Dark X-Men #1

“Journey to the Centre of the Goblin: Part 1” – January 2010

From Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk, the creators who brought us the spectacular Captain Britain and MI13, comes a book that, by all rights, shouldn’t be any good, but, you know, is. I wasn’t really a fan of the Dark line of books that spun out of Dark Reign (Dark Avengers et al), but this book was pretty fun. The story features an evil group of X-Men, including Mystique, Mimic, and Age of Apocalypse Beast playing heroes and converging on a small town to investigate a new mutant for Norman Osborne. The book could have easily end up trite and/or ultra-violent, but Cornell’s deft touch for character work and for humanizing baddies (currently on display in Action Comics) and Kirk’s talent for capturing subtle, human moments through body language and composition, resulted in a fun tale that’s more interested in character interaction than in plot. Mystique, portrayed here as a wary and only slightly conniving leader, and Beast, who only seems to commit horrific and obscene genetic crimes to alleviate his own boredom, fair the best. Sure, it’s a first issue and, as such, the story suffers from exposition and a bit too much set up, but Cornell and Kirk have done the impossible in making me care both about a Dark Reign tie-in and a set of third string X-Men villains and that’s certainly enough. A quick side note: he may not be much for interiors, but I do enjoy Simone Bianchi’s covers. Just sayin’.

Booster Gold #32

“Tense Future”

Cover Price: $2.99
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: July 2010

People seem to forget that Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’ JLI was just as much about action and drama as it was about comedy. True, the comedy was a big part of the proceedings, but so were but the intense fights with Desparo, The Grey Man, and the mutated Thunderer as well as personal tragedies, exemplified by Blue Beetle’s brain washing. These were the spine that held that series together and offered a nice, if extreme, counterpoint to the interpersonal comedy the writing duo pioneered in those pages. The resulting mix was what made that series special, not merely one or the other. All that said, as the cover implies, this issue of Booster Gold does certainly have the “Bwa-Ha-Ha,” but it brings the action and drama as well. Booster finds himself in the future, helping a small group of refuge esescape catastrophe on Daxam. Unfortunately, the group runs into the Emerald Empress, leading to a truly excellent action sequence as Booster battles her Emerald Eye, drawing it away from the refugees and figuring that the Empress herself is not as big a threat. Booster’s monolog and his repartee with the refugees is classic Giffen and DeMatteis, but the scene that awaits Booster when he returns from fighting the Eye, revealing how badly he underestimated the Empress, not to mention one of the surviving refugee’s reaction to the aftermath, prove this issue a much closer spiritual successor to the JLI than much of the duo’s other recent efforts.

Strange #1

“A Whole New Ballgame”

Cover Price: $3.99
Bargain Price: 3/$1.00
Cover Date: January 2010

Dr. Strange, who recently lost most of his powers to Brother Voodoo over in the pages of New Avengers, gets a new miniseries with this issue from Mark Waid and artist Emma Rios. Rios’ Manga influenced art is nice and clean, if not really my cup of tea, and Waid’s story, about a baseball team playing a gang of demons for their immortal souls, makes for a light and fun one and done tale. The end result is an issue that’s good enough, but feels like it could have been more. The has been magician breaking in a new assistant angle that Waid seems to be taking with this series was done much better in last year’s excellent Mysterius, The Unfathomable, which also had a slew of much more creative and gruesome looking demons. True, the story seems a little hampered from really indulging its premise by a general all ages vibe, but even that is contradicted by the Vertigo-eque cover and a T+ content rating that seems a little extreme to me (but then I suppose demons and immortal souls are probably a bit much for a lot of kids). Still, Thor: The Mighty Avenger is telling truly memorable, amazing stories right now without letting it’s A rating hold it back. All in all, I suppose my main complaint, and it’s sort of a double-edged one, is that the issue is good, but it’s just not as interesting or memorable as it could be.