WHAT IS THE BUY PILE?

Every week Hannibal Tabu (winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt/blogger/novelist/poet/jackass on Twitter/head honcho of Komplicated) takes on an between seven to thirteen reviews (or so) to share his opinions with you. Thursday afternoons you'll be able to get those thoughts (and they're just the opinions of one guy, so calm down) about all of that ... which goes something like this ...

THE BUY PILE FOR AUGUST 15, 2018

Crowded #1 (Image Comics)

Jump from the Read Pile. The premise for this book is strong enough to overcome the mild weaknesses in characterization. There's an app for everything, from renting a friend to loaning out your clothes for money. When this web-enabled gig economy turns into a crowdfunded assassination contract on a seemingly innocuous young woman, she turns to an app called DFEND and hires a weirdo bodyguard with lots of secrets and a checkered past. This script from Christopher Sebela extrapolates our current society in a Black Mirror kind of way that's very intriguing while the idiosyncratic, stylistic art from Ro Stein, Ted Brandt, Triona Ferrell and Cardinal Rae puts just the right surrealist slant on this work. RATING: BUY.

Star Wars Beckett #1 (Marvel Comics)

<i>Star Wars Beckett</i> #1
Star Wars Beckett #1 puts scoundrels in the front and suckers in the back.

Jump from the Read Pile. There's just something about scoundrels, and this delightful self-contained issue (taking place chronologically before Solo: A Star Wars Story) gives it to you in abundance. A criminal scheme gets twisted and turned with rakishness and just a hint of murderous intent as the titular character and his team try to abscond with illicit goods out in the buttcrack end of the galaxy, only to have significant hijinks ensue. The Gerry Duggan script is perfect, capturing the playfulness and menace of the Woody Harrelson character, the grace and determination of the taken-too-soon Val (played by Thandie Newton) and the four armed pilot Rio while never letting a dull moment creep into this clever and efficient plot. The visuals from Edgar Salazar, Marc Laming, Will Sliney, Jordan Boyd and Travis Lanham bring you into this gorgeous and dangerous corner of the galaxy (the Munt Ontdal shot should be a poster) with thrilling, visceral detail and scope. RATING: BUY.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Infinity%20Wars%2C%20Justice%20League%20and%20Batman%20-%20What%20Happened%20To%20This%20Week%27s%20Big%20Guns%3F']



Batgirl #25 had a very strong lead story that traded on the recent relationship challenges faced by Bruce Wayne but lacked actual things happening. The second story showed the title character at the height of her competence, which was nice but brief. The final mystery was clever but again too succinct for its own good. Nothing was wrong here, but it didn't connect strongly enough to be worth the price of admission. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Tony Stark Iron Man #3 showcases the brilliance and flaws of the titular character in a way that shows his ego prevents him from being smarter or he's playing possum like nobody's business. Inventing the interface from Ready Player One, Stark sends a lucky set of beta testers into his virtual world of hedonism to, in essence, hunt down his co-workers and loved ones in a kind of Turing test. There are schemes under schemes but Tony's either pretending not to see them or he is too oblivious too derivative to notice. Not bad, but not as forward-thinking as, say, Crowded. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Batman #53 tried mightily to make a case for the man behind the myth, to connect extraordinary heroism with common foibles, cast in the light of lost love. It came close. Unfortunately, its thesis ("God blesses your soul with grace. Batman punches people in the face") does more to bury the Bat than praise him, expose the broken man child that is Bruce Wayne, behind the training, behind the money, behind the leather fetish gear. Heady, intellectual stuff, and entertaining in its way, but nothing that elicits any sympathy for this (relatively speaking) devil. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

RELATED:

Ninja-K #10 has been on a journey of discovery the last few months, discovering that the people he works for are, at best, inhumanly vile colonizing mass murderers happy to look past the slaughter of women and children for momentary tactical gains. Another ghost from that past, another broken super soldier has turned up and the title character gets to be the garbageman for this kind of old business. This "discarded war machine" gag wasn't a new gag when Captain America first fought Nuke and it's gotten no fresher in the intervening years. Solidly executed work, but the underlying concept here is a little long in the tooth. RATING: MEH.

If Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man #308 ended a page or so earlier, it would have been the most poignant bit of character development for a Spider-villain in years. As it is, the ending sucked all of the emotional resonance from this strong build up, but it surely wasn't bad. RATING: MEH.

Cable Deadpool Annual #1 had a number of chuckle worthy meta moments, but its ending was too saccharine for its own good, the plot was too clearly derivative (which even it admits) and handled the latter character far better than the former. RATING: MEH.

Page 3: [valnet-url-page page=3 paginated=0 text='Hmm...%20It%27s%20Not%20Looking%20Good%20For%20Our%20Heroes']



Infinity Wars #2 is significantly harder to take seriously than a certain cinematic finger snap as the "villain" behind all this stands revealed (blergh) and makes her play for all the marbles, er, Infinity Stones. What's that you say? The Living Tribunal ruled the stones couldn't be used together again? That was two universes and at least two gauntlets ago. At least Marvel's truest survivor, Turk Barrett, finally came to realize his place in all of this. Messy work here with very little worth reading aside from a quip from Rocket. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

In the digital only Luke Cage #1, our man in Harlem gets brain damage via CTE, and it's not even a part of the actual plot. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. When all you have is a set of pre-existing characters and no desire to make new ones due to complex licensing agreements, you get stuff like Extermination #1, a needlessly incestuous time travel tale with high production values. This tiresome taste of Ouroborous has the same problem (and wardrobe) that Infinity Wars #1 had, and that kind of last page reveal is becoming far too cliche to be seen this often. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

Justice League #6 shares quite a bit thematically and tonally with the Justice League movie. That's not a compliment. This mish mash of battered heroes, ascendant but goofily incompetent villains and, as the creators here would call it, "plot," is just boom boom boom, chaos without significance, the pantomiming of the Grant Morrison run without the mythos or resonance as a foundation. Stop. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

Re: Astonishing X-Men Annual #1. Calling it now, Chuck Xavier will be the big bad villain to fight, two, maybe three crossovers from now, max. Also, Zatanna called, some kind of warning about Arthur ... RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

WHAT'S THE PROGNOSIS?

Maaaaaaan ... Marvel really stank it up this week, huh? Justice League didn't help ... ugh, let's try to forget most of this ever happened.

THE BUSINESS

Did you check out this columnist on the new daily nerd podcast from I Heart Radio, talking about the James Bond casting rumors? Worth a listen!

The writer of this column writes a weekly web superhero comic -- Project Wildfire: Street Justice -- free every week. Can't beat "free."

The writer of this column isn't just a jerk who spews his opinions -- he writes stuff too. A lot. Like what? You can get Scoundrel (historical fiction set in 1981 east Los Angeles), Irrational Numbers: Addition (a supernatural historical fiction saga with vampires), Project Wildfire: Enter Project Torrent (a collected superhero web comic), The Crown: Ascension and Faraway, five bucks a piece, or spend a few more dollars and get New Money #1 from Canon Comics, the rambunctious tale of four multimillionaires running wild in Los Angeles, a story in Watson and Holmes Volume 2 co-plotted by 2 Guns creator Steven Grant, two books from Stranger Comics -- Waso: Will To Power and the sequel Waso: Gathering Wind (the tale of a young man who had leadership thrust upon him after a tragedy), or Fathom Sourcebook #1, Soulfire Sourcebook #1, Executive Assistant Iris Sourcebook #1 and Aspen Universe Sourcebook, the official guides to those Aspen Comics franchises. Love these reviews? It'd be great if you picked up a copy. Hate these reviews? Find out what this guy thinks is so freakin' great. There's free sample chapters too, and all proceeds to towards the care and maintenance of his kids ... oh, and to buy comic books, of course. There’s also a bunch of great stuff -- fantasy, superhero stuff, magical realism and more -- available from this writer on Amazon. What are you waiting for? Go buy a freakin' book already!

Got a comic you think should be reviewed in The Buy Pile? If we get a PDF of a fairly normal length comic (i.e. "less than 64 pages") by no later than 24 hours before the actual issue arrives in stores (and sorry, we can only review comics people can go to stores and buy), we guarantee to try and review the work, if remembered. Physical comics? Geddouttahere. Too much drama to store with diminishing resources. If you send it in more than two days before comics come out, the possibility of it being forgotten increases exponentially. Oh, you should use the contact form as the CBR email address hasn't been regularly checked since George W. Bush was in office. Sorry!