Comics Out October 31, 2007

Batman 670. Morrison’s dully retro 70 Batman thing continues. The three girls, who are probably old comic book characters I do not know are boring, and the Silken Spider looks ridiculous doing her “sexy” wavy-arm squat dance. The art is pretty good, but also very Neal Adams in places, which is what is wanted, but not exactly keeping me on my toes. Making Bat-Gas standard issue may please retro-folks who just think the idea is great, but I am not one of those people. Ra’s al Ghul, again, is not impressing me for the same reason – I read this already in reprints. The issue almost kicked into gear with Damian – I was surprisingly pleased to see him back, and I love that he is still in the Robin uniform and cloak. That speaks volumes, and is the only thing in the issue worth keeping. Damian is the only character in the book to have any life to him. His family romance is the only conflict that feels like something original.

X-Men Messiah Complex. Flat, like no man’s business flat. Starts with the X-Jet and a view of five characters inside. Each is introduced with a name plate thing, and each gets a line of dialogue. Here they are.

“You picking up anything? We should be close by now.” “Nothing … which is a bit troubling.” “What do you mean?” “It’s a whole town fulla people, and xxx ain’t hearin’ any of their thoughts.” “It’s a trap.”

Look at E for Extinction if you want an example of how to reintroduce your cast for a big X-Event, cause this is a mess. Most of these lines could be assigned to other characters – they are not particular to character and just dully advance the plot in the least interesting way. Plus the second to last line is Wolverine’s and the last line is Angel’s, spoken with his hand on Wolverine’s shoulder, sympathetically. Why? I have no idea. He is basically just making something Wolverine said explicit. Dumb. The whole issue is like that.

Silvestri does a good Emma in spots (and several other characters as well), but does she have to look like she is posing for Maxim for a nothing scene like when she says to Scott “no orders for me?” Is that I joke? The context would suggest it is not, but there it is. And I think Silvestri accidentally made Xavier look evil, which is just distracting, as was the too-small caption telling us “A few hours earlier” (that confused the heck out of me). Also Silvestri has Nightcrawler looking down from the plane on the town but I do not see how he could see down out of that window unless the plane was at a major angle, an angle not implied by the art elsewhere. The thing ends with a creature, whose purpose in this issue is to establish, I think, that the baby is alive (other he would not be hunting it) – but for God’s sake, that is the most boring creature design I have seen since playing Metroid: Whatever for the Game Cube.

There is a trailer for the Wanted movie on the web, but I have not seen it yet. Wizard magazine had the words “Grant Morrison vs Neal Adams” on the cover but I have no idea what that is about.

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