Pow!

Initially starting with a premise of a young woman using her job to investigate the murder of her father that she witnessed as a child the story spirals into an ever darker tale of government programs and assassination programs. The protagonist is continually hallucinating, mapping Russian folk tales onto her games of cat and mouse with the retired assassins she is tracking down.

The reminds me of a more naturalistic version of Sam Keith with hair that swirls around the panel and limbs that zig zag away from the body to their terminus. The folkloric characters are vividly rendered and meshes the real and unreal satisfyingly.

The conspiracy plotline helps structure the four issues but towards the end it feels like ultimately this is just a story where people try to kill one another and as the truth of the protagonist's past is revealed things fall into place but not necessarily in a surprising way nor one that deepens or enriches the basic story. By the end I felt that this is probably a riff on the Black Widow origin story (which would also explain the name).

Bang is part metaphysical genre exposition is the style of Doom Patrol or the Invisibles and part genre pastiche.

A writer with an automatic writing machine is able to predict the future, or potential make pulp action heroes become real people. As his writing reveals the end of the world and the way to avoid it he attempts to fulfil the "final adventure" by bringing the subjects of his novels together into a "superteam".

Issue 1 features a take on James Bond where different people are essentially brainwashed with the same set of memories. An amusing explanation for the various Bonds and their different interpretations of the role. The other characters all refer to this character as a misogynistic sociopath but don't seem to hold that against the current incarnation which is a bit odd.

Issue 2 is a take on Die Hard with the John McClane character using inhalers to give himself superhuman abilities. The twist here is the antipathy the various terrorists have with the character that means he ends up in the Die Hard situations repeatedly. It's not as clever as the first issue but the character is more likeable and the powers more intriguing as a mystery but less genre appropriate.

Issue 3 seems a take on Knight Rider when the sentient AI car is deeply in the background compared to the main character who is a paralysed genius who has created a way for her to live a life as a kind of super spy. The character is really interesting but the pulp plot and gadgets just don't engage by comparison.

Issue 4 has a kind of Miss Marple/Poirot pastiche with a character who is a bit like Modesty Blaise in her youth. The whodunnit aspect is kind of interesting (with the suspects giving a suitably arch commentary on the detective's eccentric delivery) with an unexpectedly graphically violent conclusion. As this character has interacted with a previous incarnation of the James Bond character this issue works better on the different levels the story is working on. You have an exotic pulp character whose present and past she finds hard to reconcile while her memories of an exciting man in her past are difficult to reconcile with who that person became after their relationship ended and the current person claiming to be that man.

Issue 4 brings the action hero team together, essentially ending the first arc. It's pretty clear the next stage is a take on the crossover story but lurking in the background is strange meta-fictional universe and the meaning of the warring organisations.

So finally Teeg Lawless meets his appointed violent fate. Given that he is such a dislikable character and the death has been foreshadowed for this entire run it felt a somewhat mechanical exercise to read through the conclusion.

There is a twist! Having heavily outlined the probable scenario for the conclusion there's a swerve at the end which feels earned but which also renders the lead in as heavy-handed. This story is a kind of prequel to the main series, which I haven't read; maybe if I had I'd feel differently about how the story unspools.

Given Teeg's general unpleasantness (which renders much of the pulp twist at the end of the story implausible, why wouldn't anyone kill him in self-defense?) much of the emotional journey of the story is placed on the shoulders of the abused Ricky Lawless.

Ricky is really the only character that has a proper interior life in this story. You're not rooting for him, he's also the story's one piece of naturalism. He's been born down, he doesn't get a break and he isn't going to be redeemed. His spirit is crushed from an early age and he doesn't have the strength of character to overcome his numerous struggles.

His story also provides a good argument for trying to create a better juvenile justice system, although that's more something the reader infers. The pulp influence on the story prevents a deeper social critique.

The heist section at the end of the book is pretty good and is the place where Teeg's sentimentality and rage are used to good effect. The tension rises over these scenes as you know the denouement must be near and the long and short term story arcs converge.

Sean Phillips' artwork is a joy as ever and possibly for the end of this series he is the person who was pulling me from issue to issue. Thank goodness he doesn't get tired of drawing people with broken noses.

Matt Smith's art is as compelling and enjoyable as ever (the drugged gnomes and the depictions of Ugly's adventurers are standouts) but the story here probably moves a bit too quickly unless it's actually about going to be about something other than what I expected The Folklord is revealed as is a predictable truth about Ansel

The whole metafiction and ironic distance from the cliched fantasy background doesn't connect. Even if Ansel's world is simply a backwater of imaginative construction it would still be more powerful to give it more validity than it has currently. Otherwise why should we care about all these characters and their problems? Only people who know the "truth" seem valid as people.

I'm still reading and I'm still engaged but I'm not feeling that invested.

This is Kieron Gillen's take on Watchmen both visually, thematically and verbally. The blood splattered smiley, the Comedian's plummet from his apartment, Rorschach's disintegration, Ozymandius's televisions and more are riffed on and recreated.

The essential vibe is what did Ozymandius do after the end of Watchmen.

In this story what he did is try to save alternative Earths from nuclear destruction, unfortunately resulting in their destruction due to repeated flaws in his play. In a clever bit of justification of his actions he points out that he is only villainous if he never succeeds, if he succeeds then the failures are the cost of success.

Peter Cannon's power of formalism allows him to exploit the conventions of comic books, such as moving through panels and creating covers to move between dimensions.

Ultimately it is a stay in a dimension based on Eddie Campbell's Alec comics (including appearances by Campbell and Moore) that provide Cannon the inspiration to defeat himself. Exploiting his lack of willingness to change his vision of perfection Cannon is torn apart by a three by three grid.

This is all highly meta and self-referential and its entertainment value depends strongly on how you feel about that. I thought it was clever and the recreation of Campbell's comics is uncanny but it also feels emotionally unsatisfying and too easy.

I was kind of expecting a continuation of the "Young Francis" storyline but instead this is all short autobiographical comics about becoming a dad. It reminded me a lot of dad blogs, naturally, but also in terms of format King Cat.

Not really my thing at all.

A detective story set in London and created by a former Tintin artist and in a very similar style. The characters are caricatures of colonial adventurers. They hang around their club and are buffeted by events in their amateurism. Escapes are lucky, people off-scene deliver the clues required to solve the mystery (twice).

The art is excellent, the translated lettering is dense and verbose. The plot is pretty strange sci-fi reflecting an age of scientific credulity. It's supernatural elements are pretty unnecessary beyond the basics of hypnotic mind control and a flying goggle version of Google Glass.

While this post-apocalyptical vision of a wandering band of superhuman warriors is influenced by a lot of pop culture that I don't really know (Dragonball Z) it offers a vein of affecting pathos shot through its cartoonish violence.

The book opens with a couple "fusing" into one new being combining the best of both members of the fusion. A strange floating airship appears and incinerates the new combined being.

Behind the airship marches an army of outlandish warriors, who are going to be our main protagonists. Discussing the fate of the recently deceased fusion they introduce themselves in a self-consciously meta way where each character has a page showing their best power pose and the characters discuss their biography and key traits in a way that is both camp, arch and aching in the anime genre's style of exposition.

Here we learn that spy Megan has a plan to overthrow Imperious Rhaaa, their overload. Rhaaa is leaking energy and is hiding someone inside his throne room in the floating ship.

Rhaaa has banned the act of fusion, hence the punishment at the start of the story, but the conspirators first act is to break that rule and start to create a superbeing, this is the start of a spiraling series of fusions that is going to power the story from here on in. It also starts to feature various composite names for the fused characters which use puns and playful combinations to various degrees of success.

From here Megan begins to assemble an army around him but almost immediately people are resisting his leadership and are revolted by the fusion he has persuaded others to perform.

The most interesting part around the next extended scene in an underground bar is a few panels where one of the characters realises that their former lover has fused and while the resulting person retains some memory and feelings for them they are stricken by what they see as a betrayal of their feelings.

All this is in the context of absurdist violence I have to be clear. Comic combat that is grotesque, extreme and devoid of what could be considered pain, anguish or suffering. Mental torment is the most real suffering here.

The story now moves on to the confrontation between Rhaaa and a newly fused Megan (who remains the dominant personality and essentially continues through the rest of the story as a single character). Megan challenges Rhaaa for the rule of the planet and it is revealed that Rhaaa has been concealing a puppy. Rhaaa is seemingly killed while protecting the puppy but in fact goes through some kind of transition and incarnates in a new "Upset" form.

With Rhaaa seemingly dead his warriors go beserk and being fusing with abandon. You start to realise why it was banned in the first place as anarchy seems to reign as the warriors compete to fuse with as many others as they can and kill anyone they can't use.

In the sub-plot Rhaaa reveals that his rise to dominance and current affection for the puppy is driven by the killing of his puppy as a teenager by the first wave of warriors. His self-loathing is driven by his desire to punish the superhumans and the necessity of being one to achieve his goals. Marshall Law has nothing on this self-loathing!

The final act is pretty bonkers with Megan taking the form Flamegan, a huge flaming titan who Rhaaa threatens to punch so hard that he'll defuse. Rhaaa is aided by Rita Raider who refused to join Megan earlier in the story.

At this point the metaphysics of the universe become as warped as the fused warriors and essentially the conflict ends in a massive plasmic explosion that seems to destroy both Rhaaa and Megan who both experience a revelation of the futility of their existences during the fight.

The postscript sees the warriors and Rita, freed now of any overlords delighting in the puppy. A kind of bonkers bathos that reflects the genre's essentially innocent killers.

The whole thing is a mad work of love that dances the line of parody and homage. Although often hard to follow it invests a solemnity in its own logic and invests the male characters in depths of ambition, self-pity and hubris. At one point Megan begs for mercy because he is immortal and therefore fighting is pointless. It exemplifies the combination of circular logic, transcendental logic and raw cowardice that colours the interior lives of the principles. Rhaaa's reaction is to reflect that he only wishes to be loved.

The colour palette of yellow and purple seems primitive at first but then builds a sense of intensity that pays off as the action gets more absurd and titanic. The huge swathes of flame and smoke echo the mass destruction of Akira but with the throbbing colours of a children's cartoon.

Dark Angels of Darkness is a hot mess of humour, artful primitivism and East-West pop culture. It's an acquired taste but it's one worth seeing whether it fits your tastes.

Magical Beatdown melds graphic, gory, over the top violence with the magical schoolgirl manga trope.

A schoolgirl with a queer crush, illustrated in mono blue, is able to transform into a magical warrior, illustrated in electric pink, who maims and kills misogynist gang members in the defence of women.

In the final showdown the leader of the gang is revealed to be possessed by a demon resulting in pretty much a classic manga monster hunter showdown a gory, explosive finale.

It's not really my taste but the technical use of monochrome is excellent.

In an alternative 1950s America nuclear tests have resulted in huge mutant insects that are used instead of mammals for food and industrial materials.

A young boy befriends a classmate, only to discover that she and her family don't eat insects. Friendship turns into a crush.

When the schoolchildren are told to dissect a humanoid insect, the girl, Cindy, instead frees the insect and hides it in her home with the collusion of her parents. This is the inflection point of the story that moves it from alternative Americana to a horror story.

With obvious overtones of the Klan the story switches to vigilantism and choosing whether to conform or resist.

The artwork is highly stylised and while it has a 50s vibe the colour and line are discernable modern and clearly homage rather than pastiche.

I found it visually satisfying with a creepily memorable storyline.