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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E18 – Review

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

Story By: Brent Fletcher

The Story: They may not be able to track superpowers anymore, but they can still watch YouTube.

The Review: Now that the old S.H.I.E.L.D. paradigm is in shambles, we have a few episodes before us in which Coulson and his team struggle to adjust. Finding new purpose is easy: destroy Hydra, or get in their way as much as possible. Figuring out the logistics of doing so is going to be a lot harder. Without continued resources from S.H.I.E.L.D., taking down a global cult—that’s what Hydra basically is, right?—is going to be a rough task. After Coulson runs into breakdowns and defects in every corner of the Bus, he comes to Skye pleading for good news.

“We have internet.”

“Yay!” he says, with some genuine enthusiasm. “And boy, have I lowered my expectations.”
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All-New Ghost Rider #2 – Review

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Felipe Smith (story), Tradd Moore (art), Val Staples (colors)

The Story: Potential side-effects include: dizziness, shortness of breath, destruction of all you hold dear.

The Review: This just confirms how little I know about Ghost Rider, but it didn’t occur to me until just now that radical as the changes Smith made to the character’s age, race, and background are, equally as radical is the change to his ride. Giving Robbie Reyes a car instead of a cycle flies into the face of decades of continuity, which is comic book speak for tradition, so why do it? If nothing else, a car seems like it’d slow a person down and impede his movement—more so than a cycle, anyway.

At the same time, the bigger size and heft of a car makes it more of a threat by itself, which is not such a bad trade-off for the loss in speed and agility. Johnny Blaze or Danny Ketch barreling towards you on their cycles might not seem so threatening at first if you happen to be in a bigger vehicle, but even soldiers in armed cars have reason to fear the sight of a sleek, black racer heading straight their way. And the way Robbie maneuvers his around, flipping, jumping, rocketing in impossible directions at crazy angles, you certainly don’t notice any loss in speed and agility.
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Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Daredevil #1.5 – Review

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Daredevil narrowly avoids having a mid-life crisis.

The Review: It’s good thing to be fifty years old and still popular enough for people to notice. If you can get an actual commemorative issue out of it, even better! There may have been other peaks for Daredevil in earlier years, but right now he’s in one of that rare, enviable position of being both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. There’s greater joy to celebrating his longevity at a time when it looks like his greatest years are still to come.

That feeling of confidence is in no small part due to Mark Waid’s fabulous work with Daredevil for the last few years, which is why it’s so fitting that he kick off this showcase issue with “The King in Red,” a look at the life of Matt Murdock literally at age fifty. These future glimpses are tricky things because you’re projecting how certain beloved characters will end up, which is always a volatile thing to do—anyone seen the series finale of How I Met Your Mother lately?* Fortunately, with comics, readers know better than to take these future stories as anything more than potential.
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Superman/Wonder Woman #7 – Review

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Charles Soule (story), Barry Kitson (art), Paulo Siqueira & Eddy Barrows (pencils), Eber Ferreira (inks), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: Clark and Diana go clubbing like it’s Doomsday.

The Review: Kudos to any writer who wants to give you more bang for your buck, but doing so can run the risk of trying to do too much in too little space, which ends up short-changing you instead. Here, Soule has to deal with the fallout his heroes released last issue, start setting things up for the upcoming Superman crossover, and somehow work in all the usual character/plot/world development. Not an impossible task, but it requires a lot more finesse than what Soule ultimately delivers here.

As you can see by the cover, not even Superman can get caught in the center of a nuclear explosion and emerge unscathed. This might have been a good opportunity to gauge how far Clark’s recuperative abilities go, but with his second round with Doomsday coming up, Soule has to get him back in fighting (and dancing) shape by the end of the issue. It’s hard to take our couple’s peril seriously when it only takes the Fortress of Solitude’s medical tech and a Purple Ray crystal to patch them up in no time.
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Iron Fist #1 – Review

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Kaare Kyle Andrews (story & art)

The Story: Nothing like a ninja attack to ruin a perfectly good one night stand.

The Review: Iron Fist is another one of those characters, like Ghost Rider, that I don’t really know, except by playing him on Marvel vs. Capcom 3. But I am all about diversifying my comic book input, and Iron Fist fits the bill, being both a Marvel character* and a non-traditional superhero, seemingly. I’m not ready to wade into the morass of the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man franchises, but a solo, B-class character seems much easier to handle.

It helps that Andrews finds a tagline for our hero and sticks with it throughout the issue: “When offered life[,] he chose death.” Provocative, if nothing else, and a clever way to make Iron Fist stand out in a crowded universe. The details are even more intriguing, because more than simply rejecting life, Danny Rand “traded away the fruit of immortality for vengeance.” Clearly, there’s a lot of myth and tragedy wrapped up in his origins, but here, Andrews gives us only a taste—a potent one.
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Batman Eternal #1 – Review

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, Tim Seely (story), Jason Fabok (art), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: As if the Gotham underground doesn’t experience enough delays.

The Review: In a comic book world that already seems overpopulated with people following the bat standard, did we really need another ongoing Bat-series, and a weekly one at that? I’ve made this complaint before (and again before that), but surely there’s got to be a limit to how many titles one franchise can creatively support at one time before they all start blurring together. Batman Eternal can’t get by on just being a decent title; it has to set itself apart from a family of eerily similar siblings.

This issue alone doesn’t do it, even if Snyder-Tynion* start things off by coming at the story from an appreciably different angle. It’s not exactly common for people to talk about Gotham and emphasize its light and brightness, after all. As a metaphor, this talk about light suggests that hope springs eternal in the darkest corner of the DCU, but that idea runs counter to the apocalyptic Gotham that greets us on the issue’s opening page. Gotham’s light may be a more sinister thing in this world, an electric lamp that lures good people like GCPD cop Jason Bard to perish in the city’s dispassionate maw.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E17 – Review

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen (story)

The Story: The team discovers who has a Hand in the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Review: At the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with S.H.I.E.LD. in ruins, I wondered what this would mean for Coulson and Co. My theory was since Hydra hadn’t been eradicated along with S.H.I.E.L.D—”Cut off one head,” and all that—Coulson’s team would be left to clean up the mess the Avenger left behind. They’ve done it before, but there’s much more glory to their janitorial role this time around. The show’s needed a big, overarching threat, and Hydra goes right up that alley.

For that matter, the fallout of Winter Soldier addresses a lot of what the show’s needed, most crucially in enlivening several of the core characters. Never will you complain about May being relentlessly cold again, as she emotionally lets herself go to an almost alarming degree, allowing Ming Na to marshal all those acting chops she usually has to keep under wraps within May’s frosty exterior. But this level of passion is necessary to keep her from looking totally callous once the extent of her deception comes to light. Winter Soldier showed firsthand the destructive nature of secrets, or “compartmentalization,” even when the purpose is good, and May suffers that lesson quite bitterly.
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Astro City #11 – Review

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Kurt Busiek (story), Brent Eric Anderson (art), Alex Sinclair & Wendy Broome (colors)

The Story: Unfortunately, there’s no spell for good organization.

The Review: There’s a kind of segregation that happens in the superhero world, namely between the heroes and the civilians. In one sphere, the heroes fling punches and energy blasts, crashing off and through buildings, flying overhead and grappling with their foes. In another sphere, the civilians dutifully run about, panicking or trying to stave the damage, according to their natures. The two groups interact infrequently and usually in the most cursory manner.

Astro City isn’t so different in this regard, but it does the rare exceptions. Raitha McCann, personal assistant to the Silver Adept, functions much like a Pepper Potts or Alfred Pennyworth, and if she existed in any other comic book universe, we’d most likely only see her a couple times an issue max, delivering exposition, wit, or emotional support as needed. But since this is Astro City, it’s Raitha who takes central focus. We’re only invested in Adept’s life insofar as it impacts Raitha’s.
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The Royals: Masters of War #3 – Review

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Bob Williams (story), Simon Coleby (art), JD Mettler (colors)

The Story: Who needs military strategy when you’ve got a sea colossus?

The Review: I wasn’t lying when I said I liked the concept behind The Royals, but at the time I was really thinking of the metaphysical and social implications when the people holding themselves as superior to their fellow man are actually superior to them. At the very least, I thought Williams would address how this situation came to pass, but none of the characters seem even remotely curious about it. To them, this is how things have always been; any need for questioning is long past.

Instead, their attention is entirely fixed on the conflict before them, which reduces the Royals to nothing more than superheroes by another name. Applying them to WWII makes for a somewhat entertaining story, of course, but there’s little reflection on the broader impacts of their existence. In terms of “What if…” scenarios, it’s more Rome, Sweet Rome than Superman: Red Son. The former is an interesting way to pass the time, but the latter will give you something to think about long afterward.
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Pretty Deadly #5 – Review

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (story), Emma Rios (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: Just because Death gets a tired of all the yard work, suddenly the world’s about to end.

The Review: I was a bit concerned last issue at how this series seemed to be barreling towards a close mere issues after it had only just started. Not that I love Pretty Deadly so much that I hate to see it go, but it’s different from everything else on the market, and that’s a highly attractive quality that should be fostered, not cut off. So it is with some regret that I discover this is indeed the final issue of the series—for now. DeConnick promises on the last page that Deathface Ginny will return in a second volume.

But do I care, now that DeConnick has deconstructed so much of what’s made Pretty Deadly interesting? And as I asked before, will the stakes ever be higher than the fate of the very world and the life-death cycle? I tend to doubt it. The really sad part is despite the supposedly epic scope of this story, its highly metaphorical nature transforms the battle between Death and the Reaper of Vengeance into a shootout, albeit a fairly intense one, amidst fire and ruin, with plenty of major casualties.
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Green Arrow #30 – Review

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: Komodo learns that dads should never get in between a mother-daughter relationship.

The Review: As cool a concept as the Outsiders may have seemed at first, they also seemed slightly antiquated and a little at odds with the criminal demands of the modern world, especially one populated with superpowers. I mean, characters like Green Arrow, Katana, or Hawkman* are in the same boat, or would be if they didn’t modify their martial artistry with trick arrows, magic swords, and Nth metal. The Outsiders haven’t kept up with the times quite as well.

Ollie made that pretty clear last month when he took out nearly an entire clan by himself with a single umbrella arrow. Even fighting amongst themselves, without the pressure of defending against gunfire—can you imagine the slaughter if there was such a thing as a Gun Clan?—we haven’t seen much to recommend them as truly formidable threats. If there’s a title that can stand to skew its balance towards action, it’s this one. The inter-clan battle in this issue is far too brief for its size, making it hard to appreciate the power and skill of the warriors involved.
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Swamp Thing #30 – Review

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Charles Soule (story), Jesus Saiz (art), Javier Pina (finishes), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Time is running out for Alec, which means it’s the perfect time for a date.

The Review: For a long time, Alec was really the solo driver of this book, his isolation broken only by a troubled romance with Abigail Arcane and a brief partnership with Buddy Baker. But ever since Soule took over the series, he’s slowly added more permanent fixtures in the characters of Capucine, Lady Weeds, the Wolf, and Brother Jonah, all fully realized with motivations entirely separate from Alec. This isn’t just Alec’s show anymore; what we have here is an ensemble.

It’s pretty easy to tell whether a group of characters is a true ensemble or whether they’re just filler orbiting the star. Just remove the biggest name from the picture and see how the rest get on. True, Alec is only incapacitated for a few pages, but that’s enough for you to see how functional and entertaining his supporting players are without him.
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She-Hulk #3 – Review

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Charles Soule (story), Javier Pulido (art), Muntsa Vicente (colors)

The Story: A rich client is a good thing—usually.

The Review: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said in a review that I didn’t care what was going on in a story because I didn’t care about the characters involved. I’m quite sure I’ve said this even when it’s the first issue that the characters ever appeared in. Some might say it’s a little unreasonable to expect instant charm from every character, and they’d be right. But it’s hard not to set the bar that high when writers like Soule make it look so easy.

From the first line he utters in this issue,* Kristoff Vernard, adopted son of Dr. Doom, passes the first test of being interesting, if not exactly likable: “Urgh. I am not accustomed to making a request more than once.” And soon enough, he passes the likability test as well, once he explains, in eloquent though lofty terms, why he needs to leave Latveria for America: “Here…in this strange country, I can be anything. I must take the risk. I would take any risk for freedom.” For Americans, the patriotic appeal is almost irresistible. Kristoff’s pursuit of freedom will do it for everyone else.
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Loki: Agent of Asgard #3 – Review

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Al Ewing (story), Lee Garbett (art), Nolan Woodard (colors)

The Story: What if the Norse gods had the power of automatic weapons fire?

The Review: Anytime you have a story that features a villain, former or otherwise, you’ll notice a lot of time is spent exploring his villainy, certainly more time than a hero’s story is spent exploring his heroism. You don’t need a reason to admire someone who does good, but evil requires more justification for your interest, I think. Hence the endless slew of childhood traumas that plague nearly all of our Big Two supervillains. Loki may be unique in that the only reason for his evil is he’s written that way.

Loki’s mission to do good in exchange for having his past infamy wiped from humanity’s collective consciousness is merely the starting point of Agent of Asgard‘s metafiction. Elwing takes it a lot further in this issue by making Loki’s inner conflict manifest, creating a relatively unique situation in which Loki is his own antagonist—and the greatest. If there’s one clear difference between the new, hipster-ish Loki and the original, goblin-esque Loki, it’s that Old Loki* sees much more of the big picture than his younger counterpart.
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Action Comics #30 – Review

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Greg Pak (story), Aaron Kuder, Jed Dougherty, Karl Kerschl (art), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: Clark is haunted by the ghosts of not-home-for-Christmas past.

The Review: I’ve made my opinion about Doomsday very clear, and nothing that’s been done with the character since the relaunch has given me reason to change my mind. And as far as Death of Superman goes, its prominence in comic book history is far out of proportion to its actual quality. So, yeah, I’m not looking forward to a new Doomsday story, no matter how much the writers insist, almost desperately, this is not DoS,
redux.

That insistence comes through clearly in this issue’s opening pages, when Pak claims (via Tower Control), “This may not be the same old Doomsday after all…” What? Just because he killed two innocent civilians indirectly instead of with his own bare hands? Had Pak left it at just that, you definitely wouldn’t have much reason to put too much stock in the upcoming Doomed. The last page reveal of a mutated, probably evolved Doomsday is more promising, but solely eye-candy at this point.
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Aquaman and the Others #1 – Review

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Dan Jurgens (story), Lan Medina (pencils), Allen Martinez (inks), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: If the Justice League’s not available, we can always call those Other heroes.

The Review: Never in my geekiest daydreams would I have imagined a day when there’d not only be an Aquaman series that was actually popular, but two Aquaman books. That’s truly an abundance of riches, especially when you consider icons like the Flash haven’t gotten their second title yet (some, like Martian Manhunter, haven’t even gotten one). But are audiences ready for that much Aquaman? Can his current popularity handle that kind of exploitation?

I suppose the better question is: can the Others? The very existence of this issue shows that Geoff Johns was onto something when he created Aquaman’s personal justice league, but I’ve always felt that it would take a very clear vision of the Others’ purpose to bring them back. It probably would’ve helped if we’d known how they came together to begin with. They’re all permanently attached, but it’s never been clear what forms that attachment besides the Atlantean relic each of them holds, and this issue does nothing to change that.
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Arrow S02E18 – Review

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Marc Guggenheim & Drew Z. Greenberg (story)

The Story: Have you seen this girl? If so, call the Arrow on his encrypted phone line.

The Review: When Slade swore revenge against Ollie, you assumed he was seeking retribution equal to the suffering he believed Ollie caused him—an eye for an eye, appropriately enough. By that calculation, and factoring in Shado’s death, you expected this meant the death of all of Ollie’s loved ones. But we’ve seen since that Slade’s vengeance is nothing so simple. He’s had ample opportunity to kill everyone in Ollie’s orbit since he came to Starling City, yet he’s held back every time.

Of course, Slade has changed objectives since the island. In “Three Ghosts”, he promised anew, “I am going to tear everything [Ollie] cares about away from him. Destroy those who choose to follow him. Corrupt those he loves.” Ollie dies only after “he has lost everyone and everything he values[.]” It’s a psychological breakdown Slade wants for Ollie, not unlike the one he’s experienced since the dual trauma of being injected with the Mirakuru and losing Shado.*
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Movie Review

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

The moment they thawed out Captain America and he ran out into the streets of New York, only to see a new world around him, you knew there had to be major repercussions in store for the man out of time. Unfortunately, the timing of things was such that Steve’s reintegration into society had to be put on hold for several years, through alien attacks and gene-engineered soldiers and the powers of darkness, until he got a movie to call his own again.

Winter Soldier rapidly makes up for lost time, addressing Steve’s adjustments to the present time on every level. Much to its credit, the film treats jokes about the obvious pop culture gaps briefly, reducing them to an actual written list of items Steve’s instructed to look into, including I Love Lucy, Steve Jobs, and Marvin Gaye’s Troubled Man album. Instead, the film focuses on aspects of modern life that challenge Steve on a more personal level, pushing him to find his place in a world that respects his legacy, yet seems to have moved on from him.

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely make a particularly ballsy move by having Steve visit his old flame, Peggy Carter, in a nursing home. It would’ve been very easy to have written the movie so that Peggy had died by the time Steve returned, but it also would’ve been trite, encouraging him to live in the past by holding onto her memory. With her still alive, but convalescent and in the throes of dementia, Steve has to look straight at the tragic but unpleasant fact that he can’t go back to the way things were. The dance he promised her will never happen.
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The Private Eye #6 – Review

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Marcos Martin (art), Muntsa Vicente (colors)

If writers can generally be divided into two camps—the plot-driven and the character-driven—so can readers. I’d definitely say that it’s the characters that do it for me. Obviously, I love stories that have both in equal measure, but I admit that even if the plot is a directionless mess, I will follow along like a lamb to slaughter if the characters leading me on are complicated and interesting. Which is to say that character specialists like Vaughan can always count on my eternal loyalty.

My absolute favorite thing about Vaughan is he takes the time to make every character fully realized, no matter how big or significant their role in the overall story. Too often, comic book writers place their focus entirely on one or two principals, using everyone else as filler. But in a Vaughan comic, even the most inconsequential figures can be compelling on their own.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E16 – Review

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Paul Zbyszewski (story)

The Story: It’s not easy sneaking up on a Clairvoyant.

The Review: I don’t know that I’ve ever been interested in the Clairvoyant’s true identity so much because I really care who he is, but rather because I want confirmation as to whether psychic or precognitive powers really don’t exist in this world. As you can see in this episode, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents seem rather reluctant to believe they do, which seems rather small-minded for people who have encountered gods, pyro-kinetics, and ghosts.

By the time I watched this episode, I was mostly signed onto the theory that the Clairvoyant is someone inside S.H.I.E.L.D. I then lost all hope that a telepath would be revealed at the end of the search when Coulson convinced his superiors to start searching for telepaths. It’s a mystery rule of thumb: the first leads rarely pan out. In real life, going down a list and tracking the most logical suspects is the way to go, but in fiction, it’s never that straightforward.
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Earth Two #22 – Review

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Tom Taylor (story), Nicola Scott (pencils), Trevor Scott (inks), Pete Pantazis (colors)

The Story: In this case, Val flies before he runs.

The Review: Look, we all know this endless crisis on Earth-2 will end sometime; it’d be a pretty lousy superhero book if it didn’t. And certainly there’s no time limit on how long Taylor chooses to drag out the grimness. But if he expects us to endure one Apokolips-inflicted atrocity after another, month in and month out, for this long, he’s got to give us hope that when the storm finally passes, the world left behind will be one worth living in.

We’ve had a few sporadic bright spots, but nothing like the sustained luminescence of Lois teaching Val to fly. It is literally uplifting, pure and joyful in ways that the series hasn’t been in a long, long time. After all the death and ruin that’s pervaded every issue since #15, watching the two soar through the blue sky is a terribly welcome relief. The sequence only lasts a few pages, but it restores confidence that not all is lost and the world is not yet doomed.
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Trillium #8 – Review

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jeff Lemire (story & art), José Villarrubia (colors)

The Story: Love will see us through…a black hole.

The Review: If there’s one genre that’s about as stifled as superhero, it’s romance. Between ridiculously prolific writers like Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel, as well as the plethora of chicklit on the market, romance has gotten a bad rep in fiction, and for good reason. No matter how good the writing is,* the driving force of every romance story ultimately comes to the question of “Will they or won’t they,” and the answer is almost invariably “Yes, they will.”

Since the romantic formula is such that you nearly always get the same result no matter how you work it, the only real entertainment comes from the variables thrown in. I’ll cut to the chase: if you want a romance to succeed, you need to make people care about which side of the will-they-won’t-they question your chosen couple lands on. I don’t know about you, but whether Nika or William get together is the least of my concerns for this series, which is a problem since Trillium is really about almost nothing else.
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Fables #139 – Review

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Bill Willingham (story), Steve Leialoha (art), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Oh, Danny Boy, the groupies are calling…

The Review: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve reviewed Fables for nearly three years, which is a ghastly sort of time commitment to a venture which yields almost no profit whatsoever. But the enduring power of this series is truly a testament to its consistency. Though I have yet to read a truly extraordinary issue of Fables, nearly every issue has been well-crafted—at least, they’ve always given me something to talk about.

It’s impossible for any title to not have its duds, though, and this arc seems from the start to be one of those. Willingham started on the right note by featuring the Fabletown band, a collection of the most musically gifted Fables: Baby Joe Shepherd (drums), Peter Piper (flute), Briar Rose (guitar/vocals), Seamus McGuire (harp), and Puss in Boots (fiddle).* Had Willingham taken the band on some wild, silly adventure that involved travel by van/bus to a gig of expectedly unexpected danger, this could very well have turned into a very fun break from the main Fables narrative.
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Fatale #21 – Review

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: It’s just as everyone feared—tattoos do make a guy cooler.

The Review: As intrigued as I’ve been by Jo’s invariably sordid encounters with various men, I’ve also been hoping to get a broader sense of what Fatale is really about. Again, immortal woman who drives men crazy is entertaining enough—certainly, it’s been viscerally horrifying enough. But I’m much more interested in the why’s and how’s of all this.* How immortal? Why men? Why crazy? And what for? Surely it can’t just be for the pointless torment of this poor woman and the men around her.

Fortunately, it seems like I’ll be getting my wish pretty soon, as Fraction reveals that Jo has been working on those very same questions herself. She is helped in this regard by Otto, a geriatric scholar who also happens to be the only man unaffected by Jo’s sway. This alone makes him an immediately arresting figure, especially once you take in all his body tattoos, placed on him as a child by his Native-American grandfather. That suggests a certain degree of foresight on someone’s part, doesn’t it, at least in regards to Jo?
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The Wake #7 – Review

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Scott Snyder (story), Sean Murphy (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Leeward gets firsthand of the anachronistic practice of walking the plank.

The Review: Call me a bona fide English nerd (and proud of it!), but the reason why I love novels—pure prose, in general—is for their exposition. If people are attracted to fiction for the new and different worlds they present, there’s no better way to revel in all that than in the endless exposition books can provide. Time and space are precious commodities in comics, even more so in a limited series, so sadly, world-building often takes a backseat to plot in any given issue.

If I had my way, Leeward would road trip this altered America, exploring all the changes to the land, population, and society, down to the way people wash their clothes now that water can’t be spared. Snyder certainly does his best, but with only four (I guess three, depending on how you look at it) issues remaining, he has to deliver exposition on a need-to-know basis. In place of the wealth of sci-fi fantasy we got last issue, Snyder makes huge strides in the plot, sending Leeward leagues away from where she started this story.
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