Diversions #22 from Blue Moon Comics

"Diversions" is one of my favorite modern day ongoing comic book series, as one could tell by persuing this very blog.

However, even a favorite can come out with an installment (episode, issue, album, etc) that lands a little "softer" than most. 

Getting right to it, here's the cover to Blue Moon Comics' "Diversions" #22:

Now, the cover itself is right up my retro alley, if you don't mind my phrasing, there. It's colorful, dynamic, well-composed, and it's got nice, big dramatic word balloons on it! High marks, as usual from this series, I say.

The intro page, or "frontispiece" as some call it, is also excellent; continuing a very welcome trend of giving the super-talented Dana Black free reign to tease the reader with all the exciting contents of the latest issue:

As for the contents themselves; this time around, I had some (more or less minor) problems with every story in the book.

The opening "Max Miracle" tale is possibly the strongest in the book in some ways, especially in the raw, unhinged "Silver Age" flavor of it all; it's actually almost got a Golden Age level of craziness to it, which I am a fan of when it's done right.  However, the main character is drawn to look like a teenager throughout, and I seem to recall him looking more like a "Doc Savage" or "Tom Strong" sort of hero in his previous appearances. Other than that, the art by Dell Barras is great, with clear storytelling that keeps you up to speed with the breakneck pace and crazy ideas that whiz by you over the course of the 8-page proceedings.

I also wish that Max Miracle's powers were explained a little more; maybe some details on just who the "five other heroes" he is apparently made up of are/were, and why/how they ended up combined into one being (apparently across all realities), etc. And while I see where writer Lloyd Smith is coming from, I would have liked to see a more consistent approach to the matter of Max Miracle's personal pronoun(s). Max uses "we" self-referentially at times, but "I" at others times, and the narration refers to Max with the singular "he" but also says that Max "is/are" the only "being(s) on FF420 with certain powers. Again, I can see why these terms were used, but they didn't seem to have a consistent application, which resulted in pulling me out of the story a bit every time.

The story itself left me scratching my head a little, too: Max needs to essentially steal a rare object from a formidably protected location, and is even confronted by a seemingly immortal guardian while doing so. However, it's never clear why the object needs to be hoarded so jealously, when there seem to be tons of them just sitting at the bottom of a stream, and Max just needs one of them to save an entire planet. 

Again, I mostly enjoyed this one, but found I had to re-read it a few times, and each, those minor quibbles bugged me a little bit more. Also, the name of the planet "FF420" seemed like an easter egg, but when I looked up Fantastic Four #420, I discovered that it referred to the fourth issues of Jim Lee's "Heroes Reborn" reboot of the series, of which I could think of nothing worth remembering...

Up next is "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or "Toom! Son of Toombora!" by the aforementioned writer/artist Dana Black. In his third outing as solo auteur in this series, Dana takes yet another experimental approach to the storytelling; using mostly just two panels across each of the 8 pages that are allotted to his tale. 

While Dana's experiments worked very well for me before, this time around, it just really didn't. Each page is its own "vignette," featuring a large image of the child-monster named TOOM engaging in misguidedly destructive antics, and some human character in a smaller panel commenting on their history with the titular titan.

It's all extremely well-drawn, colored, and composed, and Dana's talent for dialogue even made me chuckle out loud right on the first page. I even caught his own "cameo" in the story, which was a fun Easter Egg for those of us in the know. 

However...it just didn't "add up" to feeling like a story to me. It's all incredibly cool to look at, even amusing to read, but I kind of wanted more of a narrative through-line, which is perhaps my fault and no one else's.  I am looking forward to having my physical copy delivered, as these page sin particular will be so cool to look at "in person."

The next feature, "Per Aspera Ad Astra," which means "through hardship to the stars," was unfortunately something that just didn't appeal to me at all. In fact, its message seemed more than mildly misogynistic, with a bunch of men running a death gauntlet to win a woman's hand in marriage, only for the sole survivor to be killed as well when he could not produce the "password." A wealthy man then rolls up in an expensive car and recites the password, which is "One Million Dollars," and he is then allowed, well, "possession" of the female human "prize." The woman is treated like an object, and will only approve of the man who values her in the most materialistic fashion. I honestly would rather lose these nine pages of the issue and still pay the same price for it, honestly.

Ending things on a (much) more positive note is the second chapter in the ongoing revival of "Mercury: the Hero Rises" story, and I am pleased to say that I am very much still engaged and looking forward to more of this story about legacy and the very nature of heroism. My only nitpick here has to do with the fasct that the original hero is said to have been dead for 20 years at the time of this chapter. I thought that the other "heroes" were already running around murdering "bad guys" in chapter one? This sort of thing has now been going on for two decades? And Xenos is only picking a successor for his old pal Mercury now? It seemed that this only needed to be happening a year at most after the events of chapter one to me.

So, yes, this was one of the weaker issues of "Diversions" in my opinion. REMEMBER, though, that this one of my favorite series, and I only TRULY disliked one offering between these two covers. I said when I re-started blogging about comics recently that I would not be beholden to act as the "press release" center for other people's work, but I do admit that is perhaps hardest to write even slightly negative remarks about something you otherwise enjoy. Especially at length. 

And this has been a long post!

I hereby release you to do things more worthy of your time!

(TO BE CLEAR: I mostly enjoyed this issue, and am still a Blue Moon Comics "Luna"-tic, eh?)