Friday, January 26, 2007

Book-A-Day #194 (1/26): Alias, Vol. 2: Come Home by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Gaydos

See Vol. 1 for my boring thoughts on that subject.

In this volume (mostly concerned with a case about a missing teenage girl in upstate New York), we learn that Jessica Jones is a self-destructive alcoholic. (We suspected it in the first book, but we could have put that down to her having a bad day. Something that happens once could be coincidence. A pattern of behavior is more worrying.)

The dialogue is much less fragmented here than it was in Powers, which is probably why I went on to Vol. 2 of this rather than Vol. 6 of Powers (though I expect I'll get there, eventually). This is also more of an everyday-life kind of series, which I like -- I guess I don't mind superheroes in my funnybooks, as long as they know their place and don't start angsting or emoting all over the place. (Yes, that was a veiled reference to the fact that Superman is crying again.) Super-heroing is in the background here; characters either appear out of costume (Luke Cage, Scott Lang) or wander across the background (there's a nice passing fight scene among Spider-Man, the Human Torch, and Doctor Octopus).

I still think the "mutie" thing in the Marvel universe is overdone -- as I've said before, MU people have the infallible ability to tell mutants from other kinds of super-beings, and just hate the former (up until Civil War, I guess, and probably again as soon as that reboots). That is dumb, but I guess it's too deeply ground into the carpet of Marveldom to come out now without major steam cleaning.

My qualms about the deeply silly fictional universe it's set in aside, I liked this book, and I'll probably be back for Vol. 3 next month.

The Fabulous Book-A-Day Index!

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