Comics Round-Up - May 06

[Now Experiencing] [Comics]

It's been a good month for comics! Here are a few highlights that I've picked up over the last few weeks.

* Y: The Last Man Volume 7 - Paper Dolls
A mysterious plague strikes the Earth, killing every mammal with a Y chrosome overnight - except for Yorick Brown and his capuchin monkey Ampersand.

This is the seventh volume of this fantastic series by writer Brian Vaughn and artist Pia Guerra. Yorick, along with companions Agent 355 and geneticist Dr Alison Mann, is on his way to Japan on the trail of his captured monkey, who could hold the secret to reversing the plague. However, before the trail can be resumed, the trio are detoured to Australia, which happens to be the last known location of Yorick's girlfriend Beth. Yorick has 24 hours to find clues to Beth's whereabouts, but his efforts are complicated by the intervention of an unscrupulous tabloid reporter on the trail of the Last Man. Meanwhile, Hero continues her odyssey across the unmanned America and meets the other Beth, in time to become embroiled in a clash with agents of the Vatican. Backstory is revealed for both Agent 355 and for Ampersand, and Yorick's mother receives a familiar but unwelcome visitor.

Vaughn is doing a terrific job keeping this series as fresh and exciting as it was when it was launched. This volume may well be the high point of the series so far, and the "Paper Dolls" storyline is quite rightly up for an Eisner Award. Fantastic character art and snappy dialogue interspersed with geek culture references make every issue a joy to read, and I hope the series continues for many more volumes. If you're only going to buy one graphic novel in this six months, make it a volume of Y.

* Ex Machina Volume 3 - Fact v Fiction
Mitchell Hundred was an engineer, until he recovered a scrap of metal inscribed with alien script and suddenly developed the ability to speak to, and command, machinery. He embarked on a short-lived career as a superhero, marked by a score of embarassing failures, and one notable success - intercepting the plane that would have otherwise demolished the second tower of the World Trade Center. Riding high on post 9/11 goodwill, Hundred successfully runs for the office of Mayor of New York and wins... and that is where the story of Ex Machina begins.

Volume 3 of this series, also by Brian Vaughn (Y: The Last Man) sees the role of mayor becoming ever more complex as Hundred and his staff begin to move past the post-election honeymoon. In a series of self-contained stories, Hundred confronts fortune tellers, a costumed vigilante, jury duty, and, finally, his mother.

Fact v Fiction (up for multiple Eisner awards) kicks the notch down a little from the last two hectic volumes. The atmosphere here is a little lighter than the earlier installments, but it's a needed break, and it gives the talented Ex Machina team the chance to build tension and develop some new mysteries. Is Hundred the only person with his unique powers, or does he share them with others? What is the origin of the alien artefact? And he may be able to talk to machines - but what happens when the machines lie?

This is an absolutely stunning series, combining The West Wing with Astro City written with Vaughn's signature pop-culture wit. Tony Harris' photo-based artwork lends the series a film-like visual style reminiscent of newsphoto or documentary footage and deftly setting the tone for the political suspense drama of the plot.

Ex Machina offers a little something for anyone who's ever enjoyed a comic of any sort. It's a fantastic story with believable and sensitively written characters and you should pick up a volume at the first opportunity.

*52 - Issues 1 to 3
Over in superhero territory, it's hard to be reading comics at the moment and not know a little about DC's ambitious project 52.

Set in the aftermath to the world-shaking (but somewhat mediocre) Infinite Crisis series, wherein DC redefined their superhero universe, 52 tells the story of the year following the recent catastrophes - one week at a time. An issue of 52 is coming out each week for a year, filling in the gaps and exploring the consequences of Infinite Crisis.

With DC star writers such as Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Grant Morrison at the helm, you could be assured that 52 would at least be mildly interesting. In fact, I'm surprised to find it's rather good. My tolerance for superhero-universe stories has been remarkably shortened by the excesses of Infinite Crisis, so I'm pleased to say that, at least from the first three issues I've read, 52 is a well-paced character-centred story that so far is doing no more than it needs to in order to stay relevant and enjoyable. It's filling plot holes without being gratuitous, it's being dramatic without being melodramatic, and it's doing a fantastic job of making the DC universe look like something worth continuing to read about.

It's also worth noting that from Issue #2 the title is going to print with a "History of the DC Universe" side story. Obviously it's a stunt that allows them to get away with shorter primary stories and thereby keep up with their punishing publication schedule, but that aside it's a fairly good way for new readers to get up to speed on the background of the DC Universe and its regularly confusing host of alternate worlds, historical periods, and multiple versions of the same hero.

In addition to all this, DC is running a parallel alternate-reality style site at www.52thecomic.com which aims to provide additional small details on the background of the "missing year" through newspaper-style headlines and a range of novelty downloads. (For example, LexCorp desktop backgrounds and printable beer-coasters from Gotham City bars.)

If you have any tolerance for DC Superhero titles, 52 is currently one of the better ones, and probably worth your time. Check it out.

* Other titles
Okay, this post is getting a bit long, so I'll just make a few mentions.
- Teen Titans is still awesome, with a very Buffy vibe starting to build up. Robin's a great character in this title, like you've never seen him before; new characters include a teenaged Zatara, a sidekick to Blue Devil, and Deathstroke's daughter the Ravager. Plus the most recent issue introduced the new improved Doom Patrol, which has me bouncing with happiness.
- Battle for Bludhaven is still rubbish. Buy at your own peril.
- Shadowpact could have been interesting - it's by Fables creator Bill Willingham. Freed of the constraints of plotting Infinite Crisis, I was hoping Willingham could turn this "JLA of the magical world" into an exciting title but so far it's still short on much-needed characterisation. It may be a case of a lot of potential going to waste. I'll grab the next issue and see if it picks up.
- Moving outside of the DCU, the latest issue of Dork Tower is a blast and seems particularly relevant for certain people I know involved in last minute convention organisation. Lots of fun from Kovalic, as always, and very funny.

That's me on comics for now. Sorry there's no Marvel titles, but neither the Ultimate titles nor the Annihlation and Civil War plots are doing anything for me. I am reading some silver age Daredevil, which varies in quality, but I don't imagine you'll get much from a review of it. 8-)