Opinions of the Omniverse

Scarlet Spider 5, Grifter 9, and Deathstroke 9

Okay, it's been a while. Sorry, life happens. I moved back home to Louisiana in December 2011 and it's been one thing after another since I've gotten here trying to get resettled. Because of that I'm way behind on reading my weekly supply of comics, but I read three today that I really wanted to share my opinions about; they're from May 9, so spoilers will be present, but it should not matter to most of you. One is a Marvel title and the other two are from DC (part of the almost one year old New 52).

The Marvel title is Scarlet Spider, written by Chris Yost with pencils by Neil Edwards, inks by Karl Kesel, and colors by Edgar Delgado. This book is still in its infancy, and I am loving it so far. The premise of the series stems from the Spiderman clone saga of years gone by. From that story ultimately came a failed clone of Peter Parker who somehow survived the degenerative effects that all the other clones had. This clone took the name Kaine, and, for a time, he hated Spidey and wanted to kill him. Something happened in recent Amazing Spiderman stories though and things have somewhat changed I guess (I stopped reading Spidey about a year and a half ago - the stories just weren't the same to me with the changes from the One More Day storyline). Anyway, Kaine was leaving New York and running from his past to Mexico when an unexpected stop in Houston went all the wrong way for Kaine. Now, he's a superhero (though you should not tell him that; he does not like the idea much) with the press dubbed moniker of Scarlet Spider.
This Spider is billed as having all of the power and none of the responsibility and Yost writes the serial in a way that brings that out regularly. Kaine is a man with a bloody past. In this most recent issue (#5), he's trying to help a friend(? I am not sure Kaine has friends yet) on the Houston Police Department stop a dirty bomb from going off. His methods do not include asking nicely; instead he prefers torturing the perps and threatening to kill their whole families to get answers to where the bomb is. In the last issue of this series (#4), we actually learned of a prior problem Kaine ran into with the Assassin's Guild of New Orleans (ran by the X-Man Gambit's ex-wife, Belladonna) which led him to make a deal to do one job for the Assassin's Guild if they would leave him alone from this point on - I'm looking forward to when that tale gets told. Kaine is definitely doing good as you can see if you read the series, but Yost does not let you forget that Kaine used to be a deadly killer and that past is still there as well as at least a hint of his former hatred for Spidey.
The penciles by Neil Edwards in this issue bring out the franticness of the situation as much as anything without detracting. His pencils capture the essence of the story being told and although I have not seen a lot of his work yet, I like it already. When the shadows are added by Kesel with the inks and the colors applied to make the images complete by Delgado, the images stand out to relay the story that Yost wants told. This is a fun book for anyone who remembers the anti-heroes of the nineties and wants to see a new one in action. I recommend it highly even if you have never been a Spiderman fan.

Grifter has been a part of the New 52 since DC's relaunch of the DC Universe. I've been a fan of Grifter since the Image days with the original limited series of WildC.A.T.s - I still have that series somewhere in my collection. Anyway, this issue (#9) changes the team on the book and we get a writer that I am not a fan of by any stretch of the imagination (in fact, I am kind of disheartened by the fact that Jim Lee and Geoff Johns are putting this guy on any titles, but I guess it is just business at the end of the day and the guy has a few fans somewhere, although I have never met them). Grifter is now being written by Rob Liefeld. Pencils are by Scott Clark with inks by Dave Beaty and colors by Andrew Dalhouse. While the story is by Liefeld, the dialogue is being done by Frank Tieri, which may change the way I feel about this whole thing, since I did actually like this issue of Grifter still.
In this issue, Grifter is on the one from the Daemonites still (the aliens who are possessing humans here on Earth as a precursor to invasion - you can see them lurking about in a few other New 52 titles as well - Voodoo, The Authority, and recently Superman. Grifter is joined during the new issue by a new character, Nico, who seems to swing a sword pretty well in order to help Grifter get rid of a few of his Daemonite friends - I thought we might be seeing the new version of Zealot at first, but no luck in this series. At the end of the issue though, we do get another Wildstorm character introduced into the new DCU as Deathblow shows up as a member of the resistance against the Daemonites that Grifter has just been recruited into. That puts us 2/7 of the way to Team 7 being present in the New DCU.
The story itself is not badly written. I think Liefeld did a good job of framing the story and moving it in a way that maintains the groundwork that had already been laid in this series. If this is what he's capable of, I might be able to continue with this series. This was mostly a fight issue though with brief introductions - no real character building though, so I am still not sure that Liefeld is a good choice on any book as a writer. Given that Hawk and Dove was probably the worst of the New 52 series, we will see how this plays out before I change many of my opinions on Liefeld. Tieri's dialogue seemed to be spot on for how the one existing character appearing in this issue, Grifter, should behave and the few lines we get from Deathblow at the end definitely show it to be the same Deathblow attitude and character from the Image/Wildstorm days. Clark's pencils seem to be hit or miss to me - there are panels where the detail and lines are great, while there are others where it seems like he has gotten lazy and just gone for a broad brush. Maybe this is intentional, but I did not appreciate it. The inking is fabulously done and does a wonderful job of bringing out the darker edginess of this title with the colors being toned down just enough to show that this is not a book about the lighter side of the DCU.
I will probably follow for a bit and see how the Liefeld work goes. I like Grifter and Deathblow, but I do not see Liefeld writing these characters in a way that keeps me coming back for any long term period of time.

Deathstroke is the final title of this trio. I was already losing interest in the title before this issue, and the change in writer and penciller to Rob Liefeld has all but killed my interest. Deathstroke was a title I really enjoyed back in the nineties, but the stories so far have been fairly lackluster and would have worked just as well as backstories in a Titans book (although I guess there is no Titans book where Deathstroke really belongs right now). I am sure fans of Deathstroke have liked this stories; for me it has pretty much been one mercenary assassination after another and Deathstroke seeking to prove he is the best there is in the mercenary world of the new DCU - even the fight with his son that finished out the issue before last (#7) was anti-climactic when coupled with the issue before this one (#8).
The arc starting in this issue (#9) has some promise only because Deathstroke has been hired to hunt down the last Czarnian (and we all know Lobo is the main man and not to be trifled with by anyone short of Superman). This story may be well suited to Liefeld's storytelling and art styles in that this stands out as the type of arc that will be mostly fight scene after fight scene with very little character development taking place - something I have always found lacking in past Liefeld works. This is Lobo's introduction to the new DCU, and I am interested to see how that develops. Also, on the Image/Wildstorm front for characters here, we do see Zealot finally introduced to the new DCU in this issue of Deathstroke. Her look is the same, her attitude seems familiar although not exact so far, and I would like to see how they will develop her from here.
The artwork in the book is typical Liefeld. His style has not really changed since the ninteties, which makes it well suited for this story - big guns, big fights, big muscles on his men. I did not like the way he drew Zealot at all - it was almost like he did not want to draw her and someone made him include her. Also, as always with Liefeld, the shoulder pads have been added to Deathstroke, and they just make no sense. The inking by Adelso Corona and Jacob Bear was fine as were the colors by Travis Lanham, but I still had a hard time getting past Liefeld's style (as I said, I am not a fan). I really do not recommend the book past this point unless you are a huge fan of Lobo, Deathstroke, or Liefeld. If you are a fan of Zealot, I would still not recommend the book for you as I do not think this is going to be the Zealot you want to read.

Well, thanks for reading again, especially if you're still sticking with me or looking for these after my hiatus. Hopefully, I will get the next 5 weeks of comics read soon and start posting regularly again as well as talking about more up to date issues...