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thebitterguyOkay, love's a bit of an exaggeration. But over the past year and a bit he's gone from "guy I don't know" to "guy whose stuff I will buy sight unseen".
He's done some neat things, including the sadly deceased The Order, a superhero book that reads like an examination of reality tv & celebrity culture, and an independent book that reads like "What if... Mick Jagger was Nick Fury's Son in a hyperscientific world of adventure and espionage and just a little subliminally suggested incest?", Casanova.
My two favourite books of his were his run on Immortal Iron Fist, on which he shared plotting duties with Ed Brubaker, and his new Iron Man series.
I think my personal obstinacy is one of the biggest driving forces for my newfound fanboyishness. I've seen too many really, really dumb people trashing on his work. The dumbest was the reaction to his description of his Iron Man villain, Zebediah Stane, as an "open source villain", as compared to the proprietary way Stark handles the Iron Man technology. He used buzz words, you see, to explain the story he was going to tell.
This got filtered through the Internet Idiot Stream (IIS) to mean that Iron Man's new archvillain would be fighting him with Unix. To quote the kids, the stupid, it burns.
The series was very entertaining, taking Iron Man around the world to fight Stane's terrorist network. It did include a new iteration on AIM (Supervillain thinktank/Beekeepers Advanced Idea Mechanics) as AGM, Advanced Genocide Mechanics, with their leader MODOG, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Genocide. MODOG got thrown into space, which was kinda funny.
He also introduced a Philippine superteam (whose name escapes me), which makes them the sixth country in the Marvel U to field a national team, after the US, USSR, UK, China, and Canada. Oh, and Apartheid era Not South Africa. Did Hauptmann Deutschland keep his team of West German supers together after the fall of the Berlin wall? You have to love any team that includes a guy named Zeitgeist. And the Japanese probably had one, too, with Wolverine in it. And possibly Latveria. And... Okay, yeah, there's a lot of Marvel countries with national superteams.
The story line was interesting, although since it's woven into Marvel Continuity, there was at least one cliffhanger that really, really wasn't (and had, in fact, been done 20 years prior). Stane made an interesting villain, although I think that since Iron Man fought his father six months ago in continuity we must consider abandoning the story as horrible, or I could just vent on Marvel Time another time.
I know that some people don't like his Punisher series, but those seem to be entirely composed of hardcore Punisher fans, and anyone who refers to the character as "Frank" in casual conversation loses a lot of leverage in any debate. I did read the World War Hulk crossover issue, which had very little to do with the WWH shenanigans.
The Iron Fist series was also very fun. It's only flaw was that it was obviously (and some would say gratuitously) written for trade paperback. There are several flashback/historical issues that aren't being collected in the main trades, but are expected to get their own book later.
The Fraction & Brubaker's last arc, The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, took the core Iron Fist concept and just pushed it forward a bit.
Brubaker and Fraction have heavily expanded on the Iron Fist mythos. They've expanded on the historical Iron Fists, and made Kun Lun one of the seven cities of Heaven (plus one of The Other Place). So the Seven Capital Cities includes a kung fu tournament, reminiscent of Mortal Kombat in a non-sucky way, to see which heavenly city will be the leader, as it were. Add in a Hydra plan to destroy them using a magnetic bomb train, and you get a lot of fun.
They also wove in backstory featuring Orson Randall, an earlier Iron Fist who was a two fist, double barreled pulp hero of the old school.
At this point, anything Fraction's worked on is either carte blanche Buy or a heavy look at. What's odd is he's a guy of my generation, but his work seems to be very energetic and fresh, instead of playing continuity rubgby like a lot of other enjoyable work out there. I like that. His ear for characters and dialogue is also a plus.
******
This is mostly written for The Original Universe, a fanzine I'm contributing to. It still has to be worked over a few times. Feel free to insert Wikipedia links in your mind.
He's done some neat things, including the sadly deceased The Order, a superhero book that reads like an examination of reality tv & celebrity culture, and an independent book that reads like "What if... Mick Jagger was Nick Fury's Son in a hyperscientific world of adventure and espionage and just a little subliminally suggested incest?", Casanova.
My two favourite books of his were his run on Immortal Iron Fist, on which he shared plotting duties with Ed Brubaker, and his new Iron Man series.
I think my personal obstinacy is one of the biggest driving forces for my newfound fanboyishness. I've seen too many really, really dumb people trashing on his work. The dumbest was the reaction to his description of his Iron Man villain, Zebediah Stane, as an "open source villain", as compared to the proprietary way Stark handles the Iron Man technology. He used buzz words, you see, to explain the story he was going to tell.
This got filtered through the Internet Idiot Stream (IIS) to mean that Iron Man's new archvillain would be fighting him with Unix. To quote the kids, the stupid, it burns.
The series was very entertaining, taking Iron Man around the world to fight Stane's terrorist network. It did include a new iteration on AIM (Supervillain thinktank/Beekeepers Advanced Idea Mechanics) as AGM, Advanced Genocide Mechanics, with their leader MODOG, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Genocide. MODOG got thrown into space, which was kinda funny.
He also introduced a Philippine superteam (whose name escapes me), which makes them the sixth country in the Marvel U to field a national team, after the US, USSR, UK, China, and Canada. Oh, and Apartheid era Not South Africa. Did Hauptmann Deutschland keep his team of West German supers together after the fall of the Berlin wall? You have to love any team that includes a guy named Zeitgeist. And the Japanese probably had one, too, with Wolverine in it. And possibly Latveria. And... Okay, yeah, there's a lot of Marvel countries with national superteams.
The story line was interesting, although since it's woven into Marvel Continuity, there was at least one cliffhanger that really, really wasn't (and had, in fact, been done 20 years prior). Stane made an interesting villain, although I think that since Iron Man fought his father six months ago in continuity we must consider abandoning the story as horrible, or I could just vent on Marvel Time another time.
I know that some people don't like his Punisher series, but those seem to be entirely composed of hardcore Punisher fans, and anyone who refers to the character as "Frank" in casual conversation loses a lot of leverage in any debate. I did read the World War Hulk crossover issue, which had very little to do with the WWH shenanigans.
The Iron Fist series was also very fun. It's only flaw was that it was obviously (and some would say gratuitously) written for trade paperback. There are several flashback/historical issues that aren't being collected in the main trades, but are expected to get their own book later.
The Fraction & Brubaker's last arc, The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, took the core Iron Fist concept and just pushed it forward a bit.
Brubaker and Fraction have heavily expanded on the Iron Fist mythos. They've expanded on the historical Iron Fists, and made Kun Lun one of the seven cities of Heaven (plus one of The Other Place). So the Seven Capital Cities includes a kung fu tournament, reminiscent of Mortal Kombat in a non-sucky way, to see which heavenly city will be the leader, as it were. Add in a Hydra plan to destroy them using a magnetic bomb train, and you get a lot of fun.
They also wove in backstory featuring Orson Randall, an earlier Iron Fist who was a two fist, double barreled pulp hero of the old school.
At this point, anything Fraction's worked on is either carte blanche Buy or a heavy look at. What's odd is he's a guy of my generation, but his work seems to be very energetic and fresh, instead of playing continuity rubgby like a lot of other enjoyable work out there. I like that. His ear for characters and dialogue is also a plus.
******
This is mostly written for The Original Universe, a fanzine I'm contributing to. It still has to be worked over a few times. Feel free to insert Wikipedia links in your mind.
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Date: 2008-12-09 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-12-09 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:46 pm (UTC)The series is called "Thor: Ages of Thunder." I'm sure it'll be out in trade soon, since the third one came out last week.
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Date: 2008-12-09 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:41 pm (UTC)I do like the A-SBAR review. Too bad they never got to do A-SS.
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Date: 2008-12-09 11:02 pm (UTC)Japan's main team is Big Hero 6 (although I suppose it depends on whether you're counting any team based out of the country, or only official government-run superteams, in which case either of them might not count, BH6 is funded by a corporation, I believe).
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Date: 2008-12-10 01:37 am (UTC)I didn't even know that BH6 had their own book now. I should go look it up.
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Date: 2008-12-10 12:19 am (UTC)Latveria does not NEED a national super team.
Latveria has DOOM.
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Date: 2008-12-10 12:30 am (UTC)They were indulging in a LOT of blatantly and flagrantly implied incest. But it was okay, because he was from a parallel universe, so they weren't REALLY related.
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 12:34 pm (UTC)