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Comic Book Review: Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E 1

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frankenstein DC comic Zombos Says: Good

Grate Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D onto Hellboy, add a little Universal Monster's seasoning, and bake until Metal Men done. Presto, you've got a dish of Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. Don't forget to garnish with a little Tokyo Pop wildness. 

The Frankenstein Monster is the top agent for the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive group. The Ant Farm is the 3 inch-sized globe the group travels the, er, globe with, at over 600 miles per hour. Frankenstein thinks the whole miniaturization process to get into the Ant Farm is rather goofy, and that's something Jeff Lemire needs to write around: the goofy factor. Metal Men goofy was good; Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E goofy may or may not be so good, but it's hard to judge it all on the first issue.

Keeping up with Lemire's imagination is Alberto Ponticelli's detailed artwork, whose splash pages and large panels are exciting and well executed where they need to be. One large panel introduces Frankenstein's new team–although he prefers to work alone–the Creature Commandos: the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black–no, wait a minute, I'm getting it all mixed up.

The actual Creature Commandos are: Dr. Nina Mazursky, amphibian human hybrid; Warren Griffith, Werewolf; Vincent Velcoro, Vampire; and Khalis, Mummy and medic. Father introduces them to Frankenstein when a town is overrun by hungry monsters that keep on coming, no matter how many are killed. Father is the mad scientist running S.H.A.D.E. He can regenerate himself into various human forms to keep on ticking. This time around he chose the form of a Japanese schoolgirl wearing a mask around her eyes. One of Lemire's naughty fantasies perhaps? Like I said, goofy. 

This first issue is perhaps a little too ambitious: there's a lot of matter of fact oddness to accept at face value, hopefully to be fleshed out later. Lemire manages to keep his story moving forward cleanly, however, and Ponticelli's pencils alone are a treat. The tone here reminds me of the storylines you'd find in DC comics from the 1970s, and Frankenstein's manner and dress make me think of the Robert De Niro Frankenstein character.

Although purists will have to deal with the Monster being named Frankenstein, this first issue is filled with enough wild, and promising, story and art to warrant your attention.

Comic Book Review: Animal Man 1
Warning From the Red

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animal man 1 comic book Zombos Says: Good

I'm new to Animal Man and probably wouldn't have picked up any of the issues except for DC sending me a review copy for their The New 52! reboot.  I like it. I like Jeff Lemire's story more than Travel Foreman's pencils, but there's enough like to share with both.

The use of a full-text opening page is pretty daring, but it sets the tone for the story and it's lively–written as a quick, but revealing, interview with A-Man conducted by The Believer magazine. Lemire sets up the next few pages in Buddy Baker's kitchen with his family. His wife's grumpy, his daughter Maxine wants a doggie, and A-Man–or is it just Buddy B, average guy now?–isn't sure which foot or paw to put forward until his son Cliff mentions the hostage situation at the hospital. At least it gets him out of the house.

Foreman's wispy thin lines are not a deal maker or breaker for me, they're just a little too feminine when more masculine is needed. Dare I say dainty? For chrissakes this is Animal Man where talking about. Brutish, feral, big gonad animus daddy doesn't spring to my mind through Foreman's art. He seems to have a little trouble with certain head angles, but overall the emotion in each panel does come through. Then again, the nightmare sequence, colored in greys, blacks, and reds, shrieks horror! with its primal energy. So I'll sum it by saying Foreman's style is not my cup of pencils, but it still works well to enhance the story, even if I'm thinking a Neal Adams' ruggedness-styled A-Mannish approach more appropriate. 

Lemire doesn't waste any of his 20 pages and his writing style melds with Foreman's lighter touch to produce a solid read for the first issue. The interaction between Buddy's family is earnest, real, and the doubts and concerns and needs of everyone, including Buddy, makes the storyline naturally peak to the last panel, which comes as a morbid surprise adding to a growing mystery I'd want to know more about in issue 2.

Comic Book Review: Swamp Thing # 1
Raise Dem Bones

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20110908095040_001 ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Frankly, I consider DC's The New 52! reboot a brilliant, but cheesy, marketing gimmick to boost sales. It will certainly do that, but I doubted much good would come out of freshening up the staple titles that make or break the House of DC every month, so I hadn't planned on picking up any of the number one issues; until I received a review copy of Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette's Swamp Thing in the mail. Did it hit its mark? Sure did. Will I want to continue reading it? Sure will. I think you will want to, too.

Scott Snyder writes his stories by cutting between locations, situations, and people to build his plot's events. He's been damn lucky to have artists who seem to relish all that jumping around and keep up with him, but also add to his narrative in ways–framing, angles, positions of characters–he probably didn't even think of. Snyder's a very cinematically-minded writer in how he makes his stories build, and they have a completeness between issues, with clean, integral dialog, and visually important actions capping neatly at the given page length.

You get that sense of completeness reading this first Swamp Thing issue, Raise Dem Bones. We see birds dying in Metropolis, then bats dying in Gotham, then fish dying in the ocean in the space of 3 pages, switch to a disillusioned Dr. Holland doing a construction gig in Louisiana, and then visit an archeological dig in Arizona. It's the mastodon bones in the dig in Arizona that kick things into horror gear, and the 3 men who return to the dig at night get their necks all bent out of shape with what they find. Paquette doesn't really panel his art, it just wraps around and across the pages, word ballons and narrative blocks  like a rich vine. Snyder's dialog exchange between Dr. Holland and Superman, and the narrative embellishment to scenes are just enough, just right, and meld with the artwork. Or does the artwork meld with it?

Either way, this series is off to a very good start.

Comic Book Review: The Search for Swamp Thing 1

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0093_001 Zombos Says: Very Good

John Constantine smokes up a storm in the first of 3 issues for The Search for Swamp Thing. With only 20 pages to involve Batman and Zatanna, Jonathan Vankin and Marco Castiello keep Constantine moving before he can suffer from jet lag.

After the Swamp Thing sends a vibe to Constantine by way of the bloke's morning paper (try doing that on an iPad), it's a quick hop and half a pack to the Royal Botanic Gardens to commune more closely with "old lettuce-breath." The greenery takes Constantine's breath away instead, and leaves him with a spreading fungus tatoo for old time sake.

Lazy sot that he is, Constantine hooks up with Batman to do his legwork while a mobster impaled on a tree limb in a Gotham City junkyard may hold more clues as to what's making Daddy Iceburg Lettuce so petulant. In a tender moment of holding hands and frolicking in The Green's etherealness to commune with Swampy, Constantine winds up a few butts short and with a headache only Zatanna can make worse, what with their romance magic all zapped out and all, even with all that cleavage a-burgeoning (it's discretely shirted up for the issue's cover).

The art and story make Constantine a walking chimney of twitty droll wit armed with handy pocket magic spells, and keep this glummy mystery moving along briskly to the capper splash page lead-in for issue 2.

I just hope he can solve it before he finds out how much cigarettes cost here in the States and the page count drops again.