A Few Thoughts on Comics from This Week

Slow week up at the lodge.

Secret Warriors #2 wisely provides us with more information after the shock ending of the first installment. Some mysteries need to be drawn out a bit. Some reach a tipping point and lose track of the story by waiting too long to resolve. 'Twin Peaks' springs immediately to mind as a fine example of this problem. 'Who murdered Laura Palmer' took too long to resolve, the audience started to waver, and there wasn't enough in place as a storyline for after the resolution. The 'Who is the Red Hulk?' mystery is shaping up to be one of those. Secret Warriors is NOT doing that, not on that level anyway. A myriad of questions raised by the ending of the first installment are resolved in a sentence or two from Nick Fury. I know that some disliked the revelation at the end of the first issue. I think this plot point works in the 'this is why to be more scared of the Daleks at the end of Series Four' sort of manner as opposed to it being a 'everything you know is wrong!' sort of thing. It reinvents Hydra as not being whipping boys. Their leader isn't crazy as often portrayed but a cunning plotter on the level of Nick Fury. This is a personal duel played out with organizations. Nick's just realizing he lost, and had always lost, even when he thought he won. All are welcome to their opinions. I'm finding it interesting so far.

Spider-Man and the Human Torch in Bahia de los Muertos! is a one-shot sequel to last year's story in Puerto Rico, the title of which escapes me at the moment. Like the original, this is fun and doesn't really need continuity beyond 'Spidey and Johnny Storm hang out occasionally'. Juan Doe's art is very stylized but I like it in small doses like this. The heroes all look like action figure versions of themselves but, in his style, it works rather than looking clumsy. It's a fun read.

Black Panther #2 continues the story of the (presumably) temporary replacement Panther. I didn't care for the book much the last time T'Challa wasn't in it and I'm growing increasingly neutral to this one as well. This story is being told better than that last time but I'm not sure why I should care about the replacement. I'm more impressed that I could spell T'Challa correctly without looking first.

Daredevil #116 brings back the Kingpin. Ed Brubaker humanizes the Kingpin in this issue in order to set up his return. It doesn't look like it will be business as usual for the Kingpin and that sounds like a good thing to me, at least for awhile. Bendis' run on Daredevil was good until Brubaker took over and has taken things to a whole new level of interesting. I like Ed Brubaker's writing a lot. If it weren't for him, I'd probably have dropped every X-Men related book I was getting. Brubaker is barely keeping me interested in the Uncanny title.

Madman #14 takes last issue's happy ending (who says #13 is bad luck?) and moves forward, telling another good naturedly weird story. I won't lie and say that I get everything 'Doc' Allred does with his characters but it's always worth seeing his art. Love. It.

Still reading the Video Watchdog I got this week and there's a couple trades I've yet to go through, including a story about a down on his luck Luchadore that used to fight crime. Hey! I know guys like that!