Renato ArlemRecensioni

This was another very good comic - but not without its issues. In particular, there was some odd plagiarism in Silver Surfer #2 which somehow slipped past Marvel Editorial. In particular, several backgrounds from Annihilius' throne room were lifted directly from Emperor Palpatine's Observation Room on the Death Star II in Return of the Jedi. I don't know how that got by, but it did, and I can't not see it.

Otherwise, this is some great writing, and a great cosmic superhero comic. I'm in for Book Three.

The whole idea behind the positive and negative universes eating each other was fun. I don't read this for the science, after all. All these big players on a big scale story is so delicious.

This issue jumps to a dystopian future Gotham. The dystopian plot is riveting, and I'm curious about Kate's ambiguous role in it. But when we just finished the flashback-heavy Coryana plot arc, it seems weird to suddenly jump to the future? I want to see more of Kate's present!½

The Silver Surfer part was the best. The other 2 parts were so-so.

So this has to be one of the largest graphic novels I've read from Marvel. 12 issues, Silver Surfer, Super Skrull and Ronan. That's 3 characters I haven't read much about and definitely never read with them as the main "hero". This "Marvel Cosmic" thing is kind of a whole new world, or at least one populated with what feel like distant cousins I met at a wedding or cookout when I was 9.

It's not bad and total change of pace. I guess the only problem I have is that all the characters are REALLY powerful and the main villain (the bugs) are just evil for evil's sake. Fortunately all the main characters have other stories, rather than just squishing as many bugs a possible.

God exists, and He hates me. How do I know this? He permitted the existence of a second volume of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. (Actually, he permitted the existence of still more, but in His mercy He left those ones uncollected.) Only the sheer deep-rootedness of my completist instincts can explain why I read this: given that I'd read the previous volume and that it takes place during Countdown to Final Crisis, I felt compelled to read it, but now that I've typed that it out, it seems a wholly inadequate explanation for why I inflicted this on myself. Perhaps I, like God, hate me.

This is like the first volume, but worse if you can imagine it. Nothing that any character does in here mean anything; I want to give Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti the benefit of the doubt, but this reads like sheer hackwork, comics vomited out to fulfill some kind of contractual obligation. (Is DC required to publish stories featuring the characters/concepts they inherited from Quality Comics? Surely nothing else could explain their insistence of releasing terrible comic after terrible comic featuring them.) One imagines they wrote each issue in mere minutes, never edited a word, and then laughed as they cashed their paychecks. (2007-08 was a good time for them and shit writing, given they were also partly responsible for Countdown to Final Crisis.) As a fan of what I've read of Christopher Priest's run on The Ray, I'm glad he's not alive so he didn't have to witness their utter ineptitude in handling the characters he poured so much brilliance into.

The only person more guilty than the writers of this comic is its artist. Seriously, Renato Arlem's art is irredeemably bad and completely terrible. A heavy user of Photoshop, characters usually don't move from panel to panel, and images are reused in different contexts despite inappropriate poses and facial expressions, and what the dialogue and narration indicate ought to be happening is often wholly undepicted in the artwork. That anyone has ever hired him to "draw" anything boggles my mind. I can only assume that since 50% of his drawings are reused, he costs 50% of other artists. (Caleb Mozzocco has said much the same at me, but at length, and with pictures.)

Don't be like me. Don't make my mistake. Don't turn on God. Don't read this book!

DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

One star might be a little brutal, but this book was definitely not "okay". It's muddled, bombastic, and almost unreadable, featuring some of the more uninteresting SF characters from the Marvel pantheon. There are one or two mildly interesting moments, but the art is mediocre at best, the dialog limps and is at times painfully juvenile...all in all, not worth the time or effort to read.

This trade paperback collects the second Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series from DC Comics, originally published in 2007 and 2008; this is very much an in media res series, which means that you will probably enjoy it better if you are hipped on the current continuity in the DC Universe ("DCU" for short). I'm not.

The Freedom Fighters were a team of World War II-era superheroes originally published by Quality Comics (the same folks who gave the world Plastic Man, now also a DC property) that was retconned by writer Len Wein and artist Dick Dillin in a 1973 issue of Justice League of America; basically the Freedom Fighters lived on an Earth where Nazi Germany and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (read: Imperial Japan) won the Second World War, which meant that, to the rulers of that Earth's U.S., they were terrorists. DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths in the mid-1980s wiped out the various Earths in the DCU, which meant that some of the superheroes comprising the Freedom Fighters got folded into mainline DCU continuity, and reassigned to other retconned WWII-era teams, such as Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron.

This mini-series deals with the fourth? fifth? incarnation of the team, set in the DCU "present"; apparently it's important to have read the company-wide "event" Infinite Crisis (I haven't) and, specifically, the follow-up limited series Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Blüdhaven (ditto), if not the first Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series (I'm three for three here). The only characters who are the original Quality Comics characters are Uncle Sam, Miss America (who actually pre-dated -- and is much more powerful than -- the Marvel, née Timely Comics character), the original Ray, and, in a cameo, a heavily revamped Neon the Unknown; the others are subsequent, wholly DC versions of the Quality characters.

Essentially this limited series deals with the Freedom Fighters' attempt to fight off an invasion of Earth by alien bugs and come to terms with a conflicted and manipulative U.S. government that sees them as imperfect tools that failed to protect the country (and, more specifically, the nation's capitol) from the Amazons of Themyscira (Wonder Woman's home); no A-list DCU superhero shows up here, but writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti never really convinced me why I should give a toss for these also-rans.

I have a certain affection for the Quality heroes, or at least for their DC incarnations; but, for all that the current Red Bee trumps in power the original (who was her great-uncle), and for all that artist Renato Arlem depicts her as a cute geek-girl (it might help that the Wasp is one of my favorite Marvel Comics superheroines), Gray and Palmiotti never made me like her more than such modern takes on the original as Grant Morrison's in Animal Man or James Robinson's in Starman. While this series' version of the Black Condor may be the same one that appeared as a supporting character in Robinson's Starman, the Phantom Lady shown here is not (despite her having the same last name of three versions of the Starman, Knight); however, Black Condor here is much stronger than depicted in Starman, and he controls the wind to boot. The version of Firebrand shown here is given the least to do; so much so that I'm uncertain exactly what his powers are, if any.

While I might've given this series another half-star if I'd been more versed in current DCU continuity, the writing is very pedestrian: hack-work, really, nothing to recommend the superhero genre to someone who isn't already a fan, and barely competent enough to string the pretty pictures together. The art is the major selling point here, especially Dave Johnson's covers; but while Renato Arlem's interior art is pleasing to the eye, I found many of his figures too stiff, too posed. (I was also annoyed by his tendency to recycle panels: it looks like he simply increased the magnification on a few panels to simulate the effect of a movie camera slowly zooming in for a tight shot. Ah, for an artist like Gene Colan, who truly understood cinematic pencil art....) I bought this collection used for $7.00 -- the cover price was U.S. $14.99 -- and I still find myself with a case of buyer's remorse. As of this writing, Lone Star Comics (http://www.mycomicshop.com) has all but two of the issues of this mini-series listed for $1.10 in near mint condition; the other two issues -- #6 and #8 -- are priced at $1.30, in near mint. Given that their off-the-rack cover price was probably $3.99 (it's hard to read the price on even the enlarged cover shots on Lone Star's site), that's a pretty damning judgment on this series' value. On the "buy it / borrow it / fahgeddaboutit" scale, this one falls somewhere between "borrow it" and "fahgeddaboutit."

Not as catchy as the first volume, but I think that's mainly because the featured characters were less interesting. The art was more consistent -- nothing really impressive but nothing distractingly bad. The similarities between the Annihilation wave and the Stygian Passover were noteworthy, what with them being from the same plotter and at the same general time. I'm a fan of using c-list characters in big events, even if none of these were familiar.

I have enjoyed collecting these marvel comics.

The second book of Marvel's Annihilation event is the weakest of the three; it comprises three stories that, mostly, are neither essential to the saga nor terribly good. Whereas Book One focused on the opening of the Annihilation War and it reaches its climax in Book Three, the stories in book two are about characters during the war rather than the war itself.

The first is Annihilation: Silver Surfer, written by Keith Giffen with art by Renato Arlem, originally serialized between April and July 2006. This is the story of the Silver Surfer and the other ex-Heralds of Galactus vs. minions of Annihilus who are after the Power Cosmic. The art is decent, the writing is solid, and this is the strongest story in this book. (***½)

Next is Annihilation: Super-Skrull, written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach with art by Gregory Titus, originally published between April and July 2006. This is the story of Super-Skrull and his quest to destroy an Annihilation Wave superweapon before it destroys the planet where his son lives. It's a story of loyalty and betrayal, redemption and revenge, love and death -- really quite a decent story, but brought down unfortunately by art that is much too cartoonish for the subject matter (or at least for my taste). Also it ends with a clichéd and stupid coda that really, really should not have been there. Still, enjoyable enough once you get past the art. (***½)

Finally we have Annihilation: Ronan, written by Simon Furman with art by Jorge Lucas, also originally published between April and July 2006. This story is the weak link in this collection. Ronan's always a difficult character: a hero with no sense of humor and no irony is hard to make interesting. Even getting past that, though, the art is ugly and boring, and the pacing is all off: there is a story here, but there's no feel of competent storytelling: events just seem to happen, characters just do what they do, and I never managed to get into it enough to care. (**)

So we have two pretty good stories and one pretty bad. Recommended for fans of these characters or if you're reading Annihilation, but you can get more bang for your buck elsewhere if you're simply looking for good comics.

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