The Savage Critic: June 25th 2003
By Brian Hibbs

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

I am so super-double-crazy busy it ain’t even funny. I’ve barely read 1/3 of the books out this week yet, and I am very far behind on a couple of key keep-the-store-running deadlines (most notably getting the damn order form done, and writing up next month’s sub lists)

So no Critic THIS week, either.

You can scroll all the way down to the very bottom to see my picks for TP and comic(s) of the week, however.

Promise I’ll be back for a full scale and patriotic Critic  next week....

For Sake of Completeness, here’s a list of all of the OTHER comics that CE got in this week, that I did NOT read (and, therefore, am unlikely to review!). Note, that in most cases this is limited to 1) Manga, which I try to read as it is collected; 2) “Kids” comics like most of the Archies; 3) titles that were subs-only, either by design or accident [this can include being shorted by Diamond as well]; 4) Porno [oh, like you need me to REVIEW it!], 5) Things that looked SO bad on the racks that I didn’t bother, and 6) stuff that I’ve assessed before, and I care so little about that I don’t want to waste my time reading anymore. You decide which is which. There’s also the occasional “whoops we forgot it!” in here as well...

AGENT X #12
ARCHIE AND FRIENDS #72
ASTRO CITY LOCAL HEROES #3
AVENGERS #68
BATMAN #616
BETTY #127
BIRDS OF PREY SECRET FILES 2003
BLACK PANTHER #61
BLOWJOB #6 
BORN #1 
BRATH #5
BTVS #58
CARTOON CARTOONS #19
CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #1
CATWOMAN #20
EMPIRE #0
FANTASTIC FOUR #70
FLASH #199
GREEN LANTERN #166
HEAD #4 
HELLBLAZER #185
HELLBOY WEIRD TALES #3
HULK NIGHTMERICA #1
INCREDIBLE HULK #56
INHUMANS #2
JLA #82
LEGION #21
LOSERS #1
LUFTWAFFE 1946 #10
MARK OF CHARON #4
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE VOL 2 #4
MERIDIAN #37
MUCHA LUCHA #3
MYSTIQUE #3
MYTHSTALKERS #3
NAMOR #3
OUT THERE #18
PATH #16
PETER PARKER SPIDER-MAN #57
PLANETARY BATMAN NIGHT ON EARTH
REX MUNDI #4
RUNAWAYS #3
RUSE #21
SCURVY DOGS #1
SOLDIER X #12
STAR WARS TALES #16
STARTLING STORIES THING NIGHTFALLS ON YANCY ST #2
SUPERMAN #194
SWEATSHOP #3
TERMINATOR 3 BEFORE THE RISE #1
TERRA OBSCURA #1
THUNDERCATS DOGS OF WAR #1
TRANSFORMERS GENERATION ONE VOL 2 #3
UNCLE SCROOGE #319
VOLTRON DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE #2
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #634
WAR MACHINE 2.0 #2 
WILDCATS VERSION 3.0 #11
WITCHBLADE #66
WOLVERINE DOOP #2 
WONDER WOMAN #193
X-TREME X-MEN #27

And, for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs, GNs, magazines, and other things that CE got this week. I generally haven’t read any of this by the time I post these reviews. Though I generally attempt to give at least one recommendation amongst the TPBs each week, since I HAVE read the material at SOME point.

2000 AD #1341
2000 AD #1342
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE DC UNIVERSE STORIES OF ALAN MOORE TP
ANIMERICA JULY 2003 VOL 11 #7
ASTRO BOY VOL 16 TP
BUNKER GN
CASTLE IN THE SKY VOL 1 TP
CHALAND ANTHOLOGY VOL 2 HC
CINEFEX #94
COMICS JOURNAL #253
FORTEAN TIMES #172
HONOUR AMONG PUNKS TP
ILLEGAL ALIEN TP
JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE AMERICA GN
KRAZY & IGNATZ 1929-30 MICE BRICK LOVELY NIGHT
MCSWEENEYS MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES TP
MISTY GIRL EXTREME COLL VOL 1TP 
MONSTER CLUB VOL 1 TP
POP GUN WAR TP
PREVIEWS VOL XIII #7
PROJECT TELSTAR GN
RAWHIDE KID TP
REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVEDCOLD GN
SFX #105
SFX SPECIAL #15
SPIDER-MAN LEGENDS VOL 2 TODDMCFARLANE BOOK II TP
STORMWATCH TEAM ACHILLES VOL 1 TP
UNDERCOVER GENIE TP
VIC & BLOOD TP
WHATS RIGHT VOL 1 TP
WHATS WRONG VOL 1 TP 
WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE #143

This Week’s TP recommendation is:  It’s nice to see Guy Davis’ Baker Street back in print via Honour Among Punks; a new volume of Krazy & Ignatz is always welcome to be certain; and Rawhide Kid was really much better than you might otherwise expect.... but the actual 100% full-bore recommendation this week is the wholly obvious Across the Universe: DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore. It has all three of his wonderful Green Lantern Corps stories, the DC Comics Presents with Swamp Thing & Superman (that, really, should be in the Swampy books rather than here), and the crème de la crème of “For The Man Who Has Everything” from the Superman Annual. The rest of the material here is pretty much filler, at best (That Green Arrow story, in particular, reads like he started a longer story, then decided against it 8 pages later), but those 5 stories more than justify the cover price. Man, F-Sharp Bell....

Pick of the Week:  Four things I liked enough to make ‘em Picks this week – Empire #0, the repackaging of the original Image issues of Empire , which I thought read somehow better all of these years later, and bundled in one place; Flash #199 which does the big scary super-villain thing right; Hellboy Weird Tales #3, especially the Bob Fingerman story.... effectively turning Hellboy into an all-naked episode of Seinfeld; and Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth which I thought was a pretty amazingly effective tribute to the many “ages” of Batman, and showing Warren really IS just a big mushy softy after all.

Pick of the Weak:  I was disappointed in Terra Obscura #1, especially since it’s an ABC book, and I thought there really wasn’t anything there; Namor #3 was about as thrilling as watching paint dry – three issues in, and we haven’t progressed past “all middle”; and, depressingly, Born #1, using two sets of narrative captions which just don’t WORK (at the front and the back), showing even Garth has off weeks.