A good day for comics...

And just as well, too, because fairestcat and I spent a good part of the day working on cataloguing my comics. As usual, the process was both difficult and fun, and there were all sorts of goodies I'd forgotten ever existed, especially among the independent comics: Melody, Night Life from Strawberry Jam Comics, The Tale of One Bad Rat by Brian Talbot, and so on... right back to a 1957 copy of Mr. Muscle - how'd I get that? fairestcat was amused by my copy of That Darn Cat from Gold Key, but I was busy being all excited over seeing my early issues of Fantastic Four again.

It was snowing hard for most of the day. I started out to the gym, gave up on it, and met fairestcat at the Silver Snail where we got our weekly comics, then had lunch at the Atomic Rooster. Which turned out, to my delight, to have really delicious pork ribs and caesar salad.

Two of today's comics were magnificent. Absolutely amazingly good. The first, rather predictable, was Hawkeye vol. 4 #8 by Matt Fraction and David Aja. It remains the best comic of the year, or quite possibly the decade.



It's a light caper story that has a delightful underlay of substance. And the art. The art! I am delirious with joy at the art. It reminds me of Frank Miller, Jim Steranko, Tim Sale - and yet it's original and fresh. Fraction and Aja leave me in awe.

The other wonderful comic was somewhat more of a surprise: Young Avengers vol. 2 #1 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. The first issue of this new series was good; the second issue was brilliant. In issue #1, Wiccan used magic to resurrect his boyfriend Teddy's mother from the dead. Predictably, this does not go well. Mother turns out to be an opportunistic demon with a talent for overprotection... and when Loki comes to their rescue, well, can that be good?

Of course it can. Gillen has a real talent for young Loki's dialogue. This comic was funny, smart, terrifying, suspenseful, and just about all I could wish.



A whole month to wait for the next issue?

The big disappointment of the week was Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 #0.1. The art, by Steve McNiven, is as gorgeous as anything McNiven has done. But it's a substandard story for Brian Michael Bendis, trite in just about every way I could say. A handsome alien crash-lands near a secluded house in Colorado, where he is tended by a lovely young woman. When he returns to his alien war, he leaves her pregnant. Ten years later, we have the story of his son, Peter, who resents his father's absence and seems to doubt his mother's explanations for it. Until two evil aliens appear, and shoot his mother.

A story for young boys, I'd call it, all wish-fulfillment about going to space and shooting bad guys. I did notice that there are only three women in this story: one is the boy's mother, who is killed; one is a young girl at school, who is bullied and helpless; one is a nurse. Since when does Brian Michael Bendis write stereotypes?

In its defense, I will argue that it's only the prologue, maybe the story which follows will have more to recommend it.

Of maybe Bendis is just phoning it in and a bit of boyish wish-fulfillment adventure is all Marvel wants of it.