Thunderbolts and Avengers

This was a good week for comic books. Here's a bunch of what I acquired yesterday:

• Avengers #20, by Kurt Busiek, George Perez, and Al Vey (Marvel): The Avengers' latest battle against Ultron began the previous issue, and this issue is still mostly set-up, but it's a grim, high-stakes story which finally delivers on the promise of the huge threat that Ultron has promised over the years. I'm looking forward to the conclusion.

  Oh, and George Perez is still one of the best artists in comics.

• JLA #33, by Mark Waid and Mark Pajarillo (DC): Waid is filling in for Grant Morrison, but after Morrison's final storyline Waid will take over full-time. IMO Waid and Morrison are two of the more overrated, uber-melodramatic writers in comics these days. Morrison always comes in with a bang (his early Animal Man and Doom Patrol, for instance), but his characterizations are weak-to-nonexistent, and his neato ideas get less neato in a hurry after about six issues. That happened with JLA, too. Waid, by contrast, writes over-the-top, world-bending superhero yarns, which get old pretty quickly (c.f. Flash, where "The Return of Barry Allen" storyline several years ago was brilliant, and the series has been terribly erratic ever since).

  This issue involves the JLA going up against Bruce Wayne - or so it seems. It's trite and rather unnecessary, and it features the continuity error of showing the wrong Flash on the cover. Mark Pajarillo's pencils seem amazingly stiff, too. Maybe when Waid takes over for good this series will lift out of the doldrums, but it's been a while since it's seemed to have any direction.

• Planetary #5, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (Wildstorm): The latest issue in this fun series, focusing on Dr. Axel Brass, the Doc Savage homage who appeared in issue #1. It's a quiet story of reminiscence, and a hint that the real story of this series is about to begin. I read recently that Ellis is already plotting the second year of this series, so I guess it's doing well and will be around for a while. Excellent!

• Rising Stars #1, by J. Michael Straczynski and Ken Cha (Image/Top Cow): Yes, that's Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski writing this series (to run 24 issues) about a town somewhere in America - perhaps in the Midwest - which is hit by a meteor (the timeframe is unclear) and the 113-or-so children in utero grow up with super-powers. The series is supposed to follow them from birth to death, focusing on who they are and how they affect the world. This issue is almost entirely set-up, with some foreshadowing at the end. Good enough to keep reading.

• Thunderbolts #1-8, by Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, et. al. (Marvel): I scored inexpensive copies of Thunderbolts #1-30 on eBay recently. The premise is good: In a period when many of the major Marvel super-heroes had disappeared, a group of long-time villains form a super-hero group, with new identities, to become New York City's protectors, and take advantage of the peoples' goodwill. Of course, some of the villains start to like being heroes, leading to the basic character tensions of the series. It's not deep stuff, but Busiek can tell solid stories even at the worst of times (he's come a long way from his muddled Justice League/Justice Society story of the mid-80s, and is now one of comics' top writers). Bagley's pencils are stylish and attractive, but not outstanding. Good for the tone of the story, actually. I think I'm going to enjoy reading the other 22 issues I've got on hand.

The story was a decent derelict-spaceship-and-everyone-seems-to-have-killed-each-other story, bolstered mainly by some nice bits of conscience and pathos on the part of Max Eilerson (who is clearly the G'kar of Crusade in temperament; starts off gruff, turns out not to be who you think he is; wonder if Dureena Nafeel will turn out to be the Londo?). The series is getting a little better as things go along, but it's slow. And it's now more than half-over, given its premature cancellation by TNT.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)