YALSA top ten GNs 2012: Thor: The Mighty Avenger

Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Volumes 1-2) 
Written by Roger Langridge. Illustrated by Chris Samnee
Published by Marvel (Volume 1, 2010; Volume 2, 2011)

So first, a confession. I didn't actually reading the two volumes that were placed on the YALSA list from this year. Instead I read Thor: The Mighty Avenger: The Complete Collection published in 2013. It has all 8 issues of Thor: The Mighty Avenger (plus the Free Comic Book Day story), but doesn't include the old Journey into Mystery issues (#83-86) that are included in the original collections. I'm pretty sure their inclusion didn't affect these books making it onto this list, but feel free to say otherwise.

Despite all the positive things I'd heard about this book, I went in with low expectations (though why I felt that way I couldn't really tell you). Maybe I'd just read too many YALSA top ten books that I didn't really care for (it looks like I've disliked, the last five I reviewed for this site). However, I was pleasantly surprised. This book is really cute and fun! It is, to my surprise, much more romantic than I would have thought a Thor comic would be. Jane Foster (that's her on the cover up above) works in a museum, and ends up helping Thor when she thinks he's a hobo (with a heart of gold). Soon he's sleeping on her couch and there's an amount of crushes and flirting and stuff that is sweet without it making me completely uninterested.

That's not to say it's not a superhero comic. While it's not set in any version of the Marvel Universe that exists anywhere else (that I know of) characters like Iron Man, Namor, and Captain Britain show up, and Thor fights robots and super villains and giant sea monsters. So it's pretty typical in that regard, but I also found it more enjoyable than a lot of the superhero comics I read.

Chris Samnee is an artist a lot of people really like (he won an Eisner award for his work on this series), but the limited stuff by him that I've read hasn't really clicked for me. In this book I can definitely see why people enjoy his work, as a lot of the art is great! But then the next panel will just be unappealing to me for some reason I can't put my finger on (the inking style? The width of the lines?). I wonder if it might be something to do with the way the line work interacts with the colours. The colours (by Matthew Wilson) are generally really good, though as with pretty much all modern books the colours are far more than just flat colours, but are used to give depth, hightlight physical features, and more. I wish I could see some of the original black and white line work and compare the two to see where my problem comes from. Regardless of my feelings, you do at least get to see Thor wearing an apron after cooking a meal.

The most frustrating thing about this series is the fact that it doesn't actually end. Apparently it was intended to be a 12 issues series, but it was cancelled after issue eight, leaving readers to wonder who the mysterious Mr. K was, why Thor got banished to Earth, and other questions. The only thing we do know (based on the sketches in the back) is that Hulk was going to show up. The series was successful enough in collected form that it got reprinted, so it's too bad Marvel didn't put out a four issue miniseries to wrap things up.

YALSA top ten 2012: Scarlet

Scarlet
Written by Brian Michael Bendis. Illustrated by Alex Maleev.
Published by Icon/Marvel (2011)

Brian Michael Bendis is probably one of the biggest creators in the "mainstream" (ie. superhero) comic book industry. He's been one of the most successful writers at Marvel for over a decade, writing major books like Avengers and X-Men and leading overarching storylines and events. His "David Mamet-like" dialogue has influenced pretty much all of superhero comics, and for the most part I really don't care for his work.

Actually, that's not really fair. Bendis is nothing if not prolific. He's written hundreds of comics, and when he first started in the industry he was also drawing his own stuff. I enjoyed his early crime books like Jinx and Torso, I didn't get really into Powers, his cops in a superhero world comic, but I'd probably read more of it if you gave it to me, I remember really enjoying Fortune and Glory, his comic about his experiences in Hollywood, and I've read a bunch of his (massive) run on Ultimate Spider-Man (and will read more at some point).

But at the same time, I've hated (or at least not cared for) a lot of his comics. I'm not the biggest Avengers fan, but I pretty much avoided that entire corner of the Marvel Universe for the entire time that Bendis was writing those titles. (When I did read some I found them boring and blah.) He recently became the main writer of the various X-Men related titles, and I was kind of disappointed, as I'd actually been getting back into those books and was reading and enjoying both Kieron Gillen and Jason Aaron's books.

So all of this is to say that I generally don't go out of my way to read Bendis' comics, and if this book hadn't appeared on this list I'd never have bothered seeking it out.

Scarlet is the story is of an early 20s girl who lives in Portland and has her boyfriend killed by a corrupt cop. He gets away with it, and so she vows that she'll get revenge. Does she try to expose corrupt cops? Perhaps try to get them fired or whatever? No, she just kills them. And everyone loves her!

There are definitely some parallels between what the characters in this comic say and what happened with the Occupy protests (ie. having to take stuff into their own hands, because the existing system is broken/corrupt and set up to perpetuate itself), and it's kind of surprising that this series predated all of those events. But I think that's what really frustrated me about this book: it's about dealing with problems that exist in the real world, and instead of the character realistically trying to make a difference they just kill people. Killing people isn't the answer!

I mean, I agree with much of what the characters in this book (and the people involved with the Occupy movement) are saying: a lot of police officers are corrupt assholes (I still feel a little sick whenever I hear about cases like this), the government is horrible, corporations have far too much power, etc. But you know what? I really don't think that in our society killing people is the answer. Especially in the ridiculous vigilante style that is demonstrated in this comic. Scarlet kills these cops, and says that they're corrupt, but never seems to present any evidence about this. Yet people love her anyway. I mean, I know it's set in Portland, but even then...

So yeah, I feel as though this comic takes a real, important event, and reduces it to something that should be ignored. That by making it into a ridiculous revenge fantasy it takes away from the legitimacy of real events that have happened. Yeah, I guess the Occupy movements have proved that nothing will change yet, but I still don't want to start putting people up against the wall when the revolution comes.

As for the art, Maleev's style is not going to be to everyone's liking. His artwork is distinct and recognizable: it's heavily photo referenced, but also grimy and dark. Personally, I like the art quite a bit, though I have two major complaints. The first is that reading the script at the back of the book revealed a few instances of things that I did not think were conveyed particularly clearly through the artwork. Looking at the art after reading the script I could say "oh sure, that's what's happening I guess", but I feel that a fair number of people might miss what was happening their first time through.

The other thing is something I've found in several Bendis comics (though it's possible they're comics Bendis did _with_ Maleev, so it could be either of their faults): pages that don't read like you would expect them to. This isn't even a case of weird panel layout, instead you get (for example) two side by side pages each with six equally sized panels on them. The panels are entirely contained within their own pages, so it's not immediately obvious that you have to read the entire top row of panels and then the bottom row. That's now how comic pages are supposed to work!

Also, the script mentions that a bunch of people in the comic should look like "punks", since nobody actually looks like that either this was an early version of the script that they moved away from, Bendis is referring to all young people as punks (ie. Bendis is old), or Maleev has never seen an actual punk in his life. Also also, the cover sexualizes Scarlet in a kind of creepy way that isn't actually in the comics themselves. I'm not sure if that's good or bad or somewhere in between.

Even ignoring all of that (the good and the bad), it becomes incredibly hard to recommend the first volume of a series when there is no conclusion, and the end doesn't seem to be coming any time soon. In the two and a half years since this book was published a grand total of two more issues have come out.  It's not as though Bendis doesn't write many comics, he regularly has five or six out in a single month, and he's still a big star with Marvel so it's not like he couldn't do this series if he wanted to. Maybe that's the thing though, perhaps he knows that Marvel won't always be willing to give him this much work so he should just go with it for as long as possible. I mean, he's got his whole life ahead of him to write stuff like this, so why not spend a few years/decades earning six figures writing X-Men comics? (Of course I'm sure it didn't help that Bendis and Maleev did 12 issues of Moon Knight from 2011-2012.)

YALSA top ten 2007: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (Volume 1)

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (Volume 1): This is What They Want
Written by Warren Ellis. Illustrated by Stuart Immonen.
Published by Marvel Comics (2006)

A friend of mine used to have a zine that was focused around monsters. Each issue spotlighted a different monster, and she'd have a section of movie reviews which she called "what I remember reviews". It didn't matter how long ago she saw the movie, or how much (if anything) she remembered about it, she'd write something about it. That's going to be the case with some of the reviews of these YALSA top ten books too, I have actually read a bunch of them, though in some cases it was quite some time ago...

Nextwave was a title I read when it was originally coming out as single issues. I'd have happily read it again, but the VPL doesn't have either volume in their catalogue. Honestly though I'm not that surprised, cause they'd probably have been stolen if they ever did have them.

Warren Ellis is (twice over) the reason I'm so into comic books. First with his run on Excalibur which got me to start going to comic book shops so that I could get every issue, and then later with the Warren Ellis Forum where I discovered many, many different creators and titles, and even made friends! However, while Ellis has written some stuff I've liked a lot (and has been influential to the comics medium), there hasn't been much released in the last decade that I can say I thought was really good. Now admittedly he's releasing a lot less material than he used to, but I just read through his bibliography and was like "oh yeah, I read all of Freak Angels, that was pretty decent", but keep in mind that I had completely forgotten that I read a six volume series.

However, Nextwave is the last title that Ellis was involved with that I think can be classified as "really good"! It's a superhero comic, but it's more of a comedy than most "mainstream" superhero comics are. The main cast are a bunch of minor characters that not many people cared about, and over all it's pretty ridiculous. For some of the characters Ellis pretty much just ignored the existing personality traits entirely and made up new ones. While this is frequently seen as bad writing, in this case the new versions of the characters seemed to be far more interesting than the ones that had existed before and later appearances of some of the characters, namely Machine Man and his newly human/fleshy one hating, beer drinking self, have reflected this.

I honestly can't remember that much about the art other than that it was "good", but Stuart Immonen is a pretty rad artist overall, and Ellis definitely wrote him some great scenes to illustrate in this comic.

When it was first announced that the series was going to end at issue 12, I wasn't that sad as I thought the comedy aspect of the title would get old if it had kept coming out indefinitely. But once it was finished I did miss it, and wish there was slightly more of it in existence. So yeah, if you're at all interested in superheroes as a subject this is probably worth reading, but if you don't spend your spare time reading Wikipedia articles about obscure Marvel characters be prepared to have some of the jokes go over your head.

Plus it has an official theme song! How many comics get that?