One of the great things about getting my weekly haul of comics each Wednesday is that I get to experience the full range of colors on the emotional spectrum revealed in last month’s Green Lantern #25. For instance, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Grey, and Renato Arlem’s Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters has continually provoked a response on the violet end of the emotional spectrum (i.e., love).
The week’s number 5 of 8 (right) rocked my world on whole new levels. First off, as always, the art was fantastic. And I must say that anything that opens with the Human Bomb in tank of water being forced to have sex with Red Bee who has been infected by alien insects and plans to turn the human race into a hive mind is golden by definition. Getting to discover (after all this time) the current Human Bomb’s origin story and the reintroduction into mainstream comics of a revamped, blue Neon the Unknown made it that much better. This current round of Freedom Fighters seem chockful of angsty men who were in love with female scientists before they became all strange and metahuman and it seems that our Human Bomb is no exception. Poor guy. The comic did have the problem of awkward dialogue at points, but the whole medium is riddled with this problem. Also, R.I.P. to Miss America and congrats to Doll Man for fathering a child despite being six inches tall.
Meanwhile, the second of Jeph Loeb’s nascent run on the Ultimates revealed the black end of the emotional spectrum (i.e., hate). I had my reservations about Jeph Loeb, but I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That was a mistake on my part. IT ONLY TOOK HIM TWO ISSUES to ruin what had been an amazing series. I commented on this in depth over at Bread and Roses earlier this week:
When I sat down at the Providence Place Mall today to read my exciting new copy of Ultimates 3 #2, I discovered that between it’s slick covers were 22 pages of well illustrated crap plus advertisements. Here are some things I hated:
1. The opening sequence of (oh and here’s a shocker) two Marvel superheroes fighting each other for no good reason. Hawkeye is wildly attacking Spider-Man, because in the last issue Venom attacked the Ultimate’s mansion. ???? Having Clint do things that make no sense to deal with the murder of his family is not edgy and cool. It’s just annoying.
2. In the whole sequence of Janet talking to Hank and then talking to Pietro who freaking out because Wanda was assassinated in the last issue was not convincing at all. It was like there was supposed to be all this tension but the dialogue was absurdly scripted.
3. Ultimate Thor never used “thee” and “thou” before and conjugate his verbs with “eth”. The fact that he does now is not endearing. It’s dumb. He’s supposed to be Norse not Elizabethan. I could stomach the whole Valkyrie thing even though her only possible purpose is TnA (that’s “tits and ass”) fan service. But Thor isn’t acting like Thor. It’s been two whole issues and he hasn’t railed against American imperialism.
I really want to be into Marvel comics. It’s just not working out for me. Oh well.
Yay for more Green Lantern next week.