United States 69 - World Comic Book Review

Women Assemble!

October 21, 2016February 2, 2016 by Neil Raymundo

A-Force #1 [Review]
Marvel Comics, January 6, 2016
Writer: G. Willow Wilson
Review by Neil Raymundo, Feb 1, 2016

An American publisher of superhero comic books, Marvel Comics, is presently engaging in what some comic book retailers have described as “publishing carpet bombing”: flooding the market with numerous first issues of new titles. Within many of those new titles, a common thread emerges: the repeated extension of the “Avengers” comic book franchise.

The “A-Force” is another Avengers-orientated spin-off book from Marvel Comics’s 2015-16 Secret Wars crossover event, written by G. Willow Wilson (and more on her below). This event, as we have explained in other reviews, in essence destroyed majority of the publisher’s different continuities and consolidated the survivors into a single reality ruled by an omnipotent villain called Doctor Doom. The single reality was dubbed Battleworld. One of the places within Battleworld is an island paradise called Arcadia, which is protected by the “A-Force.” This is a superhero team of exclusively female characters drawn from Marvel Comics’ extensive intellectual property asset base. It consists of, amongst many others, the following characters: Medusa, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Dazzler, Sister Grimm, and a mysterious and gender-fluid cosmic being called “Singularity.”

Captain Marvel #1 [REVIEW]

October 21, 2016January 28, 2016 by Neil Raymundo

Marvel Comics, January 05 2016
Writers: Michele Fazekas and Tara Butler
Review by Neil Raymundo, January 25, 2016

Captain Marvel #1 is part of American publisher Marvel Comics’ ANAD (All New, All Different) campaign, which is a relaunch of many characters and books apparently in order to attract a new generation of fans and give writers a clean slate in character development and reinvigoration. The other ANAD titles are clearly aimed at a younger demographic, full of fresh new faces, and premises that will be relevant mostly to teenagers.

The new title “Captain Marvel”, on the other hand, is an outlier. This character has a particularly strident cadre of fans which style themselves as “the Carol Corps”. Marvel Comics have been understandably keen to maintain the attention and affections of this group, to the point of including the name “the Carol Corps” (the name derived from “Carol Danvers”, Captain Marvel’s alter ego) in the title of one of their publications. This adoration and the announcement of a Captain Marvel movie for 2018 has attracted mainstream interest from Time Magazine to women’s haute couture magazine Marie Claire.

Clean Room Volume 1 (review) – Gail Simone Frightens Us

January 11, 2023January 27, 2016 by DG Stewart

Clean Room #1
Vertigo Comics, December 2015
Writer: Gail Simone
Review by DG Stewart, 27 January 2015

Gail Simone is a comic book writer with a deserved reputation in characterisation. In titles such as Birds of Prey, Batgirl, Secret Six, and most recently Tomb Raider, Ms Simone takes often but not exclusively female characters and engages in a process of overhaul. This was most obvious in Secret Six where Ms Simone reshaped the previously forgettable villain Catman into a rational and even likeable personality. For very extended writing projects like Birds of Prey, this detailed addition of character was a prolonged exercise with some subtlety: certain players in the plot slowly changed direction over a long period of time, while others (notably the lead character, the paraplegic mastermind Barbara Gordon) engaged in a process of shaping peers – and, indeed, in the case of Barbara Gordon, authorial identification with the character rendered it sometimes difficult to ascertain where the fictional character ends and Ms Simone begins. These sometimes musty, sometimes unremarkable characters spring to life under Ms Simone’s care and interact with each other in a way which makes them approachable and likeable. Ms Simone has done this so often in the genre of superhero comics, and with such sympathy and thought, that one would think it was her exclusive stock-in-trade.

Nothing Alien Here

October 21, 2016January 25, 2016 by DG Stewart

Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion 1
DC Comics, March 2016
Writer: Tom Taylor
Review by DG Stewart, 18 January 2016

The Green Lantern Corps is a concept which borrows heavily from EE “Doc” Smith’s science fiction classics, known as The Lensmen series (1937-1960). The stories of both are founded on the idea that deep space is patrolled by benevolent aliens of different races, and that notwithstanding their differences both physically and philosophically, these galactic patrollers are united by altruism.

In Mr Smith’s books, the aliens are very alien, to the point of resembling looming monsters. In DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps (created in 1959 by John Broome with editor Julius Schwartz), the points of alienness have always been much less sophisticated. Traditionally the Green Lantern Corps have consisted of many humanoids with different skin colours or animal features. Some of the Green Lanterns are sentient earth-type animals. One high point of the possibilities of the concept of alienness within the Corps’ ranks came in 1985 when writer Alan Moore created (as a passing mention) a Green Lantern which was a super-intelligent mathematical concept. Another Alan Moore creation, albeit one first based in the same, semi-comedic story, featured a sentient planet called Mogo which was a Green Lantern. But setting aside such irregular bursts of imagination, most of these alien lawmen have been depicted as having only marginally more biodiversity than Earthlings.