Once again, expectations have served me greatly. With a name like Learning Curve, I expected this second Ultimate Spider-Man story to mostly revolve around Peter learning to deal with his new powers, such as climbing on walls and being strong, and that this would be basically fine, but nothing to write home about while waiting for the next good story to start up.

Instead, I got a sensible revamp of several eye-rollingly silly criminals from the early Spider-Man run (and also Kingpin, who I haven’t even gotten to yet in the originals), as well as the beginnings of Peter’s work as a freelance photographer and the beginnings of a relationship with Mary Jane. On top of this, there are some seeds scattered about for future plot development, and Aunt May seems like a real and interesting character, which I would not have guessed was possible; in my experience she has only ever been a device to serve as a limiting factor on Peter’s choices in life. All this, plus the learning curve in question is Spider-Man learning to behave intelligently instead of bulling forward into fight after unwinnable fight. Which is to say, something that’s actually interesting to read about, and not filler in the slightest.

All of that plus the beginnings of the smart-mouthed banter that was, at least to my eye, Spidey’s first real trademark maneuver have gelled this series in my mind as my clear favorite in the super-hero genre, and in the top 5 of graphic novel series generally. Looking forward to more quite eagerly, let me say.

Apparently, the first omnibus of collected old Buffy comics didn’t leave that much of an impression on me, because I’ve felt no particular drive to read the next one since. The only reason I did now is because I’ve been trying to put off starting something new before the next Walking Dead collection comes out. But it’s been delayed by another month at least, and what the hell is up with all that? So, I caved. But the thing is, I mostly liked the first Buffy collection, both in my memory and in my review, so on the whole, inexplicable!

Volume 2 picks up still a little before the start of the series, but then rushes ahead into early season 3; I’m left with the impression that the comic didn’t start until season 3 or later, and that’s why things have moved so fast. As much as I still appreciate that the order of the comics is in show-chronology rather than publication, it is a bit jarring to see Dawn in the earliest comics, and then have her vanish from later ones when the writers were not aware that she would exist later.[1] In any event, most of these stories don’t do much to indicate when they are set, so chronology lets me only spend a few minutes trying to work it out, instead of the hair-tearing that would be happening if they were just scattered randomly.

As for the book itself: definitely a bit of a letdown from the previous. Part of it is that the art is either worse, or still as iffy but stands out again from what I’m used to, after the delay. But also, the stories mostly just didn’t do it for me. The first long one was a little too heavy on existential angst, the ones focused on writer favorites Spike and Drusilla were basically fine, the one set during Angelus in season 2 was quite good, and the remaining couple were pretty meh; one included an incomprehensible denouement, and the other had Giles’ niece as a really annoying character who contributed nothing. She wasn’t even whoa awesome enough to write her off as a Mary Sue.

I never really disliked any of it, besides the niece. But I occasionally wished it would be over so I could be reading something more interesting. This makes me skeptical about my likelihood to buy future volumes, barring if I see them used somewhere.

[1] But she’s still added a bit of flavor to those pre-series issues, and I can get behind that.

I was getting ready to work up a movie review from last night, when I realized I’d finished a book a few days ago and not ever reviewed it. I mean, it was the weekend, when I rarely review anything, so the delay is understandable. The forgetting, though, quite a bit less so. I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that before, or even come close. All of this would seem to indicate bad things about the book in question, and maybe reading between the lines they do, but my expectations for Micah were set so low that I walked away pretty happy about the outcome.

Yup, as intimated recently, I read another Anita Blake book. My outline created from the several most recent books states that a book in the series will start out with a mystery, quickly shift to sexual politics among Anita’s many were- and vampiric lovers, possibly also include were- and/or vampiric politics as well, occasionally hint at the mystery, and then draw it all together in the final 50 pages, sometimes very neatly and impressively but other times wildly implausibly. But the sexual politics is definitely the unfortunate-image-inducing glue that binds the whole plot together. I’ve pretty much typed this exact paragraph in a previous review; I revisit it here because Micah is not the usual Anita Blake novel. It weighs in at a light 250 pages, and with the font and spacing choices factored in as well could not be more than a third of the length of her last several books. The big question, then: what was removed from the formula to allow for this unexpected shrinkage?

My dread was that it would be all sexual politics (or possibly just sex completely divorced from any kind of characterization or plot), with no mystery or anything else. To my surprise, it was something rather more than that. There is a plot, and of course there are sexual politics, but mostly it was a chance to provide a little bit of character growth between Anita and her most recent and eponymous boyfriend. Actual growth, relative to the reader’s previous knowledge and between each other, as opposed to the typical jockeying for sexual political position that has often masqueraded as character growth lately. And the plot, bare bones though it is, wasn’t half bad. I once more believe that Hamilton can still write good mystery fodder, if she is willing to sit down and actually do it. Rumor tells me she probably isn’t willing, though. Neverthless, I retain hope!

To be clear, this was not the next book in question, although I’ve now started that book, and it really will be the next book reviewed. It’s just, I still hadn’t found a replacement for my vanished Dresden Files #3, and took the excuse to make a little bit more delay by reading a little bit more Marvel modernity. (And, as I expect to like the next Dresden Files, you can see that I’ve still failed to find it or its replacement copy. Alas, for more reasons than one.)

Anyway, the continuation of the Ultimates, Homeland Security, was every bit as good as the original; what it lacked in characterization (which was not much at all), it more than made up in plot. In brief, the Ultimates (substantially expanded in scope from volume 1) must defend the world from shape-shifting Nazi aliens bent on the destruction of free will. Which I know sounds awesome enough all by itself, but it includes battles between massive military armadas, superb plot twists, semi-cannibalism, and discreet incestuous undertones. Plus, like I said, fantastic characterizations. Quicksilver, only present in a couple of scenes, is worth the price of admission all by himself on that front, and everyone else is well worthwhile. (Except Henry Pym; deeply flawed, I can handle, but he was pretty boring in this one. Still, that is a minor complaint, and about my only one. This is, as the first volume was, a flat-out excellent story.)

Yet more graphic novels! I’ve been going kind of crazy with them lately, I guess? On the bright side, they are filled with an excessively high fun quotient, and when compared to the next book I’ll be reading… well, you’ll see what I mean, I’m sure. In the meantime, the first volume of Ultimate X-Men marks the last new series I plan to pick up from Marvel for a while, probably, so there’s that, anyway.

The Tomorrow People is the least successful as an origin story of the four I’ve read lately. I mean, sure, it introduces a lot of people and concepts, but it does it in media res; which is not a bad thing, except that I felt like if I weren’t already familiar with most of the media, I’d have been immediately lost. We’re supposed to already know about the Mutants and their war against humanity, and we’re supposed to accept that these characters have both person names and superhero names without ever really being introduced to them. It’s not that it affected my enjoyment of the book, but I really think the new people they were trying to draw in would have some early struggles that none of the other series presented.

The good news is, the actual storyline following the origin was pretty darn excellent, if perhaps rushed. Pre-9/11 America is nevertheless obsessed with terrorism, in the form of mutants who have been beaten down too long and now wish to use their powers for dominance over humanity. Before you’ve had barely time to take a blink, three forces are on a collision course: the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by the evil Magneto, seeks to place homo superior at the top of Earth’s food chain, Professor Charles Xavier’s X-Men wish to prevent Magneto’s plans and make peace with their human brethren, and the robotic Sentinels have been programmed to murder any person with the mutant gene. Mix all that in with assassins, unexpected betrayals, secret unrevealed pasts, familial angst and a reasonable portion of sex, and, y’know, good times. I measure this one as just below the Ultimates on the adult content scale, but at the bottom of the entertainment scale of the four series with Ultimate Fantastic Four, at least so far. (But still entertaining!)

Point of historical interest: I’ve never really read modern superhero comics, and only recently the semi-old stuff from the 60s and 70s. Ultimate X-Men marks the first comic I’ve read which contains the otherwise ubiquitous appearance of the female hero with outsized breasts and bared midriff. The only real surprise here is that it took this long, I guess, but there it is. On the bright side, none of them was placed in a refrigerator.