Comic Reviews: Queen & Country 25, Astonishing X-Men 2, Tokyo Storm Warning TPB

6/30/2004

Queen & Country 25: With this single issue story, we see the return of Steve Rolston on art chores on a very "talky", emotional piece involving Tara on leave, returning to the Swiss Alps to her mother's chalet, and exploring the minor train wreck that is their strained relationship. It's subtle, nuanced plotting by Greg Rucka, and completely realistic. It does, in fact, sound like a number of friends' relationships with their mothers, though only one that I can think of had a mother sleeping with men her daughter's age. Nonetheless, it's real interpersonal relationship stuff, involving both guarded statements that mean more by what they don't say, and lots of non-verbal communication that speaks volumes. It's the stuff that a few great actors and a smart script could make extremely compelling dramatic film material. Unfortunately, Rolston's pencils can't pull it off. Now, he's not my least favorite of the rotating artists on the book, and does very well at working out good panel design. But his cartoony style and simplified exaggeration of facial structure cause most characters to blend together. It's really unfortunate, because this was an issue, more than most in this series, that required a subtle hand on art chores. Granted, I would have done worse, personally. But after reading several issues from the amazing Carla Speed McNeil, I was just left with that nagging feeling of a missed opportunity here. The plot of the issue is eerily similar to the original Pink Panther, actually, with various young somethings cavorting around the chalet, skiing and hooking up, with sexual politics abounding. It's particularly interesting given that Tara's main foil here is her own cavorting mother. The psychology drips from the page: it's clear how this environment could lead to tara developing a fear-to-lose-control-and-be-happy funk, retreating into drink and socially isolating professional duties. Anyway, a fascinating look at Tara's roots, and the real kick, though not an entirely pleasant one, happens onthe last page, setting up a very interesting arc with the next issue. What a great series!

8/10 Clicks

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Astonishing X-Men 2: Despite this being the apparent successor to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's imaginative interpretation of the X-Men, Joss Whedon's second issue centers around a time-honored traditional threat for the team: a mysterious combative alien mercenary type, equipped with hopped-up cyberthungs, performs an evil act, and the X-Men rush in to thwart it, only to inexplicably be smacked around by. One. Damn. Alien. Guy.

Hpwever, Whedon writes some great dialog, and the pacing and panel construction by john Cassaday are perfect. The X-Men hit the hostage crisis like a SWAT team, and look genuinely surprised when they get their asses handed to them by this guy. I think Cassaday could have shown us Wolverine's evisceration a little bit more graphically: I mean, with his healing factor, we can afford to see him in more peril than what looks like a tummy ache. The reintroduction of old fan favorite "normal person narrative" Kitty Pryde is welcome, and subtle, as she phases hostages out of the room one at a time, and Emma's mind-tweak of one of the cyberthugs is fun to put together as you read. It occurred to me all of the things they didn't do in this sequence that after awhile you'd sort of expect them to in a typical X-Men book: the adversaries WEREN'T prepared for each X-Man individually with some sort of nullifying defense, somehow knowing who that current roster would be (like we've seen so many times in the past: a Sentinal/Nimrod/Something with an answer for everything) and we also didn't see the team runnign around blasting away with no effect. What they do is very effective...when they make contact. Which is why it's all the more interesting that the adversary disarms them like Jet Li, using them on each other and moving into their blind spots, powers-wise. It's an interestingly choreographed scene, and the X-Men are left with questions: how is this related to Dr. Rao's announcement of a cure for mutancy? We also see a wonderful, wonderful altercation between Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost that actually dares to address X-Men continuity at a time when bygones be bygones, your enemies are on the team and friends and lovers are killed and forgotten each issue. Pryde's original introduction to the team involved a White Queen attack, and the fact that Emma was also involved in the Dark Phoenix thing years before she supplanted Jean in Scott's life, make this a creepy, edgy dynamic. And Kitty Pryde is the narrative tool by which Joss gets to say, on behalf of the readership, "I'm back, I'm normal, and what. The. Fuck!" I really like this return to the roots of the character, but with age and wisdom. I look forward to seeing how it goes from here. Lastly, we have a curious change of motivation by the lovable Beast, who, until recently, has been written as one of the most well-adapted psyches for an exotic mutant the franchise has had: in Grant's run, Beast LOVED his secondary mutation, and became something of a pre-conceived notion-buster. Suddenly, as of this isse, Hank seems to have some other burdens on his mind, and I'm looking forward to what capable Joss Whedon has up his sleeve. Besides, since no two artists can get Beast's look right anyway, we might as well have a change. I admit to strongly disliking Cassaday's cathead version. Another note on these new iffy costume designs: while Cyclops' gear makes no sense (assuming the PR-friendly X-Men thing was legit) and Emma's loss of the gravity-defying X-by-omission outfit is disappointing, I am actually intrigued by Cassaday's version of Wolverine's costume. He's done something new with the nose of the mask that changes it's physicality. It's an attention to detail I expect from him, and he doesn't disappoint.

8/10 Clicks

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"The sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
And spilled into the mezzanine of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
And I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
...
Japanese God Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians"
-Elvis Costello: Tokyo Storm Warning

Tokyo Storm Warning TPB: This is another of Warren Ellis' apparent drunk-on-cough-syrup-too-much-television story ideas executed as a mini-series. Actually, i think just about everything he writes is like that in one way or another, just that his two excellent on-going series': Global Frequency and Planetary, each are set up as anthologies of single issue episodes...of apparent drunk-on-cough-syrup-too-much-television story ideas. Now, he's a brilliant writer, and I have just been bowled over by the references and the parodies and the homages and the cool, minimal dialog in these books. He's on top of his game virtually every time. I say virtually because, on occasion, he gets lazy. And gets paired with the wrong artist. And the result is something like Tokyo Storm Warning. According to a pre-series interview (follow the link below) Ellis wanted to have some fun at the Japanese nimation Giant Robo genre, apparently by declaring in the final pages of this series that the whole shebang is adolescent malepower fantasy and amounts to nothing. See, I get it. Unfortunately, the dialog is not cynical enough to make the parody clear, and combined with James Raiz (and Carlos D'Anza) on art chores, off of the Transformers books, the thing reads like a clunky western attempt to write a mecha book, not a subversion of the genre. The art isn't distant and alien enough to be post-modern about it (like Geoff Darrow did in Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, covering the same ground) nor is it wickidly stylized enough to be a bad-ass traetment either (maybe Ale Garza or Jason pearson) so the result is a classic example of what irks me about giant robots done in a western style: they look like big toys. No physicality or weight to them (despite Raiz' obvious effort on the contrary, with detail rendering of buildings being destroyed by mecha smashing into stuff) and the panels are cluttered and hard to follow. I got the impression that these ungainly, awkward battle scenes in the mecha were intended to poke fun at the agility and irrational urban combat we generally see in anime. Here, though, it just looks static and pale. Currie put in a fine effort on inks, especially the compelling prologue to the book that sets up some explanation for the giant robot vs giant monster conflict, but it's not enough to save the project. And while the ending was surreal and simple, ehh...it smacked of Akira and left me feeling disappointed that this vaguely interesting western female character in the hot seat was under-utilized here. I confess I only read this out of circumstance: it's bundled to the back of Cully Hammner's excellent RED mini. So no harm, I suppose. But next time, let's just have more Planetary.

5/10 Clicks

Tokyo Storm Warning Pre-Interview

So says...Wrongrobot!


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