Where My Money Went - Nov. 5th

Every Wednesday I push the limits of my budget for my comic addiction. This is where my money went this week:


Being a sucker for anything with Captain America in it, I probably would have bought this no matter what. After opening it and seeing Daredevil try to beat a man to death, I bought it. Once I got home, I found out it's an older European story written by a guy who did Euro-verse Disney stories, and the artist did a ton of Dylan Dogg covers. The two characters follow the same villain for different reasons, Daredevil to save a Hell's Kitchen's mother's son, and Captain America on a mission from Nick Fury himself. Classic Captain America, Classic Daredevil, and a Classic Villain. It's another one of the Euro comics Marvel has brought over that they plaster a huge "MATURE CONTENT" warning label on, but unlike the others this one has hardly any violence or language. I really can't understand why it's there, is Marvel just freaked out by these comics makers or something?It's worth the $4.99 price point, if it were DC Comics it would have been prestige format, but what are you going to do?


I have had a lot of conversations about where this comic is going and no one can agree. Is Namor going to show up or will it all be a hoax? Is the dude just seeing things or is Namor alive in their world? Who killed that entire crew? All the stories they believe become creatures they fear when the men reaches the last under water facility before they are lead into the depths to find Atlantis, or uh, not find it, proving it doesn't exist.


Machine Man gets what he came for, and discovers the Kingpin is in power and somehow has been keeping people in check and has managed to keep a human bride. Marvel Zombies 3 is the best MZ book to date. More on this soon!!


Magneto stories always feel so sad because he's so misguided. He goes about everything in the worst way possible and in Civil War: House of M he even has Charles Xavier's friendship and guidance to help him lead but still manages to make choices that end up just hurting Genosha and mutants in general. He uses Sabretooth as a weapon, which is what the humans fear about mutants, and doesn't understand allying with other nations does not mean rallying troops. Even when everything goes his way Magneto acts childish and kills Creed thinking it will help the cause. Bucky is sent in wearing Winter Soldier style clothes but a Captain America shield by Trask leading a strike team made up of Nuke and Mimic. House of M just translates to "What If...." stories that are mini series, allowing writers to do whatever they want with the characters. It's a good look.


After the surprise at the end of the last issue (there are fucking monkeys in Vietnam, what?) we get a few answers and learn the monkeys aren't just pure savages but are extremely human. The only bummer about the book is that it's $5.99 and I had to pay rent today, and then David Ford drops "It ends up being this $54 mini series." That is insane when you think about it. That being said, this issue was added so many Sci-Fi elements, and has already tricked everyone into reading a completely different story than what they bought. Also, it has a letters section which is a dying comics staple form yesteryear that just can't survive because of the internet. Why would someone want to put a letters section in their comic when people just use blogs and message boards? Reading old issues of comics and seeing the month to month theories on characters and story lines was incredible. Generally this is true with Pin-Ups as well, but they are making a comeback, and Guerillas has them as well. Also, one of the apes is named Goliath


First Class books (along with Marvel Adventures stories) are slept on by most comics readers due to the fact that they are directed at an "all ages" group which for real means children. Weapon-X: First Class is a retelling of Wolverine's time with Xavier trying to figure out his past and where he came from, discovering things like Weapon-X and former loves for the first time. Well, second time. No matter the progress he makes it seems like Wolverine is always one step behind himself. The art is really similar to the Wolverine: Saudade guy Phillippe Bouchet's work, to the point that some facial expressions were uh... referenced exactly. Some of the memories are redrawn panels from classic Wolverine stories, like the first part of Windsor Smith's Weapon X where Logan gets abducted is redrawn to show the event, which is awesome. This, however, is where the first issue ends. There's also a short Sabretooth story where Xavier tries to recruit Creed for his team to no avail. It has awesome art by Tim Seeley and Katie Desouza, with Sabretooth in a classic costume eating raw steak, you can't ask for much more.

Sub-Mariner: The Depths #2

There is an awful lot going on in the second issue of this new Sub-Mariner series. The book is growing into one that takes its narrative about a sea quest and the power of myths and those who make it their business to debunk them and projects it into a legitimate examination of belief and fear and the effects they have on the mind.

The story creates a very clear dichotomy between the deep men on the one side, who have a very real fear of the sea in general and Namor in particular, and the rational Dr. Stein, who insists that Atlantis and Namor are myths--products of the psychological disturbances associated with deep sea travel. The irony in this case is that Stein's belief has more naked religiosity to it than that of the crew. One gets the sense that it doesn't really matter to them whether Namor exists or not, it is simply that they have learned a healthy respect (and fear) for the sea.

It is interesting to note that at least at this point in the narrative, the question of whether Namor actually exists or not doesn't really make a difference. As he spends more and more time in the deep ocean, Stein's grip on his sanity becomes ever more tenuous and the tension amongst the vessel's passengers reaches a near breaking point. We are given suggestions of Namor's existence, but when Stein finally breaks down and "sees" Namor, he doesn't actually see Namor at all, but rather some generic creature from the deep obviously cobbled together in his mind from various horror stories. The bottom line is that crew of the Plato is falling apart and whether it is Namor or "Namor" that is causing it matters not at all, the effect it the same.

Both Milligan and Ribic must be credited for maintaining an extraordinary level of tension throughout the book. Suspense is maintained simply by means of the subtle, obscured suggestions of Namor's presence, despite the fact that very little happens in terms of action. Ribic in particular has done an excellent job of documenting the physical manifestation of Stein's steady decline from the cocksure skeptic brimming with rude health of the first issue, to the wide-eyed, sallow skinned neurotic we are left with here.

The issue opens with an epigraph ("A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned.") from J. M. Synge about the dangers of approaching the sea fearlessly. Perhaps just as telling in terms of where this series might be going is the portion of the quote left out: "But we do be afraid of the sea and we only do be drownded now and again."

Sub-Mariner: The Depths #1

So I recognize that I am about a week behind the eight-ball in getting a review of this comic up, but the premiere issue of the new Sub-Mariner mini-series by Peter Milligan and Esad Ribic is so great, so precisely everything that I look for in a superhero comic that I simply could not let the opportunity pass.   The particular success of the issue stems in no small part from the creators' ability to employ techniques--Alex Ross-esque painted photo-realistic art, multiple narrative types, overt and subtextual literary references--so often associated (at least in my mind) with comics that are heavy-handed, overblown or even downright abstruse, to make a comic that is most emphatically not any of these things.

'The Depths chronicles the stories of Marlowe and Dr. Stein, both adventurers in a classical mode, but representing opposing temperaments.  After a failed undersea mission to locate Atlantis in 1939 resulted in the deaths of his entire crew, including his wife, Marlowe returns for a second attempt in the submarine Plato. Following the transmission of a message in which he claims to have found Atlantis ("I think I see it . . . it . . . it's BEAUTIFUL"), Marlowe disappears.  Skeptical of the veracity of his discovery and suspicious of his political sensibilities, the government hires Dr. Stein, self-proclaimed rationalist empiricist, to follow Marlowe's course in order to determine if he has indeed located Atlantis and, if possible, to bring him back.

The doubling of the characters of Marlowe and Dr. Stein establishes the comic's debt to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, except in this case the story is sort of reversed, with Marlowe (what at first appears to be a misspelling of the name of Conrad's protagonist in fact suggests a further link to Chandler's detective) apparently "going native," leaving the uber-Apollonian and boorish Dr. Stein to rescue Marlowe from himself.  Saddling a comic with all of this literary baggage clearly runs the risk of bogging it down, but The Depths wears its erudition lightly.  The narrative is pulled along surely and economically and Esad Ribic's subdued palette and, dare I say, soft-focus give the book a sort of timeless, storybook quality which meshes well with its mythological foundation.