MONDOmagazine

Miles’ Book of the Month

Local #12 (Final Issue)
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Ryan Kelly
Oni Press, 2008

I don’t remember what happened in the first issue of Local. I read it years ago when my comic guy said that if I liked Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s Demo that I’d probably like Local. He was right.

In some ways, Local’s release schedule is to blame; towards the end there it came out quarterly, or something like that. But unlike most serials, that schedule didn’t hurt the book and might actually be why I liked this series so much.

The series is about growing up and each issue tells a chapter in maturation. Even when the issues focused on other characters, growing up was a theme that could tie the books together beyond usual familial ties. Knowing that each issue wouldn’t be followed up by another one in the next week or month, I took time with each issue and read it multiple times. It gave me a chance to reflect on my own life’s chapters and how our protagonist dealt with similar ones. But the great thing is that, in the end, neither Megan or I have really figured it out.

Kelly’s art is cool. Everyone looks hot and… and cool. There are a couple of anatomy problems here and there but you have to go looking for them for the purposes of an even-handed review. Regardless, he really knows how to line and ink Megan’s face, and gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of it.

If you missed the series, there’s a hardcover edition of the books coming out this fall with a beautiful cover. I don’t know if it will collect Wood or Kelly’s essays at the back of each issue, but it does promise excellent bonus features. If you do elect to pick that one up, I urge you to read each chapter twice before moving to the next one — Local deserves your attention and reflection.

Isaac’s Book of the Month

Detective Comics #845
Written by Paul Dini
Pencils by Dustin Nguyen
Inked by John Kalisz
DC Comics, 2008

I’ve been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes lately… and I’m trying to think if that’s because of this issue, or if it’s just a great coincidence.

This comic is a quintessential detective story, with none of the lame sequences where Batman goes around beating random thugs to save the day; this issue has him playing the armchair detective, taking all the clues of the scene and recent events to reach his conclusions. There’s a really fun sequence where, in a lull between deductive leaps, Batman logs on to a chat room entitled “The Heirs of Dupin” (Dupin being the prototypical detective character as envisioned by Edgar Allen Poe) to discuss the case with fellow sleuths, including the Riddler and oh yes — Detective Chimp!

The narration provided by Batman really drags us into the mystery. I almost felt as if I were helping to solve the case —which is an improvement on the many detective fiction stories whose protagonists disappear for a time to put the pieces together and we’re left to enjoy the scenery until all stands revealed. While it’s true that we the audience aren’t clued into all the necessary facts to figure it out ourselves, the fact that I’m tricked into believing otherwise speaks volumes about the writing.

Helping the atmosphere immensely has got to be Dustin Nguyen’s pencils; he’s probably my favourite bat-artist of them all. It’s dark and relatively simple, but not quite as stylised as say Mike Mignola, whose style can add an unreality to the work, and though that can be a necessary addition for the fantasy/horror of Hellboy, it wouldn’t be helpful in a more “reality”-based issue of Batman. That said, for any issue focusing on Batman as a mythic terror to the underworld, go with Mignola. His stuff is awesome.

The cover of the book is a bit of a stereotype, with a shadowy character in the background and the opaque aphorism of “She’s Back”; it’s only noteworthy because it’s something I would do when drawing my own little comic covers when I was little. It’s exactly what the idea of a “comic” cover should be, trying to jump off the stands with a character’s return or a sudden death-defying stunt, trying to grab your nickel of an entertainment budget. Plus the fact that the “She’s Back” feels only half-heartedly stated seems kind of hilarious to me. So, yes, the cover doesn’t make a lot of sense with this issue in general, but I don’t care, I love the issue, I just wanted to bring it up because it alludes to a really cool moment where Batman runs into Catwoman (who’s back from the prison planet of the Salvation Run series) — who is in a jealous mood because of all the time Batman has been spending with Zatanna (see previous issues of Detective Comics) and Jezebel Jet (see current issues of Batman for her). When Catwoman leaves, the narration says: “She’d like nothing better than if I ran after her. And if I weren’t sure there’d soon be four mutilated bodies in the morgue instead of the current three, I might.”

I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one who finds that cool, but I doubt it. On account of it being so cool.

James’ Book

Wolverine #66
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, and Morry Hollowell
Marvel, 2008

Up until last month, I really wasn’t a fan of Mark Millar. His stuff usually has a mean streak a mile wide, and I just generally don’t dig that. But when I picked up the first issue of 1985, it was like everything I liked about Millar finally came to the forefront. So, I started picking up most of what he’s putting out right now, and I’ve been loving it. Which brings us to the present.

This book is going to get compared to The Dark Knight Returns, and with good reason. There are a lot of similarities, but more in the way that there are similarities between movies in the same genre. It’s not like, say, Spider-Man: Reign, which takes pretty much all of DKR, then adds Spider-Man and makes everything terrible.

Anyway, this is a story about a Wolverine that got beat, got tired, and got pacifist. He’s married, had some kids, and settled down in a dystopia run by the bad guys. And the way Millar writes it, it seems like the most natural evolution for the character there is. I mean, Wolverine as a pacifist should be a hard sell considering how much he usually loves murder, but reading this book, you buy it.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot, but the issue ends with Logan driving off in the Spider-Mobile with a blind Hawkeye in the driver’s seat. That’s just awesome. That’s the kind of thing that leaves me with a smile on my face, all excited for next month.