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PIPELINE COMMENTARY AND REVIEW #63
18 August 1998
by Augie De Blieck Jr.
http://www.nic.com/~augie/pipeline
First of all, my apologies for being so late with this week's edition of
PC&R. Life got in the way this weekend, in all good ways. I had a lot
of fun doing a lot of things, but it kept me from getting this done
until now. I know a lot of you visit the web site looking for the new
column automatically on Monday, and I didn't get the chance to post so
much as a note warning of the lateness of this issue. Eep!
I also haven't read all that much this past week, so I'm not sure what
to review exactly.
I did, however, get around to reading all four parts of "LIVE KREE OR
DIE!," the recently concluded four-part crossover between THE AVENGERS,
QUICKSILVER, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and IRON MAN. The QUICKSILVER issue
mostly lost me, since I'm not a regular reader. The dialogue was awful,
I thought. It just read wrong. A lot of it comes, to be sure, from
having to do so much expository stuff in the pages. But it read all
wrong. I don't know how much of it was Joe Edkins and how how was John
Ostrander. Part of me doesn't want to know.
The whole thing was structured oddly. The chronology is not linear. It
overlaps in the oddest ways. Scenes which happen in part three
(QUICKSILVER) are mentioned in the past tense in part two (CAPTAIN
AMERICA), for example. Felt weird. It's another case of the writers
involved stringing together a bunch of odds and ends of Marvel Universe
continuity to build a story. In that sense, it works. Yet, many of the
pieces of the story come from the "dark days" of Marvel, when most
everything was unreadable, people were acting completely out of
character and things just seemed screwy. So I applaud this as a way to
un-convolute some of that stuff.
Afterwards, things start getting back on track. Cap gets a new shield.
IRON MAN is finally going up against the 'Mystery Villain' of the past 8
issues. And THE AVENGERS are in a flux, but what else is new? I'll
take a couple of paragraphs to talk about the latter two.
THE AVENGERS #8 is the center of much change lately. It's all
interestnig and I like to see how Kurt BUsiek moves the pieces on this
chessboard. He also brings back a couple of long-thought-left-hanging
plot lines from previous issues, including the story behind those
mysterious letters Jarvis is getting. The new character, TRIATHLON,
suffers from an ugly costume and feeling like a deus ex machina. When
the Avengers can't possibly save themselves, what happens? A new
character to the rescue. Granted, I'm sure the story was meant to
introduce the character and not vice versa. Every character in this
issue, drawn expertly by the perpetually-busy pencilwork of George
Perez, has a separate and easily-identifiable character. They all have
their own plotlines and on-going problems. Nobody is window dressing.
(Although Wanda can dress my windows anytime! ;-)
IRON MAN #9 stressed credulity a bit, in that I think Tony Stark pushes
it way too far. If Black Widow can't stop him, we're all in deep
trouble. But there's something else pushing Tony, and I'm hoping Kurt
Busiek straightens that out next issue. He seems to be going there.
Unfortunately, Sean Chen's artwork in this issue struck me as a little
flat and stuff.
Finally, YOUNGBLOOD #2 came out at last. It's every bit as brilliant as
the first issue was, lo those many months ago. With Steve Skroce moving
on to other projects already and Alan Moore doing a new line of comics
for Wildstorm, I guess there's zero chance of them getting back to
continue this series. We'll have to be happy with whatever happened to
be finished at the time of the first Awesome Implosion. ::sigh:: For
thsoe of us who were drooling Liefeld/Lee/McFarlane fanboys in the early
90s, the Liefeld cover was a wonderful nostalgia rush, too.
-Augie
P.S. Also out this week: WHITEOUT #2 from Oni Press. Buy it. It's
worth it, so long as you can also get your hands on the first part.
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