this one. Sometimes Remender books feel so misanthropic, even if ultimately redemptive, that I can’t do the month-to-month. I’ve liked Araújo’s past Valiant work a lot, and I was intrigued (but also maybe put-off?) by what appeared to be an Asian-heritage character on the cover. As it turns out, the character is very Benedict Wong and the comic is very much a showcase for Araújo’s storytelling gifts, as it’s very spare in dialogue. The silence and the almost mundane scenes that lead up to the explosive ending give this first issue a really potent simmer. The main character is basically on a bus route to get somewhere around Vancouver B.C., gets delayed, and maybe as a result is spared from a horrific murder that his employers (?) are not. But he’s thrown into the thick of this dark plot indeed.
Remender keeps stretching the rope he gets for a slow burn further and further, and he seems canny in knowing how to pay it off. I’ll keep reading. I’d love it if the story continued to rely very little on words, not as any knock on Remender’s writing but because this issue so clearly shows off how both writer and artist can do strong storytelling with the tools of sequential art.
Last Flight Out #2 (Dark Horse)
Marc Guggenheim (w), Eduardo Ferigato (a), Natalia Marques (c), & Diego Sanches (l)
This book was a surprise, with not much to distinguish it besides Guggenheim’s pedigree. The premise— world ending, brilliant scientist and escape rockets, missing adult daughter— seemed done and overdone. But issue 1 was done so well and issue 2 stays so elegantly executed that it doesn’t read like an all-concept/no-substance movie pitch, and instead just shows how there’s still a place for a tale well told.
Ferigato’s art serves the tight focus on the scientist character, Ben Caewood, and the regret for his absentee parenting that leaves his daughter embittered, but compels him to take a band of troops deep into apocalyptic Chicago to retrieve her. We’re not distracted here with fancy camera angles or designs. The art is economical, as the story is.
But in the end, much of this story’s value will hinge on how the inevitable payoff in the next issue. Even if the plot twists and turns are nothing we haven’t seen before, if they’re paced and presented as confidently as the story so far, “Last Flight Out” might land on terra firma.
Polybagged-and-Boarded Book of the Week:
Wonder Woman 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 (DC)
Writers: Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad, Vita Ayala, Jordie Bellaire, Tom King, Steve Orlando, Amy Reeder, Stephanie Phillips, Mark Waid, G. Willow Wilson, more. Artists: Jim Cheung, Isaac Goodhart, Paulina Ganucheau, Evan “Doc” Shaner, Laura Braga, Amy Reeder, Marcio Takara, José Luis García-López, Meghan Hetrick, and more.
This anniversary issue, alongside the “Wonder Woman: Black and Gold” anthology that I’ve also been loving, proves to any doubters that you can tell a wiiiiide range of Wonder Woman characters and have them all true to the character’s essence, world, and possibilities. The Amy Reeder story feels so very different from the Tom King and Doc Shaner one. The Jordie Bellaire and Paulina Ganucheau so different from the Mark Waid and José Luis García-López. And so on. But to see this array of very different but very Wonder Woman stories makes the reading experience feel like a worthy tribute to 80 years of this remarkable character.
The issue has so many good stories, I won’t even pick or detail them. I’d just encourage y’all to treat yourself. If the Comics Syllabus criteria for comics goodness matches yours at all, you’ll find several pieces to love in this one. Happy 80th, Diana.
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