When Jobs Attack: Quick Reviews for the 3/9 Comics

Good evening, everyone. Reviews by me this week will be super-quick, in part because I was very impressed at Bri's succinctness with last week's books, and in part because work was such a complete and utter steamroller, I'm surprised my pancake flat fingers can summon enough tension to depress the keys. My hope is that Brian will take the initiative to review some books again even though all we did Friday at the shop was exchange groans about our impending deadlines. So without further adoo-dah:

ACTION COMICS #825: Hibbs thought I wouldn't like this because time travel makes my brain pan tilt crazily, but in fact, dammit, this was Good, if not almost Very Good: pushed by the deadline to wrap things up, Austen/Finn's accelerated storytelling produces an enjoyable, larger-than-life mini-epic, with thousands of Gogs versus the League of Supermen, and an ending that, because it's true to the spirit of Superman, rings believable as opposed to merely convenient. If this had been the third issue of Austen's run and not the end of it, I would have been talking with excitement about the book. Like I said: Good or Very Good.

ADAM STRANGE #6: Oh, great. L.E.G.I.O.N. and The Omega Men. On the one hand, I admire Diggle's craftiness: throwing in pre-established characters to save Adam's hash makes the editors happy while still fitting in with that classic Alex Raymond Flash Gordon formula. On the other hand, it strikes me as a bit lazy (no real effort made to make these characters work) and if you find those characters very, very dull (and God, do I!), it's not a strong incentive to read the book. And Ferry's feeling the burn a little bit--this wasn't quite up to the rest of the really sweet work he's been doing here. So, I dunno, OK, I guess.

AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS #3: Yeah, everything I said about issue #2 and then some--the scope of the book is just beyond the artist's grasp, and there's just not enough shtick to make up for the flatness of the characters. Shipping like clockwork, though. Eh.

AQUAMAN #28: There's always one thing I really like per Aquaman issue (here, the glass bottom boats filled with family members come to see their aquatic relatives) and a bunch of stuff I really don't: "Don't you see, Aquaman? They've patented your DNA!" I suspect that's a really, really awkward hook for next issue's 'Oooo, those corporations and their wicked drug patents' screed. Even Aquaman looks kinda bored at the prospect. Eh.

ATOMIKA #1: Ever read a book without checking the credits and you can just tell--it's just obvious--that it was created by an artist who has all these great ideas but no real desire to tell a story? And then a writer's brought in later who works double-time to make it seem like things are happening by really laying on the tortured prose? That would be this book. Very pretty, and nice of Alex Ross to do the cover, but you can color me underwhelmed. Eh, if that.

BLOOD OF THE DEMON #1: For half the issue, I really thought we were going someplace different than where we ended up at the last page. Mind you, I didn't know where Byrne & Pfeiffer were going, as Jason gets his face stuck in half-Etrigan mode, but at least we weren't going to end up at "Oh no, the Demon has broken free of Jason Blood's influence!" And then, of course, we get to the last page and guess what? On the other hand, as Bri pointed out, this is Byrne's best work, by far, in I don't know how long, and the inker did a great job with his stuff. So let's call it a high OK, even though I'm now dubious if this is going to go anywhere interesting.

BLOODHOUND #9: Caught between a rock and a hard place as far as having two very uninteresting villains (Zeiss and pyro guy) and being right near the end of its run. A shame since I really like and care about the main characters. The art change was noticeable too, although it seems like Robin Riggs worked really hard to keep the characters' features consistent and expressive which was great. Eh, but I might have worked that up to OK if the book wasn't going into limbo soon.

BLUE MONDAY PAINTED MOON #4: I know that people--and particularly teens--are resistant to change, but I still felt disappointed that the two scenes that seemed like they were going to change characters' relationships actually ended up changing nothing. The one change at the end really seemed the most inconsequential to me, and I finished up this otherwise strong mini feeling dissatisfied. And that may be what Clugston wants me as a reader to feel, but, uhhh, I think it was a bit of a mistake/cop-out, honestly. Eh.

CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #3: We got some free Matrix Online promo rag and I thought it was pretty interesting that Paul Chadwick is the head writer for that game. But maybe that explains why this issue seemed really clunky--it was competing with paid work, maybe; or there's a very different kind of storytelling needed for a MMORG and Chadwick got a little rusty on his comic stuff. But all the scenes felt plot-hammered, big time. And those little factoids in the middle of the page made this read like some eco-friendly Jack Chick tract. Last issue pulled me in; this issue spat me back out. A very low Eh.

GOTHAM CENTRAL #29: Jesus, this came out this week? I totally forgot to read this. That can't be a good sign. No rating.

GREEN ARROW #48: God help me, I liked the Duke of Oil. For some reason, I don't mind an utterly goofy stereotype if he's also an absurdly berserk robot. And Judd didn't go for any of the totally easy George W. jokes I thought he might, so that was kind of impressive. And yet the ending to the Duke fight and to the issue were both formulaic as all hell. And have I mentioned I don't like the Eurotrash ninja guy? I don't like him. Still, OK.

MAJESTIC #3: Sigh. I miss Metamorphosis Alpha. OK.

PROJECT SUPERIOR: I'm going to follow Hibbs' lead and treat this like it was one big comic book anthology and review it here. It is very much worth the coin thanks to some high production values and a lot of different voices, some of whom produce really great work. I was a little worried this would be the typical "indie guys transfer their loathing for superhero fanboys onto superheroes" (and even more worried after the first story which read like exactly that) but then it goes all over the map and enjoyably so. I'd point out the highlights but I don't have the copy near and I found Hibbs and I had completely different stuff we liked so I think the point is there will be something for everyone in the book. I can only give it a Good because there was some stuff I really, really didn't like in here, but it's a Good rating where I heartily encourage you to find a copy and try it out yourself.

SHINING KNIGHT #1: Hmmm. The first issue didn't really go anywhere unexpected, which is probably more my fault with having read all the solicit info for the title (and it actually being accurate for a change) rather than any shortcoming in the book. But at this point it feels like a high fantasy rewrite of Grant's Marvel Boy miniseries and if that's all it ends up being, I might be kinda bummed. Too soon to tell so a low Good for now.

SPIDER-MAN TEAM UP SPECIAL: Sadly, this wasn't a SPIDER-MAN TEAM UP SPECIAL, it was a FANTASTIC FOUR EARTH DAY SPECIAL that got passed off as something else when presumably some distribution deal fell through. It brought me back to the days in elementary school where they'd pass out those half-sized comic books with the Brady Bunch showing you how to build kites. Remember those? On the one hand, they weren't particularly good. On the other hand, they were still better than this. This was kinda Awful.

STREET ANGEL #5: Great fun, particularly if you read Project Superior first (which I did). I'm a little troubled by Maruca and Rugg's lack of, I dunno, ambition or something but if they're content to produce a spectactularly charming and energetic, immensely slight comic book, more power to them. It's winningly done, and, for what it is, Very Good.

SUPERMAN #214: Hibbs read the whole issue and somehow missed that they're turning the priest into a cancer-powered OMAC. Or maybe I misunderstood that part. We both re-read it, and still couldn't be quite sure. Finally, there's lots of hitting, but the hitting seems very, very dull, either because I can't figure out what's going on and therefore have no idea what's at stake, or because Jim Lee's got some new pastures to go frolic in (courtesy of All-Star Batman & Robin) . Either way, dull and Awful.

TALES OF THE THING #1: This book had so many hands in it, they only put half the art guys on the cover--and I'm still trying to figure out how/why Steve Gerber had a hand in plotting it. It's a shame, considering how much really strong work DC has done with superheroes for the all-ages market, to see Marvel think of all-ages material the way a lot of fans seem to: as third-rate, passed-off junk that wouldn't pass muster in the regular market. Because between this and the Team-Up Special, that's pretty much how this reads. Just a bit above Awful.

THE PUNISHER #18: A pretty nice wrap-up to the story, so much so I kinda want to put the issues together and see if it reads that strong all the way through. Good.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #16: Way too long to wait for it, but a really enjoyable issue. Everything from the explanation of the Negative Zone to the characterization of Ultimate Anihilius was thoughtful, clever and apt. I'm not a super-big fan of Kubert's art but it worked pretty well here. Good.

VIMANARAMA #2: Weirdly, didn't work for me. Although I'm not saying they should be joined at the hip or anything, I think if, say, Quitely had done the art, there's a chance the balance of big, super-splodey and small, human moments might have worked quite nicely. But while Philip Bond nails the human drama, the big stuff was like watching luminescent jellyfish having a punch-out. There are pages here and there where the material connected with me, but by and large, Eh.

WOLVERINE SOULTAKER #1: I don't know why I read this. If you like art where nobody has elbows, or plots are so underwhelming they read like overly verbose coloring books, or a book about Japan done so unconvincingly you first wonder if the creators are Japanese American rather than Japanese, then think maybe they're untalented white guys hiding under Japanese names, before finally doubting they were human at all and are instead a disguise for some prototype auto-manga generation software Marvel keeps trying...then this is the book for you! Awful.

And that's it, more or less. Fortunately, Paul O'Brien's strange case of OCD keeps him reviewing all the X-books over at The X-Axis, even though he's a much better writer than most of the people writing the material itself, so I don't even have to touch any of the AoA stuff. Thank God.

So, that's me. Will Hibbs go for two weeks in a row? Place your bets now, and remember to say nice things to him in the comments field, if he does.

Reviews from 3/2

Well, I'm sorta upset at myself for promising to do a full boat of reviews this week -- it was a pretty damn "Meh" week for comics, and without something to be excited about, this is about as appealing as a root canal. Still, I said I'd do it, so do it I shall.

Hey, have I told you about Ben lately? Just had his 17 month birthday (I think I'll be talking about months until he hits 2 years old, then we'll see), and he's just BLOWING ME AWAY qith how sharp he is.

He's mastered about 1/3 of the alphabet so far -- we'll walk down the street and he'll point to a sign and declare "Ess!" or "Emm!" or whatever it is he's seeing. It's pretty astonishing to me. He's been seemingly picking up a letter a day, and, at this rate I think he'll have them all by 18 months. Maybe he'll even be reading by 2. What surprises me is how well he's understanding letters outside of his usual contexts or whatever. I was wearing my Teddy Kristiansen Sandman shirt, and there's a plume of smoke or something that anchors the illustration, and Ben looked at it and said "Ess!". And lo, and behold, yes, it indeed looks like an S -- but not like an S from any of his alphabet books.

Anyway, the kid impresses me.

As for the comics this week, let's see what we got:

30 DAYS OF NIGHT BLOODSUCKERSTALES #5: Honestly, I'm bored with both of these stories, and I wish that each had already wrapped up. I think that if they continue the book, they need to mix up the story lengths a lot more -- for an anthology to work, I beleive that every issue should have at least one good starting point included. Gotta go with an EH, here, especially for IDW's $4 cover price.

ANGRY YOUTH COMIX #8: Last issue I actually thought for a minute that Johnny Ryan had begun to transcend just the toilet humor -- there was at least one story that was kinda a genuinely good piece of satire. But, with this one we're back to straight up crap and pussy jokes. Not the way that I, personally, would want to spend $3 and 15 minutes, and this time through I didn't even laugh *once*, so I'm down with AWFUL.

ARANA HEART OF THE SPIDER #2: Yeah, it's not the Next Big Thing, and, unlike X-23, you don't have the X-zombies to prop you up regardless of content. We ordered 6 copies of #1 and Marvel did a 100% overship, if you can beleive that -- we received 6 free copies. I thought that was a terrific move on Marvel's part and bought the book better rack placement than I otherwise woulda given it. Alas, after 5 weeks of counts, we still only sold 6 copies. With #2, based on the weekend's velocity, I don't think we're going to sell 4. And I can't really battle it -- the book just isn't good enough to warrant individual hand-selling, or growth through word of mouth. The book is pretty much cliche after cliche, and the "armored" look is just downright ugly. The supporting cast are all really flat, and everything about the book feels forced to me. It's a really low EH, or maybe a high AWFUL, though the EH is probably fairer.

ARTBABE PRESENTS LA PERDIDA #5: What a let down of an ending. Like a bad student film, or something. And I was enraptured with the first four issues, too. I gotta give it, too, an EH.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #13: Worked better than it has been lately, but, man, what the fuck is up with the wholly false jeapordy of Cap getting killed (ahahaha!) by a stray bullet(!?!?!?!?!) -- since you know that can't actually happen, the best you could hope for is some really brain-achingly clever way out of the cliffhanger. And I don't see that happening, do you? PLus, it's been 13 months already, I sure hope we're going to actually get TO "And what's up with Sam?" one of these days now. Dragging out way too long. Fie and Foo, A staggeringly low EH.

CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #14: I swear I sat here for a minute going, "now I know I read this... why can't I remember it?" which is never a great sign. Then I remembered, "oh yeah, the Chinese Vampires." Really undercuts any possible tension it could have had with that last page -- by the time we got there, there wasn't any surprise or shock. Again, an EH, this one right up the middle of Eh Lane.

DARKNESS #19: Either I'm not parsing things right, or they changed something in an issue I didn't read, but I thought Jackie automagically lost the Darkness powers if he had sex? Other than that, this was pretty much yuck piled on yuck with a bunch of staggeringly unlikeable characters, and I don't know what I was expecting from Lapham, but 'tweren't this. AWFUL.

DEADSHOT #4: I liked the first 3 issues enough to not want to be disapointed in the third act (as it were), but I hope it doesn't end like it's now threatening too. I'll go with a tentative OK this second, but reserve the right to downgrade that substantially next month. Having said that, look, it's got the best Savage Critic Scale rating so far this week...

DETECTIVE COMICS #804: And we'll tie that here. Dense and solid work, but something seemed off just a notch in either Bats or his villians' characterizations. It's a high OK.

DOCTOR SPECTRUM #5: *shrug* OK, shocking dark secret, sure, whatever -- this took 5 issues to get to? I really like SUPREME POWER, but this is just snoozing me out. EH.

EXILES #60: *groan* Did people actually LIKE "Age of Apocalypse"? I mean actually, and truly like it? 'cuz I remember it as being long and formless and ultimately redundant. Well, we'll get more into that down a bunch, but, yes here we go back to AoA, and I don't care enough about the premise to care what happens. So, EH from me.

FIRESTORM #11: Well, I think I said I think it's a bit too late for them to bring Ronnie back into it, especially in the Professor role, but it was an adequate single issue, I 'spose. OK

INTIMATES #5: First one I've kinda sorta liked -- the dead sidekick thing is at least marginally interesting. Still, this book is clearly not meant for me. EH.

JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER SPECIAL PAPA MIDNITE #2: A solid enough OK, I guess, though it's hard to beleive that many people would mass suicide in that circumstance.

JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE #9: Again, not my thing at all (I don't want very many gritty, morally corrupt superheroes, thanks), so take my EH with whatever cavaets you'd like.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #7: Cute enough story, Adam's getting his sea-legs on the comics page, I think. OK

KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #100: Odd thing, I was looking forward to this for a bit, because I'm a big KoDT fan, and the promise of twice as many comics pages made me go W00t! But I forgot that almost meant twice as many gaming-magazine pages as well, which made the comics side seem smaller than it probably really was. If you understand what I am saying. Plus, I was expecting some big epic story, and instead it was a lot of short vignettes. Which were all funny, don't get me wrong... just not what I was expecting. Anyway, it's a GOOD, but a reserved one 'cuz I was expecting an "EXCELLENT", y'know?

LEGEND #1: It was good, it is always nice to see Russ Heath drawing something, and Chaykin's script was pretty good this time through -- but geez louise, $6? You gotta assume it's going to be a $19.95 trade, right? Look, I know that my job in life is to sell these things, but that's just plain overpriced. The "GOOD" I woulda given it is knocked down to an OK for the pricing.

LEX LUTHOR MAN OF STEEL #1: Damn nice looking art, and a good character study of Lex and his motivations. I think I agreed with all of the notes hit, so that's nice. I'll give it a GOOD, sure.

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #1: This is actually Jeff's joke, but the way the "Marvel Age" were being solicited and relaunched for a while there, it was like Kids would think that all Peter Parker ever did was get bitten by a spider and watched Uncle Ben get shot. They just keep doing the origin over and over again. With material this hoary, aimed at kids, your only choice is really capped out at OK

MARVEL TEAM-UP #6: I liked this wrap-up just fine. It's utterly weightless material, but it does it well. GOOD.

RAZORS EDGE WARBLADE #5: I was hoping for the other ending, where all the toys aren't put (more or less) back where they began. Ah well. This sold shockingly poorly for a Simon Bisely drawn comic. EH.

RISING STARS #24: Another ending I didn't care much for. The whole third act was kind of a mess, really. REally, kind of a Deux Ex Machina ending to the theme of the act -- none of the Specials actually did anything or changed a thing, it was the power *itself* which affected the societal change. This may change upon the start-to-finish reread of the entire series, but, for the moment, I got nothing more than an EH.

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #2: 4 pages of content, expanded out to 22, and it ain't even got no of them thar boobies to make the time pass. And there's 5 more issues of this to go? Cho has the artistic chops, sure, but his writing and pacing is jerky like strip pacing. It's like he needed to remind HIMSELF every few pages that she "has the eyes of a killer", y'know? It's not quite AWFUL, so it get the low low low EH.

SUPERMAN STRENGTH #3: A wonderful wonderful "silver age" style Superman comic, overpriced by half, and with the wrong artist chosen. In a parallel world where this is what Jim Lee was drawing for the last year (well, OK, maybe not Jim, but you see my point...), this woulda been EXCELLENT, but in the world in which we live in, it gets a low OK. *sad*

SWAMP THING #13: Not as grue-some for gruesome's sake as the last few, thank god -- but there's just nothing left here that I care about. Abby and Tefe and Alec just need to have everything wrapped up to some degree, and then go off stage, forever and ever. Thier time is done, really. EH.

TOE TAGS FEATURING GEORGE ROMERO #6: Well, that didn't work. Jeez, at all. If there were plans to continue the "Toe Tags" name, post-Romero, I'd scuttle them now. AWFUL.

TWILIGHT EXPERIMENT #2: an OK hook, an OK idea, but nothing better than OK. An an OK idea has to be executed BRILLIANTLY to get an OK rating. So that's why I say EH.

ULTIMATE IRON MAN #1: Variant foil covers. *sigh* is this what we've come back to? Really? I despair for comics, sometimes, I really do. I thought the insides were well done -- crisply written, and well drawn, but, man, the idea of Tony Stark having actual super-powers of some sort is diametrically opposed to what I think of as "Iron Man". No, he's 100% human at base -- that's what makes him compelling within the Marvel universe, I think. So, I have quibbliage. Despite that, however, the actual content was compelling and GOOD.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #73: It's not that nothing happens, it's that what happens should have been 3 pages in another issue, and we wouldn't have had to sit through all of the flashbacks. I'm absolutely certain this issue will work in the TP, because Bendis has played this trick before, but as a single comic book reading experience, I was impatient and bored. EH.

WALKING DEAD #16: Except for that last page (god, what a leaden line to go out with), how could you read this comic, and not be in love with it? Well, a strong like, anyway. Love, that's serious. An easy VERY GOOD.

X-MEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE #1: Because... well, someone must have demanded it. Not me. Modern AoA world looks surprisingly like our own. I accepted that on, say, SLIDERS, because that's what the budget allowed, but given my memories of what we were shown in the original AoA, it strained my credibility quite a bit to see it here. I don't know, it's not really bad or anything (Bachalo's art is more approachable than it's been recently), but I just simply don't care about this world and these characters and didn't seem to have any real reason to do so. It's time for Marvel, with it's tortured continuity and scores of variant worlds to have a CRISIS.... Anyway, the review: EH.

X-MEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE ONE SHOT: I can't even give this an EH. Geez, they don't love you, they just want all your money! AWFUL.

X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #4: Stinky stinky doo doo. This is not what you want to hand in TP to a civilian fresh outta the FF movie -- this is bad bad comics, ugly, formulaiac, irrelevent. CRAP.

PICK OF THE WEEK: best rating of the week goes to .... WALKING DEAD #16. I'm here to cut off your head!

PICK OF THE WEAK: Oh, c'mon, that's easy -- X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #4

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK: a much stronger category than the comics, here's draft 1: COMICS JOURNAL 2005 SPECIAL: Lots of strong material in the new strips section. FABLES VOL 5 THE MEAN SEASONS TP: This is how I buy FABLES FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 2 DAME TO KILL FOR 2ND TP FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 5 FAMILY VALUES 2ND TP: If you haven't read them yet, now is the time. JUNGLE TP: Peter Kuper did a great job on this adaptation. LITTLE LULU VOL 2 LULU TAKES A TRIP TP: Charming charming stuff. MINISTRY OF SPACE TP: Flimsy cover, but a great, beautiful story PROMETHEA BOOK 4 TP: if you've read the first three. TEENAGERS FROM MARS TP: It's uneven in places, but it's got fire, man.

I think I'm going to go with MINISTRY OF SPACE for the win.

You?

-B

Blahs for the Blah: the 3/2/05 Week of Comics...

Good thing Hibbs is weighing in this week; maybe he'll have something to really get at with this week's books. I don't know if it's the cold I'm fighting, or the week I'm having, but I was at the store yesterday and not really feeling the magic as far as the floppies were concerned. Kind of a nice week for trades, in that I brought home Little Lulu, Vol. 2, Ministry of Space, Promethea Book 4 and Teenagers From Mars and there's a little bit of everything for everyone in that assortment, you know? But the ongoing titles, I just, hmmm, I don't know... as evidenced by my very first review. [WARNING: First review is heavy on the scroll-wheelery and eye-bleeding: long, in short.] ARTBABE PRESENTS LA PERDIDA #5 (OF 5): And sadly, this is Exhibit No. 1 in why I'm doubting my critical acumen this week. I've been more or less knocked out by every issue of La Perdida...except this one. Considering how underwhelmed I've been about other last issues of minis I've also otherwise enjoyed (100% #5, Black Hole #12), I wonder if it's not some unfortunate end-result of a last issue following far on the heels of a previous one, particularly when the creator chooses a different path than the straight-up ratcheting of tension and expectation placed in the earlier issues. Endings are tricky, tricky things anyway, and perhaps where the creator can use a bait and switch to best effect (throwing expectations off by switching the narrative's focus from the plot to the theme, for example), but if it's nine months or a year between issues, then maybe it reads more like a souffle collapsing, a loss of potential, to the reader of the singles as opposed to what's experienced by the reader of the trade. (And dammit, because 100% is only now coming into trade, I really couldn't say for sure.)

Or maybe this just fell apart at the end. It felt like it fell apart to me: after four issues of Carla not seeing what's going on and not doing anything to stop what's going on around her, she's finally brought (literally) face-to-face with the situation at the end of issue #4. In issue #5, she's dealing with a band of kidnappers, including her ex and her closest friend, who have kidnapped a wealthy American who is also her ex: it's pretty much the height of drama, and Abel's done an exemplary job of building up to it.

But perhaps because the first four issues have driven their tension from the difference between what Carla thinks is going on and what the reader can see is going on, the fifth issue, where those viewpoints are finally the same, goes slack when Abel puts nothing in place to replace that tension--indeed, Carla's captions take over the last issue, telling us things so Abel doesn't have to dramatize them. Abel insists on not switching to a full-tilt crime story, keeping all the double-crosses and death grounded in the uncomfortable banality of life, but without that, or the hook of the schism between the protagonist's beliefs and ours, it all feels tremendously flat. I get the sense Abel may have struggled with the material--a few scenes jump art style dramatically, suggesting Abel might have tried to draw the last issue in a different style as a way to show the change in Carla's viewpoint and then ditched it--but it sure didn't feel like she got it. I hope either I'm wrong (and it's 100% Syndrome) or she does figure out the proper way to rework the material before the trade, because the stellar work in the first four issues makes this feel much worse than the Eh it probably is--because the story as a whole could be so much more.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #13: Might have worked if I hadn't known this book is closing down shop (although Captain America killed by a stray bullet...come on) but instead feels like a high-drama way of Priest putting the toys (the Falcon's recklessness, the anti-Cap) back in the box. Eh.

DEADSHOT #4: Disappointingly seems to go for the "killer grows a heart" option which I didn't really want. On the other hand, I didn't want the whole neighborhood to go to shit, either, so I don't know what Gage would have done. The "and here's an army of b-grade villains to stop him!" ending didn't really thrill me, either. I imagine we'll get some sort of Shane-leaving type scene to wrap this up then. Oh, well. OK.

EXILES #60: I don't care about the Age of Apocalypse, thus saving me from a rash of related titles this month--and this bored me, more or less right up to the end, where the tie-in lays down some decent groundwork to up-end the series, thanks to that danged M'rkanni Crystal. Whether or not they follow through with that, we'll just have to see. OK.

LEGEND #1: I wasn't really expecting to like this just because Chaykin's recent scripting has left me cold. But it's a pretty decent spin on the Superman story (I know, I know, the Philip Wylie story came first) hampered by the fact that, with Supreme Power being only the most recent example, we're pretty much up to our necks in decent spins on the Superman story. Russ Heath's art is strong, not stellar (he can still convey a sense of weight to objects, making things like the lifting of a truck seem awesome, but I didn't see any of the particularly supple inkwork that conveys an oddly tactile sense, as in his best work) and if it'd been $2.95, I'd be telling you to check it out. But $5.95? Even with the higher page count, that price tag makes it pretty hard to endorse. Eh.

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #2: Separate and apart from the T&A issue (perv that I am, I wish it had been in there), I think this doesn't work. Although I'm glad Cho didn't just go for a light-hearted romp in this, he hasn't fleshed out his characters or his situation (I thought only one military guy survived from issue #1--turns out it's ten? Twenty? However many as needs to be eaten by dinosaurs?) or, really, his storytelling. He nails down one story point per issue and doesn't really deviate from it : this issue, it's: "Shanna has something cold, unfeeling inside. She has the eyes of a killer." and every three pages is a scene to reinforce that point. I'm sure it'll pay off...around issue #5, probably, but will anyone care by that point? I more or less didn't by the time I hit the end of this issue, and I probably would have felt that way no matter how much nudity had been thrown in. A very low Eh.

SUPERMAN: STRENGTH #3: Arghhhh. This may be the best Superman story I've read since, I dunno, Red Son, but the mismatched art team combined with the price tag makes it something I can't really recommend you drop your ducats on. It's not amazingly special--it's a very, very good Superman story with some Alex Ross covers--but giving it to an artist who really could have drawn the necessary mix of big and little moments would have at least whipped me into a fanboy lather and convinced me (and you) it was worth all this coin. But when it looks like prettily colored dashed-off storyboards and it's close to twenty bucks for the whole thing? Drops down to an Eh or an OK. The best I can do is lobby for Editorial to throw some money at McCloud and get him on a regular Superman title because he'd be great.

SWAMP THING #13: Well. It's not as gruesome as the last couple of issues, the art's strong, the writing dragged a bit but also put things more or less in place...but unless there's a stronger twist coming up than "wait, you mean the sinister looking preacher is actually evil?" I don't really care. In fact, even if there's a much stronger twist, I may not care. I think my goodwill ran out on the book around issue #8, and I honestly don't know if they can get it back. Eh.

TOE TAGS FEATURING GEORGE ROMERO #6: I love the fact that Romero is going to jam oodles of social commentary into an all-out zombie title. (The revolutionary leader was a sell-out and not even dead: is that a commentary on, say, the failure of social revolution owing to the leaders frequently being from a different race or social class than the followers?) I just wish he had the facility to do it well. And Tommy Castilo contributes some very nice work (dug those inset close-up panels!), but this was just a big ol' mish-mash where simplistic characters and an abundance of ambition scuttles any chance to really be drawn in the work. An Eh, basically.

ULTIMATE IRON MAN #1: A dual-edged sword here: although it starts too early (if I'm not mistaken, Tony hasn't even been born by the end of the first issue), it moves very, very quickly. And Card throws a shitload of wild ideas at us, stacking one on top of the other. But it threatens to swamp some important aspects of the Iron Man story--as Bri mentioned at the store, the idea of Tony Stark as a genetically altered supergenius with brain matter floating through his body just seems very, very wrong somehow, and, as Ellis has pointed out in his first few issues of Iron Man, Tony Stark ends up in the armor because of all of his arms dealing (Iron Man is a pretty potent American allegory, if you think about it), not what someone does to him--and I can't help but kinda worry what might be coming down the road. But, you know, honestly, I read it and thought it was Good. Whether it stays that way, we'll see.

WALKING DEAD #16: Must have been a good week to be Robert Kirkman. Not only is it announced that your property's been picked up by Hollywood and you'll be seeing Hollywood money to do the first draft, but your zombie book definitively kicks the ass of another zombie book written by Zombie King, George Romero. (Hopefully, you realize that last page reads dopier than hell and make a note to not destroy your tone for the sake of a more powerful last page reveal) But, still: a good week to be Robert Kirkman, particularly when you've got a title on the stands as Very Good as all this.

The other problem with such a small week for comics is I don't really know if I've left anything for Hibbs to really talk about. My hope is, something else this week really struck him he'll want to go to town on.

It's Not the 2/23/05 Comics That Are Brain Dead...

It's me, I admit it. My next door neighbor had a noisy lawn party until very late in the night (morning) and I'm running on absurdly little sleep. So if my reviews lack a certain cogent something (like, I dunno, verbs or the like) , I apologize. One would think such a caveat would make me re-think this whole "jamming my opinions down people's throats" thing, at least for this week, but noooooo. Opinion jamming waits for no man, my friend. Also, because last week's gentlemanly disposition toward M. Hibbs prevented me from talking shit about Mark Millar, I reserve the right to review any book this week I want. If Bri doesn't like it, he can double-post.

As for them thar things certain folklings call funny books:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #517: "Quick, MJ! You've got to get to safety!" "I will! Right after rehearsal!" "Great, and pick up Aunt Wassername! Oh, and toilet paper! We're totally out of toilet paper." JMS's end-run continues to whimper along, as Peter inexplicably lets Vibranium Boy leave his apartment, is inexplicably blase about warning Aunt May or protecting Mary Jane, all so we can get some false drama on that last page reveal. What a drag. Eh.

AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #8: Ends pretty much where you would expect, and how you would expect. Not too crazy about the Cap's "You were great, baby. There's money on the dresser; buy yourself something pretty" scene with Rick but it's pretty close to how it played in the original, more or less. Which brings out my only real nagging problem with this mini, overall: Casey is savvy enough to tease out the dramatic undercurrents in the original stories, but is either unwilling or unable to take them anywhere new. Pretty; competent; pretty competent. OK.

BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #69: Note: Never, ever, ever see Larry Clark's Ken Park. But if you do, do not read Betty & Veronica Spectacular #69 (or any Archie comic, for that matter) the day after: it's horrible how similarly anti-narrative yr. average Clark film and yr. average Archie story are. Interestingly, the quiz says I'm more like Veronica than Betty, but I may have been subconsciously trying to swing the results. Eh.

BONEYARD #17: Richard Moore's Boneyard continues to be a great little read, month after month. I admit it gets overly cute from time to time, but not nearly as much as you would think, and Moore's got a great handle on his characters. His touch football game in this issue is exactly the sort of enjoyable between-epic breather that once suckered a whole generation into following Chris Claremont on X-Men for wayyyy too long. Good or Very Good, you make the call.

ENNIS & MCCREAS DICKS WINTER FUN SP #1: May have been the first one of these I really truly enjoyed, although I can't figure out why: maybe it's because both Ennis and McCrea seem much more focused this time out, although I really noticed the difference in how much tighter McCrea's work seemed--less loosey-goosey layouts with much tighter linework than usually ends up on Dicks. Just wish it had come out in December, is all. Good.

FANTASTIC FOUR #523: I'm baffled: Waid had a problem with Jemas's proposed FF-as-sitcom direction and quit? Because that's what a lot of his run has read like to me, and this issue even more so. I guess I'm more of a fanboy purist than I thought, because using Galactus as the center of an episode of Friends as directed by Frank Capra kinda irked me. Eh.

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #3: So, either Waid's work is much better here than there, or it depends on if you're a Marvel fanboy or a DC fanboy. Because I, who've never followed the Legion books, thought this was Very Good material: A done-in-one that also progresses the larger storyline, re-introduces a bunch of characters, and affectionately riffs on silver-age staples. I think it's because Waid just has a grasp on the material here that's infinitely more sound than than on FF, but I'm aware of my biases, certainly.

MICHAEL CHABON PRESENTS ADV O/T ESCAPIST #5: I never quite feel like I'm having as much fun with this book as the creators are, although this issue may have come the closest, what with two relatively strong "straight" bookending stories and the two whimsical pieces in the middle by Chaykin and Geoffrey Brown, respectively. I thought Brown's piece was pretty great, actually, with all of its obviousness somehow not deluting the charm. Good, although kinda too pricey, really, for that not to be a qualified Good.

NIGHTCRAWLER #6: "This is like something out of The Grudge." No, The Grudge was scary. This is like something out of Scooby-Doo...or the Halloween episode of The West Wing, maybe. It looks too good, and Aguirre-Sacasa is too on top of the ball as far as characterization goes, to give this an Awful, but, jesus. Why not just have him be a private detective in Hawaii while you're at it? SEVEN SOLDIERS #0: A little hard to judge it on its own merits, since I'm sure it's layered with stuff that'll pay off later, but I certainly enjoyed it. I kinda wish I hadn't already been in on the issue's central joke, but that's what I get for following the Internet (and/or Previews) too closely. Overall, Morrison has something like Kirby's ability to take bits and pieces and constantly reassemble them in surprising new arrays. And that J.H. Williams sure knows his way around a layout, don't he? Very Good stuff.

SOLO #3: Giving me Paul Pope on OMAC is like giving one of Pavlov's dogs a visit to the National Dinner Bell Convention, but I think I liked the slice of life stories even better--a little piece about that damn flying ghost they sold in comic books way back when, and a vignette about the average night of a streetcorner bar that builds and ebbs like the energy of the evening itself. This was all great stuff, and I can't wait to see Pope throw his considerable energy into a big new project. Very Good.

STRANGE #4: I think I'm beginning to see the pitch here: "I've figured out a way to make Dr. Strange even more boring!" For a guy who worked for so long in film and TV, JMS drops the ball on the drama in a really big way--not only does Strange not have to earn his redemption anymore (since he's "special") but he didn't even earn his damnation (because his evil mystical pal "corrupted" him somehow). Perhaps next issue, we can just have the guy replaced with a block of wood and be done with it. Really awful.

UNCANNY X-MEN #456: By horrifying contrast to super-dull X-Men #167, I could totally see how--if I was still twelve--this would be kinda cool. X-Men versus superheroes from a timeline where dinosaurs remained the dominant lifeform? With a cute chick in an old Wolverine costume? It's not like that absurdly over-the-top issue of Uncanny (#107) where Dave Cockrum basically threw in an entire Legion of Superheroes analogue gratis (and since I was too dumb to figure that out, it seemed like Claremont and Cockrum had access to an infinite number of great throw-away ideas) but thanks to Alan Davis, this makes me remember what that felt like, and ranks a Good for that alone. Or maybe I'm just glad for a little reprieve from all the usual psionic B&D games...

X-MEN #167: Return of the angry mutant houseboy? Can we get ACTOR to fund a team of mercs to forcibly extract Pete Milligan from L.A.? What's scary is that was far more interesting than all the other "Golgotha" stuff, which now reads like "The Naked Time" meets that first half of the Buffy season before the writers have figured out exactly what the threat is. Awful. [And super-thanks to Franklin Harris for straightening out my leaden brain as to which title's which. D'oh.]

Y THE LAST MAN #31: If you can buy the shit that you really would never buy in a million years (355 pops ninja chick three times in the chest and doesn't bother with a finishing headshot? Like hell she does!), this was pretty Good. Mighty contrived in spots, but Good.

Comics for 2/16/05? Sure, What the Hey....

Like Hibbs, I also thought Wondercon was a pretty great show. Normally, I find myself getting antsy and worrying I'm missing some panel or some personage signing, and find myself dashing around until I get exhausted and cranky and miserable. (In short, I'm a con newbie.) This year, I just stuck to wandering around the floor, taking the time to take in the sites and dig through dealers' stock. I was worried for a long time that I couldn't find anything I considered enough of a deal to plunk down money on, and then found a guy selling all of his stock at a dollar a book, and found some old Kamandis, Fantastic Fours and Brave and The Bolds (Batman and Ice Cream Soldier team up to beat up an anemic German schoolgirl, courtesy of Bob Haney and Jim Aparo!) Also, I've really got to give it up to Drunken Master--not only were they really nice and really knowledgeable about Asian cinema, they're 100% bootleg free and reasonably priced. Not only did I pick up two or three Seijun Suzuki films I had no idea had gotten statewide release, I went home and found I didn't pay insane convention prices for them. Really great. Anyway, I'm leaving lots of the juicy titles alone in case Hibbs wants 'em. But here's what I thought about:

AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS #2: My biggest problem here is Dan Hipp's art--like the opening pages where, for example, a TV showing Mr. Ed looks like a picture of Mr. Ed on the wall, and the guys watching it aren't even shown facing it, or the results of a rochambeau match aren't immediately clear because the artist didn't work the tell-tale spiked wrist bracelet prominently enough into the early pages to provide the pay off--and yet at the end, when everything's going to hell, and people are getting lost and disoriented running through a dark collapsing cave, the art works perfectly. It's a problem of scope, I think--the artist just can't figure out what details to put in and which to leave out in things like establishing shots and big splash pages (that island splash page seemed both under- and over-detailed which is a n accomplishment). Weirdly, Mark Smith has the opposite problem--he's good at cramming the script with a lot of action and twists, but hasn't come up with any reason for me to care about the characters: the only reason I cared about that kiss between geek guy and geek girl was because Hipp made it lovely. If they can figure out how to cover better for each other's weaknesses, this could really work well but at the moment, it's barely OK. A shame because this is the kind of book I very much want to like.

APOCALYPSE NERD #1: Ha...ha? Bagge's tale of a Microsoft nerd and his low-life pal possibly tossed into a post-apocalyptic setting is supposed to read as a comedy, but I actually found the whole thing horrible and unsettling--maybe my love of dark humor doesn't run as deep as I thought. I also had a problem with the small details--I've travelled with tech geeks and they've got pagers, cell phones and wi-fi PDAs they check every so often to see if they're still connected--so the idea that the duo could never really find out what actually happened seemed unbelievable to me: the tech guy would check his pre-loaded list of possible wi-fi spots to surf the web and check out what had happened on BoingBoing and that would be that. I kinda wish the whole book had been Founding Father Funnies because those worked great for me. Eh, but Bagge's work just hasn't been doing it for me for a while so you may feel very differently.

CONSTANTINE: Yeah, I went and saw it this weekend. I apparently am a soft touch with comic book movies (liked Daredevil, thought LXG was okay) because even though this probably ties the Cathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman TV movie for fealty to the source material, I still thought it was more or less OK. The visuals are great, I thought the script did a pretty good job introducing all of the various "rules" of its magic and keeping them mostly consistent, and some of the performances were effective (Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton, and Peter Stormare's hammy but utterly menacing Lucifer). But everything you think would be wrong because it was a big Hollywood movie was wrong--Constantine's final gambit can't be a con, so there's none of the great "Rake at the Gates of Hell" feel to it, and if that wasn't bad enough, we had to get a final two minutes clearly dictated by test screenings to wipe out any ambiguity the character might possess. If anyone ever needed an example of how much freedom there is in comics as opposed to "big" media, there's no better example than comparing Constantine to any issue of Hellblazer. But it was some damn pretty eye-candy and I enjoyed it while it was on. Go figure.

EX MACHINA #8: Vaughan's talented enough to make that gay marriage scene amusing--"I don't want this to sound judgmental, but how long have you been with the G.O.P., Mr. Dunst?"--but it also seemed preachy, somehow (maybe it was having the characters exchange information that they all seemed aware of). Like this week's Astounding, perfectly fine but not nearly as strong as previous issues. Good.

HAWKMAN #37: Nothing's worse than "Sam & Diane" syndrome: it's disappointing when the couple doesn't get together, and it's more disappointing when they finally do get together. Here, Hawkman and Hawkgirl finally get together and it feels like too much, too soon. On the other hand, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got tired of the relationship going nowhere, so I feel for the creative team here. And there's a sexy devil chick with short hair quoting Pat Benatar so I didn't hate this, but the relationship change and the weird behavior of characters just to get to the last page reveal made me feel very coolish and Eh about this.

HUMAN TARGET #19: Probably my favorite issue of the run--not just because it brings back Chance's fucked-up protege, but because of the suggestions for a few pages that he might just be a creation of Chance's even-more-fucked-up psyche. The last page suggests something a little more mundane, but we'll see and it's still Very Good work. I'm gonna miss this title.

LIVEWIRES #1: I'm a pretty big Adam Warren fan, so I'm stoked to finally see this first issue. As always, Warren works his ass off--the script is a nonstop action scene, an introduction to all the characters and themes, and a viewpoint character--but it almost worked a little too hard: I can't figure out if the nonstop action and the nonstop casual conversation kind of cancel each other out, or if, like a Michael Bay movie, the continuous acceleration just grows monotonous. And the same use of self-awareness for story shorthand (some of the characters describe each other with lines that sound straight out of the initial pitch session, i.e., "Ben Grimm in black babydoll lace") that bugged me on Peter David's recent issue of The Hulk is a little too evident here. Despite all of the above, I did like this--definitely Good--I'm just kind of bummed I didn't love it.

OCEAN #4: Lots of good stuff here--strong snappy dialogue and a great scene explaining the motivation of the villain--but this issue didn't feel as strong as the first three: to get to the great scene with the manager we have to believe that Kane is going to try one more time to settle things peacefully, and I just didn't buy it. A lot of screenplays suffer at exactly this same point for what I'd assume is the same reason--the lag as the transition from Act II to Act III gets set up--but some of the pacing problems in Ellis's Ultimate work has me a little wary. It's either a very weak Good or a very strong OK, I guess.

PROMETHEA #32: I've read several issues of Promethea that made me feel like I was on drugs. This final issue was, I'd have to say, the bad shake issue of Promethea: I felt a little trippy and dizzy at its completion, but I also had a headache and was cranky and a bit nauseated. Even as I appreciated the construction--I loved turning the pages and becoming lost repeatedly--I found myself really challenging some of the statements being put forward here, even the ones I think I agree with. Now, I haven't read this all seventeen different ways and my impressions may change drastically once I get the poster doo-dah (I'm assuming it's going to have, at the least, a personalized kaballah like the wonderful opening of Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man) but this felt like a rehash of some of the amazing formalistic achievements in this series but nowhere near a trumping of them; more a lovely whimper than a beautiful bang. OK.

RUNAWAYS #1: Filled with wit and intelligence on every page, and just as lovely to look at as the first time around, so I hope I'm alone in liking it less now that it's set so squarely in Marvel Universe. All of the Marvel touches are fun and clever--who wouldn't like "Excelsior," the group of recovering teen superheroes?--but rather than being an American manga book with superpowers, it's now an extremely quirky Marvel title. And even if readers could find this title (and/or the money for it) in the wild bramble of all those Spider-Man, X-Men and FF Titles, I think most of Marvel's readers don't want quirky, they want really strong traditional work--and so I think all this will do is shoot a hole in the supposedly strong sales being seen in the traditional bookstores. Don't get me wrong, it's a Good book--maybe even Very Good--but I don't think this reboot is gonna pull it off. I hope I'm wrong.

SHE HULK #12: Slott uses some very clever metacommentary to critique hypercritical fanboys while advancing his story and also riffing on Avengers: Disassembled. I still miss Bobillo's art, but this was quite a Good comic and I hope it comes back strong.

SIMPSONS COMICS #103: After being off for a couple issues, Boothby gives us another top-notch issue that would have worked just fine as an episode of the series. I could've lived without the Mary Tyler Moore sequence but even that, with its complex Marge/Rhoda/Brenda throw-away in-joke, is the sort of thing the series would try. Very Good.

There. That leaves at least four juicy books (Astonishing, GL: Rebirth, Andi Watson's Little Star and Wolverine) for Pa Hibbs to riff on. I may pop up again to talk about some of the week's trades.

Some 2/9 reviews

No, Jeff didn't really leave me with much that I WANTED to talk about, that bastard! It's OK, because it is Sweetie's Day around the ol' Hibbs/Friedman household. I stayed up way late last night creating an elaborate hunt for clues aorund the house leading to this year's card (and a kiss), so I don't even really feel like reviewing comics that much today. But here are some, where Lester didn't already tell you the punchline! :)

ALPHA FLIGHT #12: Last issue, and I wish Lester'd done this one actually, becauseof how much he hates Time Travel stories. He could have done a nice compare and contrast with this and JSA this week.... Anyway, yet another stab at AF dies, though I think the reasons why this time were fairly obvious -- it wasn't actually Alpha Flight, except in name. And the humor thing wasn't actually working. ("Funny" comics need to be, y'know, FUNNY). Anyway, this last issue, was EH for a last issue (where you don't expect much to begin with)

BREACH #2: I actually kinda liked this issue, and I thought the art, in particular, was really exceptional. But there's no chance it is going to make it to a full run -- I'll be flabbergasted if intials on #1 got above, say, 16k (we find out, what, next week?), and I fully expect it to be under 10k before issue #8, and a color book simply can't turn a profit at that point. Give that this started as a CAPTAIN ATOM pitch (and it's obvious it was), I really have to wonder why the decision was made to not have at least that minor commercial selling point attached to it. Ah well, easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback. As a piece of storytelling, I'll give this a very low GOOD, though we all saw how much good that did for BLOODHOUND, eh?

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #12: Pretty much a straight ahead rock-'em sock-'em superhero comic, which we haven't seen from Priest... well, good lord, maybe when he had different initials. I actually understood almost every page here without having to scratch my head and read back. Not, mond you, that I neccessarily liked it that much better, but that this was probably more what people who want to read CAP & FALCON want to read. Not trying to damn with faint praise, though I know that's how it sounds... a highish OK.

FABLES #34: New storyline starts here, and its a cute one, way far away from Fabletown, in Hollywood, actually. It's one of those rare comics that might actually even play better if you hadn't read the 33 issues before it, so if you've heard the positive buzz and were thinking about it, I'd call this a terrific "jump on" issue. VERY GOOD.

INCREDIBLE HULK #78: Better than the uneven first part, but not back up to what I expected from a PAD Hulk comic. Probably becasue PAD didn't know if he'd be continuing when he wrote the script, and his best HULK stories were always change building upon change. If Jeff was reviewing this, he would have mentioned how the "We're Dead on a island" scene fizzled the dramatic tension, or some sort of other flowery college-boy thing, but me, I was stuck on "why are the calling him 'Hulk' in the flashbacks -- he's called that because the scared soldier said it!". So, critic say EH.

MAJESTIC #2: Its a well done 21st century silver-age Superman story, yes. However, given the performance of the mini, one wonders why they rushed to do a monthly. This is a book that, like BREACH or BLOODHOUND or, across the city, SHE-HULK or RUNAWAYS or... well, the list goes on and on, books like this are high quality, but are basically not marketed at all, and are lost in the flood of SPider/Bat/X/Super titles that drown the racks. The mid list is effectively dead now, and unless drastic surgery is made at DC and Marvel to rein in thier overproduction, they're never ever ever ever going to be able to launch a new idea or concept again and have any commercial success whatsoever. Which is a shame because this, while not great is at least a low GOOD and deserves something better than "we hope hundreds of retailers will handsell the book fervently because THEY know it is good" when that mostly entails getting people excited about work that is going to come to a premature end.

KRACHMACHER GN STRANGE DAY ONE SHOT: I wanted to put these two together in review because I read them one after another and they seemed like a good compare and contrast. KRACHMACHER is a Xeric grant book, and has terrific fucking art. Major cartooning potential here, and well deserving of a grant to develop style and talent. The story, however, was really craptastic. Dull, meandering, blech. By page 6 I had stopped reading, and I was on to flipping through to look at the nice art. AWFUL, there.

STRANGE DAY, on the other hand, had a terrific little story, that I had to fight my way through the art to find. In the end the art serviced the story just fine, but the first couple of pages were painful indeed. Sweet little romantic comic, just perfect for Valentine's Day, and I'm afraid it won't survive the casual "flip test" on the rack. It was VERY GOOD.

STRAY BULLETS #36: Lapham is well on his game here. Absolutely EXCELLENT. One wonders why this doesn't sell twice as well in the general market.

ULTIMATES 2 #3: I dunno man, though the recreation of the 70s TV show at the end made me hear the music in my head, I actually thought this was a pretty pussy development. I mean, if he's there and unconscious why go through the insane trouble and expense of strapping him to an aircraft carrier and nuking it, when it would be som much easier just to give him a lethal injection then and there, or a shot in the head, or a slit throat, or... well, hell, he's there on the floor, man. So, I don't know, there was a nice bit of dialogue here or there, but this issue didn't work for me. OK.

VIMANARAMA #1: I liked everything up until the baby disappeared, and really disliked everything after that. No dramatic tension at the end, either, as we've only just met her. On the other hand, I trust Morrison generally, and am willing to come back for #2 to see if it was me or if it was him. This issue: EH.

WALKING DEAD #15: The verbiage is cut by 50%, and things flow much smoother for it. Several fairly shocking things happen in succession, and this was clearly an EXCELLENT comic.

YOUNG AVENGERS #1: Actually, not that bad. Graeme called it. The script is brisk and fun, though I thought the characterization of JJJ was off, Kat seemed like too much of a bitch, and Jessica was reduced to the calling your boyfriend joke. Still that doesn't matter as much as the new characters. Right now they're still relatively ciphers, and how much and specifically how that changes is going to determine the long-term potential for the book. I'll give this first issue a low GOOD, though.

PICK OF THE WEAK is probably ACTION #824. Which is weird, because, as Jeff noted, it's probably Austen's best issue yet.

PICK OF THE WEEK: hard call, three excellents this week (also BERLIN #11), and all three are black and white, to boot. I'm going to give the edge to STRAY BULLETS #36, I think. Go buy a copy.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK has several very credible challengers this week: BPRD PLAGUE OF FROGS TP, FLASH IGNITION TP, LUCIFER VOL 7 EXODUS TP, NEGATIVE BURN VERY BEST FROM 1993-1998 TP, but I think I have to give the small edge to ITS A BIRD SC -- now that it is in paperback, and not expensive hardcover, you don't have an excuse to not enjoy this wonderful volume.

That's it.

-B

Comics for 02/09/05: A Quick Peep....

Hey, all. Sorry this is a bit later than usual--my scheduling's a little off, I'm fighting a cold, and I've been gathering data for my very first trip to an accountant this Thursday. I knew there wasn't a chance in hell I'd sift through all my receipts if I started writing reviews beforehand, so here's a few quick reviews to celebrate having that done, and before I go on to the mightmare that is re-organizing my workspace: ACTION COMICS #824: If we'd gotten this, oh, ten issues ago, I probably could've worked up some enthusiasm. And I know Supes is prematurely aged here because of kryptonite poisoning, but why does everyone think Superman would get weaker as he got older? The dude's one big solar battery--I think there's just as good a chance he'd be ten times stronger because of all the built-up solar power. But whatev. This was nice-looking but not quite as batshit, and so more or less OK.

AQUAMAN #27: Well, The image of bio-luminescent jellyfish floating over a tenement block was lovely and surreal, and I dug the idea of using Aquaman's amputated limb for necromancy; and this got wrapped up in two issues, instead of six. And so endeth the list of the good things about the issue. The bad things? I didn't care, and I didn't get much of a sense the writer did, either. The artist has some chops, but if even mirror, mirror can't get me enthused, I wonder what legs this book has left. Eh.

AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #7: Casey's retroactive gambit shoots itself in the foot--why does Jarvis and Hawkeye stage that scene instead of just having Jarvis endorse Clint as a possible good match for the Avengers? Similarly, I thought Casey did a perfectly good job with the scene where Cap finally has some closure over Bucky's death. But that's completely at odds with all continuity after it, isn't it? Consequently, this book is too concerned with its own take on things to fit neatly into continuity, and yet carries almost no weight on its own without previous continuity. So it just can't win either way, alas. OK.

BATMAN THE MAN WHO LAUGHS: Pretty looking, and perfectly okay retcon, although I was left a bit underwhelmed: at times, Mahnke looks like he wants to out-Bolland Bolland's work on The Killing Joke, but it also looks like he loses his nerve and deliberately tries to undercut that impression at other points. The script is pretty damn good, with lots of fun creepy bits, but maybe I would've been fangasming over this if it'd been a $3.50 Annual as opposed to paying $6.95 and giving it a Good without the enthusiasm I would like.

BERLIN #11: How long is it between issues? A year and a half? Two years? The work is incredibly first-rate and, impressively, the issue neatly keeps all the storylines thematically centered on the sexual hedonism but--man, how long again? I almost wish Lutes would pull a Blankets and go straight for a trade, because the publishing schedules hinders the appreciation of Excellent work.

BLOODHOUND #8: Fuckin' Hibbs. He gets me hooked on this book and now, whenever I ask what he thinks of the most current issue, he just holds up his hands and goes: "Don't care. It's cancelled!" Bastard. Me, I enjoyed this issue right up until Zeiss appeared because the closer this book gets to actual supervillains the more contrived it suddenly seems. Although this'll sound insanely perfunctory if you've followed my previous reviews, let me assure you the art by Leonard Kirk and Robin Riggs is really great--there's so much character in the faces and the body language I can't stand it. These guys are perfectly suited for crime drama and I hope they can find another gig that'll allow them to extend those talents. Good.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #3: There's something very off in the pacing here: "Well, we're in Paris hot on the trail of international terrorists and the Cosmic Cube--howzabout dinner?" Huh? And I'm not sure what those flashback sequences are building to, but it's starting to seem like Brubaker didn't bother to read the Reiber/Austen run. And, y'know, who can blame him, but you'd think the editor might've stepped in and informed him that the fake memory storyline was done, like, just last year. Still, OK.

DOC FRANKENSTEIN #2: Weirdly torn: I'm pretty bummed by the whole anti-religion thingy going on here, and yet my favorite pages of the book were the first three where Doc recounts all the previous attacks on him by religious zealots. And without the kooky straw-man arguments against organized religion, I'm not sure there would be anything left but busy, pretty pictures. So Good, but really could be much, much better.

FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #2: Hibbs can cut right to the heart of things. I was utterly irked by the how creepily out-of-character everyone was here, as Reed hatches a horrifying idea to jam prisoners in a Negative Zone prison--an environment so hostile the people would be loath to break out. If Reed Richards really put that kind of idea forward, I think the rest of the Four would assume he'd gotten his mind swapped with Dr. Doom again, not happily going along with this enormous human rights violation. But Hibbs just looked at the issue and said, "Where are the Foes? I thought this was supposed to be FF: Foes, but there's only one foe, and he appears on pg. 20. Gimme the god-damn foes, damn you!" Maybe this isn't really Awful, but it's rubbing me really wrong and I can't see any other rating for it.

GOTHAM CENTRAL #28: Once again, for me, it's great until the last page and then the superhero cliches just swamp it. Would the sales for this book be any worse if they just dropped the super elements all together? I'll give it a Very Good because not everyone has the allergic reation to the last page that I do but I wish these could work differently, somehow.

GREEN ARROW #47: If this had just been a done-in-one with good ol', dumb ol' Duke of Oil, this would've been just fine. But with the return of the Eurotrash Ninja, I kinda lost some enthusiasm. And I'm not digging Tom Peyer's pencils--every character looks like an enraged ectomorph suffering stomach cramps. Let's call it OK.

JLA #111: Finally, people sock stuff! But why couldn't this have been part two? Or even a "jammed with mad ideas" part one? Another case where I'm not digging the pencils--they seem dashed off to me. Eh.

MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #11: I appreciated the half-hour argument that ensued in the store over whether Scorpion was an a-list villian or a b-list villain before he got the Venom outfit. (My opinion: most Marvel heroes have barely more than two a-list villains and the rest go straight to c-list villains. The Scorpion was a guy who would hit people with the big green cheeto tied to his ass--that's all he did, that's all that ever happened. C+ at best.) But other than that, I thought this was tired and wretched. Shield sends all those heroes to help Spidey but never thinks to set up any sort of watch on Mary Jane? And then--whoa, hold on, Goblin and Mary Jane on the Bridge? That's never been done before! It'll be interesting when this is done to see if I took the time to bitch about every single issue of this--that wouldn't reflect well on me at all. Awful.

OUTSIDERS #20: I miss romance in superhero comics, so this was a welcome little ish. Of course, I also miss the days when "romance" meant more than knocking boots in the quinjet (or whatever the equivalent here is) but that's another matter entirely. I don't know why I'm still so "meh" about this book, because although I enjoy each issue at least a little bit, I never really get excited about the title overall. If I can figure out why, I'll let you know. OK.

STRANGE DAY ONE-SHOT: Was this the story about the two kids meeting while waiting for the release of the new Cure album? I thought the art was ugly and limited, to be honest, but the story drew me in and nicely captured that feeling of teen chemistry and romance. I think it might have worked better as a period piece (these really seemed to be teenagers from pre-cell phone times) and, like I said, the art didn't really kung-pao my chicken, but a very nice read. Good.

STRAY BULLETS #36: Nice work on Lapham's part making that last panel as disturbing as possible. If I have a problem with this title, it's that it doesn't hold any surprises. If Craig hadn't actually been a scumball, maybe there would've been a little more drama in the story. But there was no doubt, this being Stray Bullets, that he was going to be at least quasi-scumballish and that things were going to turn out the way they did. And while it's bad form to criticize a work of art for having a consistent worldview, it's a worldview without enough nuance to really keep me interested all these many issues later: Amy's continuing corruption would be more moving if it seemed like there was any other choice available to her. Good work, don't get me wrong, but it's not knocking me out like it should.

YOUNG AVENGERS #1: Pretty good stuff, actually. I had issues with the portrayals of Jessica and Jonah--and maybe even Kat--but I thought they were handled pretty well and Heinberg is skilled enough to make sure those scenes had their own payoffs, even if a bit forced. And after seeing stuff like New Invaders turn into static mush, I appreciated Cheung and Dell's attempts to keep things moving, even if a lot of it didn't really work if you paid attention (that fight scene in the church is really messy and sketchy--those five guys frequently look like at least eight guys, and all of them seem particularly adept at shrugging off lightning bolts--but it's laid out to keep the eye zipping right through it). This book is gonna rise and fall on the strength of each Young Avenger's backstory (and even then, as Hibbs pointed out, where it's gonna go after, say, issue #12?) but I did enjoy it more than, say, any of the Bendis work on Avengers and I'll be back for more. Good.

I left plenty of stuff for Hibbs to weigh in about (and tried not to steal all of his best lines) so let's see if he takes the bait. I think I'll be working on the newsletter this week and Wondercon is coming up on Friday so don't be surprised if this site lies fallow, at least on my end, for a little bit.

And, As Promised...

Since Bri actually did post some more (to which I heartily say "fuck, yeah!"), and since it was a pretty great week for trades, I wanted to review of the trades quickly. Actually, it's such a great week of trades for CE, there's a ton of good stuff to choose from: Vol. 11 of Battle Royale? Bill & Ted? Gemma Bovary, fresh from an extremely laudatory review by the extremely hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times? Legend of Grimjack? The budget release of The Superman Archives? And I'm just listing the cool stuff I didn't get. Out of the trades I did pick up, I wanted to briefly mention: BIZARRO WORLD HC: Bri and I disagreed on this one at the store Friday, and somehow none of that made into his review. Thinking back on it, I do have to agree with his best point (which he didn't have time to scale into this review): this volume of Bizarro World feels a lot more Mad Magazine-ized than Vol. 1. There's a lot more of the funny and wacky here than the original Coober Skeeber premise of Vol. 1 where alt. cartoonists used their styles to explore the DC characters, which is why I think Brian sees the Kolchaka piece as the great piece in this volume (separate and apart from it being a great piece)--it's where Kolchaka's interests and DC's (silver age) interests cross and highlight each other in exactly the Coober Skeeberish way.

But, that said, I felt like I actually enjoyed this volume more: The Green Lantern story where we *finally* get a valid explanation for the color yellow thing; Dorkin's "Batman and Monkey The Monkey Wonder" story; the story (drawn by Dorkin) of Kamandi: the Laziest Boy on Earth (of course I would love that); that Dave Cooper girlfight; that Wonder Woman story by Mo Willems and Ellen Forney (can someone get more Forney work into the market and pronto?); and at least three or four other pieces. I can't imagine this is going to do as well in the marketplace (I think, based on what I overheard in the store a few times, is that a lot of people grabbed Vol. 1 expecting it to be Matt Groening's take on the DCU) but I think it's still worth the coin--if not in HC, then certainly in SC. I give it a high Good.

RUNAWAYS VOL. 3 DIGEST: I waited for the trade for this, and thought it read great even though the format is...not so great. Still, if you haven't had a chance, I highly recommend you pick up these three volumes: I think Vaughan does a dazzingly good job of creating an all-ages adventure packed with twists, characterization and witty dialogue. Although I was pretty sure I knew the twist resolution, I was impressed with how well it was handled, and how true to the characters it stayed. And the art's great, too. Very Good work and worth picking up--and if Marvel is smart, they'll pimp this one out to the movie people because it would be (to quote the Trump) hyooge.

BLACK PANTHER BY JACK KIRBY SC: I read through this expecting no more than typical late-70's Kirby at Marvel--great design, dynamic pacing, stinky story--and was surprised by the subtext--actualy god-damned subtext--encoded in the "Collectors" storyline. In this set of stories (running the first seven or so issues of Kirby's run--I don't have the trade in front of me), T'Challa ends up helping a collector called Mr. Little, first in correcting a problem with an ancient artifact/time machine once in the possession of T'Challa's family, and then, against his will, in a quest to recover water from the Fountain of Youth. In every issue, we get some choice bitching from The Panther about Mr. Little and his competitors (commonly referred to as "The Collectors"): "You Collectors may have a sense of value, but little sense of worth!" and like that. At first, I attributed the endless reiterations of such comments to Kirby's breakneck creative process until about mid-point it hit me: Here was T'Challa The King, fretting about wasting his time while being sent on fools' errands by The Collectors, as written and drawn by Jack "King" Kirby after the apparent rejection of his New Gods work and his return to Marvel. These quests involve time machines and eternal youth, as conceived by a guy in the later years of his career put on a book mainly because he co-created the character and expected to schedule and sell as if Kirby was still in his prime.

Mother-fuckin' subtext, yo.

All the more impressive to me is that Kirby doesn't use this for self-pity: his Panther is amused and annoyed by the Collectors but never cowed, frustrated that his attentions are forced elsewhere but never furious. And it's just a little thing, woven in underneath all the Yetis and lost Samurai and the very creepy Man from Hatch 23. I admit it's not prime Kirby, but that guy could still jam-pack a comic book and the industry could still learn a lot from him. Good (maybe even Very Good if you're a Kirby nut like me) and eye-opening.

SEAGUY TPB: Finally, on the opposite end of the subtext spectrum, we get this collection of the three issue mini by Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart. Here, the subtext isn't discreetly woven in but the essence of the story itself--Seaguy is a Z-Grade character (I love how Cameron Stewart draws Seaguy less like a comic book hero and more like an action figure who once got a single page comic strip ad *in* a comic book) who, in a world bereft of adventure, has an adventure where everything changes, and yet nothing changes one whit. It's about as devastating a commentary on how media corporations control all their icons (even their lowliest) and keep them from genuine growth as I've read, and, amazingly enough, it's presented through a publishing arm of Time-Warner Communications.

Although I think Morrison wants to have it both ways, and implies that Seaguy may be smarter, more vital and more emotionally connected to his past than appearances might show, I prefer the glass half-empty approach, and see Seaguy as a bitter pill with a sugar coating--a sadly knowing commentary on the world of mainstream comics disguised as a goofy skylark. Very Good stuff, if you ask me.

Since I said I'd be back with more

Here, at least, is my epiphany about Superman. I didn't really understand #213. It sounded like Superman saying HE had caused "The Vanishing" because he was upset about earth ending like Krypton. Or something? That's what I thought I read, at least. Doesn't make any sense, but there you go.

And there's a page where they're discussing Kal being sent off to earth in his rocketship and a paragrpah before or later they're talking about the Phantom Zone, and it hit me:

Jor-El is an idiot.

Now as I recall my continuity (And my memory is fluid, so maybe I have this wrong), but didn't Jor-El "invent" the Phantom Zone? Well the projector, I guess. At the least, he's well aware of it, if not having some access of some kind as a significant Kryptonian scientist.

So he KNOWS the planet it about to explode. And what does he do? Try to save his entire family, thier friends, random people on the Kryptonian equivilant of the internet by escaping into the Phantom Zone? Oh, nooooooo. He builds an experimental interplanetary spaceship, that may or may not even make it, and ONLY makes it large enough for his helpless infant son.

I mean, I never really bought "this is just an experimental version, and I ran out of time" -- it's not even big enough for a single adult!

Anyway, you let that slide because, y'know it's a resonant story of the parents sending thier child from certain death to become a great hero... that's biblical, man. Literally, even.

But once the silver age introduced the Phantom Zone, doesn't that render that sacrifice horrifically futile and moronic? If I had a choice between putting Ben in a rocketship alone or slipping into an alternate dimenion, no matter how unpleasent, but where the whole family could be there for him, well, I'll take Door #2 any day.

I don't know how I went nearly 40 years without realizing that? Probably because no writer had ever put "phantom zone" and "rocketship" on the same page before.

Superman #213 was AWFUL.

I also didn't do the PICKs in the last post, because I thought I'd be coming back for a full post today, but I lost any chance of working yesterday because Ben's nap schedule got messed up, so today I'm desperately trying to play catch up...

My PICK OF THE WEEK is probably SUPREME POWER #15. It's weird how I can utterly love this comic, while utterly hating AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

For PICK OF THE WEAK, I already telegraphed SWAMP THING #12, but I have to say, X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #3 came dangerously close to being worse.

Back within the hour with this week's shipping list....

-B

Jeff's Reviews from 2/2

Wow. Hibbs posts--twice on the same day, in fact. And on the same week as the release of Bizarro World....Coincidence? Maybe he'll even post after I post, thus causing our universe to collapse in on itself. That'd be something to see.

Oh, and, ostensibly, I don't care but the fact that Enterprise was cancelled warmed my heart tremendously. You know those fighting games where you got the special move bar that builds over time and depletes with constant use? Let's just call that bar "quality," and hope the Star Trek franchise gets time to replenish it now.

As for the funny books...

ADAM STRANGE #5: My attention seriously dwindled this issue, in part because there was too much Omega Men, too little Adam Strange. I also think Adam detecting the one ship on an entire planet that has Rannian etc., etc. is a little too..convenient? But considering all that, it's still five issues in and I'm still enjoying it so let's call it a very high OK.

BLACK PANTHER #1: I'm pretty much with Bri on this one: the anachronisms and the racial epithets didn't help with the tone on this, although the art and the conception are fine. For me, though, the biggest no-no was introducing Klaw like he's some sort of bad-ass. As somebody who's been reading Black Panther comics for far too long now, the last person to get me worried is a guy who's been getting his ass beat by the Panther for thirty straight years. This probably should have been the time to mix things up a bit and given us somebody else's supervillain---like, I dunno, Count Nefaria or something. It's damn pretty pictures, though, and it's just getting started so lemme also OK this.

CONCRETE: HUMAN DILEMMA #2: I skipped the first issue but something about the cover of the second issue drew me in and I'm glad. I can't remember the last time a indy creator really changed the paradigm of the relationships between main characters, and it really gave this mini the sense that Chadwick is willing to take some risks. (It helps that it worked.) As Hibbs pointed out, the "story" is a bit slow but all the character stuff is where the juice is at and I'm fine with that. If you've ever liked Concrete, you should pick this up. Good.

DEADSHOT #3: Tone, tone, tone. The artists really oversold the comedy on the babysitting scenes and that really wrecked it for me--just because you can draw Charles Bronson making the Home Alone face doesn't mean you should. But the GA/Deadshot fight was better than I expected, particularly as each character tries to psych the other one out. I'm liking this, although it's gonna be rough to get a satisfying ending. I don't want a cute and fuzzy Deadshot but I don't want this mini to end back at square one, either. So it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. Good.

DETECTIVE COMICS #803: Pacing was definitely off this issue, as Lapham apparently realized how to turn Clayface into something straight out of The Silence of the Lambs, which worked fine, and overfocused on The Penguin's organization, which didn't. This is very, very dark stuff and I'm not sure if Lapham's reach is exceeding his grasp (his Stray Bullets stories are usually much more intimate, narrower in focus, which he uses there to devastating effect) but I'm really intrigued by it. I'll give it a highly qualified Good.

EXILES #59: Hmmm, everything I liked about this (particularly Sabretooth's refusal to just off Mimic) was counterbalanced by that ending which kinda stank. I really wanted more from the Timekeepers storyline than a segueway into a new Age of Apocalypse crossover. The X-Men have a funny franchise in that anything that gets fondly remembered is brought back--even if the reason why something was fondly remembered is that it was only done once. Eh.

MARVEL TEAM-UP #5: This actually recaptures the spirit of the early MTUs: it's one big incoherent mess, in other words, and that's fine with me. It's not really a guilty pleasure per se, but I am enjoying it even though I probably shouldn't. And we're all tired of me blah-blah-blahing about Scott Kolins so I'll just stop here. A guilty Good.

NEW AVENGERS #3: I hope this can be read in the most constructive, positive way possible but what the fuck is Brian Bendis doing? We're two issues into an enormous supervillain prison break, where each hero is being piled on by more and more supervillains every minute, Luke Cage encounters the Purple Man and told to turn on the heroes and kill them. So how does issue three start out? Oh, you know, with Cap and Iron Man watching the sky and sharing bagels. Because God forbid we carry any of the tension from last issue's cliffhanger past page two: right off, without knowing how, we know that the prison break worked out, Luke didn't kill anybody and everything's fine, just by the way Cap's asking if they didn't have sesame bagels. And so we jump back to where we left off, except without any dramatic tension at all, and we get to see how our heroes get out of their fine predicament. Well, it turns out that the Purple Man didn't have his power (or enough of his power) to control Luke Cage so nothing happens there. And the supervillains? Well, some of them get beaten and some of them escape. All of it off-panel, mind you. And then the rest of the issue is Cap recruiting the new team, and setting up the new headquarters, and the new possible traitor with their "ooo, now mysterious team x will know what bagels Captain America likes!" subplot.

In short, this issue was so fuckin' weak it should be opening for Hanson at Paramount's Great America. I honest to god expect next issue to be Cap informing Spidey that he *can* write Avengers lunches off on his taxes, and telling Spider-Woman how to get her parking validated when she parks at Tony's new buliding, and letting Matt know that the deli shop has a policy where if you buy five frogurts, you get the sixth frogurt free as long as you remember to get the card stamped. If you can't be arsed to finish a fight scene, maybe The Avengers isn't the book for you. Awful.

SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL #1: I hate Marvel editorial. You want to edit out Shanna's titties? Fine. But also edit out all the eyeball gouging, face tearing, and brutal dino-deaths, please, because anybody old enough to see that stuff is old enough to see titties. (This is known as "The Friday the 13th Covenant," and wimpy guys like me were aware that if we wanted to see the nudity, we had to see the violence...) That said, I thought Cho's storytelling was far more fluid than his recent Spider-Man work, and I liked that although we didn't get a lot of Shanna, there was enough Raptorectomies that there's hardly anybody left but Shanna for next issue to focus on. Too compromised to get a Good, but certainly a high OK if you wanted a pretty brain-dead book with cool dinosaurs.

SUPERMAN #213: I'm just posting my review so Hibbs can come in and share his very cool epiphany that resulted from reading this issue. I lack epiphany to share, or any insight whatsoever really, since things now sort of make sense even though they still utterly don't. I've been reading that exquisite Silver Age Superman Archive and can see a certain connection between a lot of those old improbable Superman stories and this new improbable one. But the crucial difference is they were able to do in ten pages what took this team, what, nine issues? Apart from Mt. Rushmore guy and a really cool logo for Zod, this has just about nothing going for it. Awful.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN #17: This didn't make any sense either (why would Bruce be able to fight as Batman when he had no reason to train, even slightly? And is this evil Superman? Good Superman?) but I don't care because, like the silver age stories, it's not afraid to just be absurdly jammed with cheap DC fangasm material. Sgt. Rock? The Blackhawks? The Statue of Al Ghul? Dumb and cheap, but still probably the best superhero book I read this week. Good.

SUPERMAN STRENGTH #2: Although I quite liked this too, even more than the first issue. Scott's updating of Silver Age weirdness works pretty damn well here. I know, I know: I didn't like the headless Superman thing from issue #1 but reading that Archive put me in the right mindset--plus it's got Superman flying off to stop enormous falling combs and pens! Someone drawing more like Curt Swan would have realy sold this for me...hell, as someone pointed out in the comments, Superman acts so much like Zot, McCloud could have drawn this himself and it might have pulled more punch. Shame about the price and the art, because with another format and/or with another artist, this may well have been my pick of the week.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #72: Again, wouldn't the "secret girlfriend" angle be more dramatic without that opening scene--because then I think the reader would be more likely to think that Harry's just being an egomaniacal nutcase, and the story would deepen when we discover otherwise. Everyone in the comments section make it sound like I'm the only sucker still reading this, but this book was so good for so long that such easily fixed stuff drives me nuts. Eh.

Okay, so let's put the fate of the universe at stake and see if Hibbs will take it from here, and then, if there's still any fluid left in your eyeballs, I'll prattle about this week's trades.

Some reviews from 2/2

Whaaaaat?!?!?! Brian's doing it first? Before Jeff even sees it? What the hell planet am I on? Well, Tzipora's off to the suburbs for chores, and Ben crashed super-early today for his nap -- he usually makes it all the way through TELETUBBIES, which ends at 11:30, but today he watched all of the 10am SESAME STREET in my lap, stroking his hair (Episode 4070, jeez I think I've watched that one 25 times this year! I've seen it more than any other episode, and it's the WORST at the beginning. That's the one where Snuffleupagus' magic ukelale is broken, so he's stuck invisible, and Big Bird is all sad [Does anyone remember the days when everyone on Sesame Street thought Big Bird was barking insane because he kept talking about Snuffy, but no one but BB could see him? Or is that my aging cynicism interpreting that?] -- and talking to air. Ben always gets super bored during those scenes when there's nothing on camera and just some yammering on....), and he was done by the time they got to "Teletubbies everywhere"...

So, let's get a few books done while I have the cahnce - I really should be finishing the stupid TaW on BookScan, I'd really rather be playing a little CoH while the house is quiet -- and, hopefully, I'll be back Monday or so to do some wrap up.

Ooh, one bit of old business first: dunno why, but last week I totally forgot to mention BLUESMAN #1 from Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo. It is the follow up to the wonderful CASTAWAYS GN they did. This was really terrific and touching stuff, even if they really do need to find a cover designer to make thier covers "pop" off the rack. I want very much to give it an "excellent", but Callejo's anatomy is oddly "scrunched" in places, and I had a hard time in places distinguishing between the two leads. Still, VERY GOOD, and if your LCS deigned to carry it, go buy a copy, you won't be sorry.

This week, go!

BLACK PANTHER #1: I liked it from a "let's show how badass the Wakandans are" POV -- definately worked there -- though one has to think that world history would be completely different given what's presented here. But, I dunno if the script really worked. I was bugged by the anachronistic "kiss my butt!" thing in the 5th century, and I was surprised by the racist language as the book went along. Ignoring racism is a dumb thing for a book like Black Panther, but I do kinda wonder if Marvel would ever let a white writer and/or a "non-Hollywood" writer (because I don't know which it actually is) use the phrase "jungle bunnies", y'know? The art was spiffy, and there's definately seeds of rollicking potential laid here, but I've got enough quibbles in the scripting that I don't think I can go better than a GOOD on this first issue.

CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #2: Weird pacing. 44-odd pages in and the story seems to just be beginning. It's also got the single most surprising sex scene I've ever seen in a comic. I really like this book, but this series is moving glacially. And, yet: GOOD.

DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #1: Probably should have been an arc in the main book rahter than it's own mini. Solid but unspectacular stuff, but there's no "action" whatsoever. All Adventures of a Blind Lawyer stuff. A very strong OK, or a weak GOOD, you choose.

GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #1: Again, solid but unspectacular. This is a mature team good great action material, but all in all, I wanted soemthing more. It wasn't...ugh, I dunno, distinct enough? A low GOOD.

FIRESTORM #10: I can't imagine this was the original plan, and if it was it was a dumb one. It feels to me like DC got panicky and switched horses mid-stream to get Ronnie back in the book, but its certainly too late -- the Ronnie fans left before issue #4. From a craft POV this was all fine, but something smells off here, and I give it an EH.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #6: No real comment on the story (perfectly servicible, a solid OK), but I was fucking BLOWN AWAY when I got to the full-page ad for Scholastic's edition of the color BONE. Did you ever think you'd see something like that? I don't know what I'm more impressed by: Scholastic running advertising for the book, or DC accepting it. Both are forward thinking, y'know? Good show, everyone!

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #1: I think it would have done better as a Max book, but whatever. More about nazi experiments than Shanna, really, I was surprised to say that I was kinda, well, kinda bored. Cho draws great, no doubt, but there wasn't anything fresh here. *shrug* A high OK, I guess.

SWAMP THING #12: What an ugly ugly ugly book. I can't believe this has any legs. Horror doesn't work without humanity. AWFUL.

BILL & TEDS MOST EXCELLENT ADVENTURES VOL 1 TP: First thing: good job in the reproduction and toning. Sometimes efforts to translate a color book to B&W look like shit, but this did it well. Second thing: I know you're thinking, WTF? Who wants to read anything about a decade+ old movie? But I got to tell you this is excellent zany fun from Evan Dorkin, is wall to wall laffs, and absolutely belongs in your library. In fact, fuck it, its my TP/GN PICK OF THE WEEK, and this is a damn good week for books.

BIZARRO WORLD HC: There's a lot of good material in here, but only a small chunk of it gets as far as great (I think I'm partial to the "Dear Superman..." piece, or maybe Kochalka's wonderful LSH story) -- and there's a couple of pieces that can't crack merely OK. So, your typical anthology problem, largely compounded by being in a HC when we're all 100% sure there will be a SC within 12 months. If you prefer HC books, or your trying to match the first volume, then yes, absolutely get it now -- that's why I'm not going to wait -- but, otherwise, yeah you might be better off waiting for the SC. It will probably be the PICK for the week it gets released in SC, but it's only a high GOOD in this format, in this week.

OK, that's it for today, more later, hopefully with some Jeff along if I didn't frustrate him to death over the last few weeks. I left PLENTY to talk about....

-B

Shipping 2/2 and some 1/26 wrap up

Yah, yah, I know. It's already Wednesday, and I'm just getting to this, I suck. We're going to take Ben to the Zoo today (Free Day at the Zoo, hoorah!), so there's really no time, and besides I'm days late now.

Best thing I read last week? A book from two weeks ago: HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES HC. Best JC story I've read in quite a while. Since's Garth's run, maybe. Terrific stuff, and don't let the price get to you -- thought it was really worth it!

Of last week's actual comics? I thought PLANETARY #22 was great -- I don't even really matter that the through-line plot is getting like a page an issue. I also really liked LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #2, BEst stab at the Legion in a while.

But, there's nothing that beat last week's WE3 #3. What an astonishingly touching book, that's also action packed and full of humanity. One of the best things I've ever read from Morrison. Easy PICK OF THE WEEK.

On the down side? SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #24 was dumb-de-dumb-dumb on most every page, disguising a Walking Tour of Paris (aka: How I Expense My Holiday) with the dopiest plot developments in a Spidey book since the Howard Mackie days. We've lost somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 our Spidey readers in the last 2 months. Sometimes, actually, editors are a good thing.

But as bad as that was, PICK OF THE WEAK must go to the oh-so-loveable TAROT #30. Pube-eye shots, radically innapropriate cartoony manga art, and absurd ruminations on female sexuality that made me cringe. I mean, "Mommy Bags"? Buh?

On the book/TP side, I really liked the coloring on the scholastic version of BONE VOL 1, but the retailer in me couldn't be more pissed off that we're now losing 5% on discount at the same time the cover price shrinks. Work harder for less money, young retailer, work!

The EPILEPTIC hardcover was really pretty and well designed, and it's a terrific story, but I think I'm going to go mainstream and declare my BOOK /TP OF THE WEEK to be the hardcover of LOKI. Day-um is that some nice looking artwork all the way through.

For the stuff arriving at CE this week, sorry if you normally print this before going to the store, since it's now 12:40 and I'm just getting to it:

ADAM STRANGE #5

ALAN MOORES HYPOTHETICAL LIZARD WRAPAROUND CVR #1

BATTLE OF THE PLANETS PRINCESS #4

BLACK PANTHER #1

BLOOD ORANGE #4

BMW FILMS THE HIRE #2

BRIAN PULIDOS UNHOLY #1

BUGTOWN #2

CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #13

CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #2

DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #1

DARKNESS #18

DEAD AT 17 ROUGH CUT VOL 2 TP

DEADSHOT #3

DETECTIVE COMICS #803

EXCALIBUR #9

EXILES #59

FIRESTORM #10

GI JOE RELOADED #12

GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #1

GUN FU LOST CITY #4

INTIMATES #4

JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER SPECIAL PAPA MIDNITE #1

JONAS TALES OF AN IRONSTAR #3

JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE #8

KBETTY & VERONICA #206

KJUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #6

KLOONEY TUNES #123

KMARVEL AGE SPIDER-MAN #20

KUNCLE SCROOGE #338

KWALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #653

LIONS TIGERS & BEARS #1

MARVEL TEAM-UP #5

MONOLITH #12

MORA #1

NEW AVENGERS #3

QUESTION #4

RAZORS EDGE WARBLADE #4

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #1

SHONEN JUMP VOL 3 MAR 2005 #3

SPIDER-GIRL #83

STAR WARS OBSESSION #3

SUPER MANGA BLAST #49

SUPERMAN #213

SUPERMAN BATMAN #17

SUPERMAN STRENGTH #2

SUPREME POWER #15

SWAMP THING #12

TOE TAGS FEATURING GEORGE ROMERO #5

TWILIGHT EXPERIMENT #1

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #72

UNCANNY X-MEN #455

X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #3

X-MEN PHOENIX ENDSONG #2

X-MEN UNLIMITED #7

Books / Mags/ Stuff

24 STORIES ONE SHOT

ABCS OF SUPERPOWERS HC

BATMAN ANIMATED SERIES VOL 2 DVD

BATTLE ROYALE VOL 11 GN

BILL & TEDS MOST EXCELLENT ADVENTURES VOL 1 TP

BIZARRO WORLD HC

BLACK PANTHER BY JACK KIRBY VOL 1 TP

BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME BOOK 1 TP

CAVEMAN ROBOT GIGANTIC MEGA ANNUAL 2004

COMIC ART MAGAZINE #7

COURIERS VOL 3 BALLAD OF JOHNNY FUNWRECKER GN

DAISY KUTTER VOL 1 TP

GEMMA BOVERY GN

GRANDE FANTA SC

GRAPHIC CLASSICS VOL 11 O HENRY

HULK AND THING HARD KNOCKS TP

JUST BLOOMED ART OF BORIS LOPEZ VOL 2

LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 1 TP

MARVEL VISIONARIES STAN LEE HC

MAXX BOOK FOUR TP

MEGATOKYO VOL 3 TP

OTHELLO VOL 2 GN

PVP RELOADED VOL 2 TP

RANMA 1/2 VOL 15 (SECOND ED) TP

ROGUE TROOPER THE FUTURE WAR TP

RUNAWAYS VOL 3 GOOD DIE YOUNGDIGEST TP

RUROUNI KENSHIN VOL 11 TP

SEAGUY TP

SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC

SIMPSON COMICS BARN BURNER TP

SINSTER DEXTER MURDER 101 TP

SMALL GODS VOL 1 KILLING GRINTP

SPIDER-MAN KUBRICK SET A

SUPERMAN ANIMATED SERIES VOL 1 DVD

SUPERMAN ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC

THE REMAINDER GN

UNCANNY X-MEN NEW AGE VOL 2 CRUELEST CUT TP

VAMPIRELLA COMICS MAGAZINE ART COVER #9

WALLFLOWER VOL 2 GN

YU GI OH VOL 1 DUELIST TP

There's a good couple of "Cool!"'s in there -- what are you getting?

Off to the zoo!

-B

1/26/05 Comics...

[Opening statement; half-hearted apology for being underwhelmed by week's comics; statement of appreciation for readers and incisive commentary by posters; statement blaming Hibbs for refusing to initiate first post.] And with that out of the way...

AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS #1: I very much wanted to like this, and it says something about how low on fumes I've been lately that I was grateful for just kinda liking it. Although I can respect their decision to throw the reader right into the middle of action (it's not like Scooby-Doo had an introductory or origin episode, for example), that, in tandem with art that I think is supposed to be joyously anarchic and cluttered but instead largely comes off as merely cluttered, made this a tougher read than I would have liked. It's got potential, and like I said, I very much want to like it, but right now, it just makes me miss Jay Stevens' work. And wonder when the volume of Scott Pilgrim is due out. OK.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #516: Didn't like this much last issue, don't like it any more this issue. Again, not only are the continuity implants annoying here, they also work against each other: if Uncle Ben deemed wassisname is lacking enough moral character to hang out with Peter, what kind of asshat is Peter to completely ignore that twenty years later and attach his name to this guy's research without keeping the slightest eye on him? Huh? Not Awful-Awful but still, Awful. Also: isn't this just The Molten Man, only kinda different? Seems like a lot of work to dupe up a villain Spidey's already more or less got...

ARANA HEART OF THE SPIDER #1: I got six pages into this. No Rating.

AVENGERS: EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #6: Yeah, fine, Kolins art good, blah-blah-blah. Thanks to the bi-weekly publishing schedule I feel as if I've been reviewing this book every week for the last nine years. It doesn't suck but, if it ends where I think it does (I'm assuming the formation of Cap-Hawkeye-Quicksilver-Scarlet Witch Avengers in, what, issue #16 of the original run?), what does it say about comics storytelling that we get a quarter of the stories, in dramatically truncated fashion, in approximately half the space? OK.

BATMAN #636: Pop quiz, hotshot: which sticking point most dramatically points out the shortcomings with the Batman editing team: (a) A line being cut before it could be pulled 'taught'; or (b) Batman working completely totally on his own in the wake of War Games--except for the Nightwing cameo here, and Batman's cameo in Robin? Pretty art, and the story is certainly readable, but come on guys--put down the bong and the X-Box controller and start paying some sort of attention, okay? OK.

BETTY #144: Between the cover to this issue, Tarot, and Dave Robson's infectious glee regarding Sci-Fi Channel's upcoming Chupacabra: Dark Seas, we had a fine ol' time in the store Friday night. (I tried to find a an easily importable version of this cover, but no dice.) As for the stories--well, "stories" might be too strong a word--as for the anecdotes from this issue, they were inoffensive and that's the point, right? I think some highbrow critic should examine how Betty stories often tread dangerously close to suggesting that Betty has absoutely no self-definition outside of her social structure, and the best Betty stories have her pondering exactly this sort of quandry, and edging toward the existential horror that results from realizing we have individual identity and yet must rely on a societal structure to impart this identity, before something happens (like, the opportunity to bake cookies) and Betty forgets all about it. But that highbrow critic, alas, won't be me--I picked this up because my girlfriend and I were in a restaurant the other night and saw three young girls at a table excitedly pass around a Betty & Veronica Digest, and it was sadly sweet. OK.

DETONATOR #2: Hey, the Detonator talks to his dog! Awwww. And yet he doesn't detonate anything. Is this decompressed storytelling? We have to wait six issues for him to detonate something? Eh.

FANTASTIC FOUR #522: This book has really been suffering from "I love you, man" syndrome. Reed: "Johnny, we're so glad we found you. We love you, man." Johnny: "Wow. I just got to see you guys in a new way that is oddly similar to the way people see you each and every issue! I love you, man." Sue: "You know, Ben, I can't believe Johnny actually gave orders to Reed, and Reed listened. I love him, man." Ben: "Yadda-yadda-clobberin'-something's-on-my-foot. Oh, and dont' tell anyone I told you, but I love you, man." Also, giving Galactus an origin and then making it such a half-assed origin sucks. Eh.

FLASH #218: Got more creepily convincing as it went on, but I think a more ambiguous ending would have left me with a bit more tension: is Heat Wave going to lose his shit, or not? Instead, the ending--"and then Heat Wave lost his shit. The End."--underlined how pat some of the psychology has to be to work this into a single issue. I'd still give it a Good, though.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #2: Well, that's two for two--great art, characters are nicely established, done in one with some threads for a future story in place. What the hell, let's go with Very Good.

LUBA #10: A nicely elliptical ending made me want to sit down and reread a whole batch of last issues at a go, although I still think what Beto is trying to pass off as his point--that these people are so utterly lost in their largely sexual obsessions and jealousies they are incapable of seeing any larger picture--is really more a problem of the author (Beto is so lost in his characters' largely sexual obsessions he's incapable of imparting any larger picture) than his characters. The ending gave me a certain amount of hope, though, and as always, the storytelling chops on display here are staggering. Very Good for this as well.

PLANETARY #22: I kinda admire Ellis' moxie in refusing to try and amp his story up to meet everyone's heightened expectations--if his outline says issue #22 is going to give us the secret origin of the Lone Ranger then, by Christ, that's what we're going to get. And as an incredibly dark twist on the Ranger, it was great. As part of the larger story: who can tell? Are we supposed to infer something about how Snow, like Leather, saw the true nature of the universe in a state of heightened consciousness, and yet still didn't refrain from being vengeful and vicious? Is there some secret to the secret of consciousness that makes people violent torturing bastards? Or is it just that's what Ellis finds cool, and that's what's on the outline for this issue? Incredibly well-done so at least a Good, but I'll be curious to see if this can wrap up at all satisfyingly.

RICHARD DRAGON #9: The plot hook--working as a bodyguard for a guy you're going to eventually wipe out--I liked. The actual execution, what with the mask, and the dopey superpowered stuff I no longer even remember--I didn't. Let's go with Eh and hope Dixon re-uses that hook for something a little more durable.

ROBIN #134: Pop quiz, part two: What's a more egregious sign of bad editing: (a) the post-"War Games" appearance of Batman despite the supposed point of "War Games" being that everyone has to stay away from Batman; or (b) "Wow, Batman wants to adapt me. That's so cool! I'm so happy I can barely remember my father being gunned down in cold blood?" Willingham is smart and clever, but he so obviously can't be arsed with this book I wonder why he's still around. Again, Bat-editors: stop emailing that brazilian waxing video to all your friends and get on the stick. Awful.

SLEEPER SEASON TWO #8: Miss Misery is, let's face it, an awesome character. And in this issue stuff--a whole lot of stuff, actually-happens, which is great. But it all seemed pretty pat--I figured out the last page by somewhere around the sixth page and nothing in there really threw me a curve. Maybe reading it all in a go will prove me wrong, but Season Two seems pretty damn lackluster making this Good issue seem far better than it actually was. (In short, I almost gave it a Very Good before I thought about it a little.)

SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #24: Ugh. Even worse than last issue, in part because Peter Parker comes off like a super-powered Archie Andrews. Awful.

SUPERPATRIOT WAR ON TERROR #2: Was there a reason we had to wait so long for that? Because unless someone on the creative team lost a limb and then waited for it to grow back, there was no reason a book that mediocre should take so long to put together. Eh.

TRUE STORY: SWEAR TO GOD #12: As always, a pleasure to read, but there was more narrative tension in Betty #144 than here. Either Tom's gotta tackle some of his topics more deeply, or he's gotta put a pretty bow on it and wrap it up. I'd hate to see it end, but I'd hate even more for it to become perfunctory. Eh.

WE3 #3: Saved the best for last as Morrison and Quitely jam on the gas and knock us all on our asses. Sure, it left me wanting to see more, but I think that was precisely the point--it's a fine little antidote to the fumes of all the decompressed leftovers the market's been running on. (And how did I miss that the Rabbit poops high-explosives out its butt? That one little detail makes this must-read of 4-H and FFA kids everywhere!) I could quibble (Christ help me, I can always quibble, it seems like) but I'd rather just call this Excellent and exhort everyone to pick it up. PICK OF THE WEEK, for sure.

And, finally, to mention some of the other stuff on the racks quickly:

If you wanted to read a goth Locas drawn by Frank Quitely and/or Homer Tanuka, you should check out Wet Moon, Vol. 1. It's wayyyy too slow and wayyyy too precious, but the art is exquisite and the eye for body language and telling details is top-rate.

Ibooks' republication of Introducing Kafka by David Zane Mariowitz and R. Crumb is good news for the direct market, as the matching of Crumb to Kafka results in a spot of terrific work from Crumb--I think his retelling of "The Judgment" is a perfect wedding of artist to writer--and Mariowitz's cutting between the biography and fiction is edifying and smart. The neither-fish-nor-fowl arrangement of text and alternating comix won't please everyone, though, and I gotta wonder why this wasn't just drop-dead fantastic, considering how similar Crumb and Kafka are (what with their similar domineering fathers and shlemiel as hostile outsider routine). But it's nice intro to Kafka and Crumb fans like me are grateful for any new work.

And finally, I haven't read Epileptic, but jesus, that's one sweet-looking hardcover, isn't it? I can't wait to dig into it...

Reviews for 1/19/05 Comics

My schizophrenic approach to reading comics (read the ones I don't buy while working Fridays, read the ones I do buy over the weekend) and my slapdash approach in ordering comics has left me looking at the new release list and going: "Hmmm, why didn't I read that? And why didn't I *buy* it?" So that particularly incisive review of Eric Red's Containment #1 is going to have to wait, dammit. But here's a quick take on some stuff I did read:

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #636: I'm still shocked that Rucka's work on this just isn't doing the trick for me. The story is so cautiously doled out, it feels frugal: once Superman called in Batman and Wonder Woman, it was hard for me to imagine why he wouldn't have done so immediately, whereas at least, say, Jeph Loeb would have thrown them into a full-page spread halfway through the second issue of the arc. I actually prefer the trainwreck of Action to this. How sad. Eh.

EXILES #58: Enjoying the economy of the plotting on this--I think most teams would have dragged out the Evil-God-Controlling-The-Team angle for at least a couple of issues, but nope, they wrapped it up right after it was introduced. I'm not sure about the insistently comical tone that keeps popping up in the book, but it may be because the execution isn't just living up to the potential. Definitely a high OK, but I think the creative team's got some kinks to work out before it'll get higher than that from me.

FREEDOM FORCE #1: I was really amped for this, not only because I enjoyed the game so much but because the people who worked on it seemed like such big Kirby fans. So this was a mighty disappointment: nothing more than a retelling of the events in the game and, apart from an occasional thick ink line and a dynamic close-up or two, having almsot none of the Jack Kirby dynamism I would have hoped for. Between this and the similarly unimaginative Metal Gear Solid comic, my cool-comics-about-cool-video-games dreams have been thoroughly crushed. Awful.

NIGHTCRAWLER #5: Aguirre-Sacasa, bless his heart, strikes me as someone who stopped reading comics around 1962 or so, or else is modelling a lot of his Marvel work on Scooby-Doo episodes. I mean: the nine scary ghosts of the subway? I was kinda surprised there was no scene of Kurt running with Logan, Ororo and Kurt's date stacked on top of his head. The art is lovely, but really: the nine scary ghosts of the subway? Eh.

PLASTIC MAN #14: I think it's great Kyle Baker is doing a comic that'll make his kids laugh, but I don't think I want to pay to read it, particularly. Eh.

SIMPSONS COMICS #102: Too in-jokey, or too much of a "tribute" issue, I guess, because I saw most of the jokes coming from a mile away. And there are a few shticks Boothby does (like the faux-dramatic splash page) he might want to consider retiring. Again, just an Eh.

TEEN TITANS #20: Worked for me as a very solid bit of characterization, and, weirdly, I'm always happy to see that ugly ol' Luthorsuit. Good.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #71: Think I'm done with this title-it's just seemed very sloppy since that bungled ending to the "Ultimate Carnage" storyline. Kind of a drag because I remember when this used to be the most consistent book on the stands.

WANTED #6: Probably the dumbest last page I've seen in quite some time. And Millar seems genuinely unaware how much his "nah, I'm fucking with ya" scene undercuts any emotional resonance in the climax (because, you know, emotional resonance is for pussies and shit)--or, more than likely, he doesn't care. I started this title wanting nothing more than a good story; I finished it wanting Eminem and Chuck Palahniuk to team up and beat Millar's lazy stealing ass. The art gives it an Eh it doesn't really deserve otherwise. Bleah.

WOLVERINE #24: Millar's take on Daredevil (basically, if Daredevil=Ben Affleck, then Daredevil=widely loathed himbo of the Marvel Universe) was sorta funny but annoyingly lazy. It seemed to serve no real point to the story other than to help fill up all those little colored caption boxes, and also made this one of those issues where I figured out the last page from about page four. It was still entertaining enough, although even the John Romita, Jr. art felt kinda phoned in this time around. OK.

WOLVERINE THE END #6: How long did this take? A year? A year plus? And to top it off, Wolverine doesn't even "end," which is a real testament to how impressively Jenkins flaked off on this project. Crap.

X-MEN #166: This was so awful I wondered if Peter Milligan licensed his name for Chuck Austen to use--and the art looked surprisingly rushed and inept to boot, making me wonder if the script on this was not only lousy but late. Playing "The Naked Time" card with the X-Men is not exactly rocket science, so you'd think this would have been no worse than mediocre, but it was, in fact, full-blown Awful.

Wow. A whole lot of cranky, huh? Let's hope Bri will appear and show me the error of my curmudgeonly ways...or at least point out some gems I might have missed.

Some reviews of 1/12 comics

Like el Jefe said, it was Tzipora's birthday this weekend, so I'm drowning for time -- gonna try to cover the items Jeff didn't.... HERO SQUARED XTRA SIZED SP #1: It's wordy, yes, and the middle sequence kinda dragged on, but, overall I thought this was a terrific start, and I hope they continue it. Parallel universes and slackers and comedy ahoy. GOOD.

WARREN ELLIS SIMON SPECTOR #1: And Ellis' "5th week event" (hahaha) comes to an end. Might have been nice if it all had shipped in the same week, though. Shouldn't these be returnable, really? I thought SIMON SPECTOR was probably the least of the 4 books, but that might be because "The Man" is the least compelling of the four concepts -- when heroes are perfect and unstoppable, there's not too much drama there, is there? Still, nothing worse than an OK from me.

WARREN ELLIS ANGEL STOMP FUTURE #1: Easially my favorite of the 4 "Apparat" titles, perhaps because it has the most cleanly "Ellisian" voice -- Warren does "Turn to the camera and think about technology out loud" bettrer than almost anyone. This "felt" like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and the earlier issues, at that. Ryp's artwork is bloody fucking lovely and insane, but suffers a bit, I think, from not being colored. On most pages there isn't much of an "anchor" for your eye to fix on TO check out the insane little details everywhere. When Ryp does, say, porno, it works fine because there's usually lots of naughty bits to center your eye on, but in a dense SF-driven world like this, there's a lot of blurring going on. However, one really wonders how he has gone all of these years without being snapped up by a more... respectable publisher -- he's got all of the density and sight-gaggery of Darrow, but, apparantly, he's twice as fast at LEAST. Either way, perfect art choice for the voice of the book, and I thought this was two great creators at the top of thier form. VERY GOOD, and, all things considered, my PICK OF THE WEEK.

NIGHTWING #101: Rather than "Nightwing: Year One" it's more like "Robin: Year last". Nice to look at, competently written, my only problem was I kinda felt I had read this issue like 99 times before. Yes, yes, Dick and Bruce fight, we KNOW that one already. So, let's go with a very very high OK.

ULTIMATES 2 #2: A very solid issue, and I like the way it confounded my expectations by NOT having the fight scene where it might otherwise, and seeming to be serious about executing the Hulk. I really think they should, too. An easy VERY GOOD.

MAJESTIC #1: Well, I don't see the point of the book, or really the audience either ("modernly told silver age superman stories without superman" I guess.. and that's, what, 79 people in America?), and I really can't see it lasting more than 12 issues, but, having said THAT, it was pretty solid, with very nice art, and well-written "big ideas". I'm even going to give it a low GOOD. But it probably won't have a #13.

X 23 #1: Well, so she's not Wolverine's clone, but his "genetic duplicate", and, the script really really seemed to think this was some kind of big difference, and it just felt, dunno, kinda defensive or something. But, god, why? Why do we need a She-verine any way? With a belly ring? Jeff deeply disturbed me on Friday by saying something like "They were probably thinking, 'A character as cool as Wolvie, except we can fuck her! Woo!'" which immediately made me want to get very very drunk and curse humanity forever. I don't think this character adds anything, and it seems... oh, I dunno, cynical? or calculated, maybe. I also really felt I'd pretty much read THIS before, too -- "scientists create unstoppable killing machine then are surprised when said machine, y'know, is unstoppable and kills everyone" Really, as an individual comic, it was probably OK, but the underlying concept and lack of imagination on display here drops me way down to an AWFUL.

In terms of the PICK OF THE WEAK, I'll go with something Jeff handled: CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON #11. It hurt my little head trying to follow all of the permutations of characters and I think Priest should stop trying to be SO clever, darn it.

Only place I really disagreed with Jeff's assessments was on MARVEL TEAM-UP #4. I thought it was a god damn good DC comic. I can't even defend that statement really, but that's how it felt to me. GOOD.

For the BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK, I'll go with Andi Watson's LOVE FIGHTS VOL 2 TP it's charming stuff.

OK, now back to sorting through BookScan numbers for NEXT month's TILTING...

-B

A Quick Look at 01/12/05 Comics

So, you may notice Hibbs never showed last week. Not surprising, I guess, since he was working on a Tilting at Windmills that just got published over at Newsarama (and I should really remind him to pop in here and post links to this stuff like I just did--what's the point of a blog, after all, if you don't remember to contintually self-promote?), but, still, he might want to show up for his blog at least once in a while. Of course, yesterday at the store, he swore he was going to be on top of reviewing books this week and then added, "Although it's Tzipora's birthday on Saturday so we'll see. It depends on what she wants to do." Now, Tzipora is an incredibly great wife but I can't see her saying, "Well, Brian, for my birthday, what I'd really like to do is read your review of New Thunderbolts #4." Just. Can't. See it.

So, just in case:

100 BULLETS #57: I thought the two conversations jumping back and forth in time read surprisingly well--gave Azzarello more to do with his predilection for wordplay than just craft puns--but I've hopped off the 100 Bullets train, I've realized. I stopped caring I don't know how long ago, and so couldn't tell you if the emotional resolutions here were properly set up and paid off from previous issues: I haven't bothered to remember what happened in any previous issue enough to know. Seeing Eduardo Risso's art every month for only $2.50 is a thrill, but I'm either waiting for the trade from here on out or dropping out entirely. Maybe better than OK but I just couldn't tell ya.

ACTION COMICS #823: Imagine if Jerry Bruckheimer got Neil LaBute to write the next Superman movie and then got Michael Bay to direct it. That was this issue of Action, kinda--lots and lots of splodey with a few quick scenes centered specifically around sexual jealousy. Sadly, that sounds more interesting than it reads (cuz it reads, frankly, pretty damn crappy) but I wish Austen had the time or talent to flesh out his ideas: all we've got here currently is a pretty looking train wreck. Even though this is awful, I admit I eagerly pick up each issue of Action to see how awful it's gonna be and that counts for something.

AQUAMAN #26: A lifetime of evil twin stories leads me to believe this is the "Mirror, Mirror" of the current Aquaman setting but, interestingly, there's no particularly clear indicators this is so. It'd be great if someone picked this issue up cold and thought the first twenty-five issues had been about this bastard Aquaman sinking a city and subjugating humanity, wouldn't it? Eh.

BLOODHOUND #7: It's not that anything here is particularly original (I groaned aloud at the impending "child traumatized by death of pet" scene), it's just that Jolley and Kirk really do it well: all the blood flying on the last page was shocking, but it's the close up of Clevenger's upset face that sells it. Bloodhound's officially a dead man walking and I can't say I'm surprised, but I'm frustrated nonetheless. Good.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #11: A very pretty looking issue, but I think they screwed things up by only having two Captain Americas and two MODOKs in this storyline--as it was, I could almost maybe understand it. If Priest had worked just a little bit harder, he could have put in two Falcons, two Nick Furys, and maybe a set of six or seven Sharon Carters...kind of a shame when a writer slacks and lets his story approach coherence, isn't it? Eh.

DEADSHOT #2: Not sure I liked the last page (although, really, where else could it go?) but I really enjoyed the rest of this--for us urban types, the idea of one unstoppable bad-ass with no scruples cleaning up a neighborhood is an attractive one. I doubt the last two issues are going to meaningfully examine the dangers and fallacies in that kind of thinking, but as a little slice of nasty darkly comic noir, I'll bump this up to Very Good in its own right.

HARD TIME #12: Some sort of lesson in supercompression here as Gerber jams almost all his plotlines into one speedy wrap-up. It's not as satisfying as things resolving at the established pace, but still a Good read. Again, another book I'll miss. And yet, when I read a blurb on the back page promising a "Season Two," I weirdly found myself almost hoping it won't come back. Sometimes it's just better for a book to end (particularly when you get as poignant a final page as here) and let the creators get a chance to try something different.

JLA #110: There's always a good scene or two in each of these issues but, uh, why hasn't anything happened yet? And by anything, I mean, you know, socking and punching and giant green power ring head noogies and stuff. I may come off like a philistine here, but one would think the appeal of having the JLA fight a team of evil counterparts is obvious: you don't need five issues to set it up. May read great in a trade but on its own very much an Eh.

JSA #69: It's kinda interesting that Geoff Johns just finished a Teen Titans story where the Titans meet their future selves (or counterparts) and here he's just starting a JSA where the Society meet their past selves (or counterparts). These types of stories used to be a staple of DC Comics and, as always, Johns seems very aware of that. Unfortunately for me, unless someone ends up as their own grandfather I get kinda bored. Clearly Good, but I guess my biases currently leave me blase about the whole thing.

MARVEL TEAM-UP #4: Donnie may hate Scott Kolins' work but I'm actually enjoying it more and more all the time (and I think the colorist does a great job keeping all that thin line work from flattening out on the page). So I like this just as nice art at a nice price and will leave the whole Iron Doom/Golden Child storyline to more discerning critics. From here, it doesn't seem particularly interesting but I'll watch Kolins draw Iron Man any day. OK.

THE PUNISHER #16: The Punisher getting his ass kicked by a combat-trained short person hidden in a corpse's backpack? Hell, yes! But everything else remained remarkably dull apart from that. Eh.

Finally, gotta mention TOYFARE #91: after several very lame and flat Twisted Toyfare Theaters, they bust out one of the funniest things I've read in months as Daredevil decides to sue Ben Affleck for the lousy Daredevil movie. Absolutely hilarious dumb fanboy humor and the closest a $4.99 price tage may ever come to being justified by a mere eight pages. Really great.

Comics of 01/05/05

Ah, the joys of comics: it wasn't exactly an inspiring week of new comics, I thought, but there was plenty of good stuff I had missed through a combination of the holidays, poor fiscal planning, general dumb-assedness, etc. So before getting to any current savaging, allow me to express much favor and enthusiasm for such not-new items as the latest issue of Ariel Schrag's Likewise, the Brubaker cover issue of The Comics Journal, and particularly Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, which someone recommended to Hibbs. O'Malley's book is such a warm and witty mash-up of autobio comix, manga, videogame conventions and "rawk" (as Kolchaka would put it), it's a big-time charmer. My PICK OF THE WEEK, though it didn't come out this week. Bug your store or Oni Press directly for a copy. As for this week's stuff:

CAPTAIN AMERICA #2: The art on this was very, very strong, although the Lark flashbacks felt a little more tacked on here than they did last issue. Epting's action scene was impressive, all the more so since it's basically Cap 101, and I liked Cap's suspicion about the Skull being dead. I've got some reservation somewhere about the whole thing I can't quite place, but it's still Good work.

DETECTIVE COMICS #802: David Lapham is still working his butt off on this story: it's big, jammed with characters, and looks like it might be trying to be a Bat-noir version of a Tom Wolfe novel, where all the strata of society are shown colliding and colluding to produce a crooked town (pretty much the Batman story I've always wanted to read). But it's gummed up by a few items, not the least of which is the appearance of Mr. Freeze at the end--pretty much more or less the end of last week's Batman, giving this an utterly unnecessary feeling of warmed-up leftovers. I'm sure managing the Bat-titles is an utter nightmare, but the editors really have got to pay more attention to the storyline management--the books keep tripping each other up. Should be better than OK, but still not.

FANTASTIC FOUR: FOES #1 (OF 6): Did not like this at all: if there's one thing we never ever need to see again in a FF book, it's the "Reed, stop working and spend time with your son" scene, but I wasn't particularly crazy about the non-autopilot scenes either (Sue's not shoving people aside because of the alarm, it's because there's a sale on! See, it's funny because she's rude and clothing obsessed! You know, like all women! Wa-ha-ha!) Throw in some lackluster art, an existence predicated only on having a trade out for the movie, and you've got an Awful book.

FIRESTORM #9: Coming in late on this since I haven't bothered with the book in three or four issues. Interestingly, Killer Frost was so one-dimensional compared to the level of characterization I'm used to from this book, I found it distracting and annoying. (That's not a left-handed compliment, so I guess it's a right-handed complaint?) Not really a Firestorm fan old or new, so this book really can't seem to get more than an Eh from me either way. Which I guess is why I usually don't bother...

FLAMING CARROT #1: Says something about this week of comics that this felt kinda stale and sketchy and still seemed more vital than most of the other books out this week: is there anyone who still gripes about having to be politically correct other than lonely old guys who listen to too much talk radio? I still enjoy the loping storytelling of Burden's stories, though, so more of a high OK than a low one.

THE GIFT #9: I found the art on this appallingly bad--at almost every point in the story, the artist's choices (usually for a sketchy panel lacking detail) screwed up a later storytelling point. The writer isn't exactly innocent either, mind you, but there seemed to be a certain effort made to give each character type a distinct voice that showed some potential--or at least more effort--than what I saw from the art. Still, pretty damned Awful.

INCREDIBLE HULK #77: Liked that Lee Weeks art, but the story felt like Peter David aping Bruce Jones. In fact, a lot of the elements (random opening, weird flashbacks, strange island, monsters) seemed straight out of Wolverine: Xisle. Done a million times more competently, but still very much a low Eh at best. Prognosis not good.

NEW AVENGERS #2: Finally, after five or so straight issues of big team fights, Bendis and Finch seem to have developed some sort of competency with the conventions of it, although it's now become the superhero equivalent of bad disco music: all highs, no lows, and instilling an annoyed mindlessness in the audience. (Who would have thought Spider-Man being unmasked and having his arm broken would seem so perfunctory?) Oddly, it made me think of what Loeb and Sale--the equivalent of good disco music, I guess--could have done with it: dramatic moments that would have held a moment of resonance, big bright splashes highlighting the seemingly endless army of villains, and even tiny bits of characterization. Sure, it would have still been stupid (might have seemed even more stupid, in fact), but it might have actually been enjoyable. Eh.

SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #23: I think they changed the cover for this, but I guess they couldn't do the same with the insides. Even if I had really somehow loved JMS's "Sins Past" storyline, I think I would have disliked this: it reads like really bad soap opera crossed with somebody's attempt to get their trip to Paris written off on their taxes. Could get better but I doubt it. Awful.

SUPERMAN: STRENGTH #1 (OF 3): Hmmm, the art was very Keiron Dwyerish, which didn't strike me as particularly right for a Superman story (particularly following an Alex Ross cover) but I liked a lot of Scott McCloud's story even if I wasn't as enamored of the whacky twist at the end as Hibbs was. But I couldn't help but wonder: why this price point? It's a good story, sure, but $5.95 good? Not with that art, I'm afraid. What would have been a high Good at $2.50 or $2.95 (I enjoyed it more than any of the regular Super-titles) becomes an Eh at $5.95.

SWAMP THING #11: Probably someone is appreciating the Cliver Barkerish ultra-gore approach to this title, but that's not me. In fact, seeing an animated corpse that talks from a barely-connected dangling head somehow breaks any suspension of disbelief: how can it talk through the dangling head if there's no air to push past the vocal chords? The more explicit the gore, the more those sorts of questions get pushed to the fore, I think. I liked the page where Arcane addresses Abby about his previously failed redemption (addressing some prior continuity I don't know about, I imagine) but other than that, really found it Awful.

TOE TAGS FEATURING GEORGE ROMERO #4: What's kind of a shame about this book is Romero finally has the space to develop some of his ideas as actual ideas (the nature of good and evil, a pessimistic belief in the power of the individual in modern culture, catastrophic change as being more than just a catalyst for horror) but he can't seem to do more than bring them up before cutting to scenes of head shots and zombie-stomping elephants. I guess it's a old dog/new tricks thing, but it's still kinda frustrating: this could have been better than just an Eh.

WILD GIRL #3 (OF 6): Liked this issue the best of all of them, although part of that is just some seriously ass-kicking art: the story is still too circumspect for my liking, as if the author expects us to connect all the dots because we've read lots of Alan Moore--which may not be an incorrect assumption, admittedly, but still keeps the story feeling stilted. OK.

So to sum up: Scott Pilgrim and Likewise? Yes. Loeb & Sale? Good disco music. Most of this week's comics? Not too inspiring. Hopefully, Hibbs will chime in with his .02 soon.

Some comics from 12/28/04

OK, sub setup is done, and Ben and Tzipi are sleeping, so let's see what, if anything, I can address before I need to go off and do family stuff.... CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #1: I'm a long-time Concrete fan, and I usually really like it's usual brew of heady politics and realistic environmentalism. However, this one kinda thudded for me -- stories need conflict and there's really none here except internal monologue. Further, it wasn't so much a moral or ideological choice as much of a practical one, dampening much of the drama. Given Chadwick's track record, there's no way I won't give him the benefit of the doubt for the long haul, but as a single issue entertainment experience... this was merely OK.

DESPERADOES BANNERS OF GOLD #1: Very solid return to this Horror/Western hybrid, though that $4 cover price is hard to swallow. It's one thing on a licensed title, where they have to pay a rights holder over and above creation costs, or on an artsy experimental book like almost anything Ashley Wood or Ben Templesmith do, but it feels way too expensive on something like this which is so... well, I don't mean this prejoratively, but "middle of the road". The script was good fun, the plot moving, the art solid... basically everything I want in a comic book, but, be that as it may, it "feels" too expensive. That knocks a grade offa it, bringing us, sadly, down to OK.

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #1: Yes, that worked. It felt new, but nicely retro too. This may be a LSH reboot that "works" -- maybe the "DCU book for people who don't like DCU books". VERY GOOD.

STRANGE #3: Dude, I already saw THE MATRIX! What the fuck? As Lester mentioned in the store on Friday, this totally undercuts Strange's origin, which was originally a tale of redemption. But if they just outright tell him, "You are The One, Neo", then where is the redemption there? Foo! You can't look at this, or AMAZING SPIDEY and tell me the man doesn't need an editor for the shared universe toys. AWFUL.

SUPREME POWER #14: Meanwhile, he doesn't seem to need an editor at all here -- this is firing on all points, almost certainly because it doesn't MATTER if he changes something totally -- in fact, that probably makes it better. VERY GOOD.

WARLOCK #4: What Jeff said, but let me amplify it, and say that the twist made me go "whoa, that's fucking clever!" out loud and everything. I really do wonder if this was meant to go on from here, or if this ending was planned for later, or just what the "path not taken" was, but I thought this was VERY GOOD, and while I didn't like it the BEST this week, I was caught by surprise enough to give this one the PICK OF THE WEEK.

WHAT IF...? 5th week event: From the interviews, at least, one might think that Bendis was a big fan of WHAT IF...?, which shocks the fuck out of me considering how badly he got every little thing about the execution wrong. I mean, first off, you can't consume nearly half of your page count doing the recap! Then it was all Tell-Tell-Tell and some more Tell. Barely a page of "show" in either issue. Either ...KAREN PAGE HADN'T DIED or ...JESSICA JONES JOINED THE AVENGERS were the PICK OF THE WEAK, so let's jointly bestow that honor, shall we? Both were CRAP.

PAD's ...GENERAL ROSS BECAME THE HULK worked as a proper WHAT IF...? story, but it and the Kesel/Smith ...DOCTOR DOOM WAS THE THING suffered a lot from not having any space to breath. It's easy to forget that series 1 of WHAT IF...? were 48 pagers. The Paul Smith art on the latter was really really something to behold. OK for the former, VERY GOOD for the latter on the strength of the art.

Brube's ...AUNT MAY HAD DIED was OK (I thought the conciet of it being a comic book store conversation was pretty funny), but it depended more on WHAT IF PETER PARKER WAS A NORMAL TEENAGER? than the bounds of the concept.

The whole event gets an AWFUL, sorry.

For the BOOK/GN OF THE WEEK we don't have a ton of choices, it is either BLOOD A TALE NEW PTG, finally back in print,or FANTASTIC FOUR VISIONARIES JOHN BYRNE VOL 3 TP, showing us that, yes, once Byrne was a major talent, and a follower of the grand traditions of the Marvel Universe. I'm feeling nostalgic this second, so the award goes to BYRNE'S FF.

I had more to say (like about QUIT CITY's aviator comic without airplanes?!?!), but they woke up 20 minutes ago, and I must jet...

What did you think?

-B

Last Year's Comics!

Actually, some of the comics from last week...which was last year, right? When I left the store on Friday, Hibbs kept saying, "So, write a few reviews okay? Just one or two? And then I'll riff off 'em!" I, of course, promised I would, then became too damn entranced with setting up my new computer to review anything. But I do feel a little guilty, so let's see what I remember about: ADAM STRANGE #4 (of 8): I initially felt a bit gypped by the opening escape by Adam, but realized the whole guy-rescued-from-certain-death-by-hot-chick trope is what powers most of the original Flash Gordon, and so is considered fair game in a book like this. I'm not thrilled about it, mind you, but I can accept it. Overall, a Good read although, man, The Omega Men still suck, don't they?

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #515: Another JMS continuity implant and while less alarming than "Gwen Did The Goblin," a potentially bad sign of things to come: goober scientist guy could've been a distant friend of Pete's, some kid who he bonded with at a science fair, rather than going to the same school at the same time. Again, this seems done to maximize the drama of the storyline but violently undercuts the believability of the mythos. ("Oh, hey, it's that kid I went to school with! Boy, I felt so guilty about him I never thought about him even once in the last _________ years!") Plus, all that continuity retconning, and the story spins first on Tony and Peter being teammates in Avengers and then on them never discussing the seed money Tony goes on to give? Very, very sloppy and pretty close to Awful.

AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES #4 (of 8): Apart from the very unexplained panels of Rick Jones apparently locking himself in the Avengers' Cosmic Clothes Dryer, I liked this. The Cap storyline and the Avengers security storyline synched up and progressed nicely. Not a big fan of that last page (if there's one plot thread that should be retired for a few years, it's the "will the hero kill?" which has been done, pardon the pun, to death...) but still, a qualified Good.

BATMAN #635: Me likes the Mahnke--that opening fight scene just seemed kick-ass even as it got more and more absurd (guy sticking a knife in a building to slow his fall? Not in a Batman book, I think...). But every arc on this title keeps swinging for the fences and feeling more and more overplayed each time: the first half tried to out-hush "Hush" and the second tried to out-game "War Games," which, considering those are very, very recent Batman arcs, leaves me uninspired to run out and get next issue. Purty, though. OK.

EXILES #57: Pretty nonplussed by the conclusion to this, and I wasn't even expecting that much from the arc. It's kinda like the creative team went, "Oh, wait! The Kulan Garath setting sucks! Let's move on to something else, quick!" Eh.

IRON MAN #2: Interestingly, I don't think Warren Ellis understands decompression. He just doesn't have the patience or something. So when he writes a decompressed storyline, he just writes the same issue twice. I would've really liked this...if I hadn't read it just last month. Eh.

LEGION OF SUPERHEROES #1: I hope Hibbs will get off the stick and write about this, since he's the DC guy. Me, I liked it--a lot. It seems to have everything one would want in a Legion title, plus it's easy to follow. If the team stays this inspired, I'll have a new book joining my list of favorites in pretty short order. Very Good.

SUPERMAN #212: Too bad we don't have "Huh?" as a rating because that would be my rating for this issue. Oh, what the hell: Huh?

SUPERMAN BATMAN #16: Loeb knows how to make a Kirby fanboy like me cry with joy: not just a Kamandi cameo, but a Kamandi cameo that properly references that bizarre Superman tie-in story in Kamandi? Not just Darkseid and Metreon, but Darkseid keeping Etrigan on a leash like a pet? Batman punching it out with Jonah Hex? Kryptonite buckshot? It's a big goddamn beautiful mess and I'm enjoying it tremendously. Very Good.

TEEN TITANS #19: Felt a little rushed, particularly if you've read Alan Moore's Twilight proposal which Johns pillages for this arc (I can't really fault him for that, since it seems nearly everyone, Alan Moore included, has ripped ideas from that proposal--it's the damn Gnostic text of mainstream comics). I don't know if I would have gone for a full six issues on this, but maybe four or five? I dunno. OK.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #14: I thought about retyping my exact comments from Iron Man here as a metatextual joke but you deserve better. On the one hand, there's no reason why the end of this couldn't have been the end of issue #13. On the other hand, Ellis, like Bendis, writes very funny dialogue when he's got the room and I'm used to leisurely storytelling in the Ultimate 'verse. Still, it could be much better than just a grudging OK, I think.

ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE #4 (of 5): I liked Ultimate Unicorn from issue #3, by the way, but Ultimate Red Guardian, not so much. Also, because audiences tend to root for the underdog, I think the Lethal Weapon gambit almost never works. Remember the end of Lethal Weapon where Mel Gibson and Gary Busey are kick-boxing each other to death on a lawn with 37,000 police officers surrounding them? It's not dramatic because Busey is going to go down either way. Similarly, the Captain America/Guardian throw-down with three other Ultimates standing around with machine guns really doesn't get me too excited. Unless Ellis miraculously grabs the Ultimate Brass Ring next ish, I think this is gonna be a sludgy failure. Eh.

WALKING DEAD #14: Someone else, maybe Evan Dorkin, pointed out how bad the visual-verbal blend on this book has gotten--there's just balloon after balloon after ballon of explaining. Wayyy tooo much text. And yet, as a card-carrying member of the Post-Apocalypse Fan Club (I think everyone who grew up in the late '70s, early '80s is a member) and a guy who's read King's The Stand at least four times, I still like this quite a bit. Just start trimming that text a bit, Kirkman! Good.

WARLOCK #4: An amazingly nice wrap-up. I'd been enjoying the series despite some serious reservations, and I really, really like how this turned out. My guess is Pak had his last issue written in his head, figuring he'd break it out in another year or so, but man it worked like a charm. Sorry to see this book go, and worth hunting up in bargain bins and back issues if you didn't read this. Good.

WHAT IF DR. DOOM HAD BECOME THE THING?: Pretty dumb, but like the Hulk's What If?, gets right to the meat of the matter. And the Paul Smith art, particularly in that Thing/Hulk punch-up was so dreamy, I had to give this at least a high OK.

WHAT IF GENERAL ROSS HAD BECOME THE HULK?: A bigger misfire, just because there's nowhere, really, for it to go and the art was pretty uninspired. This made me realize those old What If's were double-sized because they needed to be: without the extra pagecount, the story has no space once everything's in place. So, really, there's just no way any of these could have worked, I think. Eh.

WHAT IF KAREN PAGE HAD LIVED?: Out of alpha order because it was the first Bendis title I read and the biggest failure. Sure, sure, he took over for Kevin Smith when Smith bowed out or something, but still: ten pages to recap the storyline? Ten pages before you even get to the "What If?" There was no space for anything but tell, tell, tell, tell, making it all incredibly dull, dull, dull. An honest to God postcard ("Dear Jeff: Karen Page lived, so I killed the Kingpin. Visiting hours are ten to five on Saturday. Love, Matt Murdock") would held more drama. Flat-out Crap.

WHAT IF JESSICA JONES HAD JOINED THE AVENGERS?: May be the biggest piece of professionally produced fanfic I've ever read, with Jessica finally revealing herself as Brian Bendis' Mary Sue par excellence. Because even though Jessica Jones is a fucked-up mess, she marries Captain America and they have millions of beautiful babies! Again, so long spent bringing the reader to the "What If?" point, there was no space for any drama to develop. Also Crap.

So, that's what I got. Now, let's see if Hibbs will chime in.

My Identity Crisis Follow-Up

I think there's a lot more interesting stuff said by Hibbs and in our comments (I thought Donnie's comment about Jean hatching some utterly insane plan rather than just saying she wanted Ray back was hilariously dead-on. ("Meltzer's way seems so...Minnesotan.")) but I'll sort of tack on my two cents by way of responding to Hibbs and some of the comments developing in his entry. IDENTITY CRISIS #7: Unlike ADD, I bought the first issue of IC and thought it was decently written, which is really why I had hopes for this mini. It wasn't unearned hope or me buying into the hype--that first issue was well-written enough that I cared about Ralph & Sue, and Sue's murder carried a lot more weight than if it had just been exploitational junk. Even when it veered into over-the-top melodrama (that damn pregnancy test!), it was done with with an eye toward maximum emotional punch. This wasn't Armageddon 2001 or Knightfall or The Death of Superman: this seemed like the work of a small tightly focused team that was both very talented and very focused on the craft.

And, I dunno, perhaps that was the problem with Identity Crisis right there: if that first issue had been more inept, or seemed a little more hackish, maybe I wouldn't have had my hopes set so high for the story. I mean, honestly, Crisis on Infinite Earths is, I think, a very lovely-looking pile of inept junk. Even when I first read it as a kid, I thought it was flimsy as a story. But I don't know if Crisis ever promised to be more than a spectacle, an event that would change the DC Universe, promises which it delivered on very well. Looking at all the stuff jammed into Identity Crisis, from the re-invention of the Calculator to the Justice League mindwipe thing to, uh, wasn't there some guy who could run really, really fast and that wasn't particularly explained?--all of it reads like a typical DC event: a bunch of twists on the DC Mythos, some new stuff thrown into the mix for creators to play with, and a certain amount of sensationalism to sell some comic books.

For me, a lot of the problem is that this book started high and got a little bit crappier issue by issue until, by issue #7, we had some really junky, poorly done scenes (that whole ending with Ralph talking to Sue is supposed to be heartwarming, I know, but frankly the guy came off like a nutjob. When Ollie told him to talk to Sue, I don't think Ollie meant to pretend Sue was still responding--and that's just one of a dozen examples). And I certainly didn't expect such a big ol' cheating pile of nonsense as Hibbs points out in his review. I'd like to think a good editor would have been able to point out all the stuff that didn't work...and even take the time to hold the last issue if rewrites were necessary. One good scene in issue #5 or #6 between Ray and Jean, crafted with the same care as those opening scenes with Ralph and Sue, for example, would have gone a long way to making the mystery side of the finale more palatable for me.

Finally, it seems to me the title of the series, Identity Crisis, works on several levels with the story--obviously, since it's about the problems of being a superhero with a public identity, and the JLA mindwipe angle is a different type of Identity Crisis--but maybe more importantly on the meta-level: what does DC want the DCU to be? High-profile, quality comics? Grim and gritty realistic books? Uplifting tales of heroes and icons? The fast buck? By trying to be all of these things at once, an event book like Identity Crisis points to an identity crisis at work at DC itself--one that it would do well to resolve before it alienates everyone by promising everything and satisfactorily delivering nothing.