Meaningless Awards of the Week- 4/18/07
Artist of the Week- Kristian Donaldson, Fallen Angel #15
Wait a second! Someone else is getting the Meaningless Award for Artist of the Week the same week Darwyn Cooke’s The Spirit came out? How is that even possible? Well, you just have to combine the always fantastic Fallen Angel with an awesome new artist. I’m not sure where this Donaldson fella came from, or what he’s done (if anything) before Fallen Angel, but I am very much looking forward to seeing a lot more of his work.
Best Surprise of the Week- Harley Quinn is the Secret Sixth, Birds of Prey #105
There’s got to be six members of the Secret Six. But since Ragdoll pushed Mad Hatter off a cliff in Secret Six #6, there have only been five. What kind of person would be crazy enough to join such a dysfunctional team, though? Crazy, dysfunctional Harley Quinn, of course. I never would have guessed she’d be the sixth member, but now that she is, I don’t know how it could have been anyone else. And since the Secret Six is semi-heroic, Harley’s membership doesn’t even contradict her recent de-vilification in Detective Comics. Keen!
Spoiled Surprise of the Week- Ultimate Beast isn’t dead, Ultimate X-Men # 81
The death of Beast is about the only memorable moment from Brian Michael Bendis’ terrible run on Ultimate X-Men. And its really only memorable because no one wanted to see him die in the first place and there wasn’t really any good reason to kill him off. Since then, UXM fans have been speculating if and when Beast would return to the land of the living. That occurred in this week’s Ultimate X-Men #81, although it probably would have been a good idea for Marvel to not put the out-of-mind character on the cover. That way, his actual reappearance in the actual story might have come as an actual surprise. I really wish Marvel and DC would stop trying to one-up each other on the bad things like spoiler covers, underwhelming “events” and Michael Turner variants.
Most Appropriate Issue Number of the Week- X-Men #198
Splash Page of the Week- Darwyn Cooke, The Spirit #5
Fear not! I still managed to fit the The Spirit double page splash in here.
Book of the Week- Nightwing Annual #2
I didn’t enjoy an issue more this week than I did Nightwing Annual #2. In fact, there wasn’t even a close second. Even with Manhunter, Birds of Prey, X-Factor, Invincible, Fallen Angel and The Spirit coming out this week. And that’s saying something.
Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise already covered the issue pretty thoroughly in their podcast last week, so I’m not going to go over it all again. I pretty much agreed with everything Jim Doom said about the issue, which might be a first here on the Legion of Doom.
I think the reason this issue stood out head and shoulders above the rest (aside from being written and illustrated incredibly well) was the fact that I really, really cared about what happened between Nightwing and Oracle after he proposed to her right before heading off to take down Alex Luthor. There’s something about these two characters that just feels right when you put them together. There aren’t many romantic duos in comicdom that you can really say that about, and even fewer where both people are superheroes.
The Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon relationship is something special. Somehow, Nightwing Annual #2 made it even more special. And yes, Colonel Doom, it is all right to care about it.
What made the Bendis run on UXM “terrible” ?
Yeah, I actually liked it better than BKV’s run by far. And I haven’t gone back to the book since, so I suppose it’s safe to say I enjoyed him more than any of the writers aside from maybe Millar.
As I’ve written about before, it was one of Bendis’ issues (#35?) that was a standalone with Wolverine that was so good it helped convince me to start reading comics regularly again.
All right, I’ll give you that standalone Wolverine story. I forgot about that one.
But Bendis’ first arc on Ultimate X-Men was an Ultimate Spider-Man story that was a team-up with Ultimate Daredevil and Ultimate Wolverine. That’s not the Ultimate X-Men. His second arc debuted a bunch of new Ultimatized mutants for no good reason, when they should have been held back until someone actually had an idea for them. And I remember hating the art very much.
JCVD, I actually think BKV’s run is by far the best one in the history of UXM. The Longshot arc was fantastic.
I don’t get where you can say things like “for no good reason.” Of course there was a reason! If he introduced them for no reason, that would be like if he introduced a whole bunch of new characters and then they played tennis or went to get ice cream.
The BKV run is where I stopped buying UXM (before the Ultimate Cable storyline – I don’t even remember what was going on) which I’d been buying since the #20s.
And if hating the art is part of why you think it’s terrible, then calling it “Bendis’ terrible run” makes it look like you’re just looking for another excuse to rip on Bendis.
Well, I don’t remember who was on art, so I can’t blame them.
Ultimate Sinister. Ouch.
Think about how you’d react if, after reading an arc on Ultimate Spider-Man that someone didn’t like for the art and the writing, they referred to “Mark Bagley’s terrible arc on USM.”
And good call on Ultimate Sinister, JCVD. Brandon Peterson’s art was so bad on that arc…further proof that Bryan K Vaughn sucks on UXM! 😉
Well, if anything, Mark Bagley’s had a terrible run, not a terrible arc. And considering who he had to work with :wink:, I’d bet that’s probably the case.
Kristian Donaldson teamed up with the awesome Brian Wood to draw a decent miniseries from IDW called “Supermarket,” for which Donaldson is also nominated for an Eisner for Best Colorist.
He’s got great stuff, and I bought some of his art from his website on the cheap.