Sunday Splash Page #257

 

"Serpent Infestation," in Immortal Iron Fist #4, by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction (writers), David Aja (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Dave Lanphear (letterer)

Immortal Iron Fist may have been one of the first books I bought primarily because of the creative team, rather than the characters. Granted, when I first heard about it, I somehow confused Ed Brubaker with Brian K. Vaughn, who was writing Dr. Strange: The Oath, which I was very much enjoying. But the point remains, I don't recall having any strong feelings one way or the other about Iron Fist prior to this title, yet, here we are.

One of the major thing Brubaker and Matt Fraction did was posit or explore the idea Danny Rand was only the latest in a long of Iron Fists. Even if DC went away from the concept in the immediate aftermath of Crisis on the Infinite Earths, the notion of characters being part of a legacy or tradition made a slow but steady comeback in the late-90s, spearheaded by Starman and JSA.

Marvel never seemed to have a lot of time for that, outside the occasional nod like Rick Jones trying to take the codename Bucky to be Captain America's sidekick. Marvel seemed to prefer the "replacement" approach. Jim Rhodes taking over for Stark as Iron Man when Tony was in his cups, or Scott Lang becoming Ant-Man after Pym had shifted to Yellowjacket. When they did explore it, it was usually relegated to side universes like Spider-Girl's MC2 Universe.

After Immortal Iron Fist's success, suddenly legacies started popping up for all sorts of second-tier characters. Jason Aaron used it on Ghost Rider, and Moon Knight is nodding to the idea right now. Immortal Iron Fist also expanded the mythos what I would call laterally, by adding another six "Heavenly Cities", each with their own champion, with Fat Cobra seeming to be the fan favorite of the bunch.

(Aaron's Ghost Rider did this too, with Spirits of Vengeance across the world, and MacKay introduced the notion Khonshu has two "fists" at the same time.)

Amid the larger story of Danny learning he's really just the most recent (and least well-prepared) Iron Fist at the exact moment he's besieged from all sides by both HYDRA and his old enemy the Steel Serpent, the book would take time out to devote one-shot issues to some of the previous Iron Fists. Issue 7's spotlight on Wu Aoi-Shi, the Pirate Queen of Pinghai Bay (drawn by Travel Foreman, who also drew flashbacks at the start of most of the issues, as well as Leandro Fernandez and Khari Evans), seemed to be the fan favorite.

David Aja was the primary artist, and he brought a different sensibility to the action sequences. Where other artists would combine multiple actions into a single panel (via the after-image approach), Aja would sometimes draw out the sequence of Danny jump kicking a single HYDRA agent through a subway window across three panels. Really stretch out the moment. A lot of alternating between larger panels to show the scope of the challenge and lots of small square panels to cut between important points within a scene rapid-fire.

He also ditched the '70s high collar with plunging neckline costume early on in favor of the number above. It's more streamlined and practical and I don't have any complaints, but I don't know how more committed Iron Fist fans felt about the change.

Unfortunately, having David Aja as your regular artist means that if you're going to keep a monthly schedule, you're going to have fill-in artists. By the latter stages of the "Capital Cities of Heaven" arc the covered the second half of their run, Aja was sometimes drawing only a handful of pages, or none at all, with Kano or Tonci Zonjic taking over the lion's share of the work. They were close enough in style that the character's maintained a similar look, but they didn't seem to have Aja's sense of style when it came to page layouts.

Also, the arc suffers from either not enough time, or too much build-up. We're told what's at stake is how often the Heavenly Cities may intersect with Earth. The loser, rather than being limited to once a decade, will be limited to once per 50 years, for example. It's unclear how you would determine a loser since there was apparently to be a battle royale between the fighters who lost earlier in the tournament. For that matter, if Orson Randall fucked the whole thing up last time by first refusing to fight, then killing another of the champions when he was to be punished and fleeing, how did that not result in K'un-Lun getting barred for fifty years?

It's a moot point, since the whole notion is dropped entirely to focus on the HYDRA subplot, which is itself really a revenge plot by a new character, descended from another new character we meet in flashback. Overall, I'm not sure the Brubaker/Fraction/Aja run doesn't end up being less than the sum of its parts, but the book didn't end when they departed.

Random Back Issues #98 - Hawkeye #1

I think the reason I never got around to watching Hawkeye was I didn't want to deal with the possibility of watching a bunch of dipshits in tracksuits saying "bro" constantly. And since Disney+ seems to be cracking down on account sharing, I never will. Because I sure as shit ain't shelling out for it myself.

Anyway, first issue of the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run. What Clint does when he's not being an Avenger. And he's not being an Avenger because he fell off a building and landed on top of a car, breaking a lot of bones.

But he's out now, and somehow happy to be in New York in August, which he describes as being able to catch a whiff of fresh air beneath 'hot garbage, wet pennies and pee.' I know Clint didn't have a happy childhood, but certainly he must remember places with better smells than that? Whatever, after kicking his wheelchair into traffic, then ditching his taxi in more traffic - if Clint's meant to be extolling the virtues of NYC, he's really just convincing me he's had a lot of concussions - he returns to his apartment to find his neighbors being kicked out because the tracksuit guys tripled their rent.

Clint, having come into some money via some method I don't recall, decides to visit a secret casino and pay everyone's rent. Tracksuit Guy doesn't want their rent, he wants them gone to sell the building. Real estate thing. The Kingpin's involved, it ends up being a whole thing. It's why the Sad Clown Killer guy gets involved.

So Clint gets in a fight, gets thrown through a window. One of the tracksuit guys' dog, appreciating the gift of pizza Clint offered earlier, bites his owners hand when the guy shoots Clint, and gets kicked into traffic. Clint's attempt to alert, divert, something the driver of a car by flicking a coin through the his window with a finger, doesn't work and the dog gets hit. Which explains all the cutaway scenes through the issue of Clint bring the dog to a vet.

While Clint waits, Tracksuit Guy shows up, looking for a fight. Should have brought more than two guys, then. Clint's not that bad a fighter, no matter how inept he ends up looking through most of this series. Clint beats them up, stuffs them in a taxi to the airport with over 12.5 million dollars to buy the building outright, and all the problems are solved!

Or not.

[5th longbox, 95th comic, Hawkeye (vol. 4) #1, by Matt Fraction (writer), David Aja (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #231

 

"Winter's Soldier," in Hawkeye (vol. 4) #6, by Matt Fraction and David Aja, Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

Oh. This series.

Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye seems to get a lot of credit for Marvel realizing fans might enjoy books with consistent creative teams granted the freedom to tell their stories without being stuck constantly tying into Big Event stuff. Those couple of years of Marvel Now! that produced the Soule/Pulido She-Hulk, G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, so on and so on. I think the Mark Waid/Paolo Rivera/Marcos Martin Daredevil book that started a year earlier really deserves the credit, but Hawkeye sucks up the oxygen in the room because Fraction and Aja did an issue from a dog's perspective.

To be clear, I was excited for this book when it started! Expected Clint Barton to get to do a lot of cool stuff. And I maintained that excitement for the first 7 or so issues! Clint makes the impulsive decision to hand a bunch of Eastern European mobsters in tracksuits a duffel bag of cash for an apartment building so the tenants don't get kicked out, and this (among other things) puts him in the crosshairs of a bunch of crime families.

It's a solid premise, what Hawkeye gets up to when he's not being the best Avenger. Fraction filled it with a lot of snappy dialogue and banter, especially between Clint and Kate Bishop, the other Hawkeye. There's potential to introduce a wide cast of characters as tenants to get us more invested in the conflict. Aja knows how to lay out pages in a brilliant way, whether it's doing a series of quick panels of Kate speaking in slow-motion in parallel with Clint releasing an arrow, or weird diagrams to emphasize how Pizza Dog perceives the world.

Although I wonder if those pages are where Jonathan Hickman got the notion for all those text pages and charts he's so fond of. If so, it may have been a real Pandora's box.

But after they killed off "Grills" one of the few tenants given even the tiniest hint of depth, it started to slide. The book spent five issues essentially replaying the time before and after Grills' death, but from different perspectives. Here's what Kate was doing, here's what the sad clown killer guy was doing, here's what the dog was doing, and so on. Combined with David Aja's inability to maintain even an every other month schedule (Francesco Francavilla and Annie Wu drew some of the issues in that stretch), and the five issues of Clint Barton moping around and being useless dragged on for nine months. Contrast that with the Gruenwald mini-series from two weeks ago. Clint is out-of-sorts at the start of issue 2 over being played by his girlfriend, and even though he remains angry and distant with Mockingbird, he still gets off his butt and does something. It was exhausting and frustrating, and if I had any sense, I'd have pulled the rip cord.

The delays themselves were a whole other thing. The book started in August of 2012, and actually shipped 6 issues by the end of the year, though two of those were drawn by Javier Pulido. Counting the Annual that came out in 2013 (also drawn by Pulido, but lacking a splash page), the book shipped 17 issues the next 30 months before it concluded in June/July of 2015. The pace slowed the longer it went. At one point, Marvel shipped issue 16 (focused on Kate) before issue 15 (focused on Clint), because Annie Wu (Kate's adventures in L.A., which were pretty enjoyable) had been done for a while and there was no telling when Aja would actually, you know, finish issue 15.

It was difficult to square this version of Clint Barton with the competent hero we see in the Avengers. The guy who was a good leader for the Thunderbolts, who took down two Elders of the Universe, can't master the drawstring on his sweatpants all of the sudden. I understand this is supposed to be Clint during off-hours, and there's no team (unless you count the dog and his brother) backing him up, but I've seen Hawkeye handle threats a lot worse than a bunch of morons in tracksuits solo. I expected there would be some rough patches for the character in the book, but I also expected those to be interspersed with moments of him doing cool shit. This did not happen. In practice, it was other characters taking time out from yelling at Clint for fucking up to do cool shit.

(There was also the whole thing about Clint cheating on Spider-Woman, which is an Oliver Queen thing. Clint's the one who says dumb hurtful shit without thinking. Sigh, still better than Bendis repeatedly writing Clint as kill-happy, but that's a very low bar.)

The book finally wrapped up just as Marvel was (temporarily) canceling all their ongoing titles for a few months because of Hickman's Secret Wars. The ending was as satisfying as it could be, but by that point I was just glad it was over. It felt like a book that had been style over substance for a while. Very stylish, to be sure, but Fraction, Aja, and Hollingsworth proved they could still make it stylish while actually advancing the story, they just went through long stretches where it felt like there wasn't much interest in doing that. 

The catch to a creative team being allowed to cook their way is, there's still no guarantee I'll like what they put on the table.

What I Bought 7/22/2015 - Part 2

Two more comics, each starring heroes who can’t quite seem to get things right.

Ant-Man Annual #1, by Nick Spencer (writer), Brent Schoonover (artist, flashback), Ramon Rosanas (artist, present day), Jordan Boyd (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) – Is Scott planning to stop a runaway trolley with the power of ants? That would be pretty impressive. Hopefully he’s not going to make them throw themselves under the wheels, in the hopes they jam them up. O’Grady tried that with a jet engine once, and I don’t recall it working terribly well. Plus, it’s kind of mean to makes the bugs kill themselves like that.

I was leaning towards giving this a pass and just waiting for Astonishing Ant-Man to start in October, but it got some good reviews, and I decided to skip All-Star Section Eight #2. Scott tries bonding with his employees at a Dolphins’ sports bar, to little success. Wait, there’s no such thing as Dolphins’ fans, said the supposedly non-existent Arizona Cardinals’ fan. Credit to Machinesmith for helping Grizz out. Also credit to Grizzly for sticking with a theme, even though the Bears are kind of a mess right now. Haha, enjoy rooting for Jay Cutler, says the guy who had to watch Ryan Lindley play quarterback like a drunk infant for his team last year. Lindley is a terrible QB. Roger Goodell could do something useful for once and force some team Arizona plays this year to start Lindley, just so their defense can pad their stats against him.

Where was I? Right, a broadcast announces Hank Pym died fighting Ultron in some book I didn’t read. Except I think everyone is just pretending he’s dead? This makes Scott think back to the last time he saw Hank, when Pym visited to track down something he hid in a lab inside the helmet Scott’s using. It’s a killswitch for some fake Avengers he built to make himself feel better, but they’ve been stolen by Egghead, who is back from the dead. I honestly assumed he’d been brought back years ago, just because that’s how it seems to go, but then I keep forgetting the Wasp is back, too, until she showed up at the end of this issue. Scott gets many laughs at Hank’s expense, which seems fair considering Hank keeps basically calling him an idiot, and outright says he let Scott keep the Ant-Man costume because he knew Scott wouldn’t make him look bad in comparison.

This is the thing I struggle with when it comes to Spencer’s writing. In a vacuum, this is all pretty funny. I chuckled more than once. But part of the reason it works is because I have certain familiarity with these characters based on past experience with these characters, and in that sense, it jars. It was an issue in Superior Foes too, where I couldn’t jibe Spencer’s Boomerang with the guy I’d seen previously, even accounting for Fred being the narrator and thus probably lying through his teeth to make himself look better. It’s like, “Ha, sick burn, but wait, would Pym actually think that? Well, OK, Hank can be kind of unaware of others’ feelings sometimes. Would Jan confirm Pym felt Scott was an idiot to Scott’s face?”

I know it’s all part of the theme Spencer’s going for, Scott being on the outs with other heroes, regarded as unreliable, a second-rate legacy version of a third-tier hero. To the point Stark can actually get other Avengers to ignore Scott when he calls for help, even though you figure at least a few of them would help just as a “screw you” to Tony. I think it’s all sort of satirical, taking something, then exaggerating it for comic effect. Pym struggles with confidence issues, so he builds robot versions of his teammates to say nice things about him, and talk shit about themselves. Lang has a tendency not to stick with any team for very long, and he’s not usually presented as a Reed Richards like super-genius, so he becomes someone who can’t see things through, and is not very bright, and people think so little of him they all tell him so. I think my issue is Spencer takes it a step further than I can stretch my disbelief, and it snaps me out of the story periodically.

Schoonover does a pretty good job of working close to Rosanas’ art style, though I’m guessing Boyd’s color work also has something to do with it. Schoonover gives Scott a bit bigger nose and more pronounced chin than Rosanas (not that you can tell when Scott has the helmet on, and I would laugh if it turned out the helmet was designed like that to deemphasize Scott’s chin and nose.) He also goes with much broader facial expressions and body language. Rosanas tends to keep things restrained, so even when someone is supposed to be freaking out, there isn’t a lot of weight behind it. Schoonover tends to go the other direction, people reacting more with their whole bodies. It’s not a bad approach. There is one glitch. When the flashback starts, Scott punches the Porcupine with his left hand, but he shakes quills out of his right in the next panel. I suppose he could have punched him less carefully with the right earlier in the fight and we didn’t see it. Also, I couldn’t tell if the A.I.-Vengers were supposed to be moving inside those tubes, or if he just wasn’t keeping their poses consistent. And whatever one might say about Hank Pym, he’s right about Wonder Man being a terrible actor.

Hawkeye #22, by David Aja and Matt Fraction (storytellers), Matt Hollingsworth (color art), Chris Eliopoulos (lettering) – Well, the Apocalypse will no doubt commence now that the final issue of this series has shipped. I have it on good authority God was waiting for this to wrap up before killing us all. Eh, it’s been a good run. We invented movable type and porkpie hats, not too shabby.

The redhead remembered the combination to red safe, but here’s Boss Bro and the Sad Clown. Clint shows up, then Lucky, then Kate. The other tenants take care of the rest of the goons, Kate deals with the tracksuit imbecile – finally! – and Clint, after some difficulty, puts down the Sad Clown. I think that’s the first fight Clint’s won in like 15 issues, so good for him. But Barney stole all his money back, and thinks Clint can’t find him again. Barney, Clint is friends with like 20 super-scientists, not to mention the Black Widow, I’m pretty sure he can track your fat butt down before you finish your drink if he wants to. Which I would, on principle alone. Barney appeared to throw in with Clint, then bailed. That’s betrayal, and I believe I’ve made my opinions clear on that a few times. But the whole universe is ending and Clint’s going to become real old for some reason or another, so I guess Barney gets away with it.

All the crime bosses have decided to continue trying to kill Clint and Kate, because they’re morons, I guess. You’d think Fisk at least would know better than to waste time with something like that. Is this an end result Fraction and Aja always had planned, or is it something Lemire was hoping to run with in his book, and this team was like sure, we’ll set that up for you? It doesn’t matter, really, other than I find it curious these characters, ostensibly concerned with making money and doing business, really think trying to kill super-heroes isn’t a waste of time and money. It’s something I was thinking about, given Marvel went ahead and started All-New Hawkeye before this had finished. I wonder if there were changes made to this, to accommodate that book.

It’s a pretty book as always. I’m curious about the use of the mauve/lavender color, whatever it is, Hollingsworth uses for backgrounds a few times. Almost always in conjunction with Aja doing a black shadow for whatever is in the panel, be it Lucky, an arrow, Penny’s hand and the gun she was holding. I don’t know if it just makes a good backdrop for the black, or if it’s meant to have a particular emotional resonance. He switches to a yellow when Clint and Kate finish off the clown guy. I really like the headbutt panel. Something about the way the shadows are drawn on Clint’s face, the way they almost evoke speed lines in his hair, makes me think of Joe Kubert’s art, the way he drew people getting hit, and how it could distort them. That’s never a bad comparison to elicit in my brain, for the record.

I might do a post-mortem in the future, though I could basically sum up my feelings in one double-page splash I’ve had saved on my computer for like 8 months now, but we’ll see. If I look at it strictly by itself, it was good. This is what I was hoping for from this book when it was originally announced. Lots of action, well-illustrated, some snappy dialogue. Clint getting to do some cool stuff and save the day, even if it doesn’t always go smoothly, and there are other problems to contend with down the line. It’s not the greatest final issue I’ve ever read, but it’s a long way from the worst.

What I Bought 3/24/2015 - Part 5

Two different titles, each nearing their ends, one issue each. One way behind schedule, the other cruising along just fine.

Daredevil #13, by Chris Samnee and Mark Waid (storytellers), Matthew Wilson (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) -I saw the first page from this issue on Samnee's Tumblr page, and he mentioned how it was the first page he'd seen in awhile that wasn't edited beyond recognition. I don't know what that means exactly, but I sure don't like the sound of it. DC seems to be adopting Marvel's approach of allowing their creative teams to actually make books that reflect their styles, don't tell me Marvel's gonna start imitating DC's new 52 approach of making everything the same somehow. Of course, the book has 5 editors listed, between assistant editors, editors, senior editors, and editors in chief. How the hell does it need so many editors?

So Matt and Kirsten are a couple now, and Matt is struggling with the implications. He's afraid of what will happen to her, and he's afraid of being happy, so Foggy has to yell at him a bit. Kirsten's in the middle of coffee with her dad, because she learned he hired bodyguards for her without mentioning it, when someone drugs and abducts her. Matt is of course convinced this is about him, but it turns out to be a killer Kirsten helped put away when she was a prosecutor. Kirsten is ecstatic at the prospect of an archfoe, while DD is less than amused. He ought to be more concerned that the Shroud seems to have teamed up with the Owl, who can now observe Matt through any electronic device, but then, Matt doesn't know about that. Yet.

I love the scowl Matt got when Foggy starts giving him grief about keeping Foggy hidden while Kirsten and Matt are out together all the time. It's such a little kid stance, it fits well with how Matt's trying to hard to deny that he loves Kirsten and wants to be happy with her. He's trying to resist the reality of that, because of how things have worked out in the past. It's also interesting how Matt refuses to look at Foggy for most of the conversation. Granted, he doesn't need to look in his direction, but Matt's usually polite enough to face someone he's talking to. Here, though, he's almost always turned away at least 90 degrees. He doesn't want to engage with Foggy's points.

I also like the shade of purple (lavender?) Wilson used for the knockout gas. It fits with the eventual revelation of the abductor's identity, but it's similar enough to the color of the Purple Man's skin it suggests a super-villain, which plays into Matt's fears (and all the panels through the issue of the Owl spying on Matt). Oh, and when DD confronts the killer, I thought Matt's mental checklist was amusing. The killer's knives might be a special alloy! Oh, he might have some super-fast attack ability because his pulse is up! No, no, he's just a serial killer.

Hawkeye #21, by David Aja and Matt Fraction (storytellers), Matt Hollingsworth (color art), Chris Eliopoulos (lettering) - Took me a second to realize Clint's wearing a sock cap with an "H" on it. Couldn't figure out how it was there until then.

Clint apologizes to Jess, so that's good. The redhead is coming back, though. That's bad. Clint's got his neighbors helping defend the apartment building, and that's good. Except that old woman let the clown in, and that's bad. And then she beat Clint with a bat? Seriously Fraction? Clint can't even handle some old lady with a bat? This book, I tell you. Clint's woozy, so I don't think he can even tell the tracksuits are yelling at him about the safe he stole from them a thousand years ago, and Barney refuses to use all that money Clint has to buy his way out. So he winds up with a knife in his back. But here comes Pizza Dog with an arrow. So maybe things are looking a little better for whenever the last issue shows up.

What color is that Hollingsworth is using the last several pages? It's not sepia, it's a brown with some red tinting to it. It's an interesting choice. I'd say there's something visceral to it, but that might just be because all the pages he uses for, someone is getting beaten or stabbed, so there's blood and viscera flying around. My doubts about Clint losing a fight to an old woman aside, the way her words are mixed in with the blood spatter, done with the same black color as the blood, and not separated within a bubble was a nice touch. I'm guessing that's Aja, but it could be Eliopoulos. Also the way that, as Clint regains consciousness, the black panels get narrower. As the scene on the roof reaches its denouement, Aja keeps going to more and more panels. Like page 18, the top row is 3 panels, middle row is 4 panels, bottom row is 5 panels. It's one of those times where I actually get the attempt to affect the pace I'm reading with the panel layout 

But the skill of the people involved in this book has never been in question. It's been whether the story was any good, and on that score, I still have my doubts. Barney apparently has a thing with Simone, the single mom, but it didn't exactly feel earned. On the other hand, Barney's death scene felt moving. Clint trying to drag himself up, the way we're only seeing bits and pieces of Barney's fight, Clint seeing the knife, knowing what's coming, but he can't move fast enough. That worked really well. I'd never given a crap about Clint's brother before this series, so Team Hawkeye can count that as a win (I suppose they also made me care a little about Kate, so count that as a win, too).