Rereads: Year in Rereads Review, Part Five

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By Keigen Rea — Welcome to Rereads: end of the year edition! I love doing end of year lists, so I’m using this space to do that, but I didn’t want it to just be my end of year list, because that didn’t quite fit what I want Rereads to be, so there’s a small twist. The books featured won’t necessarily be my favorite books of the year, they’ll be books that I wasn’t totally sure the first time around, or they'll be books I want to revisit before I make my final favorites of the year list. Naturally, that means all of these books won’t actually be on my list, and I might even dislike some of them! As always, though, I hope I come away liking these books more than I did before. 

For the Rereads year 1 finale, I’ve got Far Sector, by N.K. Jemisin, Jamal Campbell, Deron Bennett, edited by Andy Khouri, Jamie S. Rich, assistant edited by Maggie Howell

And Immortal Hulk (including the King in Black and She-Hulk issues), by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett, Ruy José, Paul Mounts, Cory Petit, Belardino Brabo, Cam Smith, Marc Deering, Mark Morales, Matt Milla, with Javier Rodríguez and Álvaro López, Nick Pitarra and Michael Garland, Butch Guice and Tom Palmer, Mike Hawthorn, Peter David, Adam Kubert, Mark Farmer, John Workman & Dan Brown, Bill Mantlo, Mike Mignola, Jim Novak & Bob Sharen, Mattia De Luis, Aaron Kuder, Frank Martin & Erick Arciniega, Jon Davis-Hunt and Marcio Menyz. 

Look at all those names. Ridiculous.

Why Far Sector?

This is very much a book on the cusp of my top ten comics, and what’s held it back from being a lock is the terrible bimonthly shipping schedule. I can’t wait for this book to be a complete story, because then I can enjoy it in the way that it deserves to be enjoyed. This will be a complete reread, even though the first two issues came out last year, but if memory serves, those are the weakest issues of the series, as it just keeps getting better, so it won’t really matter anyway. 

Pre-reread thoughts

Just gonna enjoy this, to be honest. Does it improve when you don’t read it with eight weeks between issues?

Far Sector

Yes, it does read better at once, so I’ll have to figure out if/where it lands on my list! 

I think the general themes of the book, that of civil rights and political power struggles between those with power and those without, feel great all together. Something I. Of iced on this read was how the systems don’t always reflect those of Earth, or those of New York City, 1:1 all the time. Yes, there are the “peace officers” who use their power to kill and destroy rather than understand or repair. Those in power struggle to maintain the status quo instead of creating equity. What I like though, is what the City Enduring doesn’t have. It doesn’t have people without homes, or at least we haven’t seen them. It’s subways work perfectly fine. It is true that the brokenness of the city continues to deepen as the series goes, and in ways that reflect our own, but it doesn’t seem to be as whole and complete as the brokenness I see in my community and in the country I live in. 

I tend to like this, but it also feels more by design than may be intended. The lack of good working systems at this stage in American (and really, world) history is by design, as there is really no need for these systems to work for less privileged people. Why give people $2000 when you can just give them $600? The fact that the City Enduring is so systemically impotent makes it feel as if it should be more broken than it appears to be. A minor nitpick, really, but it was one that came to mind with this reread.

Of more importance to me, is actually the characterization of Jo herself. To preface, Sojourner Mullein is one of my favorite characters this year, and one of my favorite debuts in years. Her design is ridiculously cool, and her personality matches it. However, she falls into a trap that many women comic book characters fall into of being too much of a good girl. Jo is allowed to say “motherfucker,” and is allowed to bone Marth, but those are obviously the aesthetics of a “bad girl” more than they are actually being morally complex. She’s got the baggage of being a cop and not stopping her partner from crossing a line, but she herself didn’t cross that line. Yes, good characters are great, Jo is great! But in some ways, it feels like there was a missed opportunity, especially when dealing with the complex problems it’s chosen to champion. 

I also think her competency and general good luck surrounding her choices is, again, fine, but it saps some of the drama from the overarching plot. I definitely felt a greater lack of stakes while reading this time, less than I think was reasonable. 

And yet. This remains a book that I’m excited for and will keep buying each issue in print and digitally, and I’ll probably get some collected editions too. Will it be top ten though???

Why Immortal Hulk?

The number of issues in this series gives it a weight that nothing else on my list has, and if that were the deciding factor in my list, it would absolutely be first. Now that isn’t the only deciding factor, but this book will be on my list, this read will only decide its place. 

Pre-reread thoughts

This is a lot of comics! 14 in the main series, with 2 tie ins, this is by far the most issues of a series that I’m looking at with this. Will it get monotonous, reading so many issues all together? Probably not, it is excellent!

Immortal Hulk 

AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHOOOOOOHAHAHAHHEEEHOHAAAAAAA

This is so good, so good! 

Alright, first off, I’ve been thinking a lot about the creative team and the shipping schedule on this book, how they inform each other, and how they make this book what it is. 

The creative team on this book is big, and ridiculous, but I mean that in a good way! Even if you take the old teams from the zero issue out (which I do not think is fair), you’d still clock in at 22 people who worked in some capacity on the series throughout the 14 “main” series issues and the 2 “tie ins” (which I think are essential to the narrative). At a time where it seems most people want every issue of a series to have the same artistic team, it feels like Immortal Hulk success despite its large team rather than because of it, but I strongly disagree with this. Immortal Hulk is as strong as it is because of it’s guest artists, not despite them.

This is majorly because they do feel like guests, people invited to the table to share their talent, rather than people brought in to plug holes and finish the job. Alongside that, the series’s aggressive schedule is only possible because of all of them, and I think that’s part of the specialness of the series as well. The frequency of issues has made the series more fun to follow month-to-month, or rather, issue to issue, than any other series on the market. It’s given the story a kineticism that is lacking in some books because it’s on the mind more often. Immortal Hulk is the example of how big 2 comics should generally work, and it’s why it’s the best big 2 comic running.

The other thing that continues to amaze me with Immortal Hulk is how quickly it changes the plot while being understandable and building off of what came before. Last year, I compared it to The Good Place in that way, and I think the comparison holds up. Immortal Hulk continues to zag and swerve, not spending too much time on one thread, not burning out any ideas, and moving on before they’re tired. It has felt weird having the Leader fill so much of the series’s time this year, when it feels like most of the arcs have been far shorter. At the end of last year, I would have bet that much more of this year would have been dedicated to Hulk and Banner actually working together to tear apart the corrupt systems in place, but of course, the comic quickly turned away from that, while still keeping it in view. It’s a testament to the team that the series has never felt lost in all this time, or that I have never been disappointed by the direction it has taken. 

Of course, I could go on about various other aspects of this wonderful book, but I don’t need to, because you’re probably already reading it. 

What a lovely, awful comic. 

That’s it for this year of rereads! Thank you so much for reading, I should be back sometime in January, but I’m gonna take a break and cook up a couple other things in the meantime. See you in 2021!