Best of Marvel: Week of July 10th, 2019

Best of this Week: Wolverine Vs. Blade – Marc Guggenheim, Dave Wilkins and Travis Lanham

It is quite possible to just have TOO MUCH AWESOME in one book.

Wolverine Vs. Blade had been advertised for a while, but that didn’t stop it from hitting me like a train from out of nowhere. Hile the story is very one note, it still fits both of these characters and the art elevates it to a level that I haven’t been excited about from Marvel since Clayton Crain was doing Carnage USA and X-Force. It blended the line between almost 3D and photorealistic and the writing turned this into an awesome buddy-hero story with hilarity and badass banter.

Taking place in Wolverine’s X-Force days, prior to Avengers vs. X-Men and before Blade became a full time member of the Avengers, we open to Blade and Wolverine in the middle of taking down a Cult of vampires known as “The Creed.” The book wastes no time on the banter or the action as Wolverine makes a nod to one of their previous interactions where blade stuck him full of Vampire blood while slicing a vampire head into pieces.

Wolverine shines in these opening pages in the always badass black and grey. His face is alive with burning vampire hating rage, showcasing his sharp canines and HEAVILY muscled body as he slashes and slices through vampires with the reckless abandon that he’s known for. The vampire LOOK scary, but Wolverine IS SCARY, especially covered in their blood and surrounded by the still burning remains of their bodies.

After thinking they’ve completely torn through the cult, Blade offers Wolverine a marshmallow from the fire that he’s about to set. Wolverine thinks he’s joking, but then, in a moment that I regret laughing heartily at, Blade shows off a single white marshmallow and gives us ONE of the best shit eating grin in this entire book.

Cutting to six months later, Wolverine is being attacked by very minor villain, Dragoness, who has been turned into a vampire. For no other reason, I think, than to flex his art skills and give me something to fawn over, Wilkins draws Wolverine standing with his back to a window and arms flexed so hard that I almost thought his veins were going to EXPLODE. He was Huge Jackedman levels of vascular and needed to rehydrate like hell, but I couldn’t look away from how ridiculous and magnificent he looked. However, he cuts through one of Dragoness’ wings and sends her spiraling into a conveniently placed piece of sharpened wood. Soon after, he finds the item that she was fighting him for; a mysterious box radiating with magic.

Elsewhere in Germany, Blade is taking down a Vampire Count who fires at him with eye beams that curiously look like Cyclops’. Blade allows the vampire to think he has him on the ropes before setting off explosive charges that trap the vampire under rubble. Blade is the undisputed king of banter in this issue as he offers to pick up a rock or two before the sun rises and kills the vampire for a little bit of information. When the vampire says he’d rather die, Blade gives another grin as the sun rises and burns the vamp to ash.

Both men are given information from their sources, Wolverine in Doctor Strange and Blade in some fellow he dangles off the side of a building. They learn about the prophecy of a Vampire Messiah named Varkis. Logan sees a pictogram that looks like him fighting Blade and Blade learns that Varkis may be a mutant. Armed with their information, the two make their ways separately to South America for a final confrontation.

The fight is epic.

Both men ripple with brutal and blood energy and their musculature is a sight to behold. Blade impales Wolverine with his sword, but Wolverine, being the badass that he is, rips it out and slashes blade across the face, destroying his glasses. Wolverine pounces at him again, but Blade hits him with an anti-vampire glave and Wolverine stands confused. The two work out their equal confusion until Varkis appears, looking like Wolverine, but still with bone claws.

He tells the pair that he was created from a portion of Wolverine that was sliced off and grown using magic as Wolverine has left many parts all over the world, but none have spawned a whole person. Wolverine tries to take on Varkis while Blade cuts through more lesser vampires until Wolverine remembers the picture and suggests he and blade recreate the battle ON VARKIS. Wolvie aims low while Blade aims high and Varkis is thoroughly killed.

Blade gives his last shit eating grin as he says he forgot the marshmallows this time after they blow up another temple. It’s a nice call back to earlier and the perfect cherry to top this wonderful book.

This book was a treasure. Wilkins art was amazingly dynamic, making every fight scene feel like it was brutal, bloody and horrifically violent. His colors straddle the line between very dark and amazingly bright when they need to be. The red from Wolverine’s eyes in the X-Force costume stand out alongside the red of Blade’s sunglasses as they glean with their movements and create little motion lines as they go. Most of the book takes place during the night and Wilkins makes great use of lighting to set the mood, giving a real goth or Castlevania-esque feel to things.

Guggenheim is in top form for the characterization of Blade of Wolverine. Logan is no-nonsense and violent to a terrifying degree as he always should be. Blade is snarky and effortlessly cool like Wesley Snipes before him. If there were to be a mini-series between these two, I would love it if this team came together again, but for a One-Shot, this was absolutely fantastic.

If you want to see amazing art and basic story that still is a riot to enjoy, this book is definitely made for you. Dave Wilkins wows on every page and Guggenheim brings his skills back to the best of the mid-2000s Marvel style. If it did have any pitfalls, it would have to be that it should have been even longer. High recommend!

Best of DC: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Runner Up: Batgirl #36 – Mairghread Scott, Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Hi-Fi and AndWorld Design

It finally seems like the Batfamily troubles have finally met Batgirl.

For the last few months, Batgirl has gone through something of a transformation in the way that her stories are being told. Back in 2015 she received an upgraded costume and status quo during the DCYou era, but with that came this unfortunate lack of seriousness and gravitas as she remained hopeful through all of her problems. She had a good support network and being the owner of a multimillion dollar start-up, she was absolutely set.

But that era came and went, DC Rebirth happened and I don’t know, her books just sort of foundered to me because they lacked the importance of other Bat-books, until Mairghread Scott took over. She’s been putting Batgirl through the ringer and has been bringing her back down to the gritty and hard nature that the rest of the Batfamily has been going through and this issue is no different.

After being put up for an auction to see who would finally kill Batgirl. Barbara escapes, defeating the Terrible Trio’s Shark as the auction house catches fire, trapping everyone inside. Batgirl fights her way through to a metal gate that she can maybe cut her way through, but The Trios Vulture throws a knife into her back. She states that letting these people go would be bad for business and that Batgirl sealed their fates when she escaped their trap. Vulture is willing to let herself and many others die to protect her reputation.

This kind of callousness stuns Batgirl because villains usually want to live, but Vulture is absolutely on the side of culling weakness from the world and the Terrible Trio failing to kill Batgirl is something she can’t abide and will take everyone down with her. Fox betrays Vulture, allowing Batgirl to free everyone, including the carrion villain. Shark, however, is unable to move after his beating and Batgirl, still wanting to be hopeful and helpful tries to save him. With everything crumbling down around them, Shark pushes her out of the way of debris, killing him as Batgirl watches on.

As she crawls out of the ruins, nose bloody and face full of dejection, she heads to a meeting that she was supposed to attend in order to talk with her investors. Her friend Alysia, who she placed in charge in case she wasn’t able to attend meetings, tells her that the investors forced her to make a decision that ultimately led to Babs being pushed out of the company. Now, broke and homeless, Barbara’s thoughts drift to Shark and in the face of everything, she still sees positivity.

She gets her stuff from Jason Bard, the guy who she worked with on a Mayoral campaign or something along those lines with in earlier issues, and seeing how caring he’s become since their last few encounters, she actually kind of sees him as a friend. Black Canary hooks her up with a dingy apartment in The Narrows, but Babs sees it as a good start, thinking of Shark and Jason, even as her life is collapsing, she still has hope.

I know earlier I said that the stories prior to this also had hope as the ultimate ending to everything, but at the same time, Barbara also had a safety net of things to fall back on. She’s not calling on Bruce to help her, she doesn’t have Dick to confide in and she doesn’t have the money that she used to have and to her, that is perfectly fine.

With her Year of the Villain tie-in coming up soon, I can’t wait to see where things go for her.

Best of DC: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Best of this Week: DCeased #3 – Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudiano, Rain Beredo and Saida Temofonte

Hope is dead.

Tim Drake, Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne lie dead on the floor of the Batcave as Alfred makes his way to the Batwing, unable to mourn their deaths and wanting to help stop the zombie threat. Harley Quinn finally gets the catharsis that’s she’s been looking for by pumping an infected Joker full of lead. With her face full of glee, it soon turns into a look of determination as Batgirl, Catwoman, Huntress and Batwoman are set upon her, bloody and rabid with infection.

These first few scenes are horrific and shocking to the extent of which this infection is spreading. The Batfamily is normally the most prepared for things like this to happen, but in one fell swoop, they’re almost all gone. That’s the brilliance of Tom Taylor’s plotting with this story, the inability to know what the hell is going to happen next. Batman would have come up with a cure, a plan, but with Tim and Dick being infected and him unable to fully prevent himself from succumbing to his wounds, the world’s greatest planner is no longer a factor. Barbara would have been an excellent second, but any hope of that was lost the moment she showed up covered in blood.

The world has turned to hell and even Superman can’t bring himself to smile or be hopeful as he looked into the faces of friends and companions, their eyes replaced with the rabid rage of infection and none of the love that they once had. He removes the infected from the Daily Planet office and shores up defenses on the outside before promising Jonthan that everything will be okay before he flies back home to Smallville.

The best way to describe Clark’s emotions as he makes his way through the Planet is hope being replaced by despair. The captions say it best, the hardest part of dealing with the infected is dissociating. These people are no longer Clark’s colleagues. They’re rageful monsters bent on killing, thankfully none of them can make a scratch on him, but the internal scars are far more painful than anything on the outside. Even when he promises that he’ll be back to his son, there’s this underlying feeling of doubt. We don’t know that he will, he doesn’t know that he will, but he’s Superman, right? He has to have hope?

Elsewhere, Garth and Mera are working to make his magic stronger before noticing the sky grow darker, dark with blood. They watch as Aquaman tears through Atlantis’ warriors, infecting and spilling their blood as it flows through the water and gets Garth. Mera barely escapes, but the fear on her face is palpable, she knows that all is lost.

Even Atlantis isn’t impervious to all of this, granted it’s because Aquaman was attacked by infected diving out of a boat, but that doesn’t make things any less terrifying. This also helps us to learn that the infection can spread through blood and given how fast Aquaman and Tempest can swim through water, and how far spread the infection already is, nothing is safe.

On his way to Smallville, Superman does his best to save anyone not infected along the way. He catches up to Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning, and his daughters, telling them to head to the planet before reaching the home of the Kents. Martha is okay, but Jon… Superman makes one final act of kindness before flying his mother to safety, leaving any hope that he might have had in the barn with his father.

That’s what I loved about this book. It is hopelessly nihilistic because of how tragic everything is and how all of it can even break Superman. Hairsine’s art invokes the feeling of terror that I felt the first time I watched 28 Days Later, seeing these ridiculously fast and violent killing machines tear through everything in their path. The shading on everything makes the inkers inks feel even more dark and bleak especially as Aquaman is slicing through Atlantis in a nice double page spread with a black background.

DCeased is definitely much better than I initially gave it credit for. With Hairsine’s art and Taylor’s bleak writing, this is definitely worth checking out, high recommend!

Best of Marvel: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Runner Up: Savage Avengers #3 – Gerry Duggan, Mike Deodato Jr., Frank Martin and Travis Lanham

Well, this was wild, wacky and amazingly violent.

Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato Jr. have come up with an absolutely fantastic story that’s full of brutal action, some cheeky comedy and remains true to every character involved up to a point. It pulls no punches and with Deodato’s amazing art, not only does it read well, but it looks damn good at the same time.

Starting off with a bang, we see Frank Castle tearing his way through Kulan Gath’s stronghold in the Savage Land looking for the bodies of his family. Of course Frank knows that it’s a trap, but never in his life has he let that stop him. With rage as his eyes, he tears through the Hand Ninjas, using a sniper rifle at close range and taking their own katanas to use against them. Suddenly, one of the ninjas puts a sai into the barrel of his weapon and he immediately recognizes them. Elektra has joined the fight.

Elektra seems to know of Kulan Gath’s plan to use the blood of warriors to summon something and she’s there to put a stop to it. She looks absolutely fierce back in her old gear, especially as she roundhouses and slices through Hand Ninjas while telling Castle to be careful as they make their way through the castle.

Meanwhile, Wolverine is captured by Gath and is suspended over his blood pit. Unfortunately for Logan, his healing ability only helps the evil Wizard as his blood only makes the plot come closer to fruition and Logan has an ever flowing amount of it. Soon after, Jericho, in the disguise of one of Gath’s students, tries to fool him. The Wizard sees through the ruse and gets stabbed in the chest, but given his sheer power, says that the insult hurts a lot more than the blade does and Jericho insults him by saying that’s not even worth Doctor Strange’s time.

Just as Gath is about to stab Jericho again, remarking that in his time he is the Sorcerer Supreme, he is shot right in the head by Castle. Gath makes Castle an offer to return his family to him alive in exchange for finding the thief who stole his amulet. Logan smirks and muses that the thief is long gone by now… only for him to return and threaten the Wizard. Conan is portrayed is a comedic man out of time and element in contrast to his own books where he is as serious as death and twice as deadly. Elektra frees Logan who collapses as he tries to stand and fight and Gath commands his forces to attack.

Conan picks up Logan and uses his still unsheathed claws as weapons as he swings the diminutive mutant around. Gath uses his magic to toss Logan into Elektra and runs his hand through the heart of Conan for the Amulet of Power and just as things are getting bleak, a certain symbiote attaches itself to the warrior as Gath summons his creature, Jhoatun Lau, The Marrow God.

Savage Avengers is shaping up to be the same kind of sleeper hit that Secret Avengers was back in 2012, especially while building Conan up to be a possible major player in future stories and hopefully in the upcoming Absolute Carnage event now that he’s had the Symbiote become part of him. The rest of this team itself is pretty good, fusing Castle and Logan’s rage with Jericho’s magic, Elektra’s skill and Conan’s cunning, this is definitely a book to keep watch of.

Best of Marvel: Week of July 3rd, 2019

Best of this Week: Captain America and the Invaders – Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway, Jay David Ramos and Joe Caramagna

What better way to celebrate American Freedom than by having Captain America inspire us to keep the country safe from Facist, Authoritarian rule of the dirty Nazis?

Reuniting two of the co-creators of DCs All-Star Squadron, Captain America and the Invaders tells a one-shot story of an adventure in the Bahamas Triangle a short time before the team actually assembles. With fantastic art by Ordway and perfectly campy writing, this book captures the feel of both the 1940s books and the stellar 80s works that these two are famous for.

Beginning with Captain America, Steve Rogers, bursting through and interrupting a meeting of home grown Nazi-sympathizers, the book manages to set the stage for what the action and dialogue will be like for the entire issue. Captain America is certain of his every action, punching and jumping over obstacles to take down the bastards and when one tries to escape, Steve sets upon him with fervor as the FBI emerges to arrest the Nazis. Once they’re taken down, Cap gets his next assignment, Protection Detail for President Roosevelt as he meets the Duke of Windsor as he governs the Bahamas..

We get the background that the Duke stepped down as King at the request of Winston Churchill for getting too cosy with the Nazis after being guests in Germany. President Roosevelt hopes to sway them to America’s side by offering them protection from Nazis. Ordway makes sure that everything looks absolutely of the time. Cars and some structures look exactly like they did in the 40s, however, the US Navy Sailor uniforms he and another sailor by the name of Jim Hammond wear for the undercover assignment, are not. Captain America himself looks very good in his original costume.

After a nasty storm, the President’s ship arrives on the island and not long after, he, The Duke and his wife are met by Baron Heinrich Zemo, the father of Helmut Zemo. Zemo takes everyone hostage as his men kill all of the Sailors protecting the President aside from one draped in the American flag and another who can become living fire. The Human Torch looks absolutely awesome “flaming on” to contrast the cloudy night sky. His flames are seen from the house and he proceeds to fly into the air and burn several Nazis alive. I’ve always loved the old look of a mostly naked Torch with bright oranges and yellows for the flame and his body with hatch lines for details.

As Zemo prepares to kill Roosevelt, the lights in the house turn off and a mysterious agent proceeds to knock out Zemos men while the Baron runs away. The rain picks up and Hammond’s flame goes out as other Nazis escape into a U-Boat. Rogers catches up to Zemo who uses a Death Ray of some sort to fight the American and is goaded into fighting in an enclosed space during the chase. Cap gets one good punch in, sending the Death Ray out of Zemos hands, causing the roof to fall on Caps head as Zemo makes his escape.

Cutting back to the escaping U-Boat, the Nazis think they’ve made the escape from America’s living flamethrower as their ship is torn through by an unknown assailant, Namor showing up to make sure that they didn’t get away. Cap and Hammond get back into their uniforms and make up stories about what happened to them during the night as they rejoin the protection detail with their flimsy excuses before musing to each other about meeting up again in the future.

This book was a fun little romp in a simpler time and definitely had less seriousness than the current Invaders series, but did have the heart given that Thomas co-created the team way back in 1969. It felt like he was slipping back into his old baseball glove and found that it still fit. Ordway’s art was well complimented by Ramos’ colors and looks amazing. I know he’d done some cover work recently, but his panel to panel art was certainly fantastic, like he hadn’t missed a step at all.

Flying the flag high and on Independence Eve ensures that this book is a must-read!