Review: Catalyst Comix #4

I’m continually surprised by this series. For something that I knew nothing about and only picked up because it was a #1 issue, Catalyst Comix has become my most anticipated comic each month (and will probably hold that spot until they announce what Christos Gage is writing next). The biggest way that it surprises me is that Catalyst Comix #4 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Paul Maybury, Ulises Farinas, and Dan McDaid) manages to completely flip something I expected about the series in the best possible way.

She’s become awesome enough to deserve this cover now.

I’ve completely turned around on the Amazing Grace storyline, which is now the A storyline. I remember dreading this while reading a previous issue, but it turns out that was just a slow start. They spent so much time saying that Grace is amazing (hence the nickname) without showing her doing anything. That changed completely once Mr. Seaver came in, putting her in opposition against someone, and the story has only improved from there. This issue continues the crazy battle of the minds that started in the previous issue, and the banter between the two of them just keeps getting better. I especially want to comment on the art, as part of this seems to have been an excuse to give Paul Maybury free reign to come up with interesting areas to draw, making full use of Grace’s ability to teleport wherever she likes. I’m usually not a big art person, but I can’t wait to get a hard copy (my tablet’s resolution just can’t stand up) so I can look at it in more detail.

Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker – I mean, Agents of Change (that joke is still not old) – have gone back in a more interesting direction, showing that the last issue was only a small hiccup. The problem with these smaller stories is that sometimes 8 pages is too little to tell a significant piece of a story, and the last one suffered from that. Since the end of the second issue showed that they’re all in some sort of virtual reality, I wanted to know more, but the last issue didn’t really advance the story. This issue does, showing us that even though they’re called the Agents of Change, they’re not causing the change in the way you’d expect. I get the feeling that things will really move forward when they take over as the A storyline, but I still like the bits and pieces of story in here.

Finally, after starting off as being the A story, The Ballad of Frank Wells has been moved to the C story, and the transition is a bit abrupt. The story pieces given here have to be shorter, but I still love how they use Frank to fight much more mundane problems. It’s an interesting return to essentially the root of superheroes as we know them – while these are big, world issues, he’s fighting mundane people like dictators and corrupt businessmen, far from his apocalypse-averting heroics from the first issue, which highlights the shift in his character. I wish that they’d spent more time on showing the shift in his character across a couple issues rather than montage, but I still quite enjoyed reading it. The ending kind of disappointed me, as it seems intended for people already familiar with the original series, but as I’m not, it just went over my head.

Overall, I definitely recommend this issue. I still cannot believe that Dark Horse is selling this for $2.99, given that it’s three simultaneous stories in a 32-page book, and that’s not even considering how good they are. Grace’s story has gone from uninteresting to my favorite, Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker continue to make me want to repeat their names over and over, and while Frank Wells doesn’t handle the transition as well as I’d like, it’s still entertaining, so go and pick this book up.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) has found that an unintentional side effect of reading this comic is having church music stuck in your head all day. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Catalyst Comix #3

With Amala’s Blade and Angel & Faith having recently ended, Catalyst Comix is now the Dark Horse comic that I look most forward to each month (well, maybe on par with Dream Thief, which also will end soon), which I consider high praise since about one quarter of it has gone right over my head the entire time. While I have my issues with it, let’s see what Catalyst Comix #3 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas, and Paul Maybury) has in store.

When the last issue ended, I had no idea where they were going to take Frank Wells and his story. Things went in a really different direction than I had expected given the rather explosive beginning in the first issue, but now I’m seeing where that actually goes, and I really like it. I’m not going to tell you what it is because it’s something you need to discover as you read. It’s not something new at all to comics, so don’t expect the reinvention of comics as an art form, but it’s a change in direction to almost the polar opposite of how it started that they somehow manage to pull off. They’re not too heavy handed or awkwardly trying to shove a character where they don’t fit – they spent almost two issues making sure this transition happened smoothly. It doesn’t all work perfectly, as there’s a subplot that feels like it should mean something to me but I don’t understand, but it’s only a couple pages in an otherwise really good story.

The Grace storyline is finally starting to click. I’m still not entirely sure I follow all of it, but a new character was introduced that made it feel like things were finally starting to move forward. This character, Seaver, seems like someone of significance to the universe before the recent reboot, but regardless of that, he serves as some form of opposition to Grace. With his presence, there’s finally some sort of conflict which was missing before, and the story feels like it’s finally going somewhere.

Then, on to the section with my favorite name, Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker, more correctly known as Agents of Change (and no, I don’t think I will ever get tired of this gag). For all the improvement to Grace’s storyline, this one is starting to lose me, so apparently there has to be at least one storyline in each issue that I don’t quite get. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from the end of the previous issue, but they don’t go there and it throws me off badly. It doesn’t ignore the reveal, but it’s much less important than the end of the last issue would make you believe. For that reason, the story ends up being more confusing and disorienting than anything else, which is a disappointment for a segment I’ve loved so much so far.

I continue to really enjoy the art. Frank Wells’s story has a lot of different locations and styles blended together flawlessly, helping greatly to keep the tone from feeling jarring throughout. Grace continues to have really interestingly designed locations, and her adversary Seaver has, while a little cliche, a well-done design that is just mildly off-putting. Nothing jumped out at me in the other series this time, but I still love the design of the characters – while it’s not new, that doesn’t mean it’s not good.

All things said, I still definitely recommend this book. I’ve absolutely loved the Frank Wells story from the beginning and I think that alone is worth $2.99, which I still can’t believe is the price for issues in this series. Grace’s story is starting to pick up, and I haven’t given up on Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker (not after one bad issue, since Grace’s story went through two), so there’s plenty of interesting stuff going on in this series still.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is mildly disappointed in his buddies with the amazing names. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Catalyst Comix #2

Sometimes, reboots of continuity can come up with something worth paying attention to. I really liked the first issue of this series, a relaunch of the Comic’s Greatest World imprint, and Catalyst Comix #2 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas, and Paul Maybury) continues that trend.

With three different artists, I’d expect the art in this comic to be a little scattered or schizophrenic. They don’t all use the same art style across all the stories, but they’re all similar enough that it’s not jarring to go from one to another. They’re also all well suited to the story that they’re telling, which keeps the transitions smoother than they might be otherwise.

As I said in the previous review, these issues have multiple stories in them. Oddly, these all seem to be mostly serving the purpose of setting something up for the future, which is really strange for a second issue. They’re still the laid out the same, with Frank Wells taking the “A story”. To make the review easier, I’m going to look at the stories individually:

First off is Frank Wells. His story goes in a really weird direction, setting up… something. I’m not sure what they’re trying to set up, but it has me intrigued, so it’s really done its job. They manage to keep up a lot of the same tone from the previous issue. There’s a lot of the crazy, over the top narration, but it isn’t entirely the same. It’s possibly turning the tone down a bit from the overly ridiculous first issue, but that was what I loved about that issue. It’s not a problem quite yet, but I hope it stays at this level of ridiculous instead of toning it down as the series goes on.

Then we get to Grace and her story. I really don’t get what they’re doing, since it seems like there’s so much nothing happening. They’ve spent the last two issues trying to set something up without any sort of payoff. That could be done well, but there’s so little personality to everything that’s going on that I just want them to get to some actual story sometime soon. I’m somewhat dreading this becoming the A story, though that could be the point that they actually start doing the story properly, whatever that story ends up being once the endless setup has ended.

Then we have Agents of Change, which I prefer to call Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker because those are amazing names. This story succeeds at doing the same thing that Grace’s story was trying for, spending a lot of time trying to set up for an upcoming story. This one succeeds because there’s a lot of personality in the characters to carry it forward even though there’s a pretty thin plot. That doesn’t mean that there’s no plot, and what is there has some interesting, if a little cliché, potential. I don’t want to say more at risk of spoiling things, but they really open the door to a lot of possible directions to take the plot.

Again, I’m definitely going to recommend this issue. Even though most of the stories are doing more setup work than anything else, they’re still a lot of fun and promise some interesting stories in the future. I’m still not sure about Grace and her stories, but the other stories more than make up for its flaws, so unless you have something else you absolutely need $2.99 for, buy this comic.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) still makes the association between the title of this comic and an old Sega Genesis game. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Catalyst Comix #1

Modern entertainment is drowning in reinterpretations, remakes, reboots, and any other word you can think of starting with “re”. That’s not inherently bad; sometimes interesting things come out of that. Case in point, Catalyst Comix #1 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas, and Paul Maybury) is a reinterpretation of Comics’ Greatest World, a Dark Horse imprint that started in the early 1990s but was later killed by the speculator bust. This isn’t the first of those characters to be revived (X is another character from that imprint), but this is attempting to relaunch a number of those characters in one go. Don’t worry if this confuses you. I didn’t know any of this until after I’d read the comic and did some background research, and that didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the comic at all.

This issue is a little difficult to review since this is not the standard comic format I’m used to. There are three stories here: one full-length and two half-length stories. Towards that end, I’ll look at each story separately.

The first story, featuring Frank Wells aka Titan, is easily my favorite. While one of my pet peeves in comics is constant narration, this pulls it off perfectly. The story is over the top and completely ridiculous, but self-aware enough to metaphorically wink at the camera, letting you know that, yes, they get it, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The art is equally over the top. Frank fights Nibiru, a giant monster trying to end the world (this comic takes place on December 21, 2012 — just when you thought that was all behind us), and I love its design because of how little sense it makes. The monster makes little sense, the city around it makes little sense, and yet it somehow manages to feel campy in the fun way instead of in a stupid way. I can’t figure out how, but it finds just the right sweet spot.

The second story lost me a bit. I found myself somewhat bored while reading it. The problem is, while it’s no heavier on exposition than the first story, this doesn’t have the ridiculous atmosphere to carry you through. Here, the narration is just giving us Grace’s backstory. While the art gives some really impressive starscapes, since all this nothing happens in space, it isn’t interesting enough to carry a very lackluster infodump.

The final story introduces Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker, which are names I’d say you couldn’t make up, except someone did. This story has less narration, but it makes its presence memorable, including the phrase “orgy of ordinance”, which instantly made my day. Instead, most of it is dialogue between Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker (I will repeat those names until it stops being fun, which might be never), which is still fun despite it seeming like the writer is still trying to figure out their voices beyond broad caricatures, and a character named Bert who I really want to call Agent Coulson, trying to bring together Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker and get them into the superhero game. I know it sounds pretty standard, and much the same can be said about the art (the only thing that jumped out at me was the “orgy of ordinance” scene), and while not quite as over the top campy fun as the first story, this was a solid story, especially given its shorter length.

Overall, I definitely recommend this book. I had no real idea what to expect, literally only looking because I read all #1 issues, and it blew me away. I’m especially surprised that the book is only $2.99. Dark Horse has a lot of books at that price, but this one, especially given its larger size, seems like one they’d sell for more. I’d recommend it on the strength of the Frank Wells story alone, but I also loved the third story (you can’t go wrong with Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker), and the second story… well, I can hope they’ll do something good with the character later. This is definitely a series to keep your eye on for the future.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) can’t shake the fact that the title of this comic is very reminiscent of the game Comix Zone. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts. In other news, Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker. It cannot be said enough.