Before Atomic Blonde, I Venture Into The Coldest City.

The Good: Good use of jargon, Well-constructed plot, A fast read
The Bad: Terrible artwork, Plot is telegraphed completely, No empathetic characters, Inability to connect with characters, Jargon and plot-heavy
The Basics: The Coldest City is a graphic novel worth, perhaps, one read-through . . . and it severely lowered our expectations for the forthcoming film Atomic Blonde.


It takes quite a bit these days for a movie preview to have an effect upon me. I am not saying that I only watch the things I am interested in already - far from it! - but rather that film previews have such a habit of giving away all of a film's best moments, telegraphing the plot entirely, or completely failing to intrigue me, that it is rare that watching a film preview actually generates interest from me. So, when I saw Alien Covenant (reviewed here!) and I ended up more enthusiastic about the preview trailer for the film Atomic Blonde that played before the film, that's actually saying something. With a month and a half to go before Atomic Blonde hits theaters, I took the intrigue I had from the preview trailer and tracked down the source material, the graphic novel The Coldest City, to get my fix.

No matter how good or bad Atomic Blonde ends up being, arguably the biggest shock of the film will be that it was made at all from the graphic novel The Coldest City.

Yes, despite the on-cover endorsement by Greg Rucka, whose works I have generally enjoyed, The Coldest City is that bad. The Coldest City is a spy book and it is assembled in such a way that the first read-through of the book is the only one that holds water; within eight pages in to the second read, readers who know how the book ends will sit up and say, "How was I so stupid that I didn't notice that the first time around?!" Despite the problematic narrative set-up, all other things being equal, The Coldest City is neither complicated-enough, nor long-enough to make is seem like credible source material for a feature-length film.

Opening on November 11, 1989, Lorraine Broughton returns to an MI-6 office for debriefing. There, her superiors ask her to recount for them her latest mission, as the last remaining asset the intelligence agency had in the area, Perceval, has been killed. Flashing back to October 28, 1989, Lorraine recounts getting her mission. She is being sent to Berlin because MI-6 asset BER-2 has been killed. BER-2 appeared to have been killed by the Soviet spy Yuri Bakhtin, who supposedly came into possession of a list of all intelligence assets - on all sides - working in Berlin, but Bakhtin was killed before he could return to Moscow without the list on him. Broughton is being tasked with recovering the list and BER-2's body, because the leaders of MI-6 no longer trust BER-1, David Perceval.

Undercover as a lawyer sent to recover BER-2's body, Broughton arrives in Berlin, where she meets with the sexist Perceval and begins to trace the clues that might lead her to the mysterious Spyglass, the agent who allegedly created the list of spies. Perveval is not very helpful to Broughton and her short mission soon drags on. As Broughton encounters intelligence agents from the CIA, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union, she hunts for the list and tries to determine the truth surrounding BER-2's death.

One of the difficult aspects of The Coldest City is that it is heavy in realistic spy jargon. People are constantly referred to by code names, "asset," etc. and the mental acrobatics of keeping the various code names and ethnic names straight is not rewarded by any form of payoff in the volume's climax. In fact, the unrelenting pace at which new names are dropped becomes problematic as the book nears its end. "Stachel" is referenced for the first time fairly late in The Coldest City, so the emotional reaction of the reveal of Stachel's identity is more an eye roll than a gasp of revelation. The Coldest City fails to make the reader actually care about any of the characters sufficiently to get the reader to invest in the fates of any of them.

The setting for The Coldest City might be the most intriguing aspect of the book, as Berlin - West and East - in the days before the Berlin Wall fell provides a great backdrop for the book. For a book where everybody is a spy, The Coldest City makes it credible that everyone would be a spy!

Unfortunately, there is little to talk-up about The Coldest City and the fundamental problem with the graphic novel is the artwork. Like The Walking Dead (Volume 1 is reviewed here!), The Coldest City is a black and white graphic novel and the artwork works in detriment to the story. The simplistic artwork does not make it easy to tell who the characters are or what is happening in each panel. The settings are very basically rendered, so few locations resonate, and action is far more implied than illustrated. As a result, the dialogue-heavy The Coldest City does not utilize the graphic novel medium particularly well.

Ultimately, that is the death knell of The Coldest City; the artwork obscures, the nonlinear narrative is designed to throw the reader off, but ultimately, after the reveal from the first reading, there is nothing to go back to The Coldest City for again. We can only hope, the basic ideas from The Coldest City are fleshed out in such a way to make Atomic Blonde not saddled by the same issues.

For other graphic novels, please visit my reviews of:
Lost Girls By Alan Moore & Melissa Gilbert
Uncle Sam By Steve Darnall And Alex Ross
Fathom: The Definitive Edition By Michael Turner

2/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Digest Origins: Daredevil: Season One Underwhelms!

The Good: Moments of character
The Bad: Most of the character arc is rushed, Incomplete plots, Simplistic artwork
The Basics: In rebooting Daredevil (yet again!), writer Antony Johnston gets the highlights of Matt Murdock’s early adventures without giving a truly meaty origin story . . . to the detriment of Daredevil: Season One.


I have often said that one of the problems with having characters that are decades old is that it is tough to keep them fresh and relevant and tell new stories. At some point, it has all been done and one of the obvious solutions in the comic book universe is to end the story and then reboot. DC Comics has done that remarkably ineffectively with The New 52 (most all the stories were rebooted and rebegun, but essential pieces like Green Lantern hinge on recent major crossover events like Blackest Night, so it makes absolutely no sense to have the story continuing and rebooting at the same time) and I understand Marvel has done something similar with Marvel Now! I’m not even sure if Daredevil: Season One is a Marvel Now! work (it does not say that anywhere on the graphic novel), but given that it is the origin story of Matt Murdock as the Daredevil, I suspect that it might be.

Actually, what Daredevil: Season One is is a digest version of the earliest adventures of Daredevil, like writer Antony Johnston went and read The Essential Daredevil Volume 1 (reviewed here!) and condensed it into a much slimmer volume. As a result, Daredevil: Season One is not so much an origin story of Daredevil (the first page glosses right through the accident that gave Matt Murdock extraordinary abilities) as it is a summary of the first few adversaries and adventures Daredevil has.

The core characters from the beginning of Daredevil’s career are here and the basic story is familiar to the fans: in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer by day, working with his best friend Foggy Nelson. Both of them pine for the firm’s paralegal, Karen Page, who is dating Nelson, but is obsessed with the costumed heroes fighting crime in New York City. At night, Matt Murdock takes up the mantle of Daredevil and in that guise, he attempts to bring justice to the guilty. He incapacitates Slade, the triggerman who shot his father and he tries to get a confession out of The Fixer, who arranged to have Jack Murdock killed. When The Fixer dies of a heart attack before confessing, Daredevil is left with a sense of failure and a lack of resolution, not to mention a public relations problem.

But, Daredevil has some early seminal victories: he thwarts Electro and manages to stop The Purple Man from using his influence to rape Karen Page. The firm of Nelson & Murdock looks over the lease for the Baxter Building for the Fantastic Four. Daredevil rescues Page from the Owl and goes a couple of rounds with The Matador and Mr. Fear’s crew. Threaded throughout the battles with super criminals is the story of Matt Murdock trying to save his local church from the efforts of City Councilman Doyle’s attempts to destroy the church through a land lease deal he has with the mob! What Murdock cannot achieve in court, he uses Daredevil to do on the streets!

Fundamentally, the problem with Daredevil: Season One (other than being entirely under-developed versions of previously-told stories) is that it is already being rendered as a formulaic adventure. While there is the legal not-so-thriller for the dayside which makes leaps in the narrative to reach its conclusion without having an actual detective story to it, the nighttime adventures of Daredevil are already trapped in a predictable formula. Daredevil encounters a villain, gets thwarted because he does not understand their powers and abilities and then he comes back prepared the next time and incapacitates his adversary.

But none of the villains are particularly well-defined in Daredevil: Season One. Mr. Fear is a coward who uses a gas to make others cowardly, the Purple Man can simply push his will upon others and Electro just shows up, ostensibly because he did in the original Daredevil comics as one of Daredevil’s earliest adversaries (or, if you’re jaded like me, as an obvious cross-promotional event to try to build an audience for Daredevil based upon the existing popularity and audience of Spider-Man). Because none of the villains in Daredevil: Season One are particularly well-motivated, Daredevil’s heroics seem somewhat less impressive; he’s just a guy going through the motions, just like the super-villains he is thwarting.

In a similar fashion, Daredevil: Season One entirely underplays Matt Murdock’s blindness and his super-senses. That’s a tough balance to find for the audience who knows Daredevil and I understand Johnston trying to avoid being repetitive. The problem in Daredevil: Season One is that it is so underplayed that Murdock’s blindness and radar sense are treated as afterthoughts. He does not significantly use them in Daredevil: Season One to do anything genuinely extraordinary. Similarly, Murdock’s blindness in his day to day life is not treated as much of a challenge. The result is a book that feels like a Batman volume more than a Daredevil book.

The artwork in Daredevil: Season One is very simplistic. Gone are the dramatic painted panels of the early 2000s that helped one get into Daredevil by giving it a distinctive visual style that was different from other comic books. The world in Matt Murdock’s radar sense is depicted almost as mundanely as the panels that show an objective perspective of the world. In short, there is nothing special about the look of Daredevil in Daredevil: Season One.

Ultimately, that makes Daredevil: Season One a much tougher sell than it ought to have been. It, truly, is an unremarkable reboot – it is a simplistic retelling instead.

For other Daredevil origin stories, check out my reviews of:
Daredevil: Yellow By Jeph Loeb And Tim Sale
Daredevil: The Official Comic Adaptation (Of The Film)
Daredevil Visionaries By Frank Miller

2.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Shadowland: Blood On The Streets: All The Mystery Without The Character!

The Good: Decent premise for a mystery, Decent artwork
The Bad: Characters are not engaging, No character growth.
The Basics: After working to piece together Daredevil's Shadowland Saga, I find Shadowland: Blood On The Streets to be a distracting tangent story.


As my Daredevil Year rushes toward its conclusion, I have been reading more and graphic novels and sometimes, I run into one that I just cannot muster enough enthusiasm to write much of a review for. Tonight, that comes in the form of Shadowland: Blood On The Streets. I picked up Shadowland: Blood On The Streets because when I read Shadowland and Shadowland: Daredevil and there seemed to be many missing pieces to the story that left me feeling disappointed. I loathe having stories where the missing pieces detract from the overall story.

Unfortunately, Shadowland: Blood On The Streets does not clear up any of the gaps in the main narrative. Instead, this is a tangent story simply set in the darkened Hell's Kitchen under Daredevil's reign.

With Daredevil holed up in his Shadowland castle, the streets of Hell's Kitchen are filled with fear. With the Hand watching over the streets, it seems inconceivable that a murder could occur. And yet, when a prominent mobster is killed, it draws the attention of some of the vigilantes who are worried about Daredevil's ebbing grip on sanity. When another mobster is killed, it seems even less random than the first.

The Shroud, Misty Knight, Paladin and Silver Sable begin investigating the murders and start to question how the murders could occur with the Hand ruthlessly controls Shadowland. They are given the unenviable task of investigating the Hand and Matt Murdock and the forces they come up against compel them to work together.

And the reader doesn't care. Shadowland: Blood On The Streets features the c-list vigilante characters of the Marvel Universe. While DC Universe stories like Justice (reviewed here!) and Identity Crisis (reviewed here!) hinge upon third-tier characters and develop in such a way that the reader comes to care about the characters, Shadowland: Blood On The Streets is not so fortunate. The Anthony Johnston-written story is so plot-intensive that it plods along without likable or even interesting characters.

I knew nothing about Misty Knight, Paladin, Silver Sable or the Shroud before beginning Shadowland: Blood On The Streets and this book did not inspire me to read up on any of them. The book does not provide any intriguing character elements to make the reader want to learn more or even become invested enough to care about who is actually behind the murders.

On the plus side, the book looks good. Wellington Alves makes the book look good and because most of the panels are dark, the coloring is incredibly important. The depth and shading makes for a visually satisfying experience, even if one doesn't care about what is in the panels.

Ultimately, this book is not worth the read and I can't even muster up enough interest to critique it more.

For other books around this time in the Marvel universe, be sure to check out:
Daredevil: Hell To Pay - Volume 1
Daredevil: Hell To Pay - Volume 2
Daredevil: Shadowland
Shadowland

1/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Fidelity To The Issues Pretty Much Kills Shadowland: Daredevil (An Otherwise Great Story!).

The Good: Engaging story, Moments of artwork
The Bad: No character development, Much of the artwork, Huge story holes.
The Basics: The Shadowland arc of Daredevil might be one of the character's most engaging conflicts in years, but it won't be found entirely in Shadowland: Daredevil.


Lately, as I have read through many graphic novels, I have noticed a disturbing trend from the major publishers. That tendency is to preserve fidelity to the issues of a book instead of fidelity to the storyline of that character. The most troubling incident of this before now was in DC's Blackest Night. When I began reading Blackest Night (reviewed here!) I quickly discovered that there were missing chapters and it was only when the book was combined with Blackest Night: Green Lantern (reviewed here!) that readers got the very most basic story of that Saga. In the case of Daredevil, I was excited to get my hands on Shadowland: Daredevil Or Daredevil: Shadowland but when I sat down to read it, I became more disappointed the longer the book went on. This was irksome because it was one of the more enjoyable Daredevil arcs that I have read in a while.

Sadly, though, the missing chapters in this book are so significant that the book is pretty much worthless after the midpoint. Writers Andy Diggle and Anthony Johnston let the story get broken up, so Shadowland: Daredevil is only the Daredevil issues of the Shadowland Saga, as well as the one-shot Shadowland: After The Fall. There was, apparently, a mini-series Shadowland whose issues cross over into this book to fill in the missing chapters and make the story make sense. Sadly, they are kept in a separate volume. The result is half the story and the key fights, conflicts and character moments (if they exist) are not in this book.

Daredevil has erected a fortress in the middle of Hell's Kitchen and from there, he is using the ninjas from The Hand to keep the peace in Hell's Kitchen. At night, citizens could walk the street, if they weren't so afraid of the Hand and for those who do go out, they discover they are protected by Daredevil's standing army. But Daredevil's friends and Matt Murdock's remaining friends believe something far more sinister is going on and that Murdock's life is in jeopardy. This fact is confirmed when Daredevil allows Typhoid Mary to join his ranks and Elektra arrives with the knowledge that the Hand is using Murdock as the vessel for an evil beast.

No one believes more in the unerring goodness of Murdock than Foggy Nelson, a man whose faith in Matt is so great that when Daredevil openly kills Bullseye, Foggy is adamant that it must be a ploy by the Kingpin. With private detective Dakota, Foggy enters the sealed off Shadowland district and makes his way through assassins to try to reach Murdock before his soul is entirely lost.

Sadly, I have no idea how that goes because it is not in the book. One chapter ends with Daredevil standing over fallen superheroes preparing to kill Foggy himself and the next chapter begins after the principle characters have cleared out. But Daredevil: Shadowland is pretty good up to a point. The story - even though I am so far behind in reading Daredevil that I was surprised Elektra is back in the mix (last I read, she was dead) - is engaging and the cast is an intriguing blend with Typhoid, Elektra, White Tiger and Black Tarantula making for an interesting palate to paint from.

What truly bites about Daredevil: Shadowland (and that is a professional term in this case) is the utter lack of character. This book belongs, if to anyone, to Foggy Nelson. Matt Murdock is a peripheral character to his own demise in this book and the key character moments are robbed from the reader. What happens when Elektra and Matt meet up inside Shadowland? How does Foggy save Matt Murdock? How did all those heroes like Spider-man end up impaled inside Shadowland? The answer . . . is not here. This is frustrating on more than just a plot level. Instead of leaving me scratching my head saying "what just happened," I spent more time asking "Why did these things happen and who did them?"

As one might suspect, Foggy Nelson could have a compelling character arc to do a story about, but this is not that either. Instead, Foggy is Foggy. He's the eternal optimist. He starts that way, he miraculously ends that way. Whatever happens in between, he seems fine with.

As for the artwork, Roberto De La Torre and Marco Checchetto continue to deliver Daredevil as if it is a runny painting. The panels have a decent sense of movement and most of the characters are recognizable in most of the frames, but they cheap out on some key panels or get lazy, especially with Elektra, whose proportions are off in several of the panels of the book. That said, the colors are vibrant and there is a good sense of movement through most of the book.

But, ultimately, that doesn't save the book. I've seen a number of big Marvel anthologies at the book store lately (many of them pertaining to the "Civil War" arc) and I am at a loss as to why they did not present the Shadowland Saga as a complete, big story. I am betting it has to do with making more money by selling more, smaller, books. I'd like to discourage that practice, so for my money, I'm advising against Shadowland: Daredevil until Marvel gets its act together, shows some respect for the fans and puts it together in a sensible book with the entire story in one linear narrative.

For other Daredevil books, please check out my reviews of:
The Essential Daredevil Volume 1
Daredevil Vs. Bullseye
Daredevil: Visionaries Volume 1 - Frank Miller
Born Again
Typhoid Mary
Guardian Devil
Parts Of A Hole
Daredevil: Yellow
Batman/Daredevil - King of New York
Daredevil Noir
Daredevil: Golden Age
Daredevil: Hell To Pay - Volume 1
Daredevil: Hell To Pay - Volume 2

4/10 (very liberal for that rating!)

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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