With apologies to Jon and the PCS crew (as well as to Charles LePage, who reprints my “For Your Consideration” column over at ComicList), Comic Book Commentary will be taking a short hiatus for a few weeks as the “Not Comics” part of my life is getting a bit hectic again and the self-imposed pressure to post more regularly combined with my hating writing rushed, half-assed posts has left me a bit paralyzed. My Bloglines and Google Reader folders are overflowing with unread posts so I’m just going to hit my mental reset button and jump back in later this summer.

I’m still reading comics, of course, just feeling less and less inclined to write anything about them.

Here’s a quick list of titles I’ve enjoyed recently and would recommend via legitimate reviews if I had the time:

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Isaac the Pirate: 1. To Exotic Lands
By Christophe Blain, translated by Joe Johnson ($14.95; NBM/Comics Lit, 2003)

In a perfect Direct Market, savvy comics retailers would have taken advantage of the Pirates of the Carribbean sequel opening this holiday weekend to carve out a chunk of Spider-Man 3’s endcap display in favor of some pirate-flavored offerings, and featured prominently in that mix would have been Christophe Blain’s exemplary Isaac the Pirate: 1. To Exotic Lands. NBM’s english translation of Blain’s engaging tale of a young Frenchman, Isaac Soper, who stumbles into a life of piracy while pursuing his dreams of becoming a famous painter, is several steps above the improbable adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow on the literary ladder, but still manages to capture the energy and unpredictability of a life at sea.

Isaac is a prideful dreamer, the proverbial starving artist, as passionate about his painting as he is about the love of his life, Alice, whose long-suffering support he pushes to the limit when he secretly purchases an expensive preparatory study by a deceased master painter, from which he plans to paint his own naval series that will bring him fame and fortune. “They’ll create a sensation, I’ll earn three or four times as much! I want to paint sailors, boats. We’ll live in a wealthy port city, full of merchants, I’ll become an official painter.” Unmoved, Alice insists he copy the study and resell it, which sets off a series of events that finds Isaac in the employ of the egomaniacal pirate Captain, John “the Pillager”, headed for the South Pole in search of an undiscovered New World, of which he is charged with documenting its existence. This New World, will of course, bear John’s name.

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Moviefone is tracking the buzz on Spider-Man 3 with their Blog Beat: The Buzz on ‘Spider-Man 3′ feature, with excerpts and links to a variety of reviews and commentary, including my own! (#13, my favorite number! Sweet!)

Among the wide-ranging mix is Dark Horizons’ Garth Franklin (#7), who offers an interesting assessment of the primary actors that, in retrospect, I kind of agree with:

“Tobey Maguire displays a surprising lack of growth in the role, playing him with little difference from the way he did in the first film — this is despite the events of the first two films and his general experience as an actor. [Kirsten] Dunst, and more notably Franco, show distinct improvement in the way they handle their roles — in fact their scenes together ring with more genuine appeal than any of the tedious domestic squabbles that Maguire and Dunst’s scenes together devolve into.”

I criticized Dunst in my review, particularly noting the lack of chemistry between her and Maguire, but Franklin is right on here because her scenes with Franco did have a bit more pop to them, though I attribute that more to Franco’s acting ability, which really shines through in this installment.

Meanwhile, Maguire continues with his wide-eyed, “Gee whiz, I’m a superhero who used to be a dork!” take on the character that Peter Parker really should have grown beyond by now. Some of the blame for that should be shared with Raimi, of course, and you have to wonder if it’s one of the side effects of his arguably trying to squeeze too much into the movie.

RELATIVELY SPOILER-FREE!
(NOTE: The comments section is potentially spoilerish, but there’s some good stuff in there for after you’ve seen the movie.)

My Buddy Dan^TM scored passes to tonight’s 5-borough premiere of Spider-Man 3 and we caught it at Bay Plaza here in the Bronx with approx. 100-150 other lucky winners. We’re hoping to do a joint review in the next couple of days, hopefully as a podcast, but real quick, I give it a solid B; maybe B+.

Sam Raimi did a great job with Harry Osborne and Sandman, especially their relationships with Peter; Venom worked for me, particularly the way Raimi depicted the effects of the symbiote on Peter and then Eddie Brock, though he over-indulges a bit in the former, almost derailing the middle portion of the movie with the drastic shift in tone; Gwen Stacy ends up being a bit of a disappointing plot device, especially considering she’s presented as infinitely more attractive and appealing than Mary Jane, while Kirsten Dunst puts in another barely tolerable performance as the bedraggled love interest, and Bruce Campbell and Raimi’s brother are once again annoyingly shoehorned into the movie.

The special effects are excellent, as are the multiple, well-choreographed fight scenes, the best of which takes place about halfway through, between Peter and Harry, out of costume in Harry’s penthouse. That particular fight has more emotion to it than the many painfully awkward scenes between Peter and MJ that call for one or both of them to cry. There will obviously be no best lead actor or actress nominations coming out of this movie, though one could definitely make a case for James Franco getting a supporting nod for a Golden Globe.

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[I’m so off my blogging game that instead of simply commenting on the Moon Knight #10 preview PCS just put up, I’m turning it into a blog post!]

Talk about be careful what you ask for! I couldn’t wait for David Finch to jump ship and abandon Moon Knight, and while his replacement Mico Suayan is a solid illustrator, he’s a terrible storyteller. His panel layouts in #9 gave me a headache, like the worst of the MTV quick-cut style brought to paper, and it doesn’t look like he’s gotten any better in #10.

Look at those pages in the preview, especially the two I’ve included here. WTF? My eye doesn’t know which way to go or what to focus on, and while the text should theoretically help in that regard, the pages should still make some visual sense without them. It’s like poetry in a language you don’t speak; good poetry has a rhythm that’s apparent, even if you don’t understand the words; even if it’s free verse. Kind of like rap, too.

Suayan’s art here is like a 19-syllable haiku, or a limerick that doesn’t rhyme.

Very disappointing. Especially since the combination of Moon Knight and Charlie Huston is as close to a chip shot as comics can get for me.

Marvel, please, please, please pay Bill Sienkiewicz whatever it takes to do at least one arc on Moon Knight before sales start to dip and you can’t afford him. The covers, even.

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It’s been a while since I’ve taken a close look at my pull list, something I try to do at least twice a year to see if there’s anything I’m only buying out of habit, or that’s fallen behind schedule and I hadn’t noticed. Because I hadn’t done so, I missed out on Dynamo 5 #2 yesterday when it sold out in a couple of hours! Grrrr…

Logged onto MidtownComics.com today to take a look at what was on my list, did some pruning, added a few, and came in at 50 titles, my lowest total pulls in well over two years.

All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder
Most of the blogiverse hates it, but I’ve enjoyed it despite itself, as I figure Miller’s got a point to make. And if not, it’s the one time where Jim Lee’s art is enough to keep me coming back. That crazy gatefold in the last issue was like fanboy mana!

Amelia Rules
Picked up the anniversary issue yesterday, along with the first two Hardcover collections, because Amelia is cool like that.

Artesia: Besieged
For something that’s so clearly an individual labor of love — not to mention really, really good — I’ll wait as long as it takes for Mark Smylie to produce new installments of my favorite high fantasy series.

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NOTE TO SELF: If/when you review Avengers: The Initiative #1, remember that you always tend to judge anything that touches on the military through the dual filters of a) being what most would call politically liberal, and b) having actually served in the military, both active duty and National Guard. You’re biased, not so much to the left or right, but against hamfisted stereotypes and cliches in general, which way too many ill-informed writers with a political agenda allow to get in the way of the nuances and many shades of grey reality offers…

“Reality” shouldn’t necessarily come into play when dealing with the spandex set, but Marvel has gone to great lengths to give their universe a more realistic undertone via Civil War, and the many potential problems that might come from that decision are no more apparent than in the cringe-worthy opening scene of Avengers: The Initiative #1 that offers Hydra as an Iraqi insurgent force and a superhuman taking them down. I never understood DC’s silly tweaking of names (ie: Qurac) before, but I kind of get it now. Not only was I mildly offended by the ridiculous oversimplification of the war in Iraq, the scene managed to wrench me right out of the story, too, as, by its own logic — referring to M-Day, Secretary Gyrich notes: “Without doing a thing, we won the super-powers race. We have an army of super heroes.” — the war should have been over before it started.

By setting that opening scene in Baghdad, Iraq, and explicitly making The Initiative the US military’s alternative solution to putting more boots on the ground, I began judging it by a completely different standard, picking apart the New York City potholes in the story’s underlying logic, unable to simply enjoy it on its own merits. And that’s a shame, to be honest, because there’s elements of an entertaining story here and I do want to like it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Stefano Caselli’s excellent artwork. I’ve been a fan of his since his run on G.I. Joe: America’s Elite, and as disappointed as I was to see him move on, I was hoping he’d end up on a Marvel project that I’d have some interest in.

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Robotika
By Alex Sheikman and Joel Chua (Archaia Studios Press, 2006; $19.95)

It’s rare for a mini-series whose first issue turned me off the way Robotika’s did gets a second chance, but thanks to Alex Sheikman’s commitment to his work — emailing me to clarify something from the first issue that I didn’t like get, and sending me the second issue that I would have otherwise passed on — it got one and I am pleased it did. I previously described it, somewhat snarkily, as “a sci-fi cyber-samurai yarn conceived by an artsy SoHo hipster,” and a “visually impressive if somewhat convoluted story that edges up to the border of pretentiousness while nudging you with a friendly elbow and raised eyebrow.”

In retrospect — with the benefit of both hindsight and a second, more thorough reading — I’d say that Robotika stands alongside Archaia Studios Press’ Artesia and Mouse Guard as some of the best work published in 2006, better than 99% of what’s on the shelves any given Wednesday.

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The Gonzalez Clan caught a late-morning showing of TMNT on Saturday — my 6-year old’s choice, beating out The Last Mimzy and Meet the Robinsons — and while it did an efficient job of working its target demographic, there’s a good reason it dropped 62% at the box office in its second weekend: it’s not very good.

It doesn’t outright suck, either, which might have been better, giving it some MSTK 3000 appeal. Instead, it’s just another dumb, loud and obnoxious Saturday morning cartoon, with a handful of solid character moments and a couple of good fight scenes that are buried underneath a thick layer of been-there, done-that mediocrity. Had Kevin Munroe focused a bit more attention to the primary relationships and a bit less on the overwrought plot involving extra-dimensional portals and world domination, the whole thing might have been a less messy affair.

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If I were a judge for this year’s Glyph Comics Awards, these would be my picks:

Story of the Year
Stagger Lee, Derek McCulloch & Shepherd Hendrix
Honorable Mention: The American Way, John Ridley, Georges Jeanty & Karl Story

Best Writer
Derek McCulloch, Stagger Lee
Honorable Mention: Rob Vollmar, Bluesman Vol. 3

Best Artist
Shepherd Hendrix, Stagger Lee
Honorable Mention: Georges Jeanty, The American Way

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