Now Read This!

By Christopher Gage & various (WildStorm)
ISBN: 1-84576-749-5

Disappointing umpteenth kickstart for the denizens of Jim Lee’s WildStorm universe characters – now, thanks to Infinite Crisis and 52, a bona fide element of the DCU – in which various heroes are transported to the near future by the reality bending sometime-WildC.A.T. Void. Of course it’s another dystopic disaster-area and each champion is tasked to return to their own critical point in time and prevent The End from happening.

The book is comprised of six single issues all written by Christopher Gage. Midnighter: Armageddon #1 is illustrated by Simon Coleby, Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon #1 by Neil Googe, Horacio Domingues & Dan Davis, Wetworks: Armageddon #1 by Brandon Badeux, Gen13: Armageddon #1 by Jonboy Meyers, digitally inked and coloured by Tony Washington, Stormwatch PHD: Armageddon #1 by Leandro Fernández & Francisco Parozini and WildCats: Armageddon #1 by Talent Caldwell.

To add to the annoyance caused by this flashy, shiny, vacuous eye-candy is the obligatory cliffhanger ending. The resolution is saved for another book, someday, so in this rare incidence I’m suggesting you wait for that. If that’s any good you might then consider buying this pretty nonsense, if only for the sake of completeness.

© 2007, 2008 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Sharman Devono & Hiroshi Hirata (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 0-913035-30-0

Holding a strong claim to be the first ever collaboration between an American comicbook writer and a Japanese Manga artist this slim but impressive little gem is still readily available through many online retailers.

Eclipse was one of the first publishers to get into the trans-Pacific translation business with such seminal serials as Area 88, Legend of Kamui and Mai, the Psychic Girl. Finding an audience eager for a fresh graphic experience they soon branched out into new material. This terse black and white tale combines real events from a turbulent period in Japan’s troubled history and combines them with supernatural elements for a tense, foreboding drama with the accent on human interaction rather than simple swordplay.

The Kyushu Campaign occurred during a period when Toyotomi Hideyoshi was attempting to make himself Dictator of Japan. In June 1587 he sought to consolidate his power on the island of KyÅ«shÅ« where the rebel Daimyō (Lords) of Satsuma resisted him. Into this hotbed of intrigue a Nō Actor and samurai named Okubo Nagayasu became an unstoppable secret agent for Tokugawa Ieyasu – Lord of the Five Provinces, second most powerful man in the Empire, and a wily campaigner who sought to maintain his own position through stealth, rather than by siding with either faction.

Nothing could prevent the war that occurred, especially as Jesuit missionaries were manipulating newly converted nobles for their own ends. As usual the real casualties in such affairs are the honest soldiery, but when the samurai Harada Sadayasu falls during the inevitable battle, he reluctantly returns from the dead as Shiko, a Son of Death. An unclean thing, he wants only the peace of the grave, but is ordered by his Daimyō to continue in his duty. Killing his Lord’s enemies…

The structure of this tale is a little odd and I suspect it was originally intended to be a longer work, but it’s an engrossing and exotic yarn for all that. Seminal artist Hirata is actually a gekiga exponent (which means he produces “dramatic pictures” rather than the more frivolous manga or “irresponsible pictures” – a sophism equivalent to our own western debate over “High” and “Low” art). He has had few of his works translated into English and the most well known is probably Satsuma Gishiden, a gritty historical saga in the manner of the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub. His other series include ‘Jaken Yaburetari’, ‘Tsunde ha Kazushi’, ‘Mosû Ogidachi’ and ‘Shikon’.

If you’re a fan of oriental fiction or would just like to try something a little different this is definitely a book worth hunting down

© 1987 Sharman Devono & Hiroshi Hirata. All Rights Reserved.

By Cefn Ridout & Charlie Adlard (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-0156-X

Don’t be fooled by the title and brace yourself for a disappointment if you’re a huge fan of the World War II Howling Commando and irascible leader of the planet’s most advanced espionage agency. Although he gets top billing, Nick Fury is largely absent from the post-Cold War proceedings in this well-intentioned if erratic thriller that is in actuality the spiritual conclusion to the sage of the mysterious Night Raven.

As seen in Night Raven: the Collected Stories (ISBN13: 978-1-85400-557-3), Night Raven: House Of Cards (ISBN13: 978-1-85400-288-4) and as yet un-collected illustrated prose adventures from various British Marvel publications, Night Raven was a masked vigilante who fought crime in New York and Chicago in the years between World Wars I and II. In later years he became locked in a bloody, relentless vendetta with the immortal villainess Yi Yang, Queen of the Dragon Tong.

When a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset is murdered inside the US embassy in Moscow soon after the fall of the Soviet system, expatriate Russian super agent and Avenger Natasha Romanoff is dispatched to unravel the secrets the new rulers don’t want revealed.

What she discovers is the incredible fate of the fearsome urban legend now known as Black Bird as he slaughters his way through bureaucrats and Russian Mafia alike in his single-minded mission to destroy the woman who kept him from a peaceful grave.

Superbly illustrated by Charlie Adlard this is nonetheless an uncomfortable blending of genres, with a strange pace to it: almost as if there’s been some savage trimming and pruning with no thought to narrative cohesion. Pretty and adventurous, it’s probably only of real interest to real aficionados.

© 1995 Marvel Entertainment Group/Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-48576-378-7

In the build-up to the universe-altering Infinite Crisis (ISBN: 978-1-4012-0959-9), DC released a number of themed miniseries, each of which was designed to set scenes, generate storylines, and generally warm up the audience for the Big Event. Each of these miniseries ended on a whopping cliffhanger and was then swiftly rushed out as a trade paperback collection. These ice-breakers were Day of Vengeance (ISBN 1-84576-230-4) The Omac Project (ISBN 1-84576-229-0) Rann-Thanagar War (ISBN 1-84576-231-2) and Villains United (ISBN 1-84576-232-0) – and you should probably lump in the Clip-book compilation Prelude to Infinite Crisis (ISBN 1-84576-209-6) which extracted pertinent snippets from a host of DC comics and the much more readable Identity Crisis (ISBN 1-34576-126-X) for a full set. (See separate reviews via the Archive)

The problem with the first four series/collections is that even as teaser tales and set-ups they were somewhat incomplete and inconclusive, necessitating the creation of intermediate one-shot Specials to bridge the gap between the individual storylines and Infinite Crisis itself (ISBN: 978-1-4012-0959-9 or ISBN: 978-1-84576-404-3 for the trade paperback). Those bridging specials are collected in this volume.

Day of Vengeance: The Ninth Age of Magic is by Bill Willingham, Justiniano and Walden Wong and deals with a last-ditch attempt by Earth’s magical practitioners to pacify a crazed and apocalyptic Spectre, whilst Rann-Thanagar War: Hands of Fate is written by Dave Gibbons with art by Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Marc Campos, Oclair Albert and Michael Bair finds a group of superheroes discovering the real causes of the war during a brutal battle in the depths of intergalactic space.

The Omac Project: the Lazarus Protocol is by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz and has Checkmate and a rag-tag bunch of superheroes deal with the deadly remnants of the rogue Brother Eye satellite as it crashes to Earth, and Gail Simone, Dale Eaglesham, Art Thibert and Drew Geraci bring the six super-villains who wouldn’t join Luthor’s Bad-guy Society into final conflict with the mastermind’s forces before everybody gets reconstructed by the final act of Infinite Crisis in Villains United: A Hero Dies but One.

If I’ve seemed a little disparaging here it’s not that the material is deficient or mediocre. These are good, strong stories, well told and wonderfully illustrated, but they are floating about without context in this compendium of middle-bits from a bigger story. The ineptitude of this sort of production and packaging utterly galls me. Could it have hurt so much to wait until these tales were published before rushing out the collections laboriously detailed above?

The best place for these adventures is in those books, not here as a separate volume. A big event like Infinite Crisis generates a lot of outside interest and – hopefully – new readers. To send them scurrying all over the landscape for the complete story is bad enough, but when the collections aren’t even complete all you have is a disgruntled purchaser who won’t come back. And it’s also not fair for dedicated fans – who we all know have already bought the original comics – to have yet another expensive book to add to their monthly bill.

Let’s hope for a little more joined-up thinking for those inevitable future publishing events.

© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.