Open Mike Night: Patsy Walker, Hellcat! (2016) #1-2/ Captain Marvel (2016) #1

Open Mike Night by Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

Patsy Walker, Hellcat! (2016) #1-2

Written by: Kate Leth
Art by: Brittney L. Williams
Colored by: Megan Wilson
Lettered by: VC’s Joe Sabino (issue 1) and Clayton Cowles (issue 1 & 2)

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99

Weaver: Assumedly due to Pa...er, Trish Walker’s appearances in Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix, Patsy Walker is back in comic form.  I have always been fascinated in Patsy going from her romance comic roots to the realm of superherodom, and I’m glad to see this title mix in a bit of both.  At it’s heart, Patsy Walker, Hellcat! is a humor comic with superheroes.  And yet, it’s not just a sequence of quick jokes, it has an overarching plot that pays tribute both to her romance past and her superhero past, with Patsy all the while saying she hates talking about the past (yet it keeps coming up).

In this series, Patsy gets fired by She-Hulk, who apparently wasn’t paying her much anyway since Patsy sleeps in a storage room.  She has a chance encounter with a newly superpowered guy going by the name of Telekinian which, like all hero meet-ups, begins with a bit of a misunderstanding.  Ian stole money from an armored truck, but was overcome with guilt and wanting to put it back.  Shenanigans ensue, which lead to Telekinian (now going by his given name of Ian) getting a job at a bookstore run by Tom, a character from Patsy’s old comics.  She discovers that Hedy, her old frenemy, had put the old comics back in print, leading to everyone knowing who she is.  Patsy is incensed that Hedy never told her or got her permission, and resolves to confront Hedy with She-Hulk’s help.

Meanwhile, Patsy is trying to form a superpowered temp agency for people like Ian who have powers and are trying to find jobs that are okay with or interested in people with powers working for them.  She calls an emergency meeting of her superhero friends to discuss this, which many of them are irritated about it being an emergency.  During that meeting, it’s discovered that the idea is already resonating with people both as employers and potential employees.

Also, Patsy briefly works retail at the One Stop Crop Top Shop, where she encounters and pursues a magical thief, which leads to Patsy being fired for taking too long on her break.  Phew. Lots of stuff happened.

Maillaro: Yeah, I couldn’t help but think of this series in comparison to Squirrel Girl which we reviewed months ago.  It seems like they are both tapping into the same audience, but Hellcat succeeds in every way that Squirrel Girl failed to me.  I find the characters interesting and entertaining here, there is a well-grounded story, and a concept that immediately grabs me.  

Too often, when someone does humor comics, they head directly to the random nonsense genre made popular by Seth McFarlane.  Sometimes it works (Howard the Duck, and in comics, I am actually a fan of the Cartoon Network show Uncle Grandpa..which is as random as it gets), but because of the randomness, it can be real hit or miss.  For Hellcat, they dialed back the random and just kept it simple and genuinely funny.  I have to give them a lot of credit for that.

Weaver: Because they kept it simple, they could get away with the randomness being fun juxtaposition with the more grounded parts.  Why is Patsy working at the Crop Top Shop?  Surely other retail places don’t do much background checking.  So the simple answer is...because it’s funny.  Ditto getting a bunch of heroes together for hamburgers, especially with them all accepting.

I like Hedy Wolfe and Tubs (sorry, Tom) showing up.  I feel like this title wants to celebrate all the weird twists and turns that Patsy has taken from inception to the modern day, and because that’s a favorite talking point of mine, I’m all in.

Maillaro: When I was reading the first issue, I was not always 100% sure why I was enjoying the comic, but I really enjoyed it anyway and knew I would be picking the series up on a regular basis.   Kate Leth seemed to have a real clear sense of what she wanted to build here, and the end result is a terrific surprise.

I was a little thrown by the the art on the series. At times, it makes the characters look like children.  It was real odd at first, but once I got used to it, I just let myself get lost in the world of the comic.  I am still not quite sure how I feel about the art here, but I’m willing to just let it go in service of the fun storytelling and characterization.

Weaver: It’s a manga influenced style, where someone drawn as a child is supposed to indicate to you that the character is acting childish, usually having a tantrum.  It’s used to delineate when we’re supposed to understand the character and empathize from when they’re being a jerk.  It’s unusual to see it in a Western comic, and I’m not sure I like it either, but it’s forgivable.

I do wonder something that shows up on Patsy’s dating app...is she old?  She obviously was a teenager forever ago, and she did die and get resurrected along the way, but what age range is she supposed to be?  She feels like a teenager at times, but at other times she’s lamenting having a 17 year old boss.  Also, I call foul on her never saying “cheese and crackers!”

Maillaro: I was getting the sense that she was supposed to be in her early to mid 30’s, though it was pretty unclear through the book.  I was just thinking it was part of the joke that people considered her old when in all reality she wasn’t all that old.  But, I guess she could have been even older than that.  It is definitely unclear, and probably intentionally so.

Weaver: I’m not sure it matters in the long run...or maybe the fact that it’s unclear allows us to hit jokes from both sides, both the “you’re so old” and the “I hate kids” kind of things.

What a random assortment of heroes that Patsy calls at the end.  I’m not even sure she’s technically met half of them, which makes it even better.  I also liked the lines of emoji for each one in her phone.  Which again feels like something she’s in between age ranges on...sometimes she seems adept with phone use, and sometimes, it’s a total mystery.  Although it’s weighted heavily towards mystery, so she probably knows how to do a few things well, and everything else is hit or miss.

Maillaro: I liked that they used slightly lesser known female characters.  These days, when you hear Marvel female, it’s pretty much always Carol Danvers, Black Widow, even Mockingbird. Marvel Cinematic Universe rules all.   While we did get Carol, we also got Miss America, Valkyrie, Hawkeye 2, Squirrel Girl, and Monica (I forget what her codename is these days).  It didn’t feel like they were just going for a cheap movie tie in; in the other comic we reviewed today, they included Rocket and War Machine.

So scores.  I loved the writing.  I can easily go 5/5.  I thought what they were going for with the art was cool, but it just wasn’t really for me.  It wasn’t bad though.  So I think a 3.5 is fair.

Weaver: Yeah, dredging up lesser knowns is always going to be better than same old same old for me, especially considering that we get Valkyrie over Thor (which, to be fair, Hellcat and Valkyrie have a ton of history).

I’ll go 5 on the writing too, but I liked the art a bit better, I’m giving it a 4.  There were tons of background details in the mall or Ian’s apartment or the bookstore that just made it pop for me.

Captain Marvel (2016) #1

Written by: Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters
Art by: Kris Anka
Colored by: Matthew Wilson
Lettered by: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99

Maillaro: So much of this column seems to be me torturing Weaver by picking books outside of his comfort area.  Weaver says all the time that he hates space books, so what do I pick for this week?  Carol Danvers...IN SPACE!!!  

One of the previews I read for this book called it “Marvel’s Deep Space Nine.”  And that actually is a pretty good explanation.  We see aliens from different worlds who happen to be around Earth, including a cameo by Rocket Raccoon.  And the station has spas, gyms, and meditation area.  I am kind of hoping we will see some alien shops.  In Spider-Woman, Carol took Jessica Drew to a hospital in space, so I’m hoping that ties in too.

One thing that really weirded me about about this issue was that Marvel’s new space team Alpha Flight...actually is Alpha Flight.  Apparently, Canada has decided that they no longer need superheroes, so Puck, Sasquatch, and Aurora are now serving about the Alpha Flight Space Station, which hovers around Earth to keep us safe from alien attacks.  I just thought that was pretty random, but hey, I like Alpha Flight, so if this is the excuse we need to keep them in the spotlight, I’ll take it.

Weaver: I was pretty surprised by that too.  It seemed so random.  Especially when you consider you need three space fighters, two of them custom built to accommodate size differentials.  I like Alpha Flight as much as the next guy, but I’m lukewarm at best with Canada sending their best and brightest off planet to shoot asteroids.

While I liked War Machine and Rocket appearing, I felt that both cameos went on a little too long and had far too little to do with the overall plot.  It felt like wasted space, pun intended.

I did like that Carol gets dragged into a discussion about waste management which turns out to be directly involved with the threat of the issue.  I liked some of the scenes of her wandering around and establishing the base.  But really, at the core...space story.  This didn’t do it for me.

Maillaro: I thought there was a lot of things to enjoy about this comic.  I loved the shot of Sasquatch randomly meditating in the background of one shot, and the scenes with Puck and Carol were great.  I also thought the story around the Eridani worked really well at introducing what they were going for here.  I do agree that some of the cameos seemed to take up too much time, especially since I’m not really sure what the status of Rhodey and Carol’s relationship is, and this issue didn’t really make it any clearer.

Actually, I was really enjoying this issue until the odd “revelation” on the last page.  Which I’m still not sure I understood.  Carol encounters a warship, which seems to be full of dead bodies, but for some reason, it has her logo on the side of the ship.  

Weaver: That threw me too, especially considering that her logo isn’t all the unique of a logo.  Why immediately assume it was related to her?  I’m sure there’s an explanation when the revelation comes, but as far as cliffhangers go, it was more annoying than suspenseful.  I think that if they’d cut at the point that she opens it and sees dead bodies, it would be more satisfying.  You still get the “What the hell is a ship full of corpses doing shooting lasers at us?” factor without having it get weird.

Puck is a great character, and probably the best fit to this change of any Alpha.  But he can’t carry this title on his own.  Aurora comes across as nothing but snobby, which granted is Aurora, but never is there any idea why she’d go up on a space station, which makes it pretty odd.  Puck makes sense, he’s an adventurer.  Sasquatch makes sense, he’s a scientist.  Aurora…?

Maillaro: To be fair, I am not sure Aurora every really made a lot of sense in Alpha Flight.  Though at least she had her brother around, though he managed to dodge getting shot into space.  I actually have no idea where Northstar is at the moment...  

Hmmm….I wonder if this is tied into going-on’s in the mutant books.  Mutants all seem to be getting sick because of the Terrigen mists.  Did Canada send Alpha Flight here just to keep them safe?  That could be a pretty cool twist in itself, though nothing in this issue suggested that to me.

Weaver: Of the three people in space, exactly one (Aurora) is a mutant.  Both Langkowski and Judd are cursed.  So that’s a plausible reason to send Aurora out, I guess.  As for Northstar, I know they sporadically add him into X-Men, so he might be too close to being on a main team to be missed.

Maillaro: Shows how bad my memory is.  I always thought they were all mutants.  And I’ve read a lot of Alpha Flight over the years, so that’s even more embarrassing not to know that.

All in all, I liked a lot of this issue, though I did think there were some flaws that brought it down some.  None of them were bad enough to chase me away from this book.  Also, the writers typically don’t do comics, so I give them a lot of credit for managing to keep it pretty tight with prior continuity.  Marvel’s editorial situation tends to be a mess, and many of their books tend to just do whatever they want whether it makes any sense with past stories or even other current stories.

Weaver: I had a less favorable opinion.  It does seem to give some nods to continuity, but Alpha Flight being totally unexplained takes some points away from that for me.  I felt this issue was average to below average, so I’m giving it a 2.5 for story.  The art was fine, I’ll give that a 4.

Maillaro: Yeah, I had no real gripes with the art.  It wasn’t particularly memorable.  There was no panel I can point to and say, “I LOVED THAT” but nothing bad either.  A 4 is very fair.

I definitely liked the writing far more than you did.  I agree with you on Alpha Flight being random, but like I said, I am just glad it pulls these characters off the scrap pile.  It’s not like Marvel was going to do much else with them.  I would say a 3.5 for the story.  I see a lot of potential here, and at least it was a pretty complete first issue.

Maillaro: For next week.  Old Man Logan #1 appeals to me.   Maybe we can pair that with a classic Wolverine story?  

Weaver: Did we ever do the Uncanny issue with Wolverine and Rogue in Japan right after she joins?  That’s a personal favorite.

Maillaro: Perfect!  Find the issue number for me, and we’ll be good to go.  See you next week!

Final Scores