Morning Glories - Nick Spencer

Morning Glories - Nick Spencer

Volume One -  The Breakfast Club, or maybe "Gossip Girl," meets Cthulhu.  The story opens in a prestigious boarding school, Morning Glory Academy, where six academically gifted but troubled teens arrive, and very quickly things seem eerie and off  The six characters find they all share the same birthday, and the teachers are adept at evading questions. Spencer leans into secrets, hidden agendas, and "something is very wrong here" energy.  The kids' cell phones lose signal, their parents claim not to remember their very existence, and the sinister teachers seem to have planned a series of deathtraps for the teens unless they toe the line.  However, I thought it was ultimately unsatisfying.  Spencer stirs a lot into the pot early on, including a set of murdered parents, with mysteries and questions building without immediate payoff.  I also found the characters thin and overly stereotyped, while the writing was of the self-conscious, quippy kind (think "Gilmore Girls" meets "West Wing") in a rapid-fire babble that doesn't match how anyone, let alone teens, talk.  "Our little suicide girl is your carrot on a stick, and they know it."  "This is Guantanamo Bay for the statutory set."  "Or we wave the white blouse and beg for clemency before these psychos get all Clockwork Orange-y with us."  Lines like that might dazzle in a writer's room, but no panicked teenager would ever say them. Joe Eisma's art is crisp and detailed, but I found it also glossy and flat, with little dynamism or depth, in that way matching the writing.  By the "shocking twist" on the final splash page, I found myself less intrigued than indifferent. The mystery may run deep, but the characters and dialogue never made me care enough to follow it further.  [2.5] 

The Bat-Man: First Knight - Dan Jurgens

The Bat-Man: First Knight - Dan Jurgens

Set in 1939, this story drops us back into Batman's formative nights, when he still had a hyphen, wore purple gloves, and relied on a handful of crude gadgets, a big red roadster, and raw nerve. There's no Alfred, no Robin, just a grim vigilante stalking Gotham's alleys as the effects of the Great Depression lingers and the shadow of global war creeps closer.  A mysterious zealot called the Voice seeks to turn Gotham into an isolationist fortress, commanding an army of brutish, inarticulate "monster men"—reanimated corpses of recently killed men. With moral counsel from a sympathetic rabbi and some unexpected tenderness from a Hollywood starlet, the Bat-Man, still dismissed by most as a myth or a lunatic, fights to stop the Voice before the city is consumed by his madness.  It's a stylish throwback with pulp grit and surprising heart.  [4.5]

 

Dark Night: A True Batman Story - Paul Dini

Dark Night: A True Batman Story - Paul Dini

Dini, a writer for Batman and Animaniacs, is brutally beaten and mugged, and uses his imagination to get through a difficult psychological healing process.  The determination and heroism of Batman in particular convinces him not to sink permanently into despair.  This is an honest, courageous tale, brought to life brilliantly by Eduardo Risso's art.  It's moving and troubling but at times funny and ultimately optimistic.  A real masterpiece.  [4.5]

Boy Wonder - Juni Ba

Boy Wonder - Juni Ba

Writer and artist Ba tells the story of Damian Wayne, the outsider whose brutal outlook seems to prevent him from fully joining the royal Bat-family: the king and his three adopted sons, brave and rageful and clever in turns.   Infusing the story of the Robins with Asian legend vibes, focusing on the confusion and need for acceptance of the skilled but antisocial Damian, and having one oddly unafraid hostage tell it like a fable to a confused robber, Ba has created an intriguing, quirky, and visually dynamic tale that stands out from the glut of Bat-books.  [4]

The Exterminators - Simon Oliver

The Exterminators - Simon Oliver

1.  Bug Brothers - Henry James, an ex-con, takes a job at Bug-Bee-Gone, an exterminator company run by his stepfather.  Doing his rounds with AJ, a boastful, racist, misogynistic druggie, they find a corpse.  Later, AJ injects himself with Draxx, their newest glowing, blue poison, and dies grotesquely.  It turns out Draxx has an unexpected effect on roaches, making them huge and aggressive.  James is matched with a new partner, apparently Buddhist but with a sense of rough justice when they find a woman chained to a bed at a mental hospital; meanwhile, James' girlfriend will do anything to move up her own career chain at Ocran, a weapons maker.  It's all very graphic, trashy, and chaotic.  There's a bit too much here for the reader to get grounded and care about the characters; presumably, Oliver will bring some of the strands together in the next volume.  [3.5]

Spider-Woman - Steve Foxe

Spider-Woman (2024) - Steve Foxe

Gang War - Jessica Drew, just returned from being erased from the web of existence, searches for her lost baby with the help of the new Madame Web, Julia Carpenter.  But Diamondback and Hydra keep taunting her; they know something she doesn't, and it's not good news.  Hoping to clear her head, she goes to San Francisco, where she goes up against Hydra again, although a new group of young super-heroes seem to be defending the legal face of Hydra.  But there's more to these new heroes than meets the eye, and their suspicious past might have something to do with Drew's son.  This is very smart, fast-faced, fun super-hero action.  Foxe hits all the right notes, with humor, action, and even a little romance.  He uses a lot of history in his story, but makes it clear enough for a first-timer.  Brilliant stuff.  [4.5]

The Unwritten - Mike Carey

The Unwritten - Mike Carey

1. Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity - Tom Taylor is a minor and reluctant celebrity because his father wrote a series of wildly popular boy-wizard novels starring Tommy Taylor, a character suspiciously similar to his son. When evidence emerges suggesting Tom's own past may be a fabrication, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy involving secret organizations, literary history, and the unsettling possibility that stories may have more power than anyone realizes. Before Tom can get to the bottom of any of his questions, he is framed for a massacre at his father's old house in Switzerland and arrested.  As a palate cleanser, this volume ends with a story about Kipling dealing with the powers that be behind stories.  [4]-two
2. Inside Man - In prison in France, Tom finds himself rooming with an embedded reporter.  With the help of Lizzie, the woman who first mentioned his possibly fabricated past, Tom starts to see that he has the power to make stories real.  A sinister power that once worked with Tom's father wants him dead, and in the midst of another massacre the three make their escape to a grim and tragic world, one that never existed.  Carey artfully alternates Tom's prison story with that of the prison governor, who has his own problems with the unexpected power of story.  Meanwhile, a brand new Tommy Taylor book is about to come out, despite the fact that Wilson Taylor has been missing, presumed dead, for years.  In one of the best episodes of the entire run, the interstitial story in this one is about a foul-mouthed rabbit who longs to escape his seemingly idyllic funny-animal world that is sinister underneath the surface.  [4]-two
3. Dead Man's Knock - The new Tommy Taylor novel is finally released, but it turns out to be a counterfeit written by Mr. Callander's cabal in an effort to discredit the story and undermine Tom. The real Wilson Taylor reappears to offer cryptic guidance, but the deadly Pullman, whose touch causes people to disintegrate, is never far behind.  Lizzie Hexam has a crisis of confidence, and in one of the cleverest chapters yet, Carey spins a "choose your own adventure"-style episode hinting at her tragic origins and how she became Wilson's willing tool.  Once again, Carey masterfully blends myth, literary geography, and the fictional Tommy Taylor saga with Tom's increasingly desperate flight for survival, producing a story that is both intellectually playful and genuinely suspenseful.  [4.5]-two
4. Leviathan - Every writer needs to grapple with his own white whale, and as Tom inadvertently becomes a character in Moby-Dick on his own, Carey cleverly merges and layers several whales from literature.  When Tom is inside a whale with Sindbad, Baron Munchausen, Pinocchio, Job, and possibly James Bartley, all figures who found themselves in similar predicaments.  Tom takes control of the story, but meanwhile back in the real world, the puppet master Rausch has captured Lizzie and Savoy, whose illness turns out to be story-related.  And the volume ends with an interstitial scene, in which the talking rabbit who was once the robber Pauly takes command of a troop of talking animals on a quest so blackly comic and childhood-trampling that it should come with a warning for the faint of heart.  [4.5]-two
5. On To Genesis - After putting his imprint on the Great American Novel, Carey turns to that inevitable American art, comic books.  Escaping from the whale, Tom joins his friends in a heist of the late Wilson Taylor's goods, specifically his journal.  It seems that years ago, Wilson Taylor, working for Pullman at the time, was tasked with stopping the nascent Tinker comic book. In true noir fashion, though, he falls for the dame who does the strip, and strings Pullman along.  Tom uncovers this story and discovers more family secrets; meanwhile, the cabal goes scorched earth on anyone in Tom's past.  [4]-two