Panini have done it again, getting their trade paperback of Marvel’s latest big event out into bookshops before Marvel have even released the hardcover. This means you can pick up a copy of Fear Itself TPB for about £8/$13 less than the HC and thanks to The Book Depository you can get global free shipping!

Writer: Matt Fraction
Pencillers: Stuart Immonen, Scot Eaton
Inkers: Wade Von Grawbadger, Mark Morales
Colourists: Laura Martin, Sunny Gho
Letterers: Chris Eliopoulis, Joe Caramagna
Collects: Fear Itself Prologue, Fear Itself #1-7

Without spoiling exactly what goes on, the central plot to Fear Itself is that an ancient evil is reawakened by Sin (daughter of the Red Skull) and empowers her and six others using mystic hammers which transform them into avatars of destruction. They then spread terror across the globe, which in turn makes their benefactor stronger as he feeds on fear and in turn are fought by the Avengers amongst others heroes. Events centre around the major Avengers players, so Thor, Captain America (both) and Iron Man all have pivotal parts to play in the storyline.

Fear Itself is an odd event. In recent times one of the great advantages that Marvel events had was that their concepts were easily explained, I think this is one of the reasons that Civil War and Secret Invasion got so much mainstream coverage (“Super-hero civil war” and “alien invasion” don’t take too much explaining to a non-reader), whereas DC’s had a tendency to be a bit more in-depth and require more knowledge on the part of the reader. This to me feels very much like Marvel trying to “do a DC” following the great success of Blackest Night. I’ve been trying to think of a simple statement in that Marvel style to describe Fear Itself’s plot…the best I can muster is “An age-old war between gods fuels and is fuelled by mankind’s fear” and that’s hardly punchy.

The way in which the various heroes and villains are transformed into avatars of destruction was very reminiscent of Blackest Night, as was the transformation of the heroes in the final battle. You have redesigned characters which just seem to be trying far too hard to be a toyline and which will only last for the duration of the event. There’s also a certain spectrum of colour to all the transformations from which I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Lantern Corps. Now this may be me projecting too much but after years of Marvel events which didn’t feature this sort of thing it feels like too much of a coincidence to see this the year after BN was such a commercial success.

When the story was all-out action I enjoyed myself, Stuart Immonen does his usual great job on the art and the scale of battle is truly epic, but there are large chunks of the plot that don’t really work for me. Sin is the first to be transformed, into Skadi, but whilst all of the other avatars are imbued with power that puts them on the level of Thor she is shortly thereafter seen piloting a Nazi battlemech…it doesn’t add up for me. It feels like they had too many ideas lying around and couldn’t let that one go. Odin’s abandonment of Earth also seems to fly in the face of the established idea that the Marvel Pantheon’s powers wax and wain in light of the number of their followers. Oh and a final whinge, I didn’t like that Asgard is now described as a planet in space, not as another realm. Pulling the MU closer to the movie universe feels the wrong way round.

The emotional bullets within the story also miss, there’s a character death which should have had far more resonance than it did, in fact I don’t think I felt empathy for any of the characters even those I am predisposed to liking. But I just can’t say I disliked it. As I mentioned above the art is good and packaging the story to include the Book of the Skull Prologue issue does add a lot to the story which you don’t get from #1 alone. The book ends with a series of teasers for storylines spinning out of Fear Itself, I don’t know if these were originally published in Fear Itself #7, the indicia isn’t very enlightening.

Whilst it has its high points Fear Itself is ultimately unsatisfying.

Rating: 

Reviewer: Dave Williams

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller: Alan Davis
Inker: Mark Farmer
Colourist: Javier Rodriguez
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulous

Collects: Avengers Prime #1-5

Continuing my reviews of recent Panini Marvel trades I come to a book that has me written all over it. Bendis is one of my favourite writers, Alan Davis is in my top 3 pencillers and the rest of the creative team is pretty damn spiffy…all that and they’re working on a book which brings The Avengers’ Big 3 back together! If only the reality of reading the book lived up to my hopes, but I’m afraid it does not.

This book picks up in the immediate aftermath of Siege with the figurative, and literal, dust still settling on Oklahoma following those events. Thor is joined by Steve Rogers and a newly returned Tony Stark. The tensions between the three, particularly the mortals, are immediately apparent with the events of Civil War at the forefront of the latter two’s minds. Thankfully events transpire that whisk the unhappy threesome away from Midgard to a somewhat different Asgard than any of them remember. One point of note is that the Rainbow Bridge effect that’s used by Davis is a slightly more colourful version of what’s seen in the Thor movie, so similar in fact that I wonder if he wasn’t tipped a wink by editorial about what the movie would feature.

What follows is a story about the re-connecting of these three Marvel icons and whilst beautifully rendered by Davis I found the story to be lacking in any sense of occasion or significance. The adversities they face, first individually and then as a team, don’t seem to put their lives in any real peril and I’m not sure that the reconciliation feels “earned”. To me this felt like a by-the-numbers way to get the characters reconciled in the quickest way possible (all the events being squeezed into a couple of days of Midgard time) to put everything behind them. I don’t see that this needed to be in its own mini-series and I have to be honest I think it’s a waste of all-too-rare Alan Davis interior work.

Rating: 

Writer: Jeph Loeb
Penciller: Frank Cho
Inker: Frank Cho
Colourists: Brad Anderson, Jason Keith, Matt Milla
Letterer: Albert W. Deschesne, Richard Starkings

Collects: Ultimate New Ultimates #1-5

I dropped out of the Ultimate universe just before Ultimatum, not through any deliberate gesture on my part, just because my interest petered out. The good people at Panini have generously provided me a few review copies of Ultimate U trades, of which this is one, which have kept me somewhat in the loop. However, having said that I wasn’t too sure of the status of the UU version of Thor coming into this book, in fact between this and some other review UU books I had to ask a few well-informed geeks what the reading order was between UNU: Thor Reborn, Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Thor!

The first thing that has to be said is that this is a really silly title for a book, I’ve no idea what was wrong with New Ultimates but this is about as daft as having a title called Avenging New Avengers or Defending Secret Defenders…it all just sounds a little power rangers to me.

As we join the action Thor is in Valhalla, having died a warrior’s death, and his place on the Ultimates has been taken by Valkyrie, a character first introduced in the 2nd volume of Ultimates as an unpowered superhero groupie as part of the cosplayesque Defenders team. It’s this team which acts as the catalyst for the story, as they attack the Ultimates which exposes a nefarious plot by Loki and the Enchantress. Meanwhile Thor is seeking to bargain his way out of Valhalla by making a deal with Hela. As things progress, unsurprisingly, the plot threads come together for a city-shattering battle or two.

It’s not the most intricate plot you’ll read this year, it’s more of a combination of certain well known plot elements “deal with the devil”, “heroes under a villains mind-control” etc. but that doesn’t stop it being an enjoyable read. Probably the most interesting element are the monologues which guide us through each issue, bringing us the deeper thoughts of a variety of characters. In particular the Loki one is very revealing of his need to mess with Thor, not kill him mind you, just screw around with him.

There’s a few cameos by characters not central to the Ultimates story and I love seeing Loki wearing a suit, reminds me of some of his  early appearances in Journey Into Mystery.

I’m an unabashed lover of Frank Cho’s art, my grail page is one of his featuring She-Hulk which I’d sell my soul for (see, I told you deals with the devil were overused), and he really opens up here as he’s given the opportunity to not only draw his usual incredibly sexy female characters but also has the chance to draw some huge battle scenes. Let’s be honest, who hasn’t wanted to see sabretooth tigers fighting trolls and dragons? One aspect that I’d commend the art team on is the balance between trying to show the brutal consequences of these fights without going overly gory in the detail. I think they do a fantastic job, and while the result isn’t all-ages it also doesn’t have the over-the-top guts everywhere of something like Siege.

And as ever with Panini this is a reasonably priced TPB (£12.99 for 5 issues or as low as £8.27 online) in the same month that Marvel put out their HC.

Rating: 

So now that I actually have one what do I have to say? I’m not going to do a general review as the Internet is full of those. Instead I’ll focus on my views on comics via the iPad 2.

One of the first things I noted was the quality of the display. Having used an iPhone 4 for a while now and getting used to the retina display and its ultra high pixel density I was really worried that the screen would be a let down. The iPad 2 wields the same screen as the original with a resolution of 1024×768…and it’s really very good. Yes you can tell the difference particularly when looking at really smal text like app names, but in general I’m impressed. The inevitable iPad 3 or 2+ (whatever they call it) with higher res screen will no doubt look incredible when it arrives.

Moving across to the iPad was quite easy, I was able to save a backup of my phone and use that as a restoration point for the iPad. This meant at I was able to get a lot of settings and apps straight across. I did notice however that most of the comic apps didn’t install, as far as I can tell this is because they have a separate iPad app which needs to be downloaded.

In the space of 15 mins I’d downloaded Comixology, Marvel, DC, IDW, iVerse. Although given that Marvel & DC apps are based on Comixology and IDW is based on iVerse I could have saved myself some time.

Firing up the market leader (Comixology) I noticed immediately that performance of the app was far better than on the iPhone (which uses an under clock version of the iPad 1 processor) and better than the iPad 1. Not surprising as the iPad 2 has a dual core processor clocked to a higher speed and also double the RAM.

I also noticed that I had no link to “my comics” and having bought a whole bunch of books in anticipation of the iPad I was a bit worried. And then the awesome power of the Internet took over…I tweeted my problem @comixology and within minutes had a reply which pointed out a setti which by default means that comics which you haven’t downloaded on the device are hidden. I can see that making sense as an option but having that switched on by default is a bit of a mistake in my opinion, particularly for existing users.

Having fixed this problem my comics immediately appeared for download. Downloading a comic over my 50Mbps broadband at home took about 50 seconds.

Using iTunes I loaded PKD Media’s Mercury and the Murd vol 1 into iBooks as a PDF. The reading experience here is far more simplified than in the specialist apps but still a very pleasant reading experience.

Not much else, if anything, about the experience of iPad comics has changed. It’s faster and the iPad 2 being lighter and thinner than the previous version it’s less of a handful. I must admit though that the angled edge of chassis makes it a little sharp and it pushes into the hand making it an uncomfortable single-handed read.

Here’s what we know:

As yet we don’t know how much additional RAM the iPad 2 has but it’s safe to say it’ll be up on the 256MB in the iPad.

So as a digital comic fan, or a potential fan, what does this mean?

Well…in truth it’s not a game-changer for digital comics in most senses. With one exception. In my humble geek opinion the current crop of iPad/iPhone apps perform poorly on the iPhone 4 and marginally ok on the iPad. With more RAM and dual-core processor the iPad 2 should generally perform much better when you’re browing comixology or iverse. I do think the reduction in depth and weight will improve the overall reading experience as well.

The absence of a retina quality display will disappoint a lot of people and is an inevitable addition when the iPad 2s or iPad 3 appears in 6-12 months.

The iPad 2 goes on sale in the UK on 25th March. I’ll be back soon after with my thoughts.

What Diamond are attempting to do is make hay from the digital marketplace without alienating their retailer customers. This is nigh-on impossible task and while I like to kick Diamond as much as the next man I don’t envy them in their desire to not ignore a burgeoning market whilst relying almost utterly on retailers for their revenue.

Diamond Digital seems to have three main strands:

1. Day & Date releases of digital titles priced at $1.99 by redeeming online a code you can only buy in an LCS with 30 day exclusivity
2. 99c digital copies of titles for those who buy the hard copy in an LCS with 30 day exclusivity
3. The ability for LCSs to run websites selling digital comics and making a cut

iVerse have stated that they don’t have to pay Apple a cut (from which I’ve inferred that you purchase your code for option 1 rather than being given it and then purchasing the comic) and that stores will be able to sell other collected digital editions. Given Apple’s recent efforts to ensure that all content viewed through iOS apps is purchased via the app store I’ll be interested to see how well iVerse do in being able to stick to this.

Day & Date is a powerful motivator for a lot of people and with publishers such as Top Cow, IDW and Tokyopop onboard you could see this being of interest, but…and this is a big but, are people really going to walk into a comic store in order to purchase a digital comic to then download once they’ve redeemed their code through the Comics+ app? I just can’t see it, to me this feels like a clunky attempt to golden handcuff customers to physical stores.

I’d love it to be a success, but this isn’t the Great Byte Hope that the digital marketplace has been looking for.

2011 kicked off with the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. If there was a theme for the event it was tablets…lots and lots of tablets. And today at an HP event they’ve announced their foray into the marketplace, the Touchpad.

This means that in the first half of 2011 if rumour and tradeshow promises are to be believed we’ll have four potentially significant tablets being released along with a slew of others.

iPad 2

It’s going to be the least surprising announcement of the year when it comes. Everyone knows Apple are working on a 2nd generation of the iPad and as things stand it’s the version I’ll be buying. I’m expecting evolution not revolution, faster, more memory, a camera, an updated iOS…not expecting anything from left field. Tech rumours made a lot of mention of a higher res display but the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that it’s for a later generation.

Motorola Xoom

This is the heavy hitter for the Android crowd. A Tegra dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 32GB Storage, 10″ 1280×800 (up from the iPad’s 1024×768) resolution, 5MP camera, HD video recording and playback and running the tablet-focused Android 3.0 (AKA Honeycomb). Android is the area with the most number of tablets hitting the market, but the Xoom is at the top of the spec sheets at the moment. Comixology have an Android app already out there and with sales figures catching up with the iPad’s I’d expect more publishers heading to the Android Market soon. Did I forget to mention flash? Well this baby will run flash, meaning that the 9000+ comics on Marvel’s DCU service should all be readable if you’ve got a subscription. A hefty expected $799 pricetag though.

Blackberry Playbook

Where tablets meet business. This is a smaller 7″ 1024×600 tablet running an OS which has yet to be given its own snazzy name…so I’ll call it Geoff. While this is focused as a productivity tool for business folks it’s going to end up in the hands of a lot of people as while IT departments are typically a bit squirrelly about dishing out iPads the blackberry is practically part of the decor. I can’t see there being specific apps (who knows) but it it runs flash then it will potentially open some doors.

HP TouchPad

The new kid on the block. Running webOS 3.0 and having an equally spiffy dual-core 1GHz processor, a 9.7″ 1024×768 screen (same as iPad), 1GB RAM and also supporting flash this is a bit of an outsider’s choice. The UI certainly looks slick and the features list is on a par with even the Xoom. Pricing will be key, as will app support.

The tablet purchaser is going to be spoiled for choice in 2011, let’s just hope that the publishers have something truly compelling to offer.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artists: Takeshi Miyazawa & David Lafuente
Colourist: Justin Ponsor
Letterer: Cory Petit

Collects: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #7-14

I doff my cap to Brian Michael Bendis and David Lafuente if only for one thing they do in this trade. When Marvel relaunched Ult. Spider-Man, Lafuente chose a very particular look for Spider-Man…I like to think of it as “Beachball Head Spidey”. I’m not the only one who found this to be a big barrier in enjoying the series and it got a sizeable mention in my review of the first volume of these Panini trades. But, to the matter at hand. Bendis finds a way to actually address this stylistic choice (and by extension fan reaction to it) directly in the story as a plot point and Lafuente has the balls to follow it through and have a bit of fun at his own artistic expense. I thought this was brilliant and showed great character on both their parts. Not only that but the slight modification to Lafuente’s design works a treat and I found myself getting into the story a lot more.

I can’t help but view this relaunched series as a separate continuity from the original run of USM…it just has a different feel to it, almost as if the clock has been rewound a couple of years. This arc is a little bogged down in Ultimate continuity but I think you could enjoy it without the preceding 20+ trades of material. The main characters are all pretty much household names and whilst some of the plot elements (especially around a certain smooching session a character has) won’t make sense I think the overall story will carry you through.

The story has a little bit of a twisted tone to it but retains its lightness as well, there’s a distinct absence of “woe is me!” and artistically the two issues by Miyazawa are solid, his characters seem a little short and stocky but this is probably just his style. Oh, and his Aunt May is more to my liking than Lafuente, who seems to have aged her 20 yrs since the Bagley work. A particular plot-point is left dangling at the end of the trade and I’m really interested to see how this pans out.

Much improved.

Rating: 

Writer: Dan Jurgens
Additional Art: Mike Norton, Jerry Ordway
Finished Inks: Norm Rapmund
Colourist: Hi-Fi
Letterers: Sal Cipriano, Jared K Fletcher, Steve Wands, Travis Lanham

Collects: Booster Gold #26-31

When a trade has a credits list as unconventional as this I start to worry, thankfully in this instance I shouldn’t really have. Whilst this unusual way of splitting the art chores does lead to a bit of inconsistency in the art, it doesn’t having a significant detrimental effect on the reading experience. The events of this trade overlap with DC’s Blackest Night crossover event with one of Booster’s “dearly departed” returning to cause him significant strife. Fear ye not however as the crossover element of this book is fleeting and you don’t really need to have read Blackest Night to understand that this certain character has been resurrected but as an evil version. If you’ve read BN then it’s a nice addition but doesn’t fundamentally change the story.

As is his current nature Booster starts the trade having a bit of a mope. He returns to the scene of what he feels was his worst moment absenting himself from Rip Hunter and worrying Skeets enough that he goes door-to-door with other heroes trying to find him. This leads nicely into the Blackest Night issues (or really issue and a half) before we round out the trade with a story about Booster’s sister picking the worst possible place and time (literally) to settle down in.

I think the role Booster has been cast into within the DCU continues to work well and make the character far deeper than he was originally. The ongoing tension between Booster and his time-teacher Rip Hunter is a little overplayed with Booster tending to spend a bit too much time rebelling or moping and Rip being cryptic and then expositional once Booster leaves the room.

The title’s premise allows Booster to be put into any time period within DCU history and while that doesn’t guarantee a good story it certainly opens the door to some great opportunities as long as you’re not too allergic to retcons. Given this use of DC history I think the title favours those with a bit of DC reading under their belts in order to really understand the significance of events.

As I mentioned at the beginning the art isn’t entirely consistent, I think it’s the issues which Mike Norton pencilled that feel like the odd ones out, but you couldn’t critique them for being wrong or in any measurable way inferior…they’re just different.

Jurgens manages in the last issue or so to give a real “ooooo” moment as well as a wonderful hook to drag us forcibly into Rip’s adventures in the Time Masters mini-series.

Rating: 

Writers: Greg Pak, Paul Tobin, Fred Van Lente
Pencillers: Adam Archer, Reilly Brown, Zach Howard, Ariel Olivetti, Ryan Stegman
Inkers: Michael Babinski, Ariel Olivetti, Terry Pallot, Jason Paz
Colourists: June Chung, Ariel Olivetti, Wil Quintana, Val Staples
Letterers: Simon Bowland, Clayton Cowles, Joe Sabino

Collects: Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1-2, Heroic Age: Prince of Power #1-4

It takes something for a book to get away with as badly characterising well-known heroes as this one does at times…and thankfully this collection has it. Now there’s a bit of an elephant in the room in terms of the plot here, which I would consider a bit of a spoiler but I can’t really go on without getting it out there. So, if you want to stop reading now’s the time.

Still here? Good. The two series collected in this book deal with the Marvel Universe’s reaction to the death of Hercules in the Assault on New Olympus storyline. The first two issues, drawn by Ariel Olivetti, have the heroes of the MU gathering at the Parthenon to say their final words on the original Prince of Power. Of course his best friend Amadeus Cho (7th smartest person on the planet) is first there but he’s soon joined by heroes with direct or tangential relationships with Herc who all want to say their piece. Each character gets their chance to tell a tale of Hercules, usually revealing him to be a deeper or better person than he’s often considered to be.

Lover, fighter and friend are all covered by the assemblage before the arrival of the Greek Pantheon who are deciding who will take over the earthly holdings of the Olympus Group. This second issue takes the form of a “team battle” as Athena and Apollo select mortals to do battle for the right to lead. Frankly it’s a little clichéd and it’s only the resolution of the fight which holds any interest and allows Amadeus to take flight to the realm of Hades for one last chat to his best friend.

We then cleanse our palate with the story of Namora and Venus of the Agents of Atlas on a world tour to close down Herc’s earthly holdings, turns out he didn’t spend it all on ale and whores after all! It’s a nice little story and again shows another side of Hercules.

As we enter the Prince of Power arc Amadeus has  his hands full dealing with Athena whilst looking for a way to recover his lost pal. This arc sees the reintroduction of an old-school Hulk villain which was a great surprise and Amadeus teamed up with Thor. This is probably the worst piece of characterisation in the book as Thor talks about Youtube and roofies. I don’t want Thor to be completely a man out of time but it doesn’t sit at all well with how I’m reading Thor in other titles at the moment…frankly it was all a little Thunderstrike. We get some great scenes with Delphyne Gorgon, Amadeus’s off-and-on girlfriend, in which she goes all Die Hard on the troops of the big bad.

Even though there are these character problems the fact is this story is a whole load of fun which more than makes up for any weakness. There’s one spot with an Egyptian cat-goddess being turned into a lolcat-goddess which is just absolute bloody genius. The art doesn’t press my buttons but it stays on-model and Cho is represented looking like he’s 17 rather than the 12/13yr old some artists seem to peg him at.

It’s a good collection, Marvel didn’t succumb to the temptation to pad with reprints, it’s all “new” material which whilst split into three parts does hold some common narrative thread.

Rating: