This week Ultimates 3 and Coutdown: Arena
By Miles Baker and Owen K. Craig
Each week we use random.org’s random integer generator to create two random numbers. They then count down on the release list until they find out their RANDOM COMIC OF THE WEEK! No matter what the publisher, what the issue, what the arc, we will be there reviewing things with little or no context.
Miles’ Book
Ultimates 3 #1 (of 5)
Written by Jeff Loeb
Art by Joe Madureira
Marvel Comics, 2007
This book is totally Batman Forever. After definitive work from original creators (Batman and Batman Returns), there’s a new art direction, some different characterization, and some mistakes — but it’s not as bad as Batman and Robin.
I’m not going to get into how this new series is so different from the others; it’s Loeb’s take on the concept and he should be allowed to run with it. There are some good story choices made, some pretty panels, but that’s about it — it’s a crummy follow up.
Joe Mad used to be my favourite artist. When I was 13 and he was drawing Uncanny X-Men, I loved it. I would read and re-read those issues and there might be a couple hundred drawings of me basically tracing his art. But after I left comics (I started to hang out with girls), so did Joe Mad. I heard he went into videogame art or something, I’m not really sure, but his comic craft has really suffered. There is little flow from panel to panel and a lot of his action feels very static. There’s one page of the Black Panther punching Venom where it looks like old Panthy is about six meters in front of Venom, and looking incredibly stupid (it doesn’t help that for some reason his Venom is the size of a four storey apartment). With this colourist, Christian Lichtner, and his light inks, the book looks too slick. There’s something to be said about Mad’s old more cartoony approach to inking. It was solid, dynamic, and made me want to draw comics.
Jeff Loeb used to be one of my favourite writers when I was 13, too. His run on Cable made me like a character I thought was lame and who has since returned to his lame status. But now, over a decade later, I can only think of one Loeb story I’ve enjoyed from beginning to end (Daredevil: Yellow. Long Halloween and Dark Victory were ruined their terrible twist edings). His dialogue is so flat, like Hawkeye’s joke about Thor being punched through his wall, “Nice. And now a word from our sponsor…” Oh was that supposed to be funny? Cutting? Interesting? Anything?
Also, Loeb needs to look at Women in Refrigerators, because all of his women are terrible. There are three in this book: one of them is dead, but makes an appearance via a sex tape; one of them fucks her brother, is shot, then killed; and the other is the worst excuse for a leader ever. Seriously, Janet Pym is the leader of the Ultimates, Hawkeye disobeys a director order, she starts to chew him out, he pulls a gun on her face, she psychoanalyzes him, and then he blows her off? No! Your soldier pulls a gun to your head and you don’t kick their ass right off the team? Would any male leader in comics accept that? I don’t think so.
That’s weak writing and humanity.
Owen’s Book
Countdown: Arena #1
Written by Keith Champagne
Penciled by Scott McDaniel
Inked by Andy Owens
DC Comics, 2007
Poor Keith Champagne. For all I know, he might be a great writer, but it’s tough to tell when he’s doing stuff like Countdown: Arena and World War III (a 52 tie-in). It can’t be easy to spin editorially mandated crossover tie-ins into gold, and this one is a doozy. If you’ve ever heard nerdy guys in the store arguing over who would win in a fight: Gotham By Gaslight Batman or Red Rain Batman, this is the comic version of that conversation. Literally.
Still, it could be fun, right? It very well might have been fun, except that a good chunk of the book is too busy answering practical questions. “Why would these heroes fight just because they’re told to?” “What happens if they refuse?” “Wouldn’t a lot of the characters be too honourable to kill each other?” While these are very valid questions, they’re not why any potential readers are here. After all, it’s such a lame idea for a book, why not let it just be a lame book? Stop trying to be logical and let the characters fight. These are the same problems that plagued Marvel VS DC and it seems that we have learned little from that debacle.
As for the art, I don’t think it’s fitting for the book. After all, if this is the book to capture the imaginations of the fanboys, I don’t think any fanboy imagined the fights looking like this. Looking at the two-page splash of all of the alternate reality heroes, it’s hard to pinpoint who many of them are meant to be. Certainly, penciler Scott McDaniel was given a task as daunting as Keith Champagne in drawing such a bizarre group of characters, but it seems to me that more detail was needed (although I should point out that all four issues of this comic are coming out in a month, so maybe I should cut him some slack).
But coming out of this, my biggest concern is that there was no indication of what sort of world these characters are coming from. Certainly, a little box in the corner informs me that a few characters come from Earths 19, 21, 12 and 31 respectively, but what does that mean to me? Even just the Earths that the characters doing battle in THIS issue would be nice! I have no idea what worlds those Nightshades are from! Which Earth is that Batman that looks like… well… our Batman from? I’m sure I could probably find out online somewhere, but given the nature of this book it seems like the least they could do it inform us of who is fighting this issue IN the issue.
