Fist of Justice Vol. 1 #1: Free Comic Book Day Edition

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Fist of Justice
Issue: Vol. 1, #1 (Free Comic Book Day Edition)
Publisher: Digital Webbing
Date: May, 2009
Writer: Mike Imboden
Artist: Pow Rodrix
Colorist: Edemilson Alexandre
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Mike Exner III

A superhero story that plays with a bunch of classic tropes, this features a hero who has been out of action for thirty years, returning to Charm City, where he was once a beloved protector, only to find that another hero with the same superpowers and a much meaner attitude has taken over the job.

The original Fist of Justice and his modern vigilante counterpart both have a fairly standard set of Superman-style powers: Flight, strength, enhanced senses, invulnerability, etc. Marc Mason, the original Fist of Justice had his heroic career cur short by a tragedy that he blames himself for, and he wonders whether he has any real reason to return to crimefighting.

Meanwhile, his successor is becoming more and more unhinged at the though of a possible challenger to the job that he has made his own for thirty years.

This was a good story that felt compressed in an effort to get to a conclusion by the end of this issue. It could have been helped by a bit better pacing and more depth.

That being said, the Marc Mason character is nuanced and the world is well thought out. The plot elements came together for a satisfying conclusion by the end.

The final bit of dialogue was an anti-political-correctness bit that felt more like a facebook rant by the author than a good set of ending lines, but my reaction to this was more a matter of my personal distaste for such sentiments.

All in all a well-told superhero story. Nothing groundbreakingly original, but well executed.

Rating: 5.5/10

Irredeemable / Incorruptible Free Comic Book Day Edition

I've had trouble finding time to do reviews this week. Hope you've been enjoying the 30 Day meme. Here's a 2010 FCBD item that I picked up at this year's FCBD.

Title: Irredeemable / Incorruptible Free Comic Book Day Edition
Date: May 2010
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Peter Krause, Jean Diaz, Belardino Brabo
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Ed Dukshire
Cover: John Cassaday, Laura Martin
Editor: Matt Gagnon

Reprints the first issues of the two interconnected series Irredeemable and Incorruptible, both written by Mark Waid.

The essential story here is Superman (going by the name The Plutonian, but essentially Superman) gone bad. Plutonian kills off the masked vigilante known as the Hornet in the opening scene, along with Hornet's wife and children. From there the surviving members of the Paradigm (the superhero team that the Plutonian was a member of) are frantically scrambling to find any bit of information that might give them a chance against the seemingly unstoppable Plutonian. Waid does a pretty good job of ratcheting up the emotions and laying out the basic scenario here.

Incorruptible is the mirror-image of Irredeemable, the story of a super-villain who decided to go straight. The two stories share a setting, and the change of heart that the former villain Max Damage undergoes comes as a result of the destruction caused by the Plutonian's rampage. I liked the character of Max Damage, but the attempts at humor in the book fell flat (possibly because of the grim nature of the world and the companion book) and Damage's sidekick, the aptly name Jailbait, is a pretty good summation of everything that is bad in the treatment of female characters in mainstream comics these days. I suppose it's possible that she's been set up as a stereotype for the purpose of breaking that stereotype down later, but I was pretty unimpressed with what I saw in the character so far: dump, only interested in sex and money, and drawn in typical barely dressed comic book heroine style. Waid is trying to write a very serious deconstruction of the superhero genre here. I was hoping for better than this in such an effort.

Rating: 6/10

Irredeemable Volume 4

Here's another find from the going-out-of-business sale at my local Borders.

Title: Irredeemable
Issue: Volume 4
Date: September 2010
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Diego Barreto, Paul Azaceta, Emma Rios, Howard Chaykin
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse, Matthew Wilson, Alfred Rockefeller
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Cover: Chriscross

This is a trade paperback collection that includes issues 13-15 of the comic series, plus the Irredeemable Special. The basic premise is that Superman (represented here by a character called the Plutonian, who is for all intents and purposes Superman) has "snapped" and gone very very bad. Bad as in entire cities destroyed, populations wiped out, and brutal murders of his fellow superbeings (who were never really in the Plutonian's league power-wise).

Alan Moore did this same story much better in Miracleman.

There. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I did find Irredeemable to be fairly entertaining. There are some likable characters, and not all of them are used as cannon fodder (some are, though). There is a pretty complex set of subplots, which serve to add a nice level of suspense to the storyline, even though they also mire the story in the cliches of the genre that it is attempting to rise above.

Thanks to the presence of the Irredeemable Special in this volume, I got a nice recap of the story, as well as some background on characters that appear in the regular issues, which helped make it easier to jump right in with Volume 4.

The artwork is generally quite good. There are a few moments of unnecessary gore (well, I'm sure they were seen as necessary to remind the reader that this is a superhero story for grownups), and there were some fight scenes where it was a bit hard to tell what was going on, but the artistic handling of a very tricky climactic sequence involving a bullet and a teleportation effect was brilliant work.

I wasn't too impressed when I first heard the premise of this, so I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which I found it entertaining.

Rating: 6.5/10

Vampirella: Revelations #0

Title: Vampirella: Revelations
Issue: #0
Date: July, 2005
Publisher: Harris Comics
Writer: Mike Carey
Penciler: Mike Lilly
Inker: Bob Almond
Colorist: Jay Fotos
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire

Stop me if you've heard this one. A bunch of vampires walk into a bar...

Actually, this $.25 full-format preview book starts out at a vampire bar, with a group of the usuals doing what they do best: complaining about the anticoagulants in the beverages and trading stories about Vampirella, during which the art team gets to show off some interesting variants: Vampirella as monster, and knight, and (sure to be everyone's favorite) as anime-style magical girl.

Then the real Vampirella ruins all the fun by showing up and staking everybody, with that classic of weapons, the repeating-stake-pistol-crossbow. Oh, and one character has something interesting to say about Vampirella's past, so Vampirella... wait for it... kills him anyway! Then goes off to figure out what the heck he might have been talking about.

This, apparently, is supposed to convince me that I should be reading the Vampirella: Revelations mini-series. Some of the artistic bits were interesting. The story? Not so much.

Rating: 4/10

Hunter's Moon / Salvador

Title: Hunter's Moon / Salvador
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: James L. White, Mark Polish, Michael Polish, Sebastian Jones
Art: Dalibor Talajic, Steph Stamb
Colorist: Juanmar
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Randy Buccini
Cover: Dalibor Talajic, Tomislav Tikulin

Flip book. This is a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, but there's no date on it. My best guess is 2006.

First story is Salvador by screenwriters Mark and Michael Polish and Sebastian Jones, with art by Steph Stamb. It got off to a very shaky start with a text introduction that was grammatically shaky at best and bordering on incoherent. Given that, I was pleased to see that the comic itself was wordless. Much better! Stamb's art is beautiful and the story's imagery is an interesting interpretation of the Icarus myth. I wonder if it's going to stay wordless. That might be the best approach.

Flip the book over and you've got Hunter's Moon, which begins with a flashback to the lead character deer hunting as a boy with his father. Flash forward to the present where the boy who once enjoyed spending time outdoors with his dad is now a high-powered business executive with a son of his own, one who's not too keen on spending a week of father-son bonding in the woods. The characters here are interesting, but I get the impression from the cover that there is much more to the plot than was revealed in this segment. This was clearly taken from the first issue and cut off at the best stopping point the editors could manage. The writing on this, by James L. White who wrote the screenplay for the Ray Charles biopic Ray, is quite good in terms of dialogue and characterization. It will be interesting to see how things progress as more action is introduced.

There is some sloppy editing here, but both stories show promise.

Rating: 6.5/10