Ugly American # 35 – The Rundown!

Because the Ugly American found nothing in the news sludge worth dissecting, (although he’s sure that will change during the upcoming San Diego Comic Con info-dump) here is some stuff he read and comments you may or may not find edifying:

Five Weapons # 5 – Image Comics
Script: Jimmie Robinson
Art: Jimmie Robinson

There is good news and bad news on this one. The good news is that this was supposed to be the final issue of a limited series, but I see a solicitation for a sixth issue. Apparently, sales have been strong enough to warrant an ongoing, and I like to see creator-owned projects succeed, particularly when the content is strong.

The bad news is that the deeper I get into the series, the weaker I find it. Five Weapons is an all-ages mystery book in which a hyper-clever protagonist uses his Encyclopedia-Brown-level observational skills to survive as an outsider in a school full of lethal weirdos.

Each of the issues ends with a cliffhanger. This issue opens with our hero completely out of ideas and facing off against the president of the gun club…completely unarmed. Now that’s a situation rich with tension, and worthy of a series finale. Unfortunately, all of that tension is resolved in the least satisfying manner possible as a Deus Ex Machina stumbles into the party with all the grace of a drunken rhinoceros.

I’m sure if I go back and reference the back issues for clues, Robinson laid groundwork for the character’s appearance. One of the strengths of Five Weapons is that Robinson always leaves clues in the text for all of Enrique’s revelations; nothing appears out of thin air. The problem is that all of that Vera stuff still ruined what should have been the biggest payoff in the series in exchange for her griping, which the reader has no way to care about.

I think the book still works on the whole, particularly for a younger crowd. Enrique is a very solid, likeable main character, and the parts where he builds relationships with his peers and battles his elders are strong. The puzzle-solving piece of the equation is really hit-and-miss, though, and the book has a little more whimsy than middle-aged Ryan is interested in. So I think I’m out. If somebody asked me to recommend a comic for a tween, though, this is what I’d give them.

Five Ghosts of Fabian Grey # 4/5 – Image Comics
Script: Frank J. Barbiere
Pencils: Chris Mooneyhan

Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Grey is the story of a pulpy Indiana Jones type, blessed/cursed with five literary ghosts after exposing himself to something called a Dreamstone. When the Ugly American exposes himself, all he gets is a stern lecture from his parole officer, not super powers. That’s bunk.

One of the problems with Five Ghosts is that you tend to get more usable information about said five ghosts from the solicitation copy or the back matter than you do from the contents of the book itself. Issue four is nice in one sense because it goes a long way toward clarifying the rules of Fabian’s affliction, while adding another cool layer – the ghosts inside of him are pissed.

It’s a nice twist that raises the stakes, and Five Ghosts # 4 is about Fabian Grey taking a journey inside of himself to make peace with his ghosts. I call that a world-class hook.

Unfortunately, the execution is lacking. Grey is forced to endure a series of tests where he must receive the approval of a particular ghost before moving on. Sherlock Holmes tests him by raising some kind of spirit-demon and chasing him through the streets of London. The supernatural would represent something the uber-rational Holmes would scoff at, not exemplify. Used correctly, that test should have shown Grey using his reason and senses to defeat the demon by proving it a fraud.

Instead, our super adventurer “defeats” the threat by running away like a scared little girl into Holmes address – 221B Baker Street. The ghost of Sherlock Holmes watches this travesty of superstition and cowardice and declares him a pass. Wha-huh??? The greatest detective in literature is comfortable that he’s found a worthy host because he remembered an address? Weak. WEAK.

On the plus side, I find Chris Mooneyhan’s pencils to be divine. I think the book is colored oddly, but I’m sure a real auteur like Monster Mike will correct me on that. This comic looks fantastic, it’s paced briskly, the designs are great, the core concepts are fertile for imaginative expansion…it just needs a little more meat on the story bones. At this point, I’m very excited to look at Five Ghosts, and not in a terrible hurry to read it.

Avengers A.I. # 1 – Marvel Comics
Script: Sam Humphries
Art: Andre Lima Araujo

The Ugly American did not read Age of Ultron, but he did smell something akin to a wet dog’s dirty diaper every time he passed it on the rack. That’s my way of saying I didn’t have high hopes for Avengers A.I., spinning directly out of AU. On the other hand…..It’s got Vision, a surly Doombot, and a Victor Mancha. It also has a $2.99 price point. All right, let’s crack her open and see what the guts look like!

The book opens with a random Atlanta hospital being bombed for absolutely no reason, and then a title page. That title page contains some awkward computery language introducing the concept of the books as such:
PYM OF THE PAST ASSISTED PYM OF THE PRESENT IN DESTORYING [sic] ULTRON. RESULT - DR. HENRY PYM IS A NEW MAN. RESULT [B] - SCAN FOR UNANTICIPATED VARIABLES
OUTCOME - THE AGE OF ULTRON IS OVER. THE AGE OF A.I. IS NOW
:EJECT [A.I. NO 1 RECAP

Yes, please do eject that clunky ass recap. Why would I want to read that book? Pym of the past helped Pym of the present, so he’s a new man….what does that even mean? The unanticipated variables are what…that it’s now the age of A.I.??? That tells me nothing, other than the fact that it sort of confirms my suspicion that Age of Ultron was a time-travel debacle best left avoided.

Well, after that warm invite we meet Monica Chang, and she’s kind of acting as an Amanda Waller for SHEILD, and she’s been assigned to create a Suicide Squad task force aimed at stopping Hank Pym’s Ultron antidote.

She brings in Pym and explains that the artificial intelligence he created has gained a form of sentience, and has a 99.98% chance of ultimately exterminating the human race. And at that point I thought to myself –

This thing is practically guaranteed to wipe out our species, and the “recap” page is telling me this book is about Hank Pym being a new man??? Talk about burying the lead! Here’s your new credits page:

IN ORDER TO PREVENT THE AGE OF ULTRON, HANK PYM CREATED AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH A 99.98% OF EXTERMINATING THE HUMAN RACE.
THIS IS THE STORY OF THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN STOP IT.

Bang! Now that’s a book I might even want to read. Hank Pym is a new man…don’t make me yawn. Marketing aside, at least they’ve given the book a purpose and a focus. Most of what the Big 2 put out can be encapsulated as “the superhero adventures of X”. Avengers A.I. knows what it’s about, and has a prime force to move the plot along. Very nicely constructed.

The characters are all distinct, and Humphries has clearly thought about his approach to each. Not sure how fresh or deep they are, but he’s clearly thought about it. Pym is sort of an arrogant, excitable goofball, and bears no resemblance at all to the cat who was an instructor at Avengers Academy. (they did warn me he was a new man, I guess) Victor Mancha is having identity issues, which is made evident by the fact that he changes his code name to something more absurd about every six panels, just in case you forgot. Vision has levelled up after curling up into the fetal position near the sun for a while. And the Doombot hates everybody, and is not shy about sharing that fact. If he didn’t have a charge in his head ready to deploy a mini-black hole, he would certainly kill us all.

It’s basically the bit that Warren Ellis ran with Aaron Stack in Nextwave, only less subtle. If that’s even possible. Honestly, why isn’t Warren Ellis writing this book? He was born to do it. I don’t know, Avengers A.I. is perfectly competent, and maintains a surprisingly light, fun tone for a book about a bunch of people who don’t like each other basically forced to work together against their will to stop an extinction level threat.

I can definitely imagine a possible audience for this. I’m just not it.

:EJECT [UGLY AMERICAN] --- AVENGERS A.I.

Other Stuff
All of that seemed a bit disappointing, so I thought I’d talk briefly about a comic I really adored – Hawkeye # 11. It’s a story told entirely from Pizza Dog’s perspective, so there’s almost no verbiage. Just a few key words that a dog might focus on.

It would be very easy for something like this to get a little too cute and waste all that story space basking in its own self-indulgence. My take was that it was a wonderful departure from the standard reading experience, and I think I got more out of that story trying to decipher Aja’s symbols, not less.

Hawkeye # 11 is a noir detective story where the hard-boiled dick is a dog missing an eye, and the femme fatale is literally a bitch. Without words to shorthand for you, it takes some time to parse what the symbols mean and whether they represent a scent, a sound, or a memory. The end result is that this “silent” issue actually takes more time to absorb then most text heavy books, with the possible exception of Turf # 1. It’s got action, drama, broken hearts, and a major turning point in the Clint/Kate relationship.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff as usual from Fraction and Aja. Hawkeye is pretty close to perfect. There’s more vitality in one issue of Hawkeye than in 2/3 of DCs publishing slate put together. That’s because they haven’t outlawed fun and creativity at Marvel. If you look at the numbers, turns out that’s actually a good business decision. Didio….Johns….Lee….is this thing on? Can you hear me?

And then there’s Lazarus. Oh, Lazarus. I’m running long here, so I’m definitely not attacking it this week. Maybe just better to leave that one alone entirely. But I may not be able to help myself…tune in next week to find out!

Ugly American # 17 – Five Weapons

Hand Me That Cudgel…..Now Where Did I Put The Dead Horse?

Marvel just released Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1 on Wednesday, and I instantly got a headache. You’d think I’d be over this by now….but I’m not, because they keep upping the audacity ante. Look, Marvel, I didn’t make the rules, YOU made the rules! And the rules for .1 issues, while stultifyingly misguided, were quite simple:

• They were to signify a jumping on point for new readers
• They were to illuminate a tone or plot vehicle for the title’s direction
• They were to be followed by another book shipping that same month
• They were to be priced at $2.99 to encourage test-driving

Since the initiative started, Marvel has routinely made a mockery of the first two tenets. The transgressions are so numerous at this point that I think the blatant misuses far outnumber the times they’ve played fair. No trouble with point # 3, mind you. Everything Marvel publishes ships 2.8 times a month now, so does that even qualify as a .1 thing? And then I look at GOTG 0.1 and see that disgusting looking $3.99 on the cover, so now they’ve taken a hot dump all over principle # 4.

As if there were ever a shred of doubt, .1 is an unattractive turd of sound and fury, signifying NOTHING. So the program is confusing and ill conceived, but at least they lied to us about everything. Well, everything but the part where they gouge you for double the cost in a month by over-shipping. Whew! Dodged a bullet there, huh?

What’s extra funny about all this is that if you listen to guys like Brian Bendis or Jonathan Hickman talk about the marketing/numbers guys at Marvel, you’d think they were referring to extra-dimensional savants. These numbers guys at Marvel have come down from heaven to show us mere mortals how the science of selling works. Except if you look at the mass attrition, the over-saturation of every workable brand, the over-saturation of every non-workable brand, the failure to produce any title sustainable past twelve issues, and the embarrassment that is Marvel’s performance in the book market, you might wonder if these guys aren’t so smart after all.

News to the “wizards”….that red stripe at the bottom of all your books looks like ass. Propping up your numbers with variant covers is not smart, it’s poking an economic badger with a pointy stick, and it’s going to bite you sooner rather than later. You have the most vibrant and powerful IP library in comics, and Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead outperformed your ENTIRE CATALOG according to Bookscans numbers. Don’t just gloss over that, folks. I want you to stop for a moment and consider that one independent black and white horror property outsold everything Marvel produced in 2012. And this with a billion dollar movie in the theaters! Yeah. Those are some sharp cats over there at Marvel marketing. Given the choice between the current regime and a pack of syphilitic hamsters…I’m taking the hamsters.

Meanwhile, the Distinguished Competition is learning all the wrong lessons from these kinds of shenanigans. Word from the grapevine is that the Geoff Johns Green Lantern Finale is going to have a big fat $7.99 price point, just like ASM # 700. Ugh. Yeah, yeah, extra pages. But what kind of pages? If this were 80 pages of Geoff Johns/Doug Mahnke swan singing, I wouldn’t champion the idea, but I’d understand. Everybody knows how this is going to work, though – it’s going to be 40% Johns/Mahnke, and a heaping pile of forgettable professional yeomen’s work.

Ask yourself this – if DC published one GL finale with just the Johns/Mahnke story for $4.99, and also published the $7.99 version with this “bonus” material, how many would purchase the comic with the extra content? I’m going to put the over/under at 3% of the $4.99 version. And by the way, half of that 3% would be savvy speculators betting on the “scarce” version for future profits. If DC really believed in the material, they’d publish it separately. But mostly, they just want as many $8 monsters as they can rape out of you for Q1. And that’s comics.

But this is also comics:

Five Weapons # 1
This is another new book from Image, and it’s Jimmie Robinson’s baby. Paul Little is handling the colors, but other than that it’s the Jimmie Robinson show. He’s doing the writing, the drawing, he’s washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, and tucking you in at night. That’s full service.

Five Weapons is the story of one intrepid Tyler Shainline. He’s the new kid at the School of Five Weapons, where today’s youth are trained to become tomorrow’s professional assassins. Tyler’s got a couple of wrinkles to work out, though. One, his father is a legend at this school, so he’s got a sizeable reputation demon to exorcise with everyone he meets. The other problem is that he appears to be a pacifist. This is kinda not what Weapon School is looking for.

The schtick seems to be that Tyler’s weapon is going to be his mind, and it’s a shockingly enjoyable schtick. If you’re super old like me and have favorable memories of Encyclopedia Brown, this will feel pleasantly like going home. For a more contemporary camp, I would say that if you liked Veronica Mars (and shame on you if you didn’t) you should absolutely give Five Weapons a shot. There’s the backdrop of fitting in at high school, dodging cliques, making an impression on the cute girl in home room. All good stuff, but standard. The twist is that the story is laced with puzzles and brain teasers. By the end of the issue I noticed I was on yellow alert, searching for clues about which rug might get pulled from beneath me. That was fun, and I don’t get that from many comics. The cliffhanger ending for the debut issue doesn’t have anything to do with shocking violence or a stunning reveal. It’s a puzzle. How the hell is Tyler going to pull that off? (You’ll have to read it to find out what that is) I don’t know. I’m interested enough to find the next issue, though.

This is an all ages book. It’s not labeled as such, and the marketing I saw beforehand didn’t suggest that. Perhaps if we asked Mr. Robinson, he would deny it. But it’s an all ages book. Frederic Wertham would feel comfortable handing this book to a 12 year-old. The sensibility skews a little young, and that’s not a pejorative, it’s just a fact. When Tyler was being introduced to the teachers, (one of whom has an arrow inexplicably jutting out of her head) it almost lost me. By the time I got to the “exotic weapons” student talking to Tyler through a presumably poisonous snake, I recognized that this is a book pointed more at the Ben 10 crowd and relaxed. There’s nothing wrong with Ben 10 or all ages material. Diary of a Wimpy Captain Underpants sells more books than comics can imagine. And like Han Solo, comics can imagine a lot. So I’ve been waiting for something in this vein to hit gold, and maybe this can do it?

I know Jimmie Robinson from his Bomb Queen work, so Five Weapons surprised me a little. Bomb Queen is, how shall we say this….saucy. It’s a little like hiring me and Chronic Mike to write for The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. We could probably do it, maybe even do it well. But you wouldn’t exactly expect it. I like that. I like creators stretching their creative muscles, and I like it when creators take on more control of their product.

Five Weapons is pretty darned good. Right now it’s in the “Oh, isn’t that sort of clever and interesting” category. If Robinson is able to really sell the brain teaser elements while naturally progressing the relationships in the book, Five Weapons could be really special.

Hawkeye # 8
I just couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to wait for the trade to come out and then catch up and read it all, but all the cool kids kept talking about it, so I had to crack open Hawkeye and see what the hullaballoo was about.
This just in: Hawkeye is super cool. It’s so cool, it makes you feel cooler for having read it. This particular issue featured a series of full page splashes paying homage to golden age comics while simultaneously adding weight to the tone of the scene. In the hands of lesser men, those pages would feel like wasted fluff. In Hawkeye, it’s just cool.

FUN FACT: You know how the “track suit draculas” like say “bro” at least once every five words? Know where Fraction got that from? It’s a gentle ribbing of Warren Simons, currently the executive editor at Valiant. I’m guessing it’s exaggerated. Let’s hope so, at any rate.

Clint Barton is arrested in this issue. How cool is that? It’s Hawkeye cool. Also, between this and the Young Avengers - I’m officially in love with Kate Bishop. The end!

As always, your comments are very welcome so leave them below.