Battle as Ballet: Elektra Bloodlines (2014)

 

Front cover of Elektra: Bloodlines TPB

This book collects the following comics: Elektra #1-5 (2014)

Score (out of 5 Capes)

2 out of 5 Capes for a beautiful book with an unpleasant and half-incoherent story.

My Review

My two-volume set collecting the complete run of the Marvel Comics 2014 Elektra series has been sitting on my must-read list for too long. Elektra is a complicated character in the Marvel universe, with lots of tragic back-story and twists, and I have been looking forward to reading this series since I scored the books on a discount rack.

It was not worth the wait, a disappointment in so many ways from cover to cover.

What was not a disappointment was the art. Michael Del Mundo's painted pages are breathtakingly beautiful. The reds, whether from Elektra's costume or the frequent sprays of blood, pop from the page; the ballet-esque movements of Elektra in particular but other combattants; the fluidity and swirl give the action sequences a life too often absent from more standard fare.

Under his brush, each battle becomes a dance. And there are many, many battles.

The set pieces of the covers are poster-ready images unto themselves. It is also a brilliant touch to have artist Bill Sienkiewicz offer a variant cover for issue #1, a nod to his breakthrough work on the classic Elektra: Assassin series from 1986.

Where this collection falls flat is in the story itself. Author Haden Blackman throws so many ideas, elements and twists into the mix, but they fail to click into a complete and coherent whole.

A 5-page introductory narrative anchors this Elektra series in her complex, varied and not always canonical history. The rest of the first chapter sets up the central conflict of this collection: Elektra accepts a contract and sets out to find Cape Crow, while the new villain Bloody Lips comes to the same pursuit from another, darker direction.

I will say more about Bloody Lips in the "What I didn't love" section below. Suffice to say he is a ruthless killer who feeds off his victims and, in eating part of them, absorbs their talents, abilities, even memories. He draws on this internalized library of skills to make short work of secret S.H.I.E.L.D. installations to finally arrive at his objective: the comatose Bullseye.

The hunt for Cape Crow takes both assassins to Monster Island, where Elektra encounters other bounty hunters from the Assassins Guild and, eventually, Cape Crow's son who, it turns out, put out the contract in the first place. So naturally they partner up.

From Monster Island to the underwater city of Shicheng and her first direct confrontation with Bloody Lips; to a telepathic encounter with her dead mother who is not all that she appears; to the far north of the Arctic Circle and some more confrontations with the Guild and Bloody Lips. Our heroine travels far, amid constant battles which she at times barely survives.

The final confrontation with Bloody Lips gives him exactly what he craves: a good taste of Elektra. Can he handle what comes with it?

It is an ambitious, far-reaching story that ultimately cannot support its own weight. There are too many moving pieces, too many nods to some aspect of Elektra's history or wider collection of characters. The result is a story that feels both too small and too big, ultimately falling apart amidst a loose collection of ideas, characters and past confrontations.

Die-hard and long-time Elektra fans, who have lived and breathed all aspects of her evolution and appearances, might find this an enthralling tale. But ultimately the story falls apart and we are left just with the pretty pictures. And whether in the Arctic snows or the underwater hues of blue, they are beautiful.  

2 out of 5 Capes.

What I loved

Del Mundo's gorgeous painted art

Michael Del Mundo's visuals are absolutely breath-taking.

Panel after panel, page after page, he gives us images of stunning beauty, a painter's master touch tying together the action and the dramatic revelations.

When the story switches to narrative mode, a too-frequent occurrence to cover some annoying gaps, Del Mundo seizes the opportunity to riff on the subject of the beautiful, deadly martial artist assassin. The results are one and two-page spreads like those excerpted here. So evocative of key moments in the character's history, all with a smooth, fluid visual appeal.

Beautiful, flowing, violent images

As an assassin par excellence, Elektra's adventures are filled with violent, blade-filled battles. Lots of blood, stabbings, severings. Del Mundo incorporates even the most violent battles into his fluid style. Violence has seldom been so appealing to look at.

What I didn't love

Bloody Lips and his Eat-You Power

The most prominent and powerful of Elektra's opponents in these pages is the awkwardly-named Bloody Lips. Other villains - Lady Bullseye, Scalphunter, the wider Assassins' Guild - come in and out of the story, but the psychotic killing machine Bloody Lips is the most troublesome.

If only there was something, anything, enjoyable about this new character.

His abilities span the range of powers, memories and knowledge of anyone he has bitten. Someone he has killed and from whose corpse he has eaten a larger portion, passes on more of their skills and abilities. But it seems even a little nibble of someone still living, or even licking their blood off a blade, is still able to impart at least some memories and skills.

It is a disgustingly unpleasant power. But what really irks is that it is not done particularly well. 

It calls to mind the Images Comics series from a few years earlier (circa 2009), Chew, about a detective who could get psychic insights into murder victims by taking a bite of them. But while Chew at times had an almost sacramental feel, Bloody Lips embodies all the unpleasant aspects of this unusual power source without any balance or nuance. It leaves too much room for writer Blackman to fudge things and cut corners narratively, a temptation he embraces too often.

 

Related Reviews

Elektra book 2: Révérence (coming soon)

Quick Reference Details

Writers:  Haden Blackman
Artists:  Michael Del Mundo
Published By:  Marvel Comics
Published When:  Nov 18, 2014
Parental Rating: Teen

Back cover of Elektra: Bloodlines TPB

Chill Ride - Review of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold (2018)

 

Front cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold

This book collects the following comics: Showcase #8 (1957), The Flash #150 (1965), The Flash #297 (1981), Flash #28 (1989), The Flash #182 (2002), Flashpoint: Citizen Cold #1 (2011), The Flash #6 (2012), The Flash #17 (2017)

Score (out of 5 Capes)

A scattered collection of moments in the career of a middling member of the Rogues earns a middling score of 2.5 out of 5 Capes.

My Review

Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, has a very long history of villainy battling the Flash. This collection mines the DC Comics archives to pull out eight of his most memorable tales.

For such a significant rival, of course you have to start at the very beginning, and the collection does exactly that, opening with the 1957 Showcase #8 debut. Written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino, who would spend decades on Flash stories and lay a foundation for his classic look, the tale introduces the "ambitious crook" Leonard Snart. Needing a way to ply his trade despite the Flash, he accidentally exposes his gun to the rays of a Cyclotron (classic 1950s origins!). The result is a gun capable of blasting ice in various forms, and producing hallucination-inducing levels of cold.

Gardner Fox's 1965 story, "Captain Cold's Polar Perils!", comes next in the collection. It adds nothing to the Snart character, but does have some full-length fun with the ice and frigid hallucinations gimmicks.

When we reach the 1981 story, "Capt. Cold's Cold, Cold Flame!", written by Cary Bates and (still) drawn by Carmine Infantino, the criminal methods and motivations are the same but the person under the parka begins to grow. Bates introduces a love interest into Leonard's life. Alas, his choice in girlfriends is no better than his career choices; behind his back, she uses his reputation and his ice gun for a burglary spree of her own. The betrayal moves him to set up an attempted murder-suicide, foiled ultimately by Barry Allen as the Flash.

By 1989, Barry Allen has been killed in the massive universe-realigning Crisis on Infinite Earths story. But the race continues for the Flash, this time with former sidekick Wally West stepping into the starring role. The William Messner-Loebs tale from Flash #28 is perhaps the most forgettable of these collected stories, as the attempt to drop a classic Flash villain into the life of the new Flash falls flat. Maybe most notable is the big stylistic difference between this era's penciller, Greg LaRocque, compared to the longstanding look laid down by Infantino.

After decades of little to no character development behind Leonard Snart's history or motivations, the new millennium brought renewed focus. The tales in the second half of the collection, dating from 2002 to 2017, start to round out Captain Cold into a less one-dimensional character.

"Absolute Zero" (2002) by Geoff Johns (discussed more in the What I Loved section below) sends him on a mission of vengeance, hunting down the man who killed his sister.

"Best Served Cold" (2011) by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato similarly uses sibling tragedy to fire up the cold heart of Leonard Snart.

Most fun of all, though, has to be "Cold-Hearted", the 2011 limited standalone tie-in to the Flashpoint cross-over event throughout DC Comics. Our man Leonard, in this alternate reality, is Citizen Cold, the hero of Central City. He is a complicated hero, a dark and amoral edge just below the surface. Despite the adulation of the city, the cries of "Cold Snap! Cold Snap!" from his fans, he seems barely to acknowledge them.

Adding to the fun is the conflict with another icy villain, Batman's occasional opponent Mister Freeze. In this reality, he still harbours his own tragic back-story, but has been reduced to merely a head under glass. Writer and artist Scott Kolins pits the two cold-masters against one another in a fascinating, if too brief, comparison.

The efforts of all these writers over the past quarter-century help to round out this otherwise limited character. They unfreeze his back-story, give him more shape and dimension and begin to reintroduce some interest. We the readers finally start to care, at least a little, for this cold-hearted villain. I would love to see more texture added to his frosty exterior, ideally beyond tragic loss of a beloved sibling.

It is always fascinating to watch a character evolve and grow over time and this collection gives us a glimpse into Captain Cold. The nature of such a collection is to leave us hanging amidst any multi-part tales that they include, and this one is no different. And it shows the efforts and limited successes of writers who tried to make him a more human, relatable, nuanced character.

Over all, I give it a middle-of-the-road 2.5 Capes out of 5.

What I loved

Nicely done Revenge tale

More recent writers have taken pains to expand the emotional and motivational range of Captain Cold. The results are mixed, but a couple moments do stand out in this collection.

The first is the tale of justice and revenge by Geoff Johns, "Absolute Zero" from The Flash #182 (2002). Johns balances past and present; flashbacks to the abusive father and Snart's tragic childhood interspersed with his current-day quest to avenge Chillblaine's murder of his sister.

Snart knows who he is and what he will or will not do, in Johns's telling, making for a lively if chillingly cold-hearted internal monologue. The pencil-work by Scott Kolins is solid. But it is the colouring work by James Sinclair that really makes the visuals stand out, using saturation differences to communicate when the panels are current and when they are flashback.

Giving Leonard Snart a tragic back-story

 

Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato mine a similar vein in their 2012 story, "Best Served Cold" from The Flash #6. Again the death of Snart's sister is the motivation for his rampage, but this time he blames Barry Allen, the Flash.

Manapul's icy visuals are filled with clever touches, beyond the dangerous ice spikes and jagged fragments. My personal favourite is how he worked in the title of the series, "The Flash", into one of the spires of ice supporting a floating restaurant. 

What I didn't love

Wally West inherited a Rogue

With the set of eight stories pulled from various Flash series or Flash-adjacent one-shots, the hero beneath the mask switches from Barry Allen to Wally West and back again. But no matter who is the scarlet speedster du jour, Captain Cold continues to be a central rogue.

I understand that a rivalry so deep it turns to hatred will persist no matter who wears the uniform - the Yankees and the Red Sox will hate each other regardless. But when the hero's mantle is handed off to another hero, with his own life and friends, patrolling his own corner of the world, it is not necessary to continue the same Rogues' Gallery.

Simple escapes are always disappointing

Several of the stories collected here are only one part of a larger story, an unfortunate side-effect of the nature of this kind of collection. I can forgive those, frustrating though they can be.

But there is no excuse for lazy, convenient short-cuts in the story-telling. The final tale in the collection is most guilty. "Rogues Reloaded Part Four" from The Flash #17 (2017) has the Flash at the mercy of a team-up of many of his Rogues. But by some massive good fortune, Flash accidentally broke one of their weapons just enough to incapacitate all of them but not himself. How convenient. How disappointing it must have been to anyone who had followed the entire four-parter, to have it end so randomly.

Related Reviews

Here are some reviews of other books that look at a character's evolution over their history:

Aquaman's 75th Anniversary collection 

Poison Ivy's evolution told through the Batman Arkham collection

Quick Reference Details

Writers:  John Broome, Gardner Fox, Geoff Johns, Joshua Williamson, more
Artists:  Carmine Infantino, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, more
Published By:  DC Comics
Published When:  Aug 28, 2018
Parental Rating: Teen

Back cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold