Monthly Archives: November 2010

Angel: A Hole in the World

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You know how I’ve been reading a lot of comics, and they are comics from the Marvel runs in the ’60s (and now ’70s) via computer files, on my computer? You may not know that I am additionally reading lots of comics of the physical variety, from the recent continuations of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel television series. This would not be a point of much relevance, except that my subscriptions[1] have been rather limited, which I have discovered lately after catching up on about a year’s worth of said comics and seeing all their advertisements for side stories that somehow did not appear on my doorstep.

The result of that failure is A Hole in the World, a short run chronicling a particularly heart-wrenching pair of episodes late in the series’ run in which an elder god named Illyria rises to prominence. And since I’ve seen the episodes in question, this was pretty much just a reminder of them rather than anything new. And what I was reminded of, primarily, is just how good that show really was. Pathos, humor, and consequences, all wrapped together in a delicious, plot-filled bow. Plus awesome snippets of dialogue, one of which I will quote despite that it probably won’t make much sense: “This goes all the way through to the other side. […] There’s a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.”

[1] Because, and let’s be clear, if I had to go into a comic book store on a weekly or monthly basis for this to occur, there is a zero percent chance that I’d have been reading these. Though I suppose I could have gotten them in graphic novel collections, as this particular review demonstrates.

Towers of Midnight

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So, wow. By all appearances, there really is only one book left in The Wheel of Time. I mean, now that I have finished Towers of Midnight, as obviously there were still two more when this week began. And as you’d imagine in a series with a serious dent into its fifth figure worth of pages, the penultimate book was a roller coaster ride with only a handful of spots to slow down and catch your breath before the next dizzying ascent or fatal plunge. If this were the kind of review site where I dove headfirst into Spoiler Bay and splashed around all day, it would be quite the long review, as there are plot revelations and gut-wrenching aplenty; but since it isn’t, I find myself in the odd position of having not a ton to say. It’s an extremely good book, one of the best I’ve read in the series. Sanderson’s inability in some places to match Jordan’s voice in the previous book has been smoothed out, undoubtedly assisted by my having read no actual Jordan in the past few years. Plus, you know, it’s nearly the end. At sixteen years, I haven’t been doing this as long as some, but it’s still just about half my life, and that has its own kind of impact.

I guess my point is, if you used to like this kind of thing, I can guarantee you that you still do, even if you maybe didn’t for a little while there in the late middle. And if you never liked this kind of thing, I doubt you’d start now, not even counting the multiple books of missing backstory.

Ultimate Avengers: Crime and Punishment

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I’m well over two-thirds of the way through the next book, mostly because I can’t be bothered to stop reading it long enough to actually review Crime and Punishment, the latest release in Marvel’s Ultimate Comics line. Although this certainly reflects far more on the book I have in front of me, I’m not able to claim, as I would like, that it has nothing to do with this one. Basically, it was not dissimilar to the previous Avengers book, but with fewer things I found awesome and more things I found subtly off. Which is to say, still more extraneous characters (apparently just for the sake of being new) and a focus that has shifted completely from the Ultimates in favor of recently-demoted Nick Fury’s blacker-than-black ops governmental hit squad. It’s not that I think a world full of genetically enhanced super-villains doesn’t need a secret government hit squad so much as that I think that’s a little more realism than I want from my superheroes comics. And then mix that in with the appearance of the Ultimate Ghost Rider, and I have a whole host of new complaints that are, admittedly, more fairly entrenched in my readthrough of the original Marvel line (where I have now gotten to October of 1973), and these complaints are purely personal taste, so take them as you will. But dammit, superheroes and the supernatural just don’t mix, five years of the CW’s Thursday (now Friday) night line-up notwithstanding.

Seriously, I just read a storyline where Spider-Man had to fight against a space werewolf. I like Spider-Man, you know, kind of a lot. And I like space werewolves! I just don’t really like them together. It’s like lemon pepper in spaghetti sauce: you’ll regret it. So now, when I’m watching these Avengers guys in combat against a skeletal biker sent by the devil to kill powerful people, it reminds me that it took about ten years for regular Marvel to start pulling this crap too, and I get a little bit despair-filled. Still, it is what it is, and it’s not like I intend to stop anytime soon. Oh, also, if you like the Punisher, he’s still kicking around and gets most of the best parts of this particular story. So that’s alright.