By Isaac Mills and Miles Baker
Isaac’s Book
Invincible Presents: Atom Eve #2 (of 2)
Written by Benito Cereno
Pencils and inks by Nate Bellegarde
Colours by Bill Crabtree
Image Comics, 2008
I was very glad to pick up Invincible Presents Atom Eve because I’m a huge fan of Invincible itself, but I only ever pick it up in trade format, so it’s a good long time between each of those shots of goodness.
I couldn’t find the first issue, but that’s okay. I only had to review this one and it made sense to me since it’s a prequel-type story. So, I guess I just missed Atom Eve’s origin, which sucks but is no problem.
It was rough with the guy at the comic store though, I only wanted to buy this one issue, and he was less than pleased about me doing the debit thing for me. He gave me the whole, “what if you’re out in a blizzard and need money” type thing. I laughed but, ha ha, no I was actually kind of annoyed by that. Plus I kind of plopped onto my bed and accidentally crushed the top of this comic, so that naturally broke my brain a bit — I don’t like hurting my stuff.
Oh, the issue? It was good — the Invincible line of books has this basic superhero genre energy that always gets me excited even though if I were to really think about it it would come off as bland. That’s just the realization that occurs when I consider things like: why didn’t the big burly super hero ever bust in and help out the five-foot-nothing-hundred-pounds-when-soaking-wet Atom Eve who was getting beat up inside the bank? I know the hero of the story needs to do the heroing, but it has to make sense. A couple inconsistencies like that throw me for a loop.
There’s a pretty gruesome part where Atom Eve (I think she lives with a foster family — not sure, once again, I didn’t get the first issue) finds her real mother hooked up to an elaborate birthing chamber (think The Matrix) for pumping out super powered kids — the detail involved is pretty impressive, and it really makes you hate the bad guys, which is usually a good thing.
I don’t really like the cover by Cory Walker. He co-created Invincible with writer Robert Kirkman, so he gets to do these walk-ons every once in a while, but I just don’t care for his stuff.
A good, simple, fun comic. But I say stick with just picking up some Invincible trades for a great time, and later you can check out this series if the need arises.
Miles’ Book
ClanDestine #2 (of 5)
By Alan Davis
Marvel Comics, 2008
Well, I was surprised at how good this was. Until now, I’ve never been able to finish anything by Alan Davis. I couldn’t get into The Nail, and by the time he was writing X-Men I had left the comic-reading world. That’s right, I was a part of the problem — I caused the comic collapse of the ’90s. You can blame me (and my spending time to meet girls) and the Operation Zero Tolerance event. But colour me surprised at how interested I was in Davis’ little corner of the Marvel universe.
ClanDestine follows the adventures of Adam Destine — a crusader made immortal by a Genie — and his crazy, super-powered children. And the best part of it is just how crazy the situation is. Destine has one son who can’t change back to normal from his blue beast form; another who has microwaves frying his brain; one who has built a playboy’s den on an alternate Earth; and some weird daughters going to a wedding at night. It’s like Power Pack on acid. What I like most about Davis’ art is that no one has told him that it’s not the 1980s anymore. No one that I can think of draws in this classic superhero style anymore. It’s not that he’s a hack — he does this really well. His art is detailed and Davis has a nice control over his page.
If you’re looking for a quirky title with a nice sense of humour, check this out.
Man, Alan Davis’ art is the reason I got in back issues of Excalibur! There’s something powerfully awesome about the way he draws everything so unabashedly cartoony while still understandably in the superhero mold. If you were to ask me, his is the definitive Nightcrawler, too.