Weekly Awards For The Comic Books From December 4, 2008

All right, let’s go ahead and dish out The Revolution’s weekly awards.

As always, The Followers of The Revolution submitted tons of excellent comments. The quality of comments posted by the Followers always impresses me. I wish I had more time to respond to each one. All of the comments made valid and interesting points.

It is always tough to pick the comment of the week. This week, I awarded the comment of the week to Joan. She posted the following comment in response to the Secret Invasion #8 review.

“Hmm, my copy seems to be missing the page where Tony says, “I bankrupt myself, torpedo my life and sell my soul for you people and this is the thanks I get? Seriously? You know what, fine. Enjoy having the keys to national security in the hands of the Green Goblin. I hope that works out for you. Me, I’m taking what’s left of the fortune I spent on you idiots and heading to Madripoor, which has lovely weather, no extradition treaties and a sexy leader who thinks I’m awesome. Oh, and P.S., SHIELD is a UN organization, so you can’t actually disband it. Bye now!

-Joan”

The nominees for the Che for the best read of the week:

Batman #682
X-Men: Noir #1

The Winner: X-Men: Noir #1

I already reviewed Batman #682 and Thom did a Bunker Bulletin for X-Men: Noir #1. I enjoyed both issues. I praised Morrison’s work on Batman #682 for impressively summing up Batman’s entire career in just one issue. This was a fine bridge between RIP and Final Crisis and this issue got me excited to see what Morrison has in store for Bruce Wayne.

However, I had to go ahead and give the Che for the best read of the week to X-Men: Noir #1. I completely agree with Thom’s rating and assessment of this issue. This was an absolutely brilliant read. Van Lente has rapidly become one of my favorite writers. I seem to instantly enjoy any title that he writes. I have been a fan of his work on Wolverine: First Class and Incredible Hercules.

Van Lente turns in an incredibly crafted read with X-Men: Noir #1. The character work is impressive as the reader gets a good sense of the various personalities for the Noir versions of Magneto, Quicksilver and Professor X. The dialogue was impeccable as Van Lente absolutely nails the pulp noir styled dialogue.

And the part of this issue that I enjoyed the most was that Van Lente brings back the Golden Age Angel to star as the main character of this book. I love the Golden Age and I dig that Marvel is beginning to make use of some of their Golden Age characters.

In just one issue, Van Lente creates a textured and intriguing world. I dig Van Lente’s Noir Universe spin on the X-Men mythos. And the added bonus of a few pages from Trask’s science fiction novel was fantastic.

And now the nominees for the Sequential Methadone Award for the worst read of the week:

New Avengers #47
Secret Invasion #8

The Winner: Secret Invasion #8

This was a tough decision. I hammered both issues in my reviews this week. New Avengers #47 was a truly awful read. This was typical Bendis as we got a pointless story full of talky dialogue that served no other purpose other than to take up panel space and waste time. And Bendis hamstrung the artist into giving us nothing but repetitious panels of talking heads. Some panels were practically identical except that the character’s head was slightly tilted. God, I would imagine that some artists must hate working with Bendis.

However, I had to give the Sequential Methadone Award of the week to Secret Invasion #8. I had serious reservations about Bendis’ big event from the very start. Still, I kept an open mind hoping that Bendis would surprise me and crank out an exciting and original story. He did not. Instead, Bendis simply affirmed all of my initial reservations about Secret Invasion.

Secret Invasion was a slow, bloated, meandering, pointless and unoriginal story that had an alarming lack of internal logic. Secret Invasion #8 was an incredibly anti-climactic ending. Bendis gave us the obligatory “big event” death as he killed off the Wasp. Unfortunately, poor Janet got dealt a completely pointless and purposeless death that had practically no effect at all on the characters or the story.

We also got more of Bendis bashing on Tony Stark to the point where he was clearly ignoring the continuity from Iron Man’s own monthly title. And we got Bendis ignoring the fact that SHIELD is a U.N. organization and having the President of the United States unilaterally shutting down SHIELD. And Bendis has the U.S. government, in stunning move that lacks intelligence, turning over full control of SHIELD’s old jurisdiction, the Initiative, the Avengers and the Thunderbolts over to a known psychopath in the Green Goblin.

In the end, the Skrulls offered up about as much resistance as the Detroit Lions’ defense. And the Skrull invasion served no real purpose other than to give the reader some incredibly mindless action. The Skrulls never took advantage of infiltrating the various super hero organizations and actual kill any of the heroes. And on top of it all, the Skrull reveals were not terribly exciting. After all, who can forget all of that scintillating “You’re a Skrull! No, you’re a Skrull!” dialogue?

All in all, Secret Invasion #8 was a fitting end to what was a massively over-hyped and under-performing big event. I am sure that in a couple of years, Secret Invasion, much like House of M, will be largely forgotten. Secret Invasion is certainly not a big event that is destined to become a classic in ten to twenty years.

So congrats to X-Men: Noir #1 for winning The Che Award of the week and “congrats” to Secret Invasion #8 for winning the Sequential Methadone Award for the week.