The Fox - Mark Waid

Vol. 2: Fox Hunt - Mark Waid

Paul Patton, Jr, son of the original Fox, is trying to put away his superhero life and focus on his family.  But a psychopathic businessman named Mr. Smile, fixated on Fox, puts a million dollar bounty on his head, which becomes complicated when Paul's own son and even his wife decide they want to be masked vigilantes.  I wasn't very impressed with this one for several reasons.  First, it starts off with what seems to be a long-term story about going home again, saving a dead town, etc, but then that storyline is abruptly dropped.  Second, its fights are cartoonish, about the same level of verité as a GI Joe or Super Friends cartoon.  Paul is thrown through windows without a scratch, enemies that are supposedly intent on killing him capture him or watch him sleep, etc.  Paul's son somehow changes into a costume while on the floor not ten feet away from a bank robber with a gun.  It lacks internal consistency: Paul's son calls him "Dad" when he's in his civilian clothes, but then says not to say his real name out loud.  Later, Paul opens his shirt to reveal his costume with a shopkeeper watching him.  Also, though it is a humor book, I didn't find Fox's constant chatter, or the silly pratfalls, very amusing.  A final thought, it's interesting that Waid uses "the villain is in love with the hero" that ultimately forms a plot point in his otherwise utterly dissimilar Irredeemable.  This one's not for me.  [2.5]

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Daredevil - Charles Soule

Daredevil - Charles Soule

1. Chinatown - Murdock has somehow handwaved away his public identity (with plot magic!) and is back in NYC working as an unappreciated ADA, not beloved defender.  Daredevil has taken a young superhero, Blindspot, who happens to be an illegal alien, under his wing.  A charismatic cult leader named Tenfingers has amassed a following in Chinatown.  He has mystic power and proclaims he wants to "save everyone" (his actual motives and endgame were unclear to me), but then the Hand comes knocking.  I enjoyed this rebooting of Hornhead's story, but the story felt a bit rushed, with an ending that doesn't answer much about the villain.  And I'm not a fan of the ziptoned, washed-out gray and redscale coloring.  [4]
   
2. Supersonic - Ambushed by an enraged Elektra who thinks he's kidnapped her daughter, DD realizes she's had a false memory planted, as part of an attack on him.  He goes to Macao to track down the Black Cat, and asks Spider-Man to help him retrieve some information.  It's not clear to me how he knew that Black Cat is behind the false memory.  I did enjoy the interplay between DD and Spidey, especially the part where Spider-Man gets DD to open up to him.  I thought that was very in-character for both of them.  This volume also includes the annual with a story in which DD and Echo team up to stop a sound invasion by Klaw, and a rather brutal Gladiator story.  [4]
   

The Boys - Garth Ennis

The Boys - Garth Ennis

1. Omnibus Vol. 1 - Containing #1 - 14 with bonus material.  After the brutal death of his girlfriend at the hands of a negligent and uncaring super, Hughie is recruited by the Boys, five individuals backed by the CIA who want to keep tabs on and sometimes take out bad supers.  And the supers of this world are very, very bad indeed.  They use surveillance equipment to blackmail the hedonistic young group Teenage Kix, infiltrate a Russian/CIA plot to overthrow Moscow using supers, and investigate the death of a young gay man who hung with sidekicks.  So here's the deal with this book.  It's vile, way over the top, sometimes funny, sometimes not so much.  Ennis' highly puerile anti-superhero fixation is given free rein; he's at his worst and least mature when mocking superheroes.  Here the supes are not only amoral and brutal, they are all, every single one, sexually neurotic or "poofs." There's even a scene where a gerbil crawls out of KO'd supe's rectum.  Gag.  The satire here is vulgar, cheap, mean, and over the top, but worst of all, childish. It's about a subtle as three hammers to the crotch.  All that said, though, as it gets going it becomes more palatable.  The Boys' mission is sympathetic, it's a decent story, and everyone is so terrible that you keep reading just to see somebody get some kind of comeuppance.  The world-building is pretty terrible though.  [2.5]

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