***
INVADERS #5,
Marvel Comics, written by Zdarsky, art by Magno and Guice
After a promising first couple issues, Marvel’s latest attempt to make a “thing” out of (technically) their first-ever super-team book—the WWII-era Invaders, featuring Captain America, Bucky, the (original, android, criminally underutilized) Human Torch, trying to figure out what’s wrong with/reign in the lunatic ambitions of an out of control Namor who seeks to unite the underwater world and wage war on the surface world (again!)—I am beginning to lose interest. Not just because the story beats are starting to feel too familiar at this point, but also because the stuff that is original to this storyline (the ret-conning of Namor’s years of amnesia, the whole Professor X element and the idea that Namor is, like, “the first mutant’ or some such nonsense), I’m just not feeling. I’ll give it one more issue, just to see how they squirm Namor out of the fact that he appears to have attacked New York with three (count’em!) nuclear warheads. After that, without serious improvement, I will be taking this title off my pull list.
After a promising first couple issues, Marvel’s latest attempt to make a “thing” out of (technically) their first-ever super-team book—the WWII-era Invaders, featuring Captain America, Bucky, the (original, android, criminally underutilized) Human Torch, trying to figure out what’s wrong with/reign in the lunatic ambitions of an out of control Namor who seeks to unite the underwater world and wage war on the surface world (again!)—I am beginning to lose interest. Not just because the story beats are starting to feel too familiar at this point, but also because the stuff that is original to this storyline (the ret-conning of Namor’s years of amnesia, the whole Professor X element and the idea that Namor is, like, “the first mutant’ or some such nonsense), I’m just not feeling. I’ll give it one more issue, just to see how they squirm Namor out of the fact that he appears to have attacked New York with three (count’em!) nuclear warheads. After that, without serious improvement, I will be taking this title off my pull list.
***
LITTLE BIRD #3 of 5
Story by Darcy van Poelgeest, Art by Ian Bertram
Upon completing my first read-through of the third issue of this ongoing masterpiece-in-the-making, I was delighted to find that my personal Geek Rating had gone up a notch. How so, you ask? Well, it turns out they decided to publish that letter I wrote (as mentioned above)! They edited my letter down quite a bit (of course), and the parts they printed, they did mostly for utilitarian purposes (you'll know what I mean if and when you read it), but still, I have to admit that seeing my letter in print sent a little shot of adrenaline rippling through me. But aside from all that, if you're at all a fan of—or know of a mature teen who loves—art, First Nations topics, science-fiction, Canadiana, and stories that address the horrible potential of theocracy, then by all means seek out Little Bird. The first issue is in its third printing already, the second issue has been out for four weeks, and the third issue came out literally three days ago (at the time of this writing). You won't be disappointed!
***
BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU 6 (continued)
Twenty-One New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, Edited by S.T. Joshi “The Gaunt”, by Tom Lynch ~ Boilerplate occult revenge story set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony circa the 1700’s, a man (Arthur Bishop, the titular “Gaunt”) whose wife and daughter were burned as witches for helping a rich family’s servant girl get over her migraines through the use of some slippery elm tea, returns to the township of Arkham after a seven year tour of the colonies and the Old World, during which time he searched for, and discovered, an esoteric means of redress for the monstrous injustice of his family’s destruction. The Necronomicon features, but is not named, and the description of the Gaunt’s horrible vengeance is sufficiently diabolical and descriptive to make up for the fact that, overall, the story feels rushed, under-cooked, and a few pages shorter than it maybe should be.
“Missing at the Morgue”, by Donald Tyson ~ For a story by a “noted scholar of the occult”, “Missing at the Morgue” has the feel of a decent pro-am effort, at best. A kind of Lovecraft noir, liberally riddled with that genre’s shopworn clichés, it’s the story of Dalhoy, a freelance photographer after a photo of a recently deceased serial killer, and his dealings the New World’s most lax, ineffective police force. The laziest of tricks work like magic for Dalhoy. For instance…
Cop: “I can’t let you in.”There are re-animated corpses, disappearing organs (a plot point that also, hilarious irony, disappears from this story halfway through), and a new type of monster, which Tyson describes as “indescribable”, but essentially, they are cat-sized tadpoles with little arms, eyes, and sharp white teeth (oh, and their mama monster, who is just a big black shivering ball floating in an underground lake). There’s a secret tunnel located at the back of a single corpse-locker in the hospital morgue, but it conveniently disappears, via unknown means, within hours of being discovered. There’s the aforementioned vast underground lake that, miraculously, no one knows about, even though it’s somewhere within crawling distance of a major hospital. This story is a mess. Another tale that has no business being in a collection of what are supposed to be the very best stories that the Cthulhu Mythos has to offer.
Dalhoy: “Come on. Please?”
Cop: “Well… okay, but only for ten minutes!”
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