December Comics Round-Up

Ultimates #2 (Marvel)

Yes, this is definitely the Avengers-esque title I'm going to follow. Black Panther's team - Blue Marvel might nominally be calling the shots, but it's definitely Black Panther's team - are all incredibly powerful, hyperintelligent, or both, and they're travelling the universe to sort shit out. Dan Brown's art is perfect for this. There's a real cosmic feel to this issue, ending with a complete inversion of what Galactus stands for, that could lead to some very interesting things indeed.

Doctor Who - Eighth Doctor #2 (Titan)

Emma Vicelli absolutely nails her depiction of the eighth Doctor. I prefer this issue to the first; this is the other side of the eighth Doctor, the careworn old man who's trying to remain positive in the face of an overwhelmingly cruel universe. It ends on an optimistic note, but we know that this Doctor is going to have to face his own war soon, which adds depth to the story. Very good.

Doctor Who Magazine #494 (Panini)

Haven't we had sword-and-sorcery planets in the comics quite recently? This is fine, but there's not an original element in it. Adrian Salmon's art style doesn't really work for it, either. I'm going to call this one a miss.

Batman/TMNT #1 (DC/IDW)

Just much more fun than it has any right to be. I like that this avoids going for all out campery. Batman and the Turtles might actually work very well together. And using Killer Croc here is so obvious it would have been foolish not to do so.

Ms. Marvel #2 (Marvel)

This is rather excellent, with Kamala facing the twin evils of gentrification and the exploitation of fame. There are some rather lovely moments with both Bruno and her adorable older brother, and pitting the youngest Avenger against a new, corporate version of HYDRA makes sense. The important stuff is Kamala's entirely believable reaction to the developments, though.

The Mighty Thor #2 (Marvel)

"Just take me to my cell, serpent. I figure it's best I get one now... before all the good ones are filled." That's just a brief line showing how awesome Heimdall is, but this is brilliant throughout. Thor is just excellent right now. The war between the Light and Dark Elves rages, with the incongruous sight of Roxxon tanks mowing down unicorns. Loki is back, all re-grown up and bad again, while the Elves and Jotnar lay waste to the Nine Realms in a beautiful and finely written story. Recommended.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #3 (Marvel)

A fairly middling issue for Squirrel Girl, but still way more fun than pretty much any comic series running right now. Retro-Dr. Doom just about works in this context, revelling in the campness of the character, but Nancy isn't quite up to the task of holding the storyline up against him without Doreen. Things work much better once the girls team up again. Digging Doreen's sixties costume. Includes the perfect footnote, "That guy's The Punisher! Like all men who take themselves extremely seriously, he likes to spend his downtime sewing cartoon skeleton heads onto every shirt he owns, so that way everyone can tell right away how extremely serious he is." When a comic running at half-power has lines like that, it's a keeper.

Lucifer #1 (DC/Vertigo)

Well, that wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared it would be. I still don't really see the point of it; the original Lucifer series by Mike Carey was truly brilliant and a closed story, ending in the most perfect and final way possible. I'd expected this to be a reboot, rather than a continuation as it is here, and I'm not sure which is more pointless. Still, Lucifer returning to the Universe in the wake of God's apparent murder has some potential. Not a patch on Carey's work, but approximately 130 times better than the shit they cooked up for TV.

The Wicked + The Divine #17 (Image)

Wow, this has gone off the boil. The last issue of the current "let's look at everyone's backstory" season, this one focuses on cat-goddess Sekhmet, who is only interesting in fucking and drinking and is correspondingly boring as hell. Looking forward to how the series kicks back into gear upon its return in April, as it really needs some forward momentum.

And that's yer lot. I'll be cutting right back on the comics next year - Saga, Squirrel Girl, Ultimates and The Mighty Thor will be on my list, probably along with Ms. Marvel and maybe Spider-Woman. 

Whotopia Returns!

It's been nearly two years, but now the popular web fanzine Whotopia is back with its 28th issue. In this very Masterly issue, I provide the first article in a series called "Master Who," examining each incarnation of the villainous Time Lord in the same vein as my "Doctor by Doctor" articles from 2013. David P. May also provides an insight into the villain's schemes in "Master of Disaster," and also takes a look at the underappreciated first Doctor serial The Keys of Marinus. There's also new fanfic from Michael Baxter, a look at third Doctor story Carnival of Monsters and Bob Furnell explores some of the unmade scripts for the fifth Doctor. Click below to go straight to the issue.

The International Astronomical Union recently held a vote to determine the names of a list of planets and stars in distant systems. It would be impossible to assign a name to every star and planet in the Galaxy - there are just too many of them - so they generally just get an alphanumerical designation. However, a few have accrued names from popular usage, and now a select group have had names officially assigned by the IAU, according to popular vote.

The full list is at the link, but some of my favourites include Thestias, the new name of the only known planet orbiting Pollux (Beta Geminorum), named for the epithet of Leda, the mother of Castor and Pollux (the Gemini twins) in Greek myth. The Mu Arae system has five known planets, named for characters from the Don Qixote story: Quijote, Dulcinea, Rocinante and Sancho, plus the star itself has received the common name Cervantes, after the author.

Another star, formerly known only as PSR 1257+12, has been named Lich, and undead being from myth, and its planets have been named in kind: Draugr, Phobetor (i.e. Nightmare) and Poltergeist! The well known Epsilon Eridani is now also called Ran, and its sole known planet is Aegir, named for two Jotnar from Norse myth. And a particular favourite planet of mine, Fomalhaut b, is now known as Dagon, after the Semitic deity (made famous in the modern era by H.P. Lovecraft).

The 55 Cancri system has been named in honour of great astronomers, with the star itself now called Copernicus, and its planets named Galileo, Brahe, Lippershey, Janssen, and Harriot, while Iota Draconis b has been named for the great Hypatia. Wonderful stuff.

WHO REVIEW: 9-12) HELL BENT

You know what? I really enjoyed that. This hasn't been the most consistent of series, and there are problems with the finale that reflect this. It's certainly not what I expected to see, following on from the remarkable Heaven Sent, but that's not a bad thing. This was a perfect end to the season, and to Clara's story. Clara's character has suffered particularly from the inconsistency this year, and she's never been the most consistent character in any case. As a farewell, though, this worked beautifully. As many have pointed out, this was essentially an inversion of Donna's fate at the end of season four, with Clara taking retaining her own agency and the Doctor being punished for his own arrogance and hubris. "Never be cruel, and never be cowardly; and if you are, always make amends." For once, the Doctor was both cruel and cowardly, and he payed for it.

So they're out of the way, complaints (ish):

• Clara didn't die after all. Are we surprised? Even if the cast of the episode hadn't been released ages ago, this wouldn't have been unexpected. Nobody stays dead in this series. It's just part of the way the show works these days.
• Gallifrey's back then? Sat at the end of the Universe, not up to much. The Doctor finally arrives there and takes the place over in a bloodless coup (which is just perfect), exiles the President, takes his place and promptly runs off again. All great, but still, it was a bit anticlimactic.
• Rassilon was a disappointment, and a bit of a waste of the great Donald Sumpter. It's a shame we didn't get Timothy Dalton back, but perhaps, actually, it was for the best. This was the real Rassilon; the scared, desperate old man behind the blustering warlord, who simply isn't relevant now the Time War is finally over. The Doctor finally kicked him out by simply refusing to take him seriously.
• Why were Ohila and the Sisterhood there? And how? They seemed rather surplus.
• The Doctor really put himself through billions of successive iterations in a cyclic hell just so he'd have a bargaining tool when he finally got to Gallifey? He really is a stubborn old bastard.
• All that Hybrid stuff really didn't work as a mystery. We'd never heard anything of it before Davros randomly mentioned it in The Magician's Apprentice, and since then it's been dropped in rather awkwardly more or less every episode in an attempt to make us think it's been haunting the Doctor and the Time Lords since the series' inception. It really didn't work. Applause for the fan-baiting tease of the half-human Doctor though (which he notably doesn't actually deny).

With that out of the way, though... this was rather joyful, when it wasn't milking tears. The Doctor goes home - and he really goes home, not to the President's office but to the place he hid out as a child. I was very pleased to see the General again (I'll have to stop calling him General Bones now). A shame to lose Ken Bones, who I rather adore, but that regeneration was just fabulous. T'nia Miller is actually rather excellent as the new General, with a real authority that makes it believable she's the same character. And the gall of it... the old white guy regenerates into a young black woman, right in front of us, a full-blooded Time Lord, damned right it's canon, deal with it. And basically says, "ah, back to normal at last." Just perfect.

Even before that though, the moment between the Doctor and the General, the former acting appallingly, blinded by love, the latter standing his ground, unwilling to waver. Two characters with utter respect for each other, at odds. It's a beautiful scene. But for the Doctor to gun someone down, a friend, even though he knew he'd probably regenerate; I don't think we've ever seen him go so far.

Good to see Maisie Williams used well again. She gave an astonishingly controlled and confident performance as the last woman in the Universe. By then, after trillions of years of life, she'd either be completely insane or, well, god. Also, that classic, white TARDIS interior, with the Doctor in a severe black coat. I had nostalgia for the sixties, and I wasn't even there. 

So, very Moffat, and the Moffat haters will, of course, hate it. And fair enough; if it's not your cup of tea, that's understandable. It was somehow overblown and undercooked at once, it made no sense whatsoever, but it was quite simply a wonderful experience and I imagine it'll be an episode I go back to again and again (unlike, say, Zygon ISIS, which although the best story of the year, isn't one I'll get a lot of rewatch value from). It ends with the Doctor picking up the pieces while Clara and Me/Ashildr travel the Universe together. Spot on.

REVIEW: The Flash 2.7-2.8, plus Arrow 4.8

GORILLA WARFARE

This episode only works because Grodd is in it, and I'm still thrilled by the fact that we get to see Gorilla Grodd on live action TV. The central storyline, ostensibly, is Grodd coming to terms wih his existence by, um, trying to create a race of superintelligent gorillas with Caitlyn's help. So about par for the course there, really. Grodd and Caitlyn get some nice King Kong/Fay Ray moments. Added into this is Harrison-2 pretending to to be Harrison-1 to fool Grodd into behaving himself, which, unsurprisingly, doesn't work.

The other side of the episode sees Barry getting over his crippling injury by Zoom the episode before. While I never expected Barry's paralysis to be permanent, I'd have thought they'd at least have him grounded for a few episodes while he healed, emotionally and physically. I get that this is a metaphor for his regaining confidence after his defeat, and it works well as that, but it's still over too quickly to really accept. His dad drops in as well to give him a boost, and gives an actual reason for leaving town as soon as he got out of prison: he can't stand to live in a place full of people who saw him as a murderer. Which is understandable, but it's still bizarre to have him skip out on his son like that.

However, there are some great moments for Barry-Patty and Cisco-Kendra, Harrison-2 is still very much a highlight of the series, and it ends with a gorilla being punched into another dimension. Which is something that deserves a place in anyone's viewing schedule.

LEGENDS OF TODAY/LEGENDS OF YESTERDAY

In case the title didn't make it clear, this two-part story - which crosses over between The Flash  and Arrow - exists almost solely to set up Legends of Tomorrow. However, it does manage to spend some time on some rather lovely character moments, particularly between Oliver and Felicity, and move on the ongoing plot of both shows (a little of Speedy's development, a crisis for Patty, Jay, Caitlyn and Harrison-2). It's a good thing I've been following Arrow more this year, because it would be pretty confusing coming into that series' side of things otherwise. That said, the most important part of that series' story, the relationship between Oliver and Felicity and the revelation the former has a son, is easy to grasp for more casual viewers.

Mostly, though, this is about introducing the really out there characters due to make up part of the Legends team, namely Kendra/Hawkgirl, Carter/Hawkman, and Vandal Savage. Throwing in a pair of eternal lovers from ancient Egypt, reincarnated again and again over thousands of years, and the immortal warrior who hunts them down, takes the Arrowverse to new levels of comicbook weirdness, but to their credit the showrunners pull it all off. This is overblown, overexcited nonsense, with way too much breathily delivered exposition and some really crass dialogue, a huge rewrite late on due to the power of time travel and some rather fudged action scenes. But god, I enjoyed this.

Cisco and Wells remain probably the best things in The Flash, so it's a shame they don't interact in this story, but they both have more important things going on. I was a bit disappointed in Caspar Crump as Vandal Savage; he looks the part but his performance was a little underwhelming. (Zoom would kick his arse.) John Barrowman is still terrible as Merlyn.