Weekly Wanderlust typically features reviews of comics released in the current week, but this one is a selection of comics from recent past weeks.
Comeback #5 (of 5)
Image Comics
Ed Brisson
(a) Michael Walsh
Ed Brisson’s time-travelling miniseries comes to a close. The best thing I can say about Comeback is that it is not a mind-f… that collapses under the weight of its own ambitions.
Brisson’s time-travel plot is tight. Few characters. A narrow window of time. Simplistic, really, if you boil it down to the essentials, which are this: Time travel is illegal. A Federal agent is trying to shut down an organization using it to profit from people that would pay a lot of money to reclaim the lives of recently departed loved ones. And, wisely, Brisson presents us with a few simple, logical rules of how time travel works in his world.
Well done, sir.
Remember these names, folks: Brisson and Walsh. They’ve got exciting careers ahead of them. (Chad Boudreau)
Helheim #1
Oni Press
Cullen Bunn
(a) Joelle Jones
I purchased this debut issue because the writer, Cullen Bunn, co-created one of my current favourite ongoing series, The Sixth Gun. That particular book is a supernatural adventure story told in the Old West. Helheim looked to be a supernatural adventure story told in the time of the Vikings.
Helheim is a supernatural adventure story told in the time of the Vikings. It is also a series with an end to its beginning that took me by surprise. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming because of the cover art, but I never claimed to be a keen observer.
What I did observe for sure is the kinetic art of Joelle Jones. The opening sequence is alive with motion— fleeing and fighting in a palette of atmospheric colors provided by Nick Filardi. And I honestly just now noticed that Helheim is lettered by my friend Ed Brisson, creator of Comeback, a review for which you’ve read further up the page. (Chad Boudreau)
Manhattan Projects #10
Image Comics
Jonathan Hickman
(a) Nick Dragotta
The entire proceedings are a visual representation of what is occurring in a character’s mind—specifically the beginnings of a quiet, yet bloody power struggle between a single “good” personality and a multitude of “evil” personalities. This is a great issue if you’ve been reading Manhattan Projects since #1, but #10 is quite possibility the worst jumping on-point ever.
But, wow.
Get caught up on Manhattan Projects and then we’ll talk. (Chad Boudreau)
Mars Attacks #8
IDW
John Layman
(a) John McCrea
My favourite comics are, at their heart regardless of genre, character driven stories. Y: The Last Man, Sandman and Fear Agent, as examples. But sometimes I just want a comic in which a carnie rides a giant mutated flea in order to fight bug-eyed, brain-popping-out-of-the-head Martians that have come to destroy our one and only home.
The flea-riding occurred in an earlier issue of Mars Attacks, a comic series that is inspired by and pays homage to the trading cards from 1962. This most recent issue features an arrogant Mafioso who promises to lead the Martians to a weapon capable of killing them if they agree to help him kill the human assassins hunting him.
This issue once again proves that this comic is not a collection of tired images of Martians and humans killing each other. Writer John Layman moves the perspective to a different character each issue, keeping the narrative fresh, offering new insight into the minds of the combatants, including, as in this issue, the Martians. Blyx begins to believe that perhaps humans and Martians could learn to live together. Oh, Blyx, you naïve alien… (Chad Boudreau)
Sledgehammer 44 #1 (of 2)
Dark Horse Comics
Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
(a) Jason Latour
It does my comic shop owner heart well whenever someone purchases their first Hellboy, BRPD, Witchfinder, Baltimore, Abe Sapien, or Lobster Johnson trade paperback. That’s because they are entering the rich, sometimes scary, sometimes touching, and always surprising world of Mike Mignola.
Sledgehammer 44 is a two-part series set in WWII. A troop of Americans are charged with keeping classified equipment from the Germans. That equipment is dropped from an airplane, smashing down into a cobbled street in France. From the rubble emerges a robot, a man-like machine wearing a G.I. uniform and packing enough firepower to annihilate a Nazi-piloted war machine; but the explosive effort knocks flat that hero of a robot and now it’s up to the all-too-human grunts to get it—him?—to safety. (Chad Boudreau)
Saga #11
Image Comics
Brian K. Vaughn
(a) Fiona Staples
Lying Cat— whom I enjoy on the pages of Saga as much as I enjoy peanut butter on a toasted cheese bun—is alive! My relief is so great that I can write no more about this latest issue. (Chad Boudreau)
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