What I’ve Been Reading – Columbus Day Weekend Edition

Whenever I fly, I always make sure to pick up a new book or two. Most of the flights I take are under two hours, which means about an hour of each flight makes me electronicless, so I need something else to do. I recently got $50 to Amazon through my credit card and decided to pick up a few graphic novels I’ve been wanting.

Dynamo 5 Volume 3: Fresh Blood
by Jay Faerber, Mahmud A. Asrar, Yildiray Cinar, and Marcio Takara

For those that don’t know, Dynamo 5 is a monthly series published by Image Comics. I used to read it in issues but switched to trades for all my comics about a year ago. The premise of Dynamo 5 is simple: Captain Dynamo (this universe’s Superman) was less than loyal to his wife and fathered five children with five different women, each one of them gained one of his super powers.  After his sudden death, his widow sought out the children and assembled them into a crime fighting team to protect Liberty City.

The last trade left off with Dynamo 5 disbanding after their base of operations had been infiltrated by a group of supervillains. Without a group of protectors, Liberty City becomes overrun. This trade picks up with a new hero patrolling the streets: Vigil.

Through a progression of guilt, Scrap returns to the city and creates a new Dynamo 5 consisting of the newcomer Vigil and three established heroes: the mother-daughter duo both named Firebird and Quake. The story follows this groups new adventures against The Veil. I’m not going to give away the plot, but it’s a solid read.

Dynamo 5 as a concept is great and follows the ideas presented in other books like Fantastic Four, X-Men and Avengers. The premise of most of those books is how they are a family first but Dynamo 5 switches it up. They are literally a family only none of them know what to do. Faerber takes generic superhero comic cliches and twists them just enough to make them feel new. The villains are a great balance between a caricature and innovation. The Veil draws heavily from HYDRA but feels new. Bonechill looks like a blue Ghost Rider but works as a character. It’s not about how or why, the villains just are – something that’s been missing from mainstream comics lately. I started reading this during Civil War and it felt right: clear sides, good versus bad. Asrar continues to do great work, though he occasionally gets cheesecakey. I’d love to see him work on any book that involves Emma Frost because Firebird looks just like her.

As a trade, this is a great continuation of the story but you need to start at the beginning to understand it. The book’s recap page doesn’t do much for new readers, but this is one of the best superhero comics out.

Dinotopia: The World Beneath
by James Gurney

I first discovered the Dinotopia series before it was even a series. It was in either 2nd or 3rd grade when I first say the book in my school’s library and was instantly taken in by the captivating artwork. I vaguely remember seeing the second book in the series a few years later but couldn’t recall actually reading either of the books. But I heard last year that a new book in the series was coming out so I went online and picked up the first three books to read. Only two of the books ever arrived, but I bought the second book again to read this month.

Dinotopia is a four book series with amazing oil and watercolor paintings. The prose is lackluster at times but the art makes up for it. The first book is the journal of a father and son who survived being shipwrecked on the mysterious island of Dinotopia. The first book is the best written and the second book tries to be more story-y and that is it downfall. Gurney is clearly an amazing artist, there’s no doubt about that but his skills as an author are limited. The book relies too heavily on adjectives and a string thin plot. The art is exceptional and enough of the plot can be determined through looking at them. Characters are shallow and might as well be named things like token bad guy, token female who becomes love interest randomly and stuffy professor.

Astounding Wolf-Man Volume 2
by Robert Kirkman, Jason Howard, and Ryan Ottley

Another superhero comicbook series from Image Comics. Written by Robert Kirkman, known for Invincible, Walking Dead and writing an Ultimate X-Men series that didn’t make sense, Kirkman knows how to write. Astounding Wolf-Man follows a simple premise: there’s a guy who gets bitten by a werewolf and becomes a superhero.

The last trade left off with Wolf-Man being framed for his wife’s murder and he seeks the training necessary to avenge her. Being on the run, Wolf-Man ends up in some park where a large werewolf calls home. After some training, he learns to control his powers better.

The premise is interesting, well was interesting. The main character is a werewolf and his nemesis is a vampire. Twilight has ruined everything. The stories are okay but not Kirkman’s best work by any stretch. This is the guy who wrote Marvel Zombies – he knows how to do the supernatural. He also writes Invincible, which is probably the second best solo superhero book out there besides Ultimate Spider-Man. It just needs something more. Running from F.L.A.G. Agents doesn’t make for capitvating stories. The best part of this book was when it was an issue of Invincible, so read that instead.

Ultimatum
by Jeph Loeb and David Finch

Jeph Loeb is the reason I switched to trades for reading comics. His run on Ultimates 3 was absurd at best and absolutely awful the rest of the time. For some reason, the higher ups at Marvel thought the Ultimate Universe needs a big mix up.

Know what? The Ultimate Universe had enough for mix-ups. And everything in it lately that has been awful has been Jeff Loeb’s fault. The end of Ultimate Power? That was him. Ultimates 3? Him too. Ultimatum – yeah, Loeb again.

The first two issues aren’t bad. Magneto goes crazy and attacks the earth. Some nice destruction, a bunch of people die. Then Loeb confuses Ultimate Universe with “I can do anything I want because this isn’t in continuity!” He starts ignoring exisitng Ultimate Universe history that doesn’t work for him and just runs with it.

It doesn’t work.

After issue 2, the story falls apart and becomes more of a series of scenes so loosely connected I’m still not sure they are. Blob eats Wasp! Spider-Man’s dead! Magneto get’s KILLED BY WOLVERINE. Yes, Magneto forgot he had powers of magnetism. It’s beyond awful. Don’t read this.