Civil War II #2

Civil War II, Issue #2 starts with a dramatis personae, featuring the Ultimates, the Avengers, and the Inhumans.  The Ultimates and the Avengers are random gangs of superheroes, but the Inhumans are a specific breed of meta-human.  They all got their powers through exposure to the tetrigen mist.  Karmela Khan, Ms. Marvel, was initially identified as an Inhuman because she got her powers through exposure to the tetrigen mist, but there's a genetic component involved that I haven't followed closely enough, so she's an Avenger.  Ulysses is the kid causing all the trouble, and he's an Inhuman.  Tony Stark wants him in his custody so that the Inhumans don't use his powers to prevent crimes.

I'm definitely hooked after two issues, and I'll buy Issue #3 and Issue #4 in two days, when I buy comics.  I don't think I'll go too deeply into the crossover event, however.  I do like the way Marvel handles crossover events, unlike DC, which simply pushes an event through all the titles affected, whether they make sense or not (see my review of Superman-Wonder Woman, Volume 2, which was ruined by a crossover event that made no sense unless you read the entire event).  Marvel, instead, just adds comic titles relating to the event.  There is one aspect of the crossover event that I'm not a big fan of.  Marvel has put "Civil War II" covers on comics that have nothing to do with Civil War II, like International Iron Man, Issue #3 which only has one line relating to the event.  I bought the "Medusa" variant cover.

Weavers #3

Weavers, Issue #3 is third in a six-issue limited series I like for several reasons.  I started reading it because I liked Simon Spurrier's Cry Havoc on Image Comics, which produces comics of such quality that I'll basically read anything they publish.  Weavers is published by Boom! Studios, which produces a number of titles I like, including The Woods.

Weavers, Issue #3 is a fun little issue.  There's intrigue, there are betrayals, and I love the artwork by Dylan Burnett and colorist Triona Farrell, not to mention the letters by Jim Campbell.  My favorite part of Campbell's work is where he uses the "silent" lettering for Mr. Silence, the main enforcer.  Sid is an enforcer, and the story's mainly about him.  He's got misgivings, but he hasn't betrayed the Spiders yet.

Civil War II #1

Civil War II, Issue #1 is a title I hadn't planned on reading.  I didn't really like the original Civil War, and I bought Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars in hardcover but never broke the shrink wrap.  The Avengers, the X-Men, the Inhumans, and basically all of the heroes on Earth-616 are fighting an extra-dimensional giant robot - the Celestial Destructor - and its minions.  Just as the robot is about to wreak havoc, the Inhumans send it back where it came from with little fuss.

Carol Danvers - Captain America - wants to find out how they knew who was coming and how to send it back to where it came from.  Their secret?  A boy named Ulysses, who can see the future before it happens.  Jean Grey tries to read his mind but cannot secure a link; his mind is closed to her. Captain America wants to use Ulysses's power for good, preventing crime before it happens.  Iron Man wants to stay away from using Ulysses's power at all.  Hence the conflict.

I actually had it in mind to buy a bunch of DK III comics and catch up on that title, as I've only read the first issue, but I bought the first two issues of Civil War II instead.  So I guess this is where I choose my side.  Is it a thrilling, genre-defining tour de force, or is it a bad ripoff of The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, who I'm a gigantic fan of?  I'm leaning toward the former, quite frankly because the drama is real.  Characters really die.  Brian Michael Bendis?  I'll read anything he writes.

Autumnlands #12

The Autumnlands, Issue #12 starts with one of the Galateans telling Dusty, Learoyd, and Bertie about their creation and their purpose.  They are rock-women, androids, built to entertain their master but mostly to gather energy from the lava fields.  As their master - and later other masters - gave them less and less work to do, they began reading; they learned that they were slaves.  Eventually, the new masters stopped coming, and that's where the trouble started.  Some Galateans chose to end their lives, giving off energy and polluting the streams, making the Goat-men sick.  And that brings up one other question: do the Galateans have anything to do with there being less magic in the Autumnlands?

The Autumnlands is my favorite fantasy series going on right now in any genre.  I'm not a big fantasy guy, but this is really something special.  As Learoyd says of the Autumnlands, "I thought it was a dream, at first.  It comes off goofy, all badgers and warthogs in fancy robes and shit.  Like a kid's story.  But there's just as much shit here as there is anywhere, isn't there?"  I noted that the cover shows Bertie (the Goat-man) running away from the temple along with Dusty and Learoyd, but the comic shows Bertie in the temple as it is destroyed, supposedly.  A deus ex machina?

Old Man Logan #9

Old Man Logan, Issue #9 starts the new arc, "The Last Ronin."  Like the other issues, Issue #9 takes place in two timelines, two Earths; they are known simply as "then" and "now."  "Then" is actually in the future, on another Earth, while "now" is on Earth-616 in the current time, with an older James Logan. On the other Earth, Logan and Maureen are hunted across North America, so they go to Japan.  On Earth-616, Logan is looking for Deathstrike in Japan.  He finds her, but not in the way he imagines.

Jeff Lemire has always been able to say as little as needed, leaving out words or phrases when lesser writers (such as myself) would put them in.  It's something I've always wanted to improve in my writing, and I've learned a lot from Lemire over the years, starting with Essex County.  And like usual, the realization by Andrea Sorrentino and Marcelo Maiolo are on point.  I love the timing of the double cross on page 4, the way the whole panel turns red just as Old Man Logan figures out that he's in danger.

International Iron Man #5

International Iron Man, Issue #5 starts off with a young Tony Stark (pre-Iron Man) at his father's funeral, drunk, talking with Nick Fury.  Then it skips forward 20 years to Bulgaria, where Tony Stark as Iron Man is tracking down his parentage, and he just happens to be at the Gillespie compound, where his former lover, Cassandra, thinks she's holding him hostage.  After that's sorted out, he finally finds out who his true birth mother is, and he gets to meet her.

This is a great series, chalked full of romance, adventure, intrigue, and mystery.  In fact, Issue #5 is my favorite of the series so far, although I really like Issue #1, which introduces the situation and Tony's romance with Cassandra Gillespie.  Throughout the series so far, page-space has been split between 1996 and 2016, creating a nice contrast between the young, emotional Tony Stark, and the much less emotional (it would seem) Iron Man.

Swann's Way, The Graphic Novel

It's hard to pin down exactly what I love so much about Proust, especially since I'm a scant book and a half into his great novel, In Search of Lost Time.  Charles Mingus famously said, "it's easy to sound weird," praising the making of the complex simple, as Bach did.  Marcel Proust wrote the prototypical 20th-century novel in a style all his own.  I'm reading the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, which is faulty in some ways, but it is known for capturing the style of Proust, with his long, flowing, beautiful sentences.  Proust talks of memory, of time, but mostly he talks about people.  You fall in love with his characters, which come to life in volume after volume.  

In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way, The Graphic Novel is the work, primarily, of Stephane Heuet, a French comic artist in the bandes dessinees (Franco-Belgian) tradition.  He has worked on adapting In Search of Lost Time for almost two decades, and it is only in 2015 that Swann's Way, the first volume, has been available in English.  Arthur Goldhammer translates not Proust but Heuet.  Proust in any language is not suitable for comics, one would think, because of those aforementioned long sentences.  Heuet takes Proust's language and codifies it, abbreviating it into sentences that can fit into ordinary text boxes.  Goldhammer then makes it palpable for the Anglophone audience.

I've seen several reviews of the Swann's Way audiobook by readers who were introduced to Proust through Heuet's comic, and Goldhammer argues that one of the principal audiences of this graphic novel is people who are too intimidated by Proust to read In Search of Lost Time in its original or translated form.  Well, guess what?  Even the graphic novel is intimidating.  It's huge, to begin with, and I read it for an hour, only to get a mere 50 pages into it.  The artwork is classic ligne claire, stunning and a triumph.  Heuet does things only the discerning reader or fellow artist would appreciate, like staggering panels by mere millimeters, so that the reader knows which way to read without thinking.

Anyway, what Heuet has done is create a gift to all fans of Proust.  Of course, it cannot be a perfect adaptation without being thousands of pages long.  And who would read it then?  The length is excellent in my view, a solid four-hour read (compared to 15 to 20 hours for the prose book), at just over 200 full-sized pages.  It has a lot of text for a graphic novel, a LOT of text.  I would compare it to one of my favorite novel adaptations, Ringworld: The Graphic Novel.  The adaptation of Ringworld is six or seven hundred pages in two manga-sized volumes.  That adaptation, on the other hand, tries to include everything that is in the book, nearly, at the expense of color.  Swann's Way: The Graphic Novel is lavishly colored, as seen in the attached photographs.