It’s A Southern Takeover

So, uh, I guess I should introduce myself.

I’m David Brothers and I’m your new Senior Comics Editor. I stole the title of this column from the excellent HBO show “The Wire” and the quote from Grant Morrison’s Flex Mentallo, one of the best comics I’ve ever read. I’ve been writing about comics since 2005 and reading them for substantially longer. My site is 4thletter!, which I run with a few old friends. We talk about funny stuff, social issues, and dumb comics. Give it a look.

You’ll probably see a little bit from those guys on PCS over the next few weeks. I’ve been tasked with revitalizing the comics side of PCS, since Kate has been doing such a great job on the manga side of things. It’ll be an interesting ride! I’ve got pretty much total control in revamping the comics, so hopefully I won’t screw it up too bad. My main focus is keeping regular content going again. We’re gonna start slow while I build up a good content schedule, but we’ve already hit the ground running.

Alternate Current stealth-debuted on this past Thursday. Schedule and writers willing, it’ll hit every Wednesday. It is, in essence, a soap box. We’re going to have a different writer each week talking about a different subject. It’s an open forum. Our inaugural column was on how Jon views ASBAR. The next one could be a critical analysis of the gender politics vis a vis the socio-political economic and racial policies of New Deal-era Superman. It is, quite literally, a place where you can talk about whatever you want. Interested? Drop me a line. I’m also planning on rolling out a couple of regular columns, too, so if you’ve got that killer idea that everyone needs to hear, email me.

Picks & Pans are sticking around! We’ve got a great group of reviewers, and getting alternate opinions on comics is great. Jon’s Comic Rankings is a great experiment, too, and one we’re gonna keep going and expanding upon. It collates reviews from all across the comics internet, similar to GameRankings.com, and puts them into nice and neat tables for you.

I’ve got to do a bit of cleaning up, so pardon the dust. Just make sure that you keep coming back for more. Tell your friends, respond to posts, and let’s do it big.

Got ideas for the site? Want a column? Want in on Alternate Current? Email me. Let’s talk.

The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury

Let me list three of my top five favorite creators: Frank Miller, Jim Lee, and Brian Azzarello. All three of them dropped books this past week, and yet my book of the week was produced by Brandon Thomas and Lee Ferguson?

Let me introduce you to The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295. No, you didn’t miss 294 issues of a comic somehow– Miranda Mercury‘s conceit is that there is a storied past behind the title character and that this is just the latest of her adventures. Miranda is a hero in the Doc Savage, Tom Strong, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers mold. She’s out to have a good time, see the sights, and maybe even learn a little bit while she’s out and about.

The book first caught my eye because it stars a black female. If you’ve been reading 4l, you know that I feel pretty strongly about the lack of positive black females in comics. Lee Ferguson’s art delivered up a black girl who is both cool and attractive without being sexed up. Thomas’s script brought it all home when it put Miranda’s quick wit and stubborn will on display.

Basically, this comic is great. The cover page ties into the story in a big way (here’s a hint: it’s the first page of the story), the art is insanely attractive, and the story is a great one. Despite being dropped in mid-scene, it’s very easy to follow. You have the villain, the heroine, the sidekick, the hook, and the twist. The villain is a short fellow with an anger problem. The heroine is a skilled fighter in that Indiana Jones kind of way. The sidekick is a supersmart kid with a penchant for possibly being too smart for his own good. The hook is a magical cube that lets you have one wish once you solve its puzzle. The twist? The twist is something I won’t ruin, but which casts the series in a new light.

This isn’t Brandon Thomas’s first comic. He wrote an issue of Robin a few months back, just pre-Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, that was the best single issue that book had seen in probably eight years. It was just a quick done-in-one about Robin, and ended on a few pages that really nailed the Batman/Robin dynamic for me.

Thomas displayed a deft grasp of the characters and dialogue in that book, and it’s carried over to Miranda Mercury. You get a feeling of real history between all the characters, but not the kind of history that feels manufactured. There’s none of the “Like that time on Alphozon-VII, where you narrowly escaped my clutches!”-style awful exposition. Just quick lines that hint at a shared past and allow your imagination to fill in the blanks.

The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295 is, as far as I’m concerned, an incredible success. The characters and art are equally vibrant, the story has a great twist at the end without being an annoying cliffhanger, and I’m genuinely interested in where the story is going to go. Miranda Mercury is an A+ right off the starting block.