[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.]

Note: this month’s Pull List is mondo-big, so it’ll be broken up into three pieces. Here’s the first part.

Spotlight

Back in March when I first wrote about Xombi, I noted that the title’s future was uncertain at best, given the state of the market and the limited readership for an oddball sci-fi/adventure title. Six months later, it turns out my suspicions were correct—Xombi #6 marks the end of the series. I’ll always want more, but if Xombi has to end, I’m glad it ended like this.

Writer John Rozum gives all of the major characters their spotlight moment in the final battle against Finch; Catholic Girl fights off a squad of flying monocular robots, Nun the Less sabotages the Ninth Stronghold’s defenses, Julian fights off a trio of blood mummies. Naturally, David and Annie get the most glory as they outsmart Finch (thanks in part to a literal pearl of wisdom – Rozum clearly enjoys working wordplay into the fabric of his story’s world) and restore the stronghold to its original state. Rozum brings the various plot threads together neatly, which wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment for a six-issue series, except that every one has been packed with characters and concepts. Rozum can’t help himself even in the final issue, introducing monstrous adversaries like the Blood Mummies (female mummies with both internal and external circulatory systems who are covered in silk bandages created by the spiders that constantly patrol their bodies and wield weapons that change based on the phase of the moon) and Dental Phantoms. As much as I’ll miss the characters, I’ll miss Rozum’s wit and inventiveness even more.

That said, the real strength of this issue is not the humor or the resolution of the invasion plot, but rather the completion of David’s emotional arc. When the series began David was struggling with his place in the world, having recently become the Xombi. In issue six, presented with an opportunity to live with a beautiful girl in a perfect world among other people who will age just as slowly as he will, David opts instead to stay on Earth with his friends, to cope with his difference rather than hide from his fate. The sequence is rendered beautifully—artist Frazer Irving again makes use of floating heads for extended dialogue, relying on facial expressions alone to sell Annie’s disappointment and David’s brief moment of doubt before saying goodbye.

Thanks to Irving, Xombi is easily one of the best looking books of the year. His frames glow with otherworldly color, and his framing frequently breaks out of the standard grid approach, appropriate for the rich, unusual world the characters live in. Irving strikes a delicate balance between a kind of cartoonish expressionism and realistic detail, making the wildest of Rozum’s ideas seem plausible. I don’t always need, or even want, my comics to look real, but I enjoy the playful tension in Irving’s possible/impossible approach.

As far as we know, there’s no future for Xombi in the DC relaunch. But given the company’s new interest in non-superhero titles, there’s at least a chance that the publisher will bring Rozum and Irving together again. If not, then at least we have six issues worth of storytelling that was never once missed its mark.

[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.]

Spotlight

The Red Wing #1

There’s a certain kind of text that exists solely to flatter its audience. It doesn’t strive for anything more than to pat readers on the back for being So Awesome and in on the joke. It’s tongue-in-cheek fun, but too often the Awesome is used to substitute for a story, or solid characters, or momentum. In comics the presence of an Awesome story is often indicated by a gorilla on the cover, particularly if the book doesn’t ordinarily feature gorillas. “Look,” it shouts to a potential reader, “a gorilla fighting Captain America! Everything’s better with gorillas!” Of course, it’s not always gorillas – sometimes its zombies, or Abraham Lincoln, or giant robots. In any case, The Awesome serves as bait for a certain readership, and it all feels much too easy.

I’m guilty of falling for it, too. Every single episode of “Voltron” is exactly the same as the previous episode, and yet I watch them with glee because giant robots are a big part of my Awesome. Two other key components are time travel, and X-wing fighter-style spaceship dogfights, both of which feature prominently in Jonathan Hickman’s newest creator-owned series, The Red Wing. Of course I picked it up, but I approached the title with caution, aware of how easy it would be for me to ignore any mediocrity.

I needn’t have worried—The Red Wing #1 features plenty of spaceship duels and leaps across time, but it’s ultimately more concerned with the intricacy of the concept and how it relates to the comic book medium than simply scoring rad points.

Set in the 23rd century, when time-travel technology has been weaponized, The Red Wing follows two young pilot recruits, Valin and Dominic, whose fathers crashed during a battle and were destroyed by the time stream. By the end we learn that Dominic’s father survived, but got trapped in 14th-century Mexico. That’s a pretty scant amount of set-up for a first issue, but Hickman builds the universe just enough to give his characters space to expound on grief, warfare, and the shape of time. All that theorizing also complements the action sequences—a spaceship crashing to the ground in ancient Rome is all the more tense and exciting when you know that rescue is impossible because time is more like a flat disc than a straight line.

Nick Pitarra’s pencils shift easily between the intense and more relaxed moments. His line has a soft edge to it, particularly when drawing faces, which can look rounded and fleshy in the young recruits, or gaunt in the pilots facing battle. And he frames the flight sequences particularly well, using panel borders to denote differences in time, then stretching figures across them to illustrate time travel. The detail and creative framing on page seven alone, a splash page depicting the effects of temporal displacement, are enough to recommend this book. Not to mention Rachelle Rosenberg’s colors, a mix of muted reds and greens during the pilot sequences and dark blues and grays during the expository bits, which help sell the skewed nature of this reality.

Probably the most radical decision apparent in The Red Wing #1 is the title sequence, which follows a fatal time-crash: two stark white pages occupied only by a pair of cryptic log lines explaining the nature of time, then two more white pages for the title and creators’ names. It would be easy to read the sacrifice of four story pages for what could easily fit on the back cover as needless indulgence, if not for the effect of seeing all of that white after just witnessing a pilot’s aging into dust. That non-narrative space is gives nothingness a presence, and acts as an effective barrier between storylines.

The Red Wing is a four-issue mini-series, and so I expect subsequent issues to be a bit heavier on plot, but more plot isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Hickman is too shrewd a writer to ignore the appeal of time-traveling fighter pilots, but he’s also clever enough to aim higher than a few fist pumps. …
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[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.

Spotlight

Detective Comics #878

The title blurb on the cover of Detective Comics #878 reads “The Villainy of Tiger Shark,” but the issue is really about villainy of another sort—a less ostentatious form of evil that wears a face you wouldn’t necessarily pick out of a crowd. Batman’s world is unique in that it contains both theatrical criminals with outlandish costumes and realistic street crime. Some writers seem to choose one or the other to focus on (Bill Finger and Alan Grant the former, Frank Miller the latter) while others (Grant Morrison and Jeph Loeb) consider both sides, exploring the boundaries between the ordinary and the fantastic. Scott Snyder, whose run on Detective is coming to a close, is among that last group, though he has dispensed with classic Bat-villains like the Joker, Two-Face, or the Penguin, and instead created his own murderous eccentrics to juxtapose against the more mundane, but far more terrifying, “is he or isn’t he” evil of Commissioner Gordon’s estranged son, James. Jr.

Detective #878 opens with Dick Grayson’s Batman suspended from chains over a water tank that contains a monstrous killer whale, which takes big Shamu-like leaps at him, jaws open. Tiger Shark, the story’s nominal villain, is a pirate and drug/weapons trafficker who wears a red scarf over his eyes and a wardrobe derived entirely of ocean-dwelling animals. He speaks exclusively through his attendant thugs, any of whom he’s willing to kill on a whim. There’s some grandiose talk about Tiger Shark’s lineage and whether he may be part of an Illuminati-type ancient society, but all that is abandoned as soon as Batman escapes the trap. The action is gratifying and immaculately rendered by series penciller Jock, and ends on a nice moment of Dick clinging to a buoy, and narrating exactly what kind of physical trials he had to endure just to get there. The hero endures, as always.

Then Snyder articulates the end of the action sequence by jumping suddenly to Dick keeping his promise to Gordon by meeting with James Jr. It’s a satisfying move for anyone who’s been reading the title and knows this has been building for a few months. Beyond that, it also keys Dick back into the plot that seemed to float away unresolved in the previous sequence, and it sets up a Dashiell Hammett-style confrontation with Sonia Branch, with Dick solving the mystery while recognizing that he’d been played. That much layering and interconnectivity alone would be worthy of praise, but Snyder does triple duty, using the final two pages to introduce some incredibly gruesome violence, and evidence that Batman has been used as a pawn yet again. I won’t step on the reveal, but it’s definitely a turning point for this arc.

Snyder’s story is unfolding just like a year long story should – steadily, without dragging any plot points out unnecessarily, and without giving away too much up front. The James Jr. plot has been building since the first issue of the arc, but it’s always been interlaced with the other mysteries Batman is solving, with time given over (particularly issue 875) to explore the overarching plot in greater depth. Every plot point feeds into the others, and all are driving towards a conclusion that’s unknowable by design. With most superhero comics we can predict at least part of the ultimate outcome—good will win out over evil, even if sacrifices are made along the way. But Detective Comics #878 promises little outside of a grim, painful reckoning. …
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[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.

A quick note: Due to the complications and demands of May, I didn't have time to dig into and dissect my pull list in the usual fashion, which is unfortunate because some excellent books (Nonplayer #1, Detective Comics #876, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6) came out in April. But, I did write a Spotlight on my favorite book from April. Full May column follows.]

Spotlight: April

Dark Horse Presents #1

In previous months I’ve written about my love of anthology comics and short-form storytelling in general—I like the quick pace and the inclination toward bittersweet endings, I like meeting and leaving a character all in one sitting, and I especially like the juxtaposition of different voices. Even beyond my idiosyncracies, it’s clear that anthologies allow us to broaden our reading horizons by giving us a comfortable place to try out new material—if a writer or artist or story doesn’t suit you, it’s over in eight pages and you’ll be onto something with greater potential.

But appreciating anthology comics is more than just a personal preference, it’s a part of the medium’s history. Anthologies have been a staple of comic storytelling from the very beginning—Golden and Silver Age titles like Detective Comics, Action  Comics, Amazing Fantasy and several others featured four or five different stories, often positioning the superheroic adventures of characters like Batman and Superman against more grounded detective stories, or mystical/supernatural adventures. And even as the market changed and those books became solo vehicles for the most popular characters there always seemed room, particularly in the underground comix movement, for anthology storytelling.

But that seemed to change in the past decade, as reader preferences shifted towards decompressed storytelling and publishers began catering to the trade paperback market, telling stories over five or six issues that could then be collected and sold in bookstores, theoretically reaching a wider audience. There are still holdouts, like 2000 AD in the UK, Heavy Metal, and Image Comics’ Popgun collections, and one-time experiments like DC’s Wednesday Comics, but those collections can be expensive, or hard to find in certain markets. What’s needed is an affordable, regular anthology title that is widely available. Thus, the return of Dark Horse Presents. …
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