Hibbs on 10/4 releases

Well, the original plan was that yesterday, Thursday, I was going to belatedly take care of last week's reviews. Not only was Sue on vacation, so I had an extra 3 hours of riding the register, but it was the first rainy day in SF all year -- first rainy days historically totally killing business as people adjust to the new weather (it did, we were off by 1/3), as who wants to buy paper when water is coming from the sky? There's no way I wasn't going to have MORE than enough time to get caught up on both reading and reviewing. And then Michael Lieberman walked in the door. For long-time CE customers, you'll remember Michael as "Little Mike", the store's original "Munchkin" -- a young kid who gets you lunch, does some scut work, etc. Michael is Munchkin no more, having been now to law school, just come back from a summer internship (I think) at the Hague (!), and about to start a new job in Washington DC at a law firm where, in his first year, will be making a greater salary than either my Mom (president of marketing), or my Stepmom (runs a 10 acre complex for the elderly) are after being high in their fields for 20 years.

Frickin' lawyers!

Michael is also Ben's Godfather, because I'm not an idiot, and I wanted to be sure that if Tzipora and I died in a fiery cash accident or something, that Ben would have someone both young AND capable of taking care of him.

Michael showed up around 1:30, and before I realized it, it was suddenly quarter-to-six and we had jawed the whole afternoon away, talking about supply-side economics, political ethics, morality & money, and a dozen other light subjects. Chris Carter (no, the other one) also hung out for like an hour and gave us some interesting primers on how globalization is affecting animation.

So, no, I didn't write any reviews yesterday.

Wednesday was Ben's 3rd birthday, and a wonderful time was had by all -- a small party at his preschool, dinner with the 3 American grandparents (mm, Pauline's Pizza!), and the beginning of the presents. Tzipora got him a super-realistic 1/6 scale garbage truck (Ben has the odd fixation with garbage men and their trucks), which, for like the first time ever got Ben to play 100% all by himself for like 90 minutes at a time. Usually, he's too interested in his parents to play alone -- he wants us to do all the playing with him -- but finally, FINALLY he's got a toy which utterly absorbs him.

Me, I started the decade-long project of doling out *my* action figures to the boy -- gave him my "Super Powers" Superman, Batman and Robin figures, with the cloth capes and all.

He liked the garbage truck better, at least on day one!

Sunday, we have his birthday party with all of his friends. We've got a jump house, and there's a hot tub at my parents house. And tons of screaming little children. Should be awesome.

Finally, I'll be eating that bug for ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #100 today (I think). I've decided on crickets, since the pet store carries those, and I was wowed by the packaging (?!?) of live crickets. They're in a box in which they'll live "a week or two", that has marketing copy like "The classic cricket experience -- crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside!" Um, wow. I was just expecting a clear plastic bag, really.

(I was also offered mealworms to buy, but they don't look enough like a "bug" to me, although the clerk assured me they were reasonably tasty) (?!?!?!)

I just lost too much time last week to do the bug eating, but it should be today, as long as I remember to bring the camera to work this afternoon. Hopefully sometime middle of next week for pix, depending on Jeff's schedule to resize and post them.

Like a said above, I was originally going to do last week's books yesterday (then this week's books early next week), but since I missed that window, I'm just going to skip ahead and handle THIS week's books, much earlier in the cycle than you are used to.

However, here's a quick run at last week's comics: my PICK OF THE WEEK was STAN LEE MEETS SPIDER-MAN. Not because it was any good, but because it was the strangest god-damn thing I've ever read in my life. Not only do you have Stan psycho-analyzing Spidey, and giving him... dodgy advice ("You've got to keep doing it, son – think of all the people depending on you with toys and movies and underoos!"), but then it had a Joss Whedon story that ends up with, and I swear I am not making this up, Stan going off to PornWorld. Ah, Marvel comics! We're not just for kids any more! Oddly, STAN LEE MEETS SPIDER-MAN was also my PICK OF THE WEAK, since, wholly fuck, can you BELIEVE that content?!?!?! My BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK: SHENZHEN A TRAVELOGUE FROM CHINA HC. I thought last year's PYONGYANG was one of the best books of 2005, and I was really looking forward to this. It isn't at all the same as PYONGYANG, which really gave me "deep" insight into a culture I'll likely never experience on my own -- instead SHENZEN (and this has to be an earlier work, no?) is much more about how Desisle personally feels while traveling in China, with all of the boredom and banality that being a stranger in a strange culture can bring. But, I didn't feel like I learned anything much about China or Shenzhen itself, that I didn't already know. Despite that, this was still, easily, my pick of last week's stuff.

As far as THIS week goes....

52 WEEK #22: We're rapidly reaching the halfway point (4 to go), though it doesn't at all feel to me like we're halfway into the plots. The back half is going to need to be pretty dense, I think, to handle all of the threads they've opened up (like, gosh, hasn't it been forever since we've seen Vic and Renee?). Still and all, I'm pretty much enjoying the run. My only real problem this week : "Going Themyscira" doesn't real sound that likely to me as a (what would you call it?) catchphrase -- there's 4 syllables in that second word! "Doin' a Diana" or "Going Wondy" would both parse better, I think (though the former probably wouldn't translate that well without a footnote, as I tend to think the average reader would probably first flash to the real English one). This is spectacularly OK work, all around, which for a weekly comic is like the gold standard.

ALL NEW ATOM #4: Byrne's gone, and the book suffers from it a bit. I thought #3 was one of the best things Simone had ever written, but that spark doesn't follow through for this reader into #4. Probably because of Mr. Info Dump guy that lays out the Ivy Town weirdness in a very tell-not-show way. I'm also already getting pretty sick of the funny-talking aliens. The art is fine -- just a little too, oh, "DC House Style" for me, I guess. You can say a lot about Byrne, but at least there was always dynamism in his art, even (especially?) in scenes where its just people standing around talking. Merely OK.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR #2: This is much more what I was expecting from a Vertigo AmSplen -- Richard Corben AND Eddie Campbell? Cool! AmSplen's historical problem has always been the art -- I LIKE Gary Dumm's art just fine, but it makes Pekar's mundane tales that much more mundane, and having a Campbell or a Corben makes the mundane seem much more dynamic. Comics NEED dynamism, I believe. On the other hand, I kept expecting an ax murderer or something to show up in the Corben piece because, y'know, Corben. Still, I'll go with GOOD.

BOYS #3: Momentum builds here. Each issue has been better than the one before, which is great because I thought #1 was pretty darn weak. Here, finally, I'm getting a handle on the characters and their world. I'll go with a solid, if unspectacular GOOD.

CRIMINAL #1: Very dense, very strong, very pretty. Top notch stuff from two guys who have really strongly found their legs, and, clearly, work well together. I was going to go with an "Excellent", but I think I'm going to be a petty bitch and knock it down to a VERY GOOD because of the thin cover and the lack of "Good hand" when you pick the comic up. (But, it is actually really Excellent)

CROSS BRONX #2: There was that one SPECTACULAR page in issue #1 where the ghost lady rises up and causes the car crash, and there's nothing here that matches that astounding visual. But it is still GOOD.

DETECTIVE COMICS #824: There's something just a little tiny bit off here, and I'm not sure what it is -- maybe that there aren't any villains on display, or not any real detectiving going on, or maybe it's just the stupid Paris Hilton stand-in (which seems out of place even for foppish Bruce Wayne). Its certainly not bad, but it was pretty much just OK.

DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #1: Oooh, pretty. Plus it had some great bits of business (that Iron Fist opening), and some adept craft (excellent job fitting the origin into the issue without seeming forced -- that kind of natural info dumping is a hard trick to pull off, really), and, so, hard to not call it VERY GOOD from me.

FANTASTIC FOUR #540 CW: What I would have said, had I reviewed last weeks comics, is that, regardless of what you think of CIVIL WAR itself, they're doing some fairly amazing tie-in tricks; for the most part, every tie-in comic has seemed to be relevant and expansive, and you can see why they HAD to hold the crossovers for the main book, because core plot points are involved. That's REALLY rare in line-wide crossovers, especially doing them so well integrated. Which makes this FF even that much odder -- the only thing it seems integrated TO is last weeks AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, not CIVIL WAR itself. I mean, that's NOT how Sue left, is it? Now, I like this version better (Just like I liked FRONTLINE's Death of Giant Man better than the "real" one), but it is a real false note here. I also am really looking for a legitimate justification of Reed's actions, and I'm just not getting it at all. A big EH from me.

GIANT SIZE WOLVERINE #1: The front story was alright (if a bit MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS), but WTF is up with the reprint story as the back up? That kind of incoherent, ugly nonsense is exactly the kind of story that Marvel should be trying to forget, not mis-match pairing with a more "arty" Wolvie story. Brings the whole package down to an AWFUL.

IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #1: Decent and dense read, but it doesn't really hold up. SHIELD is comprised of these kinds of agents? So, then, like the only reason Hydra hasn't taken over, is because they have bigger boobs working for them, then? "The world's most unlikable character" is, perhaps, not exactly accurate (THE FLASH's Griffen takes the 2006 prize, so far, I think), but that's not exactly a sustainable pitch for an ongoing hero book, I think. Hard time Savage Critic Scaling this one, since I think the faults in premise and setup are large, but the skill of execution is decent, so let's be wishy-washy and say OK.

JONAH HEX #12: I had a few problems with pacing, and who-shows-up-where-when, but it's all minor, and this is one of those books that almost certainly deserves a bigger audience than it is getting. I never EVER thought I'd like a Jonah Hex comic book, yet I really do, so I'm going with GOOD.

KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #119: Just one of those periodic reminders that this crudely drawn comic, with all of the annoying (since I'm not playing, and have zero use for it) gamer material in the back, is still pretty much the funniest monthly comic on the stands. No, it IS the funniest monthly comic on the stands. There's nothing special about THIS issue, and, really, everything is mid-story so maybe not the best jumping in point (last issue, #118, is probably better for that), but every once in a while I feel the need to remind you this is VERY GOOD.

MYSTERY IN SPACE #2: Bored now. I used to have a "Zzzzzz" rating, so consider it brought back for this.

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET #1: Nope, they're not really getting the appeal of Freddy here, are they? If this is what we're going to get from Wildstorm horror titles (especially where, I assume?, they're paying licensing fees too), then lets abort the line now, since this is just AWFUL.

NIGHTWING #125: So, first off, thank god Bruce Jones is gone. Wolfman and Jurgens are... well, they're kind of the equivalent of comfort food, as a creative team, aren't they? Not particularly good or anything, but filling enough, and evoking nostalgia. There's no way I could cal this better than OK, but, compared to what came directly before, this is a home run of a comic.

OTHER SIDE #1: Wow, that was a punch to the gut. Strong strong characterization, and a solid look at both sides of the Vietnam war. Loverly artwork. A solid home run, and one you should snap right up, because, let's face it, Vertigo is really really spotty about collecting mini-series into TP. VERY GOOD

X-MEN PHOENIX WARSONG #2: So, uh, wait, this book has nothing to do with Phoenix afterall? Now, that's a dead-brilliant move! Really AWFUL.

As for the Books/TPs, there were three major releases this week... all aimed at the bookstores, at that (though I'm going to sell a ton of each):

BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006 is a really nice package of work, with a superb presentation, but I have to admit it felt a little too close to MCSWEENEYS #13. Still, I expect to sell a shedload. On the other hand, I want to kill Elizabeth Moore for that fucking introduction ("Please please please take comics seriously. We're all adult and stuff! Plllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeaaassssseeeee") -- we're in a really sad place if we need the validation of someone else to bless the medium. I was also a little ... amused maybe that Pekar's introduction goes on an on about how comics are not just superheroes, and the VERY FIRST STORY presented in the book is a SUPERHERO STORY. Sure it's got a "he shouldn't have been a superhero" punchline, but that doesn't make it any less of a punchline. These kind of collections/surveys tend to be pretty snobby, high brow, and otherwise elitist in their presentation of "Comics are Art, damn it! Plllllease believe us!" (and they have been since since Fantagraphics did the BEST COMICS OF THE DECADE (1980s) sixteen or so years ago -- and I keep thinking there was at least one other even before that), but, let's face it, this IS a collection of really fantastic stories. I'm not all the way through it yet, but I haven't read one story that was anything less than "VERY GOOD" so far. Next year, turn down the desperate rhetoric, and I'd have nothing but good things to say. Up to the point I've read, I'm calling it EXCELLENT.

CANCER VIXEN: Its breezy, its focuses on what I think is a largely superficial and vapid segment of American (and specifically New York) culture, but I find it hard to really review autobio, especially when it's about something really fucked up like breast cancer? (or domestic abuse, in the case of DRAGONSLIPPERS by Rosalind Penfold; or abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder in Madison Clell's CUCKOO) Actually, I think those two are also good comparisons, because from a comics-as-craft sense, none of these are especially "good" -- Marisa Acocella Marchetto's cartooning isn't really strong enough to carry the parts of the story that have weight here, but it's breezy enough to make the fashonista stuff clever and fun -- but they're all affecting works if only for the raw sheer bravery on display. I'd put this in the hand of someone who has, or knows a woman with, breast cancer, most certainly, because "Yes, you can survive" is a really important thing. I'd also recommend it to people who are interested in comics-as-a-form because there are relatively few works that try to tackle subjects like these (I'd add PEDRO & ME, and MOM'S CANCER, and I know there are 2 or 3 more, but I'm blanking at the moment), and because of the "it"-driven nature of the book, I think this might ultimately be seen as a historical book in the widespread awareness of comics. If I have to give it a Savage Critic rating (and I do), it's not really much more than an OK, though. That might just be me, however -- if you read VOGUE and watch fashion on E! then you'd probably like it much more than me.

CHICKEN WITH PLUMS HC: I haven't had the time yet this week to read it! I suck! On a flip through, it looks instantly better than EMBRODERIES, so I am heartened and eager to get to it, but I haven't been able to yet. But the reason I am even typing a thing is because I CANNOT believe they went for the cut-out dustcover. God, those things are a nightmare. Virtually every copy of EPILEPTIC that we received ended up damaged, if not from distribution or transport, then from rack damages. The cutout is "safer here, being in the middle of the book, but my god, if you're going to do a dustjacket that *in any way* can be mishandled (Also this week, Gaiman's FRAGILE THINGS falls into the same category), shrinkwrap the son of a bitch. Trust me, WE can open the ONE copy for display.

So, uh, PICK OF THE WEEK: Aw, CRIMINAL #1 by far.

PICK OF THE WEAK: it is either X-MEN PHOENIX WARSONG #2, or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET #1, and I gotta go with the latter. Freddy should have FOUNTAINS OF BLOOD, man

GN/TP OF THE WEEK: No contest, screwed up introduction or not -- BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006.

ASSHAT OF THE WEEK: It really really bugs me when publishers ship the HC and SC version of a book at the same time. That, almost always, means the SC is DOA. So, give it up for both WALLYS WORLD and LIFE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II IN COMICS. Eedjits!

And, if I may ask, what did YOU think?

-B

Yesterday's Comics Today! Jeff's Reviews of 9/20 Books.

Oh, sure, horrifically late, but I didn't think I'd be back so soon, to tell you the truth. However, I finished my writing contract (and am now sort of hanging out hoping they'll throw more my way) and have my Wednesday morning free and clear (I might have tried to write this sooner, in fact, if the IT guys at work hadn't done something at work so my web browser bombs out whenever I open two windows...) so let's see what happens when guy with no short-term memory opens up week-old whup-ass on books he barely remembers. Maybe it'll be entertaining in that "senile old fool chastises couch cushion he thinks is his cat" kind of way... 52 WEEK #20: When Lobo he put on his little hat at the end of the book, I involuntarily thought, "Hey! I want back the five bucks I spent on Devil's Rejects!" Either Lobo needs a makeover, or my brain needs a bleaching. And anyone else notice the ad count in this issue? It wasn't as bad as some of those Marvel books a while back, but I did put this book down struck by the cosmic sci-fi sweep of Rush City. On the other hand, Kevin Nowlan, $2.50, etc., etc. Highly OK.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #17: Huh. Having this come out within a month of the previous issue made it seem almost twice as good. Which is my way of saying I liked it, but, apart from that hilarious and amazing background/foreground transition, would be loathe to say exactly why any more or any less than the previous issues. And yet, Very Good.

BIRDS OF PREY #98: Kinda why I wish Simone'd stayed away from the whole Batgirl thing--it's fucked if it's Barbara and it's fucked if it's somebody else we don't know--but I do wonder if these past few storylines is setting us up to a change in the focus of the Birds of Prey team. Instead of cracking down on crime, they're going to be helping/saving/fighting young female metas that have fallen through the blabbity-blab of society's yakkity-yak. Or maybe they expressly said that four issues ago and I kinda missed it. Anyway, OK, but really only because the new Batgirl was at least amusing with her "dark justice rulez!" dialogue.

BLADE #1: Double-damning with faint praise: the best Blade book I've ever read and the best Howard Chaykin art in the last year or so. It's still underwhelming, mind you (I feel for the writer who comes up with the the big splashy moment, like the one here where Blade is facing off against nine million vampiric SHIELD agents firing guns and sliding down ropes, You Only Live Twice style, and how that writer must feel after an artist does a somehwat perfunctory job of execution (it looks like Chaykin just adapted some pages from that graphic novel adaptation of Bob Fosse's Chicago he's been working on all these years)) but, for a first issue, I've seen much worse. OK, and we'll see where it goes.

CATWOMAN #59: Has this book officially changed its name to Film Freak yet? Yeah, I can see how he could be a classic villain in the Batman Rogue's Gallery style but, dude, isn't this like the tenth consecutive issue he's appeared in? Also, I know this probably makes me come off like an uptight prude, but I don't think Selina is really the type of person who would knowingly sleep with the son of someone she's slept with (and I think knows is in love with her) just because she and the son feel they have "a connection." But, hey, maybe this is just to pave the way for the revelation that the father of her baby is Tim Drake and I'm being too judgmental. Eh.

CIVIL WAR #4: You'd think that, for my review, you could just cut to a cage full of chimps going apeshit and you'd have an accurate take of my reaction, right? Weirdly, no. I had a genuine reaction to Peter's unmasking in Civil War #2 because I felt that (a) it was a huge mistake, and (b) it at least had been well-established by the JMS lead-in stories over in ASM. For better or for worse, they had led the character to a point where the choice there seemed natural. But, despite being a huge old school Marvel fanboy, I had no real reaction to Civil War #4 (apart from "Wow, that's dumb") because everyone was just so out of character, I didn't believe any of it. Also, honestly, although Mark Millar has read enough Marvel comics to find the wiggle room in any characterization he wants to make--"Of course, Professor X was molesting Jean Grey! Don't you remember that one panel where he's thinking...."--I genuinely believe the clarion call of Millar's muse is the sound of the money truck backing up to his house. There's no real point in debating character or motivation or plausability--you either buy it or you don't. I didn't (in the suspension of disbelief sense), and I won't (in the fiscal sense) from now on.

(Sorry I didn't get to work in the "This is my face as I'm fucking the Marvel Universe in the ass" joke, but I'm sure someone else has gotten around to it by now.)

Lovely art, though. I guess I'll go Eh.

CLAW THE UNCONQUERED #4: I am docked a full letter grade in Barbarian Appreciation because I read this and not the other two Conan books this week. I'm sure they're fine, the other two books, but I have to admit, I kinda dig Claw, and I'm liking this miniseries. This issue was a little heavy on the expository blabbity-blab after the initial werewolf fight, but considering I'm the only person buying it, who cares? OK.

EXILES #86: The threat was utterly limp, but the all-Wolverine conceit was fun. I'm sure it's better than what Claremont's first story--Exiles on the Planet of Infinite Ororo Dominatrices or somesuch--would have been, for sure. Highly OK, just because I think the art, although competent, lacks a certain pizzazz.

FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #4: Back to teh suck. Whoever last issue's fill-in artist was, get that dude more work, and pronto! Awful.

GHOST RIDER #3: Ghost Rider and Dr. Strange have a sissy slapfight in a cemetery. Soothingly sibilant high concept notwithstanding, it's dumb and dull and the "Johnny Blaze is a Tool of the Devil, and we do mean Tool!" approach drives me nuts. Not worth your time. Awful.

HELLBLAZER #224: I missed Ms. Mina's first arc, so have no idea how in media res this issue is, but wow, it'll media res the shit right outta you if this is your first issue. A decent conceit, a fun take on Constantine, and a refreshingly balls-to-the-wall approach made it a Good read, but I'm not altogether sure the team can pull off the story effectively. We'll see, I guess.

IRON MAN #12: For extra credit, read this and Civil War #4 back to back and figure out how you're supposed to believe these books are even by the same publisher, much less featuring the same character. Really weird.

MOON KNIGHT #5: Home Alone, as re-enacted by the Moon Knight Community Players. I was okay with it until, I shit you not, Taskmaster got his ass shot by a butler with a blunderbuss. A staggeringly fucking stupid issue with a lot of really terrible choices made by the writer and a real misunderstanding (to put it mildly) of the Taskmaster. Awful, awful, awful.

NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #8: Probably my favorite issue since the dragon in the purple underwear left. Having a Dormammu analog get his head jammed in a toilet was positively inspired, I gotta say, and those Mindless Ones? Gold. And there was some actual characterization and shit, so I'm going with Very Good.

REVOLUTION ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #6: Came out last week, but I wanted to mention it because I'm a big Ape-head. I thought the story kinda ran around in circles for six issues, had far too many people hollering things at each other, and tended to mistake portent for genuine drama far too much of the time. And yet, I also thought it was a lot better than most of the Apes comics projects I've seen over the last decade or so, and that last backup story in particular was exceptionally satisfying. If they release a trade of this and it's affordably priced, you could do worse than to pick it up. Highly OK.

SUPERMAN #656: I hope Superman fights the Anti-Christ ten issues from now. That'd be great. Good.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #34: It's odd. I should totally love this, since Carey not only is having the Ultimate version of the FF meet and fight a pastiche of the Forever People, but also in that Carey's alteration to his pastiche (instead of loveable hippies, his Forever People are paranoid veterans of an unending war) seems to be addressing the differences between two similar periods of American history (The Forever People were created while America was still at war in Vietnam, after all). And yet, I'm only more-or-less OK with it and I'm not sure why. It could be that Ferry's art, which I loved on Adam Strange, is so light and colorful and Euro, it just can't evoke the Kirbyness required for me to really appreciate the conceit. Of course, one of my big problems with UFF is that it swapped out Kirby for Kubert right at the beginning, thus making this book absurdly visually lackluster.... I don't know. Obviously, I could blather on for hours and get no closer to my discontent. Let's call it distressingly Eh.

WALKING DEAD #31: I was strangely underwhelmed by this issue as Kirkman makes some hard-to-believe plot choices and some odd pacing decisions (that conversation between Rick and the nurse didn't feel believable at all--even if Rick's trying to get someon on his side, I can't believe he'd take the very slow "so what's with you and the doctor? Are you guys dating?" since he knows about the threat facing his community). Guess it was Eh? Weird.

WETWORKS #1: What the fuck? I haven't read any previous iteration of Wetworks, so lemme get if I follow this--it's a covert operations team that underwent some dramatic transformation around the time it got involved in a battle between vampires and werewolves? That concept is so retarded it's almost awesome, but Mike Carey goes for a thoughtful, underplayed approach that (I think) takes that original "idea" and tries to change it up--and that would work if somebody somewhere had bothered to recap the original premise so new readers like myself weren't completely baffled. Kinda Awful, but amusingly so.

PICK OF (LAST) WEEK: ASTONISHING X-MEN #17, but there was a lot I didn't read.

PICK OF THE WEAK: MOON KNIGHT #5, with just a few bad choices, all but destroyed the tone the entire mini had been working toward. That seems like more of a disappointment than what Mark "Do you like my hat? It's made of money!" Millar is doing, just because Mr. Millar knows what he's doing.

TRADE PICK: I don't know, to be honest. GODLAND VOL. 2 TPB, probably? Where's another god-damned volume of god-damned SGT. FROG when you god-damned need him?

NEXT WEEK (by which I mean this week): Blue Beetle, Daredevil and She-Hulk will probably make me 80% less cranky this week than I was last week. Plus, I had no idea about this Dracula vs. Capone miniseries--I'll be reading it just to see if the King of the Vampires is defeated by Capone's untreated syphilis! Nuff said, true believer!

And youse?

Time to stop being Civil: Graeme's one review of the 9/20 books.

I've got to be quick this week, for reasons that I'll explain at the end of the column, so just one long bitchy review this week. And you know what I'm going to talk about, don't you? CIVIL WAR #4: I don’t know if it makes me an old fogey or not, but the other day when I was talking about this issue with Brian, I actually asked the question “Where are the editors?” It was rhetorical, of course; I know that the editors are doing interviews with Newsarama where they dodge the obvious questions, but it still kind of fits my mindset with this book – With each and every issue, it gets further and further into the realms of bad fanfiction, written around ideas that sound cool but don’t really stand up to scrutiny. For example: Clone Thor. When, exactly, did Iron Man clone Thor? We’re told that he collected Thor’s hair from the first Avengers meeting (and that scene, where Hank Pym explains the origin of clone Thor, is clunky with exposition and just draws attention to its own ridiculousness: “What kind of man combs his furniture for hair follicles and skin cells?” I would’ve thought that the answer would be the kind of man who is either OCD about cleanliness or someone who is really really paranoid and a CSI fan, but according to the Wasp, the real answer is “A guy with a lot of foresight, I guess.” Oh, that’s right! We’re still doing the Iron Man as Futurist thing, aren’t we?), but not given any timeline for when he started with the whole cloning process. Or why he got the idea to clone Thor in the first place. I mean, we know why Mark Millar did it: For the shock value of the close of issue 3. But why did Iron Man do it? What made him think, “Well, I’m fighting some superheroes, so I probably need some kind of secret weapon… Hmmm… I think I’ll clone Thor.” His “side” already has Cap’s team outnumbered and out-powered (Isn’t Sentry supposed to be the most powerful person in the Marvel Universe? He’s on Iron Man’s team, even though we haven’t seen him yet), so it can’t be that, and for psychological effect, I’m sure that clones of themselves would’ve been much more successful… So… I don’t really get the reasoning behind it, in story. But that’s okay, because this isn’t really a series about story, after all – It’s a series about shock and awe, and that’s about it.

Brian’s main problem with the issue, which I’m sure he’ll tell you himself if he gets the chance to write reviews this week, was the end of the book, where Sue writes Reed a letter explaining why she’s leaving. Not that the letter is terribly written – although, it kind of is – but that the letter explains that, even though Sue is leaving her husband and abandoning her kids, she didn’t want to be thought of as a bad mother or wife, so she made him dinner and slept with him one last time. Which, uh… yeah. That’s more than a little fucked up right there, and a kind of fascinating insight into the way that Mark Millar views the world. That might be indicative of the entire series, in a way; if we’re to believe Millar when he says that he is definitely on Iron Man’s side, then I am very, very scared of Mark Millar. As countless people online have pointed out by now, by this point in the series, Iron Man and Reed Richards are very clearly evil scientists: They have cloned their dead friend to use as a weapon, and are now mind-controlling supervillains (because that always works) to use them as weapons as well. They are paranoid – See Reed in the scene at Goliath’s funeral (and, surprise! It’s the giant who dies this issue, continuing a theme through Mark Millar’s work since, what, his first Authority arc?): “Is it just me or is Peter Parker acting very, very suspiciously?” It’s just you, Reed, because all we’re shown is Peter talk to his family and looking upset (Now, we all know that this is foreshadowing for Parker changing sides, but that’s only because of the obviousness in Millar’s writing; as soon as he said “Do you ever wonder if we’ve picked the right side here, Hank?”, you know that he’s going to jump ship. The characters in the story don’t have the ability to recognize their writer’s limitations, though, so for Reed to get suspicious, it’s either paranoia or bad writing, as he’s reacting to signs that we’ve never been shown). – and callous. This is actually flagged in the script itself, with Hank Pym asking “I just watched a new superhuman I helped create blow a hole through one of my oldest friends. Do you really think I’m so remote - - so detached - - that this wouldn’t have some kind of impact on me?” as we see Reed working on the clone Thor, clearly remote and detached and unimpacted. By contrast, Captain America becomes a bit of a zealot, but it’s hardly in the same class of character assassination… It’s unclear if we’re meant to consider Cap the lesser of two evils, or if the people behind this story are completely unaware of the morality of what they’re creating.

I know, I know. I’m overthinking the whole thing. It’s true; I definitely feel that I’m thinking about it more than the creators, which is worrying, but by this point, I’m just reading the whole thing in some weird state of shock at how unfun the Marvel Universe is these days (Compare and contrast with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #1, Jeff Parker’s new retro X-series, which is much better than it has any right to be, the second time he’s taken a crappy concept and made something so enjoyable after his Agents of Atlas series), and how it just keeps being made darker and darker.

Ass, and don’t even get me started on the “Watcher looks sad” panel.

I’m off on vacation – I’m actually flying in about an hour and a half – so no more reviews from me for awhile (well, potentially something next week if I get a chance to write while I’m gone), but in the meantime, what have you people enjoyed lately?

Evil floaty robots. It's always those evil floaty robots: Graeme's reviews of the 9/13 books.

Second set of reviews this week, because, let’s face it: I should talk about the comics some more. But it's hard when BBC America is doing an Eddie Izzard marathon... 52 WEEK NINETEEN: I have no idea what it is about the “shocking” reveal at the end of this issue – It’s certainly not the shock, because all the reveal is is really just the confirmation of a fan-held suspicion for a while now – but it’s somehow made me much more excited about the series as a whole. Perhaps it’s because it feels like the beginning of some kind of second act: Now we know (one of) the bad guys, we can start to begin working out just what’s been going on behind the scenes for the last eighteen weeks. Was (spoiler warning) Skeets lying to Booster all along, and plotting his demise, or taking advantage of his cluelessness? Is time really broken, or was that just something that Skeets was telling Booster to cover his tracks? Is Skeets the one kidnapping mad scientists, and if so, is he trying to start the artificial intelligent wars that were mentioned as a future event earlier in the series? With this and the last issue, things are beginning to come together and a larger plot becoming apparent (although some of the threads seem to be being lost in this convergence: When was the last time we saw John Henry Irons?), giving the series some much needed forward momentum. Good, and interestingly-done payoff-without-being-payoff, reminding me of Lost.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #2: Jeff Parker continues to have fun in his corner of the Marvel Universe, away from Wars, Civil and otherwise (Is “War” Marvel’s version of “Crisis”? We’ve had Secret Wars, Secret War, Civil War, and next year we’re getting World War Hulk), and it shows in the dialogue here, whether it be Jimmy Woo’s 50s spy lingo or Ken Hale’s dryness (“Derek, I’m a freaking gorilla. What else can you do to me?”). There’s also a nice bit about alien toilets that sums up just how silly Jeff is prepared to be and how much of a breath of fresh air this series is in the very serious world of The Big Two these days. Very Good, and continuing to be a very pleasant surprise overall. If Parker can be kept around, I’d love to see this become an ongoing book.

CASANOVA #4: I love this comic. I can’t be objective about it, for some reason. It hits all of my buttons: Humor, action, sense of its own ridiculousness but rejoicing in it nonetheless, pop cultural thievery and magically some emotional resonance as well. And that’s not going anywhere near Gabriel Ba’s artwork, which is clean and cartoony and dramatic and and and. Just like the last issue, I finished this one and thought “It’s the best one yet,” and part of that comes from the way in which each issue builds upon the last while still managing to have a plot that manages to resolve itself within an issue – Matt Fraction’s mentioned that he’s following a Buffy model of writing here, with the A plot of each episode complete within each episode, but with B through Z plots that run the length of the season, and it’s not the only Buffy influence I got here; the importance of (and strained relationship with) family felt very Whedonesque, as well. Excellent, but like I said, I can’t be objective around this.

THE ESCAPISTS #3: There’s a sequence in the middle of this issue, where the characters talk to each other through their work, revealing themselves in the work, that felt new and exciting – the way the lettering changes as the fictional characters stop speaking as their characters and start talking as themselves, and the artwork setting their conversation as chase sequence – which only underscored how disappointing the rest of the book felt (with the exception of Max’s reaction to his first bad review, which also feels honest). It’s not just that Steve Rolston’s art is still an awkward Philip Bond impression that doesn’t have Bond’s lightness, even as it suffocates what’s good about Rolston’s own style, but Brian K. Vaughan’s writing, which comes across as entirely unrealistic and forced: The hand of the writer is too obvious as the characters’ comic is critically panned (Awww!) but magically successful, being a top ten seller (Huzzah!) within a few pages, while an evil corporate publisher appears at the end of the issue, wanting the rights to the character back and wondering where his moustache is, because he wants to twirl it to be melodramatic. I have no idea what’s happened to Vaughan here, because this is all much more false than his writing normally reads, adopting the melodramatic plotting of the Chabon source novel without the smoothness of Chabon’s voice to try and hide it. A disappointing Eh.

MS. MARVEL #7: Still in the middle of Civil War, and still oddly making the anti-registration side more sympathetic despite the best attempts of the creators, I mention this Crap book just to point out that David Mack’s cover art is really weirdly half-assed in its treatment of the background characters.

MYTHOS: HULK #1: Paolo Rivera’s art is nice, if muddy – he has a really enjoyably cartoony treatment of the characters, especially when it comes to exaggeration of body language – but it’s used in the service of a very badly written story that not only begs the question “What’s the point?” but also the question “Did Paul Jenkins think that he had more pages here?” It’s a very oddly paced story, with a lot of time spent on set-up that never really pays off, and the Hulk himself spending very little time on-panel, and none of that time hinting at any complexity in the character whatsoever – This is the Hulk as destructive force of nature and that’s it. It confuses more than anything, because it adds nothing to the character or the origin story, but it also doesn’t work solely as a retelling of the origin, either, due to the loose ends: Are we really meant to end the book thinking that the real tragedy of the Hulk is that Betty Ross ends up being dumped, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear? Awful, despite how much I liked the art.

PHONOGRAM #2: So, I did end up picking up the first issue, and enjoyed it in the “Britpop Hellblazer” way that it had. But this second issue felt too referential in ways that the first managed to avoid. I got all of the references, because I was in my twenties when Britpop was happening and I bought the singles and hated the songs – Oh, boy, did I hate Echobelly, as much as I fancied Sonya Madan – that get namechecked in here, but… I’m not sure that there was enough underneath all of then namedropping; plotwise, it feels like the first half of an issue, not an issue in itself. Which may be the point, and is kind of fitting; Britpop was always concerned with style more than substance, after all – although the best bands had both – but still… I’m hoping that next issue has more explanation of what’s happening than (admittedly well-deserved) hatred of shit DJs. Eh, but the first issue was better.

A short week of “singles”, as they’re called by some, this week. But that’s because it’s all about the graphic novels this time around – Hopefully you’ve all made your trip to your comic or book emporium to pick up American Born Chinese and/or Pride of Baghdad already (ABC is still my TRADE OF THE WEEK, if you’re caring), although I was surprised to find myself enjoying this week’s JONAH HEX: FACE FULL OF VIOLENCE collection as much as I did. I’d tried the first issue (collected here with the next five issues) when it came out and more or less thought “Yeah, fine, whatever”, but either I’ve become soft in my old age or the stories here get better as they go along. Yes, Luke Ross’s art still feels somewhat plasticy and photo-referenced, but Justin Grey and Jimmy Palmiotti get to play with the “Jonah comes and makes everything alright” formula enough to keep things entertaining: Evil nuns! Almost all lawmen being corrupt! Lots of people being hanged! I’d be happier if it wasn’t on glossy paper because, well, it should be on rough pulpy newsprint and cost next to nothing (and, in an ideal world, be read by macho men in hats and pubs), but that’s just me being snotty; it’s actually Very Good, and who expected that?

PICK OF THE WEEK is Casanova, however, and PICK OF THE WEAK is Mythos. Next week: As much as I'll want to write something about Civil War #4, I’m on vacation, so anyone who knows of good places to eat in New England, feel free to offer advice in the comments.

Some Sort of Respite: Jeff's Reviews of 9/13 books...

Yesterday, Friday, was my first day working at CE in two weeks and I gotta say: looking at the new comics rack and seeing all the issues of Julia Wertz's Fart Party next to the latest volume of MOME? Genuinely heartwarming. In other brief not-comics-but-pop-culture news, I'd seen (almost all of) the first two Lone Wolf & Cub movies, but that restored version of Shogun Assassin is fucking great. That narration? That synth-heavy score? All the most insane parts of the first two Lone Wolf & Cub movies cut into one not-qute-coherent whole? I loved it.

But hands-down my favorite thing about it is Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto. Not only is he an awesome badass, but he is a fat, slobby awesome badass. There's a scene where he's half-dead and killed a dozen guys and about to kill a dozen more and, like, he's unshaven, and his hair is sticking up in weird places and there's, like, leaves in it, and it was just the coolest fucking thing ever. I know it's just an extension of the Mifune Yojimbo/Sanjuro thing but it's taken to an even higher level.

Anyway, it got me thinking--who would you say are the top five cinematic fat slob badasses of all time? My list at the moment looks like:

1. Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto (Lone Wolf & Cub; Shogun Assassin) 2. Toshiro Mifune as Sanjuro/Yojimbo (movies of the same name) 3. Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan (Touch of Evil) 4. M. Emmet Walsh as Loren Visser (Blood Simple; and just as you can't imagine Wakayama's performance without Mifune's, you kinda can't imagine Walsh's without Welles') 5. John Belushi as Capt. Wild Bill Kelso (1941)

Who else am I missing? (Note: All other Belushi performances are probably null and void unless they're very different from above, as is Sammo Hung unless you've got a role where he was also a slob badass, as opposed to just a fat one.) Drop me your picks in the comments.

Where was I? Oh,right. Those whattya-call-'ems:

52 WEEK #19: I was expecting to be deeply annoyed by Lobo, but the idea that he's found religion and has kinda cleaned up his act, made that storyline kinda interesting and fun. The Booster Gold stuff read a little rushed but had some cool patches and you've got two gorgeous looking pages by Brian Bolland, to boot. Highly OK, I thought.

ABANDON THE OLD IN TOKYO HC: I thought this second volume of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work was better than the first, probably because there's at least a little more variation in the choice of protagonists--for example, the first story (whose title I can't remember because I am a dope), about a failing kid's manga artist whose interest in bathroom graffiti is a stunning piece of work, oddly reminescent of Clowes' Caricature, that succeeds precisely because of the creator's willingness to risk the reader's confusion between creator and protagonist. (It also has one of the most haunting full pages I've seen in some time, where the protagonist is shown on the street after having descended a pedestrian overpass. Tatsumi is giving us an ordinary bit of everyday life and a shockingly bluunt metaphor--the protagonist is caught in a spiralling descent--at the same time.) There's some other amazing stuff in here (the title story, and, jesus, that story with that monkey!) although your best bet is to read just a story every other day so they don't suffer from their similarity: a gorgeous hardcover for $19.95, this is Very Good if you dole it out accordingly.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE SC: Although I only read this once, I think Graeme's review is pretty much spot-on--this is a one of the best graphic novels of the year. It effortlessly strikes that sweet spot of being hilarious, troubling, entertaining and thought-provoking all at once, and it puts you in that all-too-rare position of laughing and challenging about why you're laughing all at the same time. I understand Graeme's initial vexation at the end but I thought it kept the three storylines from being more than just variations of each other--I was reminded of the way the melodies in a canon follow and then come together--and opened not just the technique of the story but possibly the message into a new place none of the stories could have gotten to on their own. And, to put it crassly, at 240 color pgs. for $14.95, this sucker is a god-damned great deal for the money. Excellent work, worth reading and worth owning.

BECK VOLUME 5 TPB: I know, I know. Several weeks old but worth commenting on anyway, because on the one hand, the payoffs were tremendously enjoyable and yet, on the other, out of synch with the pacing of the previous volumes--it read like Harold Sakuishi had been told to wrap things up and then halfway through the editors changed their mind and told him to keep going. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was damn Good stuff and if I had my way, you fuckers would buy this and like it even if you did so at gunpoint, but I'd be a sycophantic cheerleader if I didn't admit this volume felt a little off.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #21: A little bit of trouble with that ending scene between C & B, but the rest of this was pure comic book nirvana. Very Good stuff if you're a Cap fan.

CASANOVA #4: Four issues, four months, and Fraction's work is shaping up to be a very pleasurable thing, indeed. Under an enjoyable done-in-one cosmic spy heist story is a lovely subtextual rumination on the difficulty of determining the value of what's real and what's fake in matters (largely, but not solely) spiritual. And it's not even diagrammed out, underlined or prechewed in the accompanying text piece. Really Good stuff--I quite liked it.

CLAWS #2: Far less stiff and annoying and tool-ish than I expected it to be. In fact, although maybe not quite as charming as the first issue, still very charming overall. Sadly, the larger price tag (like, $3.99 or something?) keeps in the Valley of the OK, I think.

DEATH NOTE VOL. 7 TPB: Like Beck, suffers from a sudden heaving jump of the plot but I still wouldn't trade it for the world: Death Note was becoming just a bit too complacent in its formula and the revelation in this volume were just what was needed. Could well have screwed itself, but, for now, Very Good.

DEVI #3: I know, I know. It's really just Witchblade: India and yet, between the large cast and the occasional surreal cityscape and the badass who really seems like he should look like Sanjay Dutt instead of a dude you'd find on an Old Spice bottle, I'm just the teeniest bit hooked. OK.

DMZ #11: A really lovely looking issue, but I think looking at the pre-DMZ break between NYC and the USA is a mistake--it's a concept that works as a conceit, as a rich base for satire and allegory and personal vision; trying to sell the reader on the idea that this is something that might actually ever happen is just inviting disbelief. But as a gorgeous looking issue, and another oddly moving loveletter to New York, Good.

DRAGON HEAD VOLS. 2 and 3 TPB: I'm glad this is being spared Tokyopop's "direct ordering" treatment because this book didn't get interesting to me until Volume 3. Minetaro Mochizuki's art is great--something about it reminds me of Charles Burns and, weirdly, Chester Gould--but the first several volumes push the hysteria and "descent into madness" thing a little too quickly. If you can push through that, Volume 3 does a much better job of positing the ways in which panicked and isolated people fall into patterns of magical thinking. Vols. 1 and 2: OK. Vol. 3: Good, but to be honest, if you had to pick between this and the similar Drifting Classroom, I'd steer you toward Drifting Classroom.

DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL. 1 TPB: Seriously, this was a great first volume: an entire elementary school gets transported to a mysterious wasteland and everyone loses their fucking mind. Unlike Dragon Head, this book nails the madness lurking behind shock and trauma, probably because it shows how much mass panic contributes: some of the most shocking scenes in this volume are of panicking children trampling each other or falling to their death in an attempt to get back to their parents. If you ask me, the very retro art (the series originally ran from 1972 to 1974) makes the work all the more disturbing as doe-eyed Tezuka kids running in mid-air really heightens the sense of innocence being strapped into the front car to Hell. Very Good stuff and you should hunt it down pronto.

ESCAPISTS #3: All of my problems with issue #2 magically disappeared this issue, and I'm back to really enjoying this. On the one hand, I mourn its brevity--it's not going to explore nearly as many interesting ideas and riffs as the novel did--but I'm actually thrilled that this miniseries might now pace itself properlyand not dramatically drop the ball at the end of things. Very Good stuff.

EX MACHINA #23: On the other hand, if you must buy only one BKV dream sequence this week (and "buy" in the sense of "believe") this one has it hands down over the one in Escapists. Forced ending, but there's always something about this book that never really gels quite right for me. OK.

FART PARTY: I've enjoyed every issue of Julia Wertz's self-published Fart Party, but, to be honest, have been leery about recommending them because they're, like, $3 each. (I know, I know. I'm a cheap bastard and I suck.) So here's a great solution: go to Julia's site, read all of her strips, then give her as much money as you think she deserves. If you hate reading comix on the web, get the second issue of Fart Party either from us or from her (it's fifty cents cheaper and has a priceless Liz Prince cameo). Either way, I think you'll really like her work--the charmingly crude visuals are more than made up for by the hilariously crude obscenities--and will support it accordingly. Funny stuff.

GOLGO 13 VOL. 4 GN: I can't really review this because I still can't think about G-13 sniping a space satellite without some primordial pleasure center in my brain going off. And the English Rose story is an audaciously fucked up piece of work that doesn't care who it pisses off. Very Good stuff although if we could get just a bit less Clancy and a bit more Crazy, I'd be very pleased.

GREEN ARROW #66: It's sloppy--the captions start off omniscient, go to Ollie, then end[?] with Connor and at least half the book felt like it was set to the "Montage" musical number from Team America--but it's effective: I read it back to front, all in one go, enjoyed it and will read the next issue if it's in the store the same time I am. Quite OK.

GREEN LANTERN #13: Sometimes I wonder if Geoff Johns did intern work for Satan drafting the selling-of-the-soul documents because that guy can find the loophole in anything: Here, it's revealed that Arisa was thirteen years old on a planet where a year's rotation around the sun was equivalent to blah-blah-blah-blah, making her not underage jailbait but instead a super-hot grandma. The rest of this will either similarly entertain or annoy you, depending, but any book where planets blow up willy-nilly and giant transformer robots beat the snot out of Green Lanterns gets a Good by me.

LOVE & ROCKETS VOL 2 #17: Most of the Beto work seemed to poised to easily understandable dramatic denouements for a change, but I'm not sure if they really worked in a dramatic sense. (I suppose they will in the trade but that doesn't do my $4.50 much good right now, does it?) But that's just me snarking. It doesn't matter because Jaime's Hopey story kicks nine kinds of ass and makes the issue worth it all on its own). And, wow, the way that guy draws kids breaks my heart (in a really good way). Very Good issue, despite my initial pissiness.

MONSTER VOL. 4 TPB: If you ever wondered what it might be like if David Lynch directed an episode of The Fugitive, Vol. 4 is maybe as close as you're going to get. Good, and maybe my favorie volume since the first.

MAN CALLED KEV #3: Is it wrong to admit I'm enjoying this much more than The Boys? It's not perfect by any means (Ennis either wrote it in a hurry or his ear for dialogue is getting a bit tinny), but as I think I said elsewhere, it reminds me a little bit of Ennis's dear departed Hitman. Good or highly OK, depending on where you stand with this sort of stuff.

PHONOGRAM #2: I thought the first issue of this, with its Hellblazer-meets-High Fidelity take on the British music scene (and yes, apparently every review of Phonogram is required to take a stab at reverse-engineering the high concept), was quite good. I'm really on the fence however as to whether this issue is better or worse--although it's admirable that the creators don't blurt out the backstory all at a go, I think I spent more of the issue baffled rather than intrigued. The art's lovely and the concept is really, really great but my enthusiasm is more guarded than I would like. A guarded Good (bonus synchronicity points for the way the Transformers screed ties in perfectly with American Born Chinese from First Second).

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD HC: Again, see Graeme. The art on this is stunning and Vaughan's characterization and eye for event tremendously affecting. If you've been wondering what to give that person who loved that copy of We3 you gave them last year, look no further. This book is not without its flaws--the book's end, a nudge to make you take that final little leap of empathy, felt a little pushier than I would have liked--but goddamn, is it a strong piece of work. Good stuff.

SAM NOIR SAMURAI DETECTIVE #1: Very very dumb--it makes Sin City look like The Dubliners by comparison--but very, very gorgeous. Not how I'd spend my cash, but hard to rank that lovely art lower than OK (although I probably should).

TRUTH JUSTIN & AMERICAN WAY #4: I have no idea if anyone's reading this but me (and honestly, I can't remember if I made it past issue #1 or not) but I'd like to sit down with all the issues of it sometime. The '80s shout-outs get old fast--avoid that fake letters page at all cost--but Giuseppe Ferrario's art is goddamned good and the story is fun. Provided there's not tentacle rape in the next few issues, a trade of this skewed to the teen market'd probably do really well. Highly OK.

WASTELAND #3: This, Phonogram, and Casanova all seem very similar to me, and I don't think it's just the WEF pedigree. Even though they're not done in Fell format, Phonogram and Wasteland have similarly ambitious takes on their specific non-capes genres, with black and white work and generous text sections at the end. But whereas Gillen maybe holds his milieu back a little too much, Johnston gives his too much free reign: a really iconic storyline that should move like a b-movie drags under mostly underwhelming art and an over-fastiduous eye for detail. On the letters page, Johnston mentions growing up and playing a lot of RPGs and it shows: Wasteland gets bogged down in too much flavor text too often. My hope is that both Gillen and Johnston will nail down these pacing issues as their books go on but, until then, this is really just kinda OK.

PICK OF THE WEEK: As you can see, didn't bother too much with the crappy stuff (hopefully not to the entry's detriment) so I'll leave it up to you.

PICK OF THE WEAK: See above.

TRADE PICK: American Born Chinese, and then, if you have the coin, either Pride of Baghdad or Drifting Classroom and some other manga volume.

NEXT WEEK: Not from me, amigo! I'm down to the wire this week on two separate deadlines and it's my one year anniversary on Monday. Besides, wasn't that a big ol' portion of mouthiness right there?

Please submit yr. thoughts and lists of slobby fat badasses below. K, thx, bye.

Midweek! But reviews nonetheless!: Graeme reappears when you don't expect him to.

Well, I promised some kind of reviews this week, right? Luckily, I had more to review than just Mystery In Space… Don’t get me wrong; I’m more than happy to talk about last week’s weird science fiction revival from DC, but it’s more fun to get into two of the best graphic novels of this, a pretty great week for graphic novels. So, let’s get into it, shall we? MYSTERY IN SPACE #1: Or, as the logo says, “Mystery In Space With Captain Comet,” which may be my favorite thing about the entire comic – There’s just something about that that makes it sound like some PBS show, like the DC Universe version of Jacques Costeau or something. Sadly, the comic doesn’t follow through on the somewhat kitschy promise of the title, instead offering up something that doesn’t really fit together well – Shane Davis’s jagged Top Cow-esque artwork is a bit of a mismatch with Jim Starlin’s old-fashioned and very… well, Starlin-esque writing (Not that Starlin’s own art over his writing, in the back-up, is that much of an improvement, looking oddly quaint and with some crazy coloring). It has to be said, Starlin has his niche, this weird hippie take on space opera, and he’s made it his in a way unlike any other comic writer. You’ve got to respect that, even if – like me – you find that style to be overwritten and too reliant on “cosmicness” to explain away obvious plot devices; the four page sequence explaining Comet’s death and rebirth has some terrible narration to work through (“Quantum physics I understand and can explain. The spiritual and the occult are realms I never delved into - - Complete Greek. But I wasn’t operating, at that moment, on any kind of intellectual level. Fear drove me on, and chance allowed me to spot that tiny sparkle of light. There was something different about it. Something alluring.” And that’s just one panel!), and once you get to the end of the issue, you realize that not that much has really happened in either of the two stories, outside of exposition and backstory. It reminds me of the Rann-Thanagar War, in the way that it’s amusing that DC’s sci-fi books seem to be some of the more old-fashioned books they publish, writing-wise… Not that that’s a bad thing, but it makes for a pretty Eh comic book, it has to be said.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE: You know it’s a good sign when one of the few faults that you can find with a book is that you don’t like the font that the lettering is done in, and that’s pretty much the case with Gene Luen Yang’s new graphic novel from First Second. In the same way that Eddie Campbell’s Fate Of The Artist was, for me, the “lead” book of First Second’s launch line, this feels like the lead of the second set of releases, which (again, like the launch line) includes a lot of other strong releases; Lat’s Kampung Boy and Joann Sfar’s Klezmer being the ones that are probably most likely to attract critical attention. This, though, is my favorite of the publisher’s fall releases; a book about personal and cultural identities that manages to talk about both in inclusive and specific ways all at once, playing with stereotypes (and, in the way it tells the story of the Monkey King, mainstream comic storytelling traditions) in such a way as to take advantage of, and undermine, them at the same time. By structuring the book in the way that he does – separating the themes into three distinct storylines that come together at the end – Yang plays slight-of-hand tricks with the true intentions of the story in such a way as to undermine the scope of what he’s doing. The difference in experience between reading the book for the first time and re-reading the book is greater than you’d expect, with the re-read solving what I’d felt was the largest fault of the book the first time around… which I can’t really explain here for fear of spoiling the story (It’s the nature of the reveal of crossover between the three parallel plots, and that’s all I can say. But for those who finish the book and feel as if something was off, re-read it and see what you think then). It’s a very strong piece of writing, though, and one of the best graphic novels I’ve read in a year that was already a great year for graphic novels. Excellent, I would happily say.

PRIDE OF BAGDHAD: I think every fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s approached this with some level of trepidation, if only because it seemed so outside of his comfort zone – Where were the last page cliffhanger reveals going to be in a graphic novel? How could you get pop-cultural references into dialogue from lions in Iraq? – but that turns out to be a plus, surprisingly. It allows you to focus on everything else that BKV does well, which happens to be… well, quite a lot. Really, his characterization is still key, despite the lack of trivia titbits to be spouted; the animals have personalities that border on Disney but still ring true, and allow for the allegory to come through (although the allegory gets slightly too obvious for me at the climax of the book, but your mileage may vary). All of that is beside the point for me, though, because this is artist Niko Henrichon’s book. The artwork is beautiful, and sells you on everything that you need to believe in to work – The characters are distinct, but believable instead of cartoony, the surroundings atmospheric and the storytelling clear. Any talking animal book lives and dies on the artwork, and Henrichon’s stuff is so good that he could’ve made anyone’s script enjoyable; it’s just a plus that Vaughan’s script is pretty damn good, too. Another Excellent book, although, admittedly, I’m not sure that it’s worthy of the hardcover, $25, format. But Very Good, even at that price.

PICK OF THE WEEK, then, is American Born Chinese, which again makes you think that First Second really know what they’re up to when it comes to picking creators. PICK OF THE WEAK, well, it’s Mystery In Space, but that hardly counts, really…

This weekend: Reviews of some of them there comic books, as opposed to graphic novel books. And probably a lot more snark.

A quick check-in from Hibbs (8/30 books)

Why is it that "three day weekend" holidays end up with MORE work being needed to catch up? I'm more swamped than normal, and I've got, maybe, 20 minutes now before the truck shows up with this week's comics, and I'm oddly grumpy about everything.

First off, because I'm sure someone cares, that "3 week supply" I described last week RE: LOST GIRLS? Looks like I'm higher than a kite. We sold our last copy this morning. I've even brought back my copy from home (because I don't much care if I end up with a first printing or not) -- so, yeah, we ended up having a really good week last week, thanks to that $75-a-throw pornography.

I'm not really in much mood to review this week, sorry, but I did want to say that I was deeply weirded out by BLACK PANTHER #19, where both T'Challa and Doom tell Storm to shut up like a good girl, and, uh, she does. And gives the Panther a big kiss for it, too. Yikes.

Yeah, that's all I want to write for now. I'll try to do some real reviews for this week's books, if the loss of a day doesn't kill me...

I'd ask you what you think... but I didn't tell you what *I* did, did I?

-B

If they make a blogger reality show, I'm there: Graeme's reviews of the 8/30 books.

Is it wrong of me to be completely hooked on HGTV’s “DesignStar”? The reruns are on this morning, and Kate and I have just watched three in a row, and would probably happily watch the rest of the marathon if it wasn’t for the fact that we should, you know, leave the house and get some fresh air or something. I blame the end of Who Wants To Be A Superhero and the terrible gap it has left in my life. Project Runway just isn’t enough, as much as it tries… Oh, wait. This is a comics review blog, not “what reality shows I waste my life on,” isn’t it? Okay, have some comics.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #5: Dear DC, apparently you forgot to finish the cover for this issue, because the copy I have is somehow missing a speech balloon from Luthor that says “Stand back, Kent! This is a job for Lex Luthor!” and I know that there’s no way that you would’ve missed that opportunity intentionally. Mind you, it was just the first in a series of disappointments this comic brought, so maybe it’s just me. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the idea, but with the execution… Grant Morrison’s script doesn’t really put a foot wrong, but it’s too slow and so much exposition for what we already know that it drowns the action. Frank Quitely’s art is technically perfect, but it’s not right for this story, somehow… It’s too good, if that makes sense, too beautiful for something that needs a higher, more pulpish, quality (Just imagine a Curt Swan take, and the same story being told in fourteen pages, for example). I know that this is probably the best thing I read this week, and yet it still only felt like an Good book to me.

Oh dear.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #1: Except, of course, this is really issue 2. It doesn’t even offer a “story-so-far” for those who missed issue zero, just to emphasize the point, so pity the poor souls who pick this up expecting the start of a story. Quality-wise, this suffers from the same problems as the previous issue: Writing that comes so close to being pitch-perfect to the television series, before blowing it with something so offkey that it leaves you soured on everything that comes in the next few pages, and art that – while occasionally catching likenesses – is staged and definitely colored in a way much closer to your average superhero book instead of the very particular aesthetic of the show (The cliffhanger at the end of this issue is still unclear to me, and I think it’s an art thing – It feels as if there’s something in particular that I should’ve been able to tell from the double page spread, instead of just “Well, that doesn’t look good.”). Things aren’t helped by the scope of this storyline – it’s obvious that the returnees aren’t the real thing back from the dead, because there’s no way that if the dead son, brother and lover of the show’s three main characters had come back to life, that would’ve been reflected in the TV show at some point, and so the whole thing has a feel of “Well meaning but ultimately just Okay,” sadly.

THE BOYS #2: As Robson was saying to me in the store, this really should’ve been the second half of a double-page first issue – if not the first issue in and of itself, considering how much of that first issue feels wasted insofar of everything that was repeated this time around - in that it brings some humanity and attempt at subtlety that was lacking in the real first issue. Not that much, though; this is still a completely cynical book full of stereotypes and cheap humor, and still Crap for me, but at least this time it feels closer to a good version of what it’s aiming to be.

CIVIL WAR: YOUNG AVENGERS AND RUNAWAYS #2: With the introduction of Marvel Boy as a mind-controlled killing machine, does this mean that we can add this series to the long line of undoing Grant Morrison’s contributions to Marvel (even Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men seems to be getting into the act with its most recent two issues, depressingly)? This is Awful, which is kind of a shame, because there were parts of Zeb Wells’ script that were quite enjoyable (Especially where the two teams discuss their similarities); it’s just that the plot is entirely forced and unnatural – Why is SHIELD going after the Runaways now, when they’ve not done anything to draw attention to themselves anymore than all other illegal superheroes? Shouldn’t they be focusing on the actively anti-registration heroes? - and the art somehow both appealingly cartoony and lazily ugly, something that isn’t helped by the murky coloring. The end result is that I’m curious to read something Zeb Wells writes that he has some level of control over, and preferably a different artist, and I doubt that was the intention…

CSI: DYING IN THE GUTTERS #1: Wow. Just wow. Ignoring the procedural and murder mystery (because, surely, the murderer intended for Joe Quesada to be the victim?), this is a fascinating book just to see the axes that someone has to grind within the comic industry. Ed Brubaker portrayed as Joe Quesada’s minion! Chris Ryall as a paranoid angry editor-in-chief! And, much more interestingly, Joe Quesada as an asshole! Seriously, I have no idea what’s going on with the Joe Quesada in this book, but it’s worth picking up the book for just for his appearances, saying things like “Hey, the no-smoking thing in our comics is strictly for my image and public sympathy. Wolverine can’t smoke, but I can” while his arms around two silent smiling bimbos. Are they the TVs that he keeps on telling people he has to spare? Is writer Steven Grant trying to tell us that Joe is a transvestite pimp? Yes, I read the disclaimer that “characterizations in this story are dramatic embellishments and are in no way supposed to represent the actual people,” and I get that everyone is being portrayed as the Lying-In-The-Guttersverse version of themselves, but still, come on. There’s some crazy axe-grinding going on here from someone, whether it’s Steven Grant or someone else, and I’m going to keep reading the next few issues to see what else we’re going to see before this is done. Good, but for all the wrong reasons; if you’re going on the quality of the book instead of the strange carcrash feeling, then it’s low Eh - The set-up takes too long, the script has some very clunky “comics are cool” exposition to get the characters to the convention, and the art relies too heavily on the photo reference. That said, it has to be seen to be believed.

SOLO #12: I think my mind was melting by the time I finished this, but in a good way. Oddly enough, I think this made me realize what was missing from Mike Allred’s issue of this series – Mike loves pop, but he isn’t pop, he’s really well-done retro pastiche. Not that that’s a bad thing, but you see this and realize what the difference is: Brendan McCarthy, for all his faults, is as pop as they come, and this isn’t so much an anthology of short stories as 48 pages of freeflow pop culture remixed by the best DJ you’ve heard. Or, in this case, seen. Curt Swan meets Yellow Submarine meets Carmine Infantino meets the Bible meets David Lynch meets meets meets… It’s not to everyone’s tastes – if you aren’t a fan of random art poetry pieces, for example, you might have a problem with a few pieces here – but for me, it’s Excellent, and the best way for this series to end because, really, how do you follow this without it seeming like a letdown in enthusiasm at the very least?

THE TRIALS OF SHAZAM! #1: I don’t have the same problems with this as Brian; doing a grim-and-gritty Captain Marvel isn’t necessarily a bad idea, as such. Well, as long as the story is good, and not something that starts with children being kidnapped to be sacrificed for some black magic ritual and then jumps back in time for some exposition flashbacks that don’t really add anything to the black magic ritual plot. The art, too, has some interesting painterly touches matched to some terrible basic errors (Howard Porter, please, please, concentrate on basic human proportions). This is Eh, but hey! There’s still time for it to get better, right? I have no idea what makes me cautiously optimistic about this, but I’m hoping that it ends up hitting the promised mines of wonder and magic sooner rather than later.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #33: Who knew? Mike Carey + Pasqual Ferry = Jack Kirby. But not the Kirby of Fantastic Four, but the Kirby that went to DC and did Forever People and Jimmy Olsen, because this is “What if the Fantastic Four met the Forever People?” in almost every way that counts, making me wonder if the “God War” storyline isn’t just going to be a retread of Kirby’s Fourth World but in the Ultimate Marvel Universe. It feels… awkward, and awkwardly graverobbing, as well. Am I just getting too picky? It’s Good, and potentially better than that if it doesn’t just make you want to go back and read some real Jack Kirby. That said, Ferry’s art is still a thing of beauty, and maybe worth picking up the book for in and of itself.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Solo, because I’m a sucker for Blue Meanies that are actually yellow. PICK OF THE WEAK is Civil War: Young Avengers and Runaways, because I really liked that Marvel Boy miniseries, and would have much rather have seen the character ignored that turned into a generic “mindless deadly assassin” character that completely squanders the potential and ideas that Morrison had left behind. TRADE OF THE WEEK is a tough one; I feel as if I should give it to Lost Girls just because it’s easily the most newsworthy of the books released this week, but I personally wasn’t interested enough to want to spend $75 on it. Is that wrong of me? Probably. So, instead, Showcase Presents Batman Volume 1 wins instead, because even though I haven’t read that one either, how can you really go that far wrong with 500+ pages of Silver Age Batman for $16.99?

What else has everyone else been reading recently?

Better late than never: Hibbs on 8/23

Little late here, sorry --don't really have that much time as it is, so here's a small handful of reviews for the week. BATMAN #656: Y'know, if someone more cartoony was doing the art, say an Ed McGuiness or something, I'd probably really really be enjoying this. But I think Kubert's art is... oh, I don't know, too mannered maybe? for me. This is supposed to be manic and pop and fun, and, to me, it is stiff, and overly rendered, and way too formal. Besides that, how'd you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln? GOOD.

BATMAN & THE MAD MONK #1: I thought this was super-terrific, but I'm a Matt Wagner fanboy, I am. Since "super terrific" isn't a Savage Critic rating, let's call it VERY GOOD instead.

KADE SUN OF PERDITION #1: Absolutely stunning artwork, with a very so-so script. I also don't like the "universe building" going on here, with the "Ezra" character being so prominently focused. Books should work within their own orbit, IMO. OK

52 WEEK 16: Love/Hate relationship for me. I liked the sense of the plot and where this is moving, but the staging was so slipshod and amateur that I wanted to put my head through a wall. Where's security? how do Renee and Vic sneak in? Why the hell is Vic wearing that mask, which would seem to draw MORE attention, rather than less? How is it that Renee is screaming and yelling and using Kirbytech guns to shoot into the crowd, and the Marvel family, 20 feet over their head, don't even begin to notice? Feh and double feh. Not quite AWFUL, but still less than EH.

FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #3: Much MUCH nicer art, and the medicine goes down much smoother. If #1 & 2 looked like this, there'd be a positive buzz about the book. I still think the story is pretty bad, but the art pushed this way up to an OK

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1: OK, first off, that line up? Man, that's a seriously street level JLA, isn't it? Plus, there's no way Black Lightning would ever be on the JLA -- he already told those "Jive Turkeys" to blow! I also really think that I'm going to quickly go mad from the IDENTITY CRISIS-style multiple viewpoints, and overlapping narratives -- that's far too cerebral and "bookish" than I, personally, think the JLA should be. I like that style of writing on many things, but JLA should be a lot more slam-bam. Clearly, everyone's heart is in this, and it is written with depth (perhaps too much, but I shouldn't tell Ian Brill's stories for him), but I can't swing better than a High OK for how I felt about this at the end of the week.

WONDER WOMAN #2: Too many characters, way way too much previous continuity needing to be espoused, and, still, not even a hint of what or how or if Diana changed during the missing year, or what or why she's doing what she's doing now. Especially with it only coming out bi-monthly (rassen frassen), I'm going to need a real reason to care about this. And, no, Hercules really isn't it... EH

DARKNESS WOLVERINE: Also had really terrific art, in the service of what can't even be called a story. Barely a vignette. EH.

FELL #6: A solid base hit, but compared to the full out Home Runs the first five were, that feels a real let down. Interestingly, I think that maybe lateness is really going to hit this book hard. At Comix Experience, at least, first week sales of #6 were only about 60% of #5's -- one thought may be that because these are all one-offs, there's less of a compelling reason to "burn" for the next issue like a cliffhanger makes you do. Anyway, I thought this was a GOOD issue.

WALKING DEAD #30: I think shifting the action back to the prison blows most of the momentum of the story -- it sorta felt like Supporting Cast Theatre -- though it might work in a book, we'll see. But, like I said, I was pretty bored with this issue, and we'll go with a high OK

DAREDEVIL #88: Brube is firing on all cylinders, man -- he's just going through an amazing streak of great writing right now. VERY GOOD.

RED SONJA #13: This should have been the first issue. I really liked this one, bringing some depth and a solider backstory to what's really been a 2-D character. Believe it or not: GOOD.

ETERNALS #3: So weird to have such a blatant CIVIL WAR tie-in in this. That's going to go hard on the eventual TP, I think. What's really getting me, however, is that it just doesn't read like a Gaiman comic, at all. Extremely EH.

HEROES FOR HIRE #1: On the one hand, I pretty much disbelieve the motivations of the key cast members for being on the "pro" side; on the other hand, this was reasonably dopey fun that sold much much better than I would have really imagined. I intensely disliked the new Tarantula chick who licked the blood from her weapons though -- ew! EH

NEW AVENGERS #23: I was pretty much digging it until the Cheaty McCheaters of "And then she blew the island up and killed everyone" without any, y'know, how. But, still, this, like the last 2 issues that focused on one character, have pretty much been the best issues of Bendis' AVENGERS work so far. A low GOOD.

ULTIMATES ANNUAL #2: Jeff asked me, at the store, what I thought of this and I stood there for 15 seconds trying to remember if I had even read it or not. I *thought* I had, but I couldn't remember a single event for the comic. That's never ever a good sign. I'll also say that sales were way down from last year's annual, where it sold (for me) 95% of the parent title. So far here we're at about 55%. Ruh roh. The default rating for "I can't remember if I even read in the first place, something that I did read 2 days before" is AWFUL.

SUPERGIRL #9: Ugh, skeevy. AWFUL.

JACK OF FABLES #2: There's a line in here, something along the lines of "Well, I'm in no danger, I'm Jack of the Fables, and I always win!", and my interest-o-meter just went shuddering down by 50%. You want something much much more in a line-expansion like this. OK

ASTONISHING X-MEN #16: The big moment, the line that Graeme built up so much in his review, and I can't remember exactly how I phrased it then! Try this: basically, this is to Joss Whedon and (nee) UNCANNY X-MEN #133, as SUPERMAN RETURNS is to Bryan Singer and SUPERMAN (nee :THE MOVIE) -- its a glowing love letter. The difference is that Whedon takes the template (Wolverine: ALONE!), and twists it with Kitty as the protagonist. Plus Kitty's spit-take last line was a thing of joy and beauty. I enjoyed this tremendously, and will give it a rare EXCELLENT.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Well, you know how that one turns out, anyway -- ASTONISHING X-MEN #16.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Of what I wrote about here, SUPERGIRL #9. BUt I probably liked SWAMP THING #29 less, really.

GN/TP OF THE WEEK: It's a really really good week for books. BATMAN & THE MONSTER MEN is great stuff (though somewhat shockingly bereft of anything but the comic -- no intro, no nuthin'), and I was seriously grooving on the first 80% of DEATH NOTE v7, but then they start a new story in the last 20%, and it marred my enjoyment of the intensity of the conclusion of the previous story. I also think the FALLEN ANGEL (IDW) TP is gorgeous to look at, and is some interesting work, but if I had to pick just one thing, then I'm probably going to go with PROMETHEA v5, if you didn't buy it in the HC.

That's what I thought.... how about you?

-B

More than usually Superhero-centric: Graeme's reviews of the 8/23 books.

Awww, Major Victory! How could they get rid of you?!? I mean, yeah, Feedback’s really into the whole thing and Fat Momma has not only the inspirational thing but the theme song, but still… You were the best of all of the contestants on Who Wants To Be A Superhero?. You were the only one who deserved your own Sci-Fi Channel movie. And now you’re… gone… (Blame Hibbs. He’s the one who got me watching the show in the first place, the bastard.)

ASTONISHING X-MEN #16: Hibbs has a one-line review of this that’s so perfect that, if he doesn’t have time to write his own reviews this week, I’m going to come back on here on Wednesday just to post it. He was a fan, though, but my own enthusiasm for this book is being defeated by the schedule… This issue was Good, but felt too inconsequential for something that I’ve waited two months for. Part of that comes from the lack of forward motion in the main plot; as fun as the Kitty/Emma confrontation was, that and the dramatic reveal of the fifth member of the Hellfire Club, were the only real plot movements in this issue, with pages being lost on the not-as-funny-as-Joss-thinks-it-is infantilized Wolverine joke and the Ord/Breakworld subplot that gets a quarter of the issue for something that could just as easily be done in two pages. With two issues left in this story arc, it feels as if there’s a lot of resolution and explanation to be done, and the pacing so far makes me think that it’ll either be rushed or done half-assed, much in the same was as the end of the last arc. Still, it’s very pretty.

BATMAN #656: Now, this is much better than the last issue, both playful and intelligently done, with a nice tone of absurdity throughout the whole thing (The narration helps immensely with that: Both “Man-bats. Ninja Man-bats. Alarming twist” and “Plan B switches to plan C, just for a second. Then plan D kicks in” bring in a dry sense of humor to add to the traditional clipped Bat-tone). Immediately from the first panel, the pop-art background acts as meta-commentary to the story, winking to the reader without undercutting whatever action that’s going on at the same time, and managing to make the fight sequence simultaneously old-school and contemporary. It’d be a neat trick in any superhero book, but to do it in a Batman book, considering Batman’s history with pop-art and over-the-top sound effects – Holy Adam West! – makes it something ever better. Beyond the main part of the book, everything else continues the raised eyebrow bemusement: Talia’s dialogue, the flashback to a love scene Batman naked except for his mask (and his costume neatly laid out beside him), Grant Morrison’s speaking-through-Batman commentary on the comic itself (“…There’s a message here somewhere. I know if I just stare hard enough…” and, later, “If there’s one thing I hate… it’s art with no content.”). It’s a Batman book with the energy and fun of the best of Morrison’s Seven Soldiers books, and Excellent.

BATMAN AND THE MAD MONK #1: So, I didn’t read Matt Wagner’s first mini-series from this series (Batman and the Monster Men, I think it was called?), but this has me interested in picking up the trade. Taking cues both from the earlier Batman comics and Frank Miller’s Year One, this manages to merge the two into some kind of uber-pulp, with tough-guy narration (“I don’t give them time to react. They’re big, but soft around the middle. Slow. Two are down before they even know what hit them.” And that’s Jim Gordon talking.), hard-boiled action and a lovely cartoony look – with beautiful coloring from Dave Stewart – that just works really well. It’s not a Batman book for everyone, because again it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s Very Good and a somewhat strange realization that there are a lot of great Batman comics out right now. Superman’s comics don’t suck, either, and Wonder Woman… well, you’ll find out later. But what’s the world coming to when DC seems to be bothering about their biggest franchises?

DAREDEVIL #88: Ed Brubaker’s really rather good at these one-issue breathers after initial story-arcs, isn’t he? His Nomad one-off in Captain America was a highlight of his first year on that book, and this whatever happened to Foggy Nelson gives you just enough shakes and shivers to explain the whys for what went before and give you all new questions for future storylines. Fill-in artist David Aja apes Michael Lark’s texture but not his linework, with the result being something that reminded me, weirdly enough, of the art from Where The Wild Things Are. That aside, this was Good, and I’m looking forward to Daredevil in Paris next month, as well.

FLASH: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #3: The bad: A fill-in on the third issue of a book doesn’t bode well. The good: Karl Kerschl’s fill-in art is the best that this book has looked, clean and easy to understand against regular artist Ken Lashley’s over-rendered work, and it helps the book be readable for the first time this series (There’s actually a complete fill-in art team this issue, unusually – Fill-in penciller, inker and colorists – so perhaps the editor is trying to sort out some of the visual problems from earlier issues?). The script still contains more than its fair share of clunky dialogue and again a cliffhanger that doesn’t have that much dramatic tension, but it’s astounding how much better this book is when it’s not so difficult to look at. Eh, but a step in the right direction, at least.

HEROES FOR HIRE #1: I’m convinced that Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti got paid by the word for this book, considering how much narration and exposition that’s contained between the covers of this book. I know it’s a first issue introducing a lot of characters that readers probably haven’t really seen before – the one exception being Black Cat, who noticably is one of only three regulars in the book that don’t get any introduction at all (the others being Paladin and, weirdly enough, Orca. Is there a massive Orca fan contingent out there I’m not aware of?) – but still, good Lord, this is a verbose book. It’s not a bad book, though; Billy Tucci’s art is horribly inconsistent but competent, and the idea behind it is fun enough. Shame it had to start with a Civil War tie-in – and yet again, the pro-registration side is made to look unsympathetic, with Misty Knight comparing forced registration to slavery and the regime in communist China – but give it a couple of issues, and things might be different… For now, it’s Okay, and has potential to be better when Marvel stops being tied up in political allegory land.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1: Say what you like about Brad Meltzer, but you can’t deny that he isn’t afraid to stick his favorite characters in the Justice League for no obvious reason whatsoever. Vixen! Black Lightning! Arsenal! Red Tornado! Because no-one demanded it apart from Brad himself! For everything that’s interesting about the new series – My favorite is the anti-Mister Miracle, complete with Father Box and Hush Tube, although the reprinted panels from the Red Tornado’s first meeting with Kathy is a very cute touch – it fails for me because the structure is so close to that of Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, down to the multi-character narration and pretentious “This is a story about…” introduction to each character (not to mention the layout of the last page title and credits); it feels unoriginal and forced to try and evoke the earlier success. Maybe later issues will feel more organically – and explain why this particular league exists with these particular characters – but for now, it’s simply Eh.

NEW AVENGERS #23: Two thoughts: 1) Well, the Civil War crossovers are definitely bringing out the best in Brian Bendis, who’s getting to do the character work that’s his strength while the main CW book does the heavy plot-lifting, and 2) Wow, they’re really making Iron Man into a bastard. For those who haven’t seen this issue, this is the one where Iron Man tells Spider-Woman that, unlike everyone on every message board on the planet, she doesn’t get to pick what side she’s on because he doesn’t like her, and by the way, she’s under arrest. By this rate, by the time that Civil War ends, Tony Stark will have shaved his goatee into a Hitler moustache and be demanding that he gets Heiled whenever he enters a room, and Joe Quesada will still be insisting that Marvel is trying to provide a balanced viewpoint to this story. Meanwhile – and although Bendis’s introduction to his upcoming Spider-Woman series is fun in its own right – the real star of this issue is Olivier Copiel, whose work this issue puts most of Marvel’s current set of Young Guns to shame. Good.

SUPERGIRL #9: This may be some kind of superhero comic Stockholm Syndrome speaking, but I didn’t hate this. I didn’t really like it either, but when you compare it to the issue I read two months ago, then it might be about to win Most Improved Title of 2006, if only because there’s no kissing-your-cousin-while-he-gropes-your-ass action. While Ian Churchill is still incredibly the wrong artist to be drawing this series (Call me picky, but I’d prefer someone who has a basic grasp of anatomy), but for all his mistakes, there was something in Joe Kelly’s basic idea of a Supergirl who doesn’t have any idea who she is or who she’s supposed to be that made me almost enjoy this issue. Eh, which I wouldn’t have believed possible two months ago.

SUPERMARKET #4: It had to happen, of course, but the ending of this series felt completely anti-climactic. It just kind of… stopped, which was a shame, because the first three issues had held together really well. It’s not that the reasoning of the end that disappoints, but the execution. After the two families having chased Pella for so long, when they catch her, we don’t get enough of an explanation as to why they were chasing her – there’s a McGuffin reason, but it’s very vague (Pella is the key to a vault containing a fortune, but what does that actually mean? We don’t find out, but instead cut to the next scene where she’s done whatever her key thing is and they’re inside the vault). Everything becomes deux ex machina: Pella manages to disassemble the supermarket, although what that means isn’t really explored, the bad guys just disappear (it’s even commented on in the story, but never explained), and the much needed epilogue never comes. It’s like finishing a story with “And then I saved the world and became really famous the end.” Kristian Donaldson saves the day, though, with art and coloring that makes the frustrating story go down easily. That said, it’s still, sadly, Eh.

WONDER WOMAN #2: Just like Batman, this second issue is better than the first, focusing on filling in the blanks from the previous issue and doing some character building. While there are still some fannish shout-outs, unlike the last issue, they’re of the kind that play less to the comic fanboys than a more mainstream audience (Especially the return of the costume change twirl from the ‘70s TV show at the end of the issue), and don’t really interrupt the flow of the story... which is nice. It’s still nothing more than old-style superhero thrills that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s done so well that it’s one of the more enjoyable things I’ve read this week. Who knew? Good.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Batman, which was not just well-done fun, but well-done clever fun. PICK OF THE WEAK is, depressingly, Supermarket, which should’ve been so much better. I don’t have a TRADE OF THE WEEK, because I spent too much of the last week reading the second volume of Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, which contains the spectacular Spider-Lizard. You want high-concept? He’s Spider-Man… infected by Curt Conner’s Lizard serum! There’s your high concept right there, true believers!

…

…Yeah, you’re right. My brain may have turned to mush. It's all from watching Who Wants To Be A Superhero?. That's enough to make anyone lose their mind.

Blame Hibbs.

Circus daze and 8/16 by Hibbs

So, we took Ben to the Circus on Saturday afternoon. 2 is the perfect age for the Circus, really -- old enough to appreciate the spectacle, young enough not to see the strings. I sorta think the Circus is a scam -- the $13 programs, the $18 toys (which I firmly said no to), the $5 bag of stale-ish popcorn. In fact, when Grandmother Michele bought the tickets, I had asked for good seats, but not the top-line ones. Somehow, she was told the $60 seats were sold out, so being a very VERY cool Grandmother, she opted for the super-expensive seats. But when we got to the Oakland Coliseum, it was clear there were plenty of $60 unsold. I felt like I had "rube" stapled to my forehead.

On the other hand, the seats she bought were "Circus Celebrity" passes, and, 'round about the half-way point of the show, they ushered us Celebrities out onto the circus floor, and put us in a trolley, where we were right in the middle of the show for about 15 minutes. The cars had a drum built into them, and Ben had a blast pounding on the drums while acrobats and clowns and Cossacks swirled around us.

The Circus has changed a lot since I was a kid. I was, dunno, eight maybe, the last time I went to the Circus (at Madison Square Garden), and that was a proper three-ring event. Our Circus was just one ring, boo. Plus, no Big Cats. Double boo!

The A#1 weirdest thing, and I have to think this is because of Cirque Du Soliel and the like, is that the Circus now has a PLOT.

As the show opens, they bring in a "lucky family" to star in the show -- "Dad" becomes the ringmaster, Mom a trapeze artist, and the Daughter a dancer. But the Son doesn't know what he wants to be, so the rest of the show becomes "What can 'Dan' be at the Circus?"

Between every act, they go back to the story -- sometimes with songs, sometimes with video -- and I'd have to say that at least 10% of the performance was this stupid meta-story about "Dan"

A lot of this was pre-recorded, and there was an awful lot of terrible lip-synching going on. And badly animated elephants talking all "street", ow.

One of the things I wondered about the most was just how pre-set and pre-recorded a lot of it was. Yes, there was spectacle and explosions and wonderment, but I wonder how they pull that off night after night in venues that are probably different sizes and shapes every leg of the trip. You know what I mean? How do you hit marks, or lay out the props and the safety equipment correctly when the venue is a different size on each stop?

Doing quick and sloppy math in my head, with the number of performers involved (though many did double and triple duty), the transportation costs, the venue and insurance costs, and so on, I really wonder if they can even break-even on attendance alone. Plus, our matinee performance was, maybe, 2/3 full (at best) -- makes that $5 popcorn make a little more sense.

But, at the end of the day, only one thing mattered, and that was Ben had a GREAT time, his eyes as wide as saucers for most of the show. Circuses are really for two-year olds, and that's OK.

Now, how about some of them thar comical books?

52 WEEK 15: I always liked Booster Gold as a concept -- someone who came to heroism for all the wrong reasons, and in all the wrong ways (remember: he was a thief). So, I'll shed a tear for Booster. Booster Gold is dead, but long live Michael Carter, whom, I assume we'll find out is in the "Supernova" costume. A solidly OK issue, leaning upwards again.

CATWOMAN #58: The problem here is there just isn't any drama in Angle Man or Film Freak knowing anything -- they're strictly D-list adversaries. And I don't really buy that Zatanna would do any more mind-wiping, and I'm getting frustrated by Magic in the DCU. We're told the rules have changed, but everything seems to work out exactly the same. AWFUL.

CHECKMATE #5: I've still yet to find any character here I have any affection for, or, frankly, interest in. The cast and scope of this is too large to not have a POV character we can root for. Can't swing more than an OK.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #3: Sorta the same issue here, really, with the understanding I like the core idea better. But I find the execution to be lazy ("building a corps" would have been a better direction), so EH.

SHADOWPACT #4: DC is publishing way WAY too many third-string titles at once. You should see my DC rack, all one-quarter cover at best. Adding 20 new titles (or whatever it is) all at once -- especially when so few of them seem like they have long-term goals or ideas -- just fragments the audience. We sold 40 copies of SHADOWPACT #1, 33 of #2, 30 of #3, and we're down to 19 in the first week of #4. If there were not 19 other #1s in the last 6 months, maybe this would have held its audience. Nor does it help this is pretty EH.

PHONOGRAM #1: HELLBLAZER meets SCOOTER GIRL, right? And I thought it worked really well, at that. We'll see if it continues to live up to the promise of this first issue, but I will go with a tentative GOOD.

CIVIL WAR X-MEN #2: Sure, I believe the government is going to make thier sentinels look more like Gundam robot suits! Always nice to see the original team in action, though. OK

CLAWS #1: About 4 pages in, I became convinced that Linser stopped drawing this, and Amanda Connor stepped in. I can't imagine that people who like Linser for DAWN are going to care for this bigfoot cartooning one tiny bit. I found the style appealing, but frustratingly light for a $3.99 cover price. EH.

STAR TREK THE MANGA v1: You know they have no idea what they're doing when the first story is about how K&S inadvertently helped create The Borg. Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew! It also doesn't help when it appears half of the artists have never seen the show, and have no idea what the sets and costumes look like. CRAP. What I can (sorta) recommend to scratch that "Classic Trek" itch is www.newvoyages.com, a fan film site where they appear to be trying to do the 4th and 5th seasons of the original show. The sets and costumes and props and generally "feel" is pretty impeccable, even if the acting needs a bit of work. Apparently the next episode will have a DC Fontana script, and a appearance by Walter Koenig. And I was horribly disturbed by th Comedy Central Roast of Shatner. Wow, that Farrah Fawcet sure is scary, ain't she? And I thought it was supposed to be about Shatner, but most of the thing was comedians I've never heard of insulting OTHER comedians I've never heard of. Seemed like under 10% of it had anything to do with Shat.

WASTELAND #2: I liked this much better than the first issue -- probably because there's more forward motion, an antagonist, and less world-building needed. A solid GOOD.

DEADMAN #1: AWFUL.

THE BOYS #1: What's funny is that "Boys" ships the same week as "Girls". Sadly, that was really the only thing funny here -- this is pretty rote by-the-numbers-for-Garth stuff, and Darick's art, while lovely, really bugged me every time that Shaun of the Dead guy appeared. Its conceptual that this could end up some place very fun, but for now, I think I have to go with an AWFUL.

Meh, that's all I have to say this week. I'm tired, after covering Rob's birthday (and giving him an extra day on top of that, since o0ne day off in the middle of a work week is no fun at all)

PICK OF THE WEEK: Either PHONOGRAM #1 or WASTELAND #2 are well worth your hard-earned comics dollars.

PCIK OF THE WEAK: Dude, easily STAR TREK: THE MANGA.

TP/GN OF THE WEEK: There's no contest, because Eric Shanower's ADVENTURES IN OZ is lovely, fun, entertaining and great for kids. The $75 HC is even nicer, with a REALLY extensive "behind the scenes" section that rival's any "ABSOLUTE" edition. Great stuff!

I also enjoyed the PLASTIC MAN ARCHIVES v8 HC, and portions of the JUSTICE SOCIETY (1970s) TP -- those couple of issue by Wally Wood are just eye-poppingly lovely, even when buried by the inks. What I just don't understand is why not one of these individual stories had credits, nor was there any title page laying them out? What's up with that?

What did YOU think?

-B

Sunday Night Fever: Graeme's Review of the 8/16 books.

Have you ever had a weekend where nothing goes to plan? All I’m saying is this: I didn’t get to Jeff’s garage sale yesterday, but I did manage to spend a number of hours in Ikea waiting for our current houseguest to choose between two mattresses that seemed completely identical to me. Is it any wonder that a grown man will turn to comics in such a world as unfriendly to my plans as this? 52 WEEK FIFTEEN: So, there’s a theory I’ve seen floating around the internets about the way that Booster proves the existence of predestination in the DC Universe just before his “death” (Because, come on, there’s no way that he’s really dead – Ignoring the unsubtle cover that gives away that plot twist in the most unsubtle way ever, or even the Supernova/Booster exchange that screams both “I was written by Mark Waid” and “Supernova is Booster Gold through some strange time travel plot twist” – Booster’s slated for a two-page origin later on in the run, which suggests that he’s coming back around that time). It comes from Skeets’ future-historical records of what happened that night (“A car-jacking on 33rd… A power blackout in the Bakerline area…”), and Booster apparently later on causing those events. Except… he doesn’t. He does car-jack someone’s car (jack someone’s car? Is that how you say it?), but according to the art, it was on 11.1st, not 33rd. And, yeah, he does cause a blackout… but in the Midtown area (as mentioned in the dialogue). Either these are my misreadings, mistakes that weren’t caught, or more misdirection and proof that history is broken by the creators… Either way, this issue follows up on last week’s action-packed attempt to get all of the plots moving again after a couple of issues’ worth of hijacking by Ralph Dibny and Black Adam, and despite the unbelievable death of Booster Gold, the series seems to be regaining some sense of immediacy and momentum. A low Good, but I may be being swayed by the lack of Ralph Dibny-abuse.

THE BOYS #1: Yeah, I don’t get why so many people seemed to be getting excited about this. With a set-up that feels about five years out of date (and also recycled from other Garth Ennis books: Haven’t we seen the hard military bastard and over-the-top superhero parodies before?), nothing in this book feels genuine – A problem when it comes to the motivation of one of the two main characters (Apparently played by Simon Pegg, in a Bryan Hitch-like jaw-dropping modeling of characters after real life actors moment) centering around the sudden death of his true love. It reads like Garth Ennis writing a parody of Garth Ennis without any spark of originality, or enthusiasm, or anything other than cynicism (There’s a weird mysognistic undertow, as well, considering that there are only two women in the book, and the one that doesn’t exist only to die is shown as powerless to the sexual charms of a man she hates; It may just be Garth’s usual machismo going overboard, though). Darick Robertson’s art is Okay, but the book itself is pretty much Crap.

CASANOVA #3: You have to love a book that starts in a pie store in Oakland and freewheels from there, and if you disagree, then you’re just plain wrong. I admit, I’m biased; I’ve been completely head over heels for this since reading the first issue in PDF format before it was released. Of course, I forgot to buy the second issue, because my family was in town and I was sporadic in my comic shopping and and and I am shit. Seeing this issue in the store this weekend made me get the second issue as well, and the first, because I wanted to read it like a real comic for a change. Reading all three in a row is like having your head blown in a good way, but this third issue may be the best yet – The plot is easier to follow while the execution is both more structured and more playful; Matt Fraction’s script keeps veering between the personal and the hardboiled, and Gabriel Ba’s art is completely kirbymignolamcmahonscrumptuous. Excellent, and that’s before you get to Fraction’s stream-of-consciousness text piece, which may just be my favorite part of the book somehow…

CLAWS #1: God knows how this happened, but this is a really enjoyable romp of a book. Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s writing, which has never really worked for me in any other book, completely clicks here with an old-school ridiculous plot and a fun script full of wiseass dialogue (Co-stars Wolverine and the Black Cat do the bickering duo thrown together in dire circumstances very well; the Cat so much so that I’m almost sold on her next port of call, Palmiotti and Gray’s Heroes for Hire ongoing), and Joe Linser’s linework has a cartoony quality that I’d never imagined from his airbrushed “Dawn” covers of yore. Maybe I’ve just been overloading myself on Essential Peter Parker this week – I probably have – but this is Very Good, and much better than I’d expected from the solicit and previews.

DEADMAN #1: Continuing DC’s new tradition of sending bloggers preview issues of books that they must know wouldn’t get the best reception (like Martian Manhunter a couple of weeks ago), this came in the mail last week: Bruce Jones’ latest entry in his “I have some strange issues and I want to work them out with you, dear reader” career. This new Vertigo series has nothing to do with Boston Brand, and it’s all the worse for it: New dead man Brandon Cayce would rather relive his girlfriend cheating on him than wear a cool red costume with a large D on his chest. It’s a slow first issue, but there’s something oddly nostalgic about it, like something from around when Vertigo launched. Maybe it’s John Watkiss’s (wonderful) blocky art, or the awkward urge to be politically relevant in modern times no matter how clumsy. It’s probably that nostalgia at work that makes me want to come back next issue and see just what happens next; either that, or it really is Okay.

PHONOGRAM #1: I have no idea; it had sold out by Thursday at the store, which I’m taking to be a good sign. I’ll have to track it down, though, because if ever there was a book meant for someone like me who secretly thinks that Menswear’s debut album is kind of good, this was probably it.

THUNDERBOLTS #105: When the biggest surprise a book like this can throw at you is the identity of the inker – Yeah, like you expected Gary Erskine, of The Filth and The Authority and various less mainstream projects, fame to be working over Tom Gummett’s pencils – then that probably says something about the book, right…? This is an old-fashioned Marvel book in exactly the worst ways you’d expect: Full of continuity and characters that you have no idea who they are or what they’re doing and why. It’s also a Civil War crossover, which means that not that much is really allowed to happen in and of itself because the massive crossover has to be serviced at all costs, so all the real story is in subplot and therefore somewhat impenetrable to new readers. In other words, it’s kind of the worst of both worlds right now, but nonetheless, done with such gusto (No other word seems as appropriate. Except, maybe, “gumption”) that you kind of have to admire it nonetheless. It’s not good, but it’s professional and it does exactly what you expect it to do, which has to count for something. An Eh kind of something, but that’s better than nothing last time I checked. PICK OF THE WEEK is Casanova, and if you haven’t picked it up at all yet but would like something that crosses genre with the personal with the fantastical with an air of “anything can happen in the next half hour!” like Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, you owe it to yourself to pick up the first three issues and read them in one sitting. PICK OF THE WEAK is The Boys, and I’m expecting everyone to disagree with me about that one within about three minutes of posting this. But instead of dwelling on that, let me tell you all of my latest addiction, and this week’s TRADE OF THE WEEK: Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. I’m blaming it on last week’s Essential Marvel Team-Up, but more than anything, I’ve been craving some shitty 1970s Spider-Man action just like I grew up reading, and that’s something that Essential Peter Parker provides like nothing else. Never mind Amazing’s timeless classics, I want dated topical stories about Flash Thompson’s Vietnamese girlfriend Sha-Shan and her evil husband, Brother Power. I want to read about the White Tiger and his student activism on the Empire State University campus. And, much more importantly, I want to read about an evil DJ in a New York nightclub who hypnotizes people in a story called “Spiderman Night Fever”.

Throughout the whole thing, I was left with a wish that Bill Mantlo could somehow be healthy and writing Spider-Man during Civil War, just so I could read thought balloons like “Face it, Parker! You might be a big-shot with the Avengers and Tony Stark’s best buddy - - but Captain America hates you and Jolly Jonah Jameson wants to sue you for fraud! No matter what happens, whenever I win - - I LOSE!”

What else has everyone else been reading?

Not exactly the Hat Trick: Hibbs on late comics

Victim of no time today -- the truck actually showed up at 11:45 today (about 2 hours earlier than usual), and I hadn't even finished my morning paperwork routine by then. There's also the little problem of not being very excited about much of anything last week -- ANNIHILATION #1 was OK, 52 WEEK 14 was OK SHE HULK #10 was OK ... all in all even the high spots were pretty much just "OK" (Damn you five week shipping months, damn you!!). Even the stuff that kinda sucked didn't, I didn't think, suck that bad -- MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1 was just kind of generically EH, rather than Graeme's completely CRAP attack on it.

Really the only book that I had anything valuable to say about was GREEN ARROW #65 that kinda pissed me off by not even trying to explain the pre-OYL cliffhanger that it "resolved" this issue.

But, then, I noticed the little tidbit of news about CIVIL WAR'S new shipping schedule (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=80636) (In a nutshell: CW #4 is pushed back 5 more weeks, #5 will run 2 months after that, and so on.... plus ASM, FF are delayed, as is the launch of PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL... and almost certainly THOR and MIGHTY AVENGERS, too), and I need to vent. I was going to do it on the CBIA, but then I thought, well, let's just make it public and link it there, and everyone can play along.

Look, man, this is fucked up.

CIVIL WAR has been one of the few legitimate home run hits that Marvel has had -- it is both connecting with the core Marvel reader, but it is directly and specifically bringing "back" "Lapsed" readers, and new faces to their core properties.

To have the schedule slip this badly is, flatly, unconscionable.

History shows us that when books like this start to slip, they end up with a cascade effect. I laughed when I saw the projected dates for #6 & 7 as being back on a monthly schedule after #5's big-ass delay -- that seems... unlikely? improbable? pure fiction?

The momentum of the story (which has been, let me add, come in fits and starts, with the "waiting for a bus" plan of shipping [wait 20 minutes, then 3 show up at once]) is going to be gutted, and that means one thing: lost sales. How much, how many? Dunno, but there WILL be some... and who is going to have to bear the cost? Yessir, the retailer.

This is magnifying a thousand fold by it being a Big Ass Crossover That Affects Every Book -- you know, it really sucks when ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN ships months late, but, at least, that doesn't affect anything other than ALL-STAR. CIVIL WAR, on the other hand, affects each and every Marvel title, and is, at the very least delaying FF and ASM by a month. Books that I depend upon for their steady cashflow. It is, as noted above, delaying other books that were set to launch out of CW -- that's more cashflow I'm being denied.

So, it is fucked up.

There have been (and continue to be) a number of very high profile, spectacularly late comics lately, and it needs to S-T-O-P. Stop fucking soliciting things that aren't far enough along the creation process to have a CHANCE of shipping. This isn't Marvel-exclusive, by any means -- how is it even POSSIBLE that ALL-STAR BATMAN & ROBIN #5 was originally solicited for April '06, then rescheduled for July '06, and now they're telling us NO-FUCKING-VEMBER for it. How can that be?

I mean, I wasn't the only person who laughed (defensively, in pain and fear) when they announced Adam Hughes on ALL-STAR WONDER WOMAN, right? I mean, why not retitle the whole ALL-STAR line as the ALL-LATE line?

This shit needs to stop, and it needs to stop now. We don't need more late comics. We don't need any more ULTIMATE HULK VS WOLVERINE #3 or DAREDEVIL FATHER #6. We don't need the core books of the universe lines, like WONDER WOMAN or JUSTICE LEAGUE moving to 6 week schedules because the creators can't hack monthly. No, damn it, 9 issues a year is NOT acceptable on what has to be a monthly book, I don't care what pedigree the talent has.

There is art, and there is commerce, but as a retailer, and for the sake of the industry, there has to be a regular churn of ongoing titles to provide the cash flow to keep everyone going. That's just a bottom line reality.

But as pathetic as ALL-STAR anything and DAREDEVIL: FATHER have become, the problems are multiplied a thousand-fold for a core-universe crossover book like CIVIL WAR.

June's sales chart says that $21.24 million dollars of comics were in the Top 300, of that, CIVIL WAR #2 was nearly $760,000 of that -- what's that? about 3.5% of the month's total? CIVIL WAR is now "on hold" for a month (then another month, after that), and that's more than 3% of the month's dollars just gone *snap*, like that.

It kills confidence in Marvel as a brand among consumers, as the domino affect cascades across the whole line. YOU CAN NOT DO THIS WITH CROSSOVERS.

Even if you have to replace George Perez with Ron Lim.

There are theories of whose "fault" this is -- maybe it is the artist, maybe it is the writer, and I say no, none of that matters: it is the publisher.

ASSHAT OF THE WEEK: goes to Marvel Comics.

What do you think?

-B

Garage Sale THIS Coming Saturday!! (Plus, Comic Book Reviews.)

First, the big news: the garage sale is this upcoming Saturday, the 19th, and I'm not even remotely prepared. I've got eight longboxes of comics still to sort through so you'll probably get an update on Thursday (and, God help you, Friday). But I can tell you this: it's not going to be in a garage. Or near a garage. It's being held on Cortland Avenue, the main strip of lovely Bernal Heights, on the block between Andover and Moultrie. (See here for a handy Google map.) Last year, nobody would've showed for my sale if it hadn't been for the awesome people who heard about it through this blog or visiting CE. This year, average passerby will have no choice but to stumble over my longboxes, tremble in awe at my cut-rate DVD collection, marvel at how much time and money I wasted on mint-on-card action figures--and pick up some mediocre but perfect condition PS2 games at the rate such items deserve. Currently, my plan for the comics is to put 'em at a quarter apiece, but I'll mark it down to 20 for $4.00, which is still a pretty good deal, and I'm gonna have a ton of dollar manga and 5 for $10 trades. Anyway, you'll get another update before it happens with bus routes and everything, but mark your calendar: Saturday, August 19, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., here.

Second: the comic books. Unfortunately, our giddiness over last week's hat trick found its counterpoint Friday as Hibbs, G., and me looked at the week's new comics. "You know," Hibbs said. "If these books came out last week, I doubt I could have forced myself to write reviews. Because it's all just so meh." It seems unlikely that we'll get to a hat trick this week, and if we do, it'll be because Graeme wanted to talk about "Punchy Punchy Super-Hero," I'm worried no one's gonna show up for my garage sale and I'll have thrown out my back for nothing, and Brian will want to show off Ben's burgeoning understanding of superstring theory. Poor comics. What fair-weather friends you have in the Savage Critics.

52 WEEK #14: Eric Powell drawing Metamorpho is like having some aberrant sexual fantasy fulfilled before ever realizing that you had it--I'm counting the days as to when baby's gonna draw that sexy, sexy Element Man again. The rest of the issue, though, was highly OK--I quite liked the Khandaq stuff, and the mad scientist stuff was great (although, you know, if they had set up the Metal Men stuff in the early issues, it would have been even better). All every issue needs from here on out is a new origin of Metamorpho drawn by Eric Powell and we'll be set!

ANNIHILATION #1: Can't top Graeme's hilariously on-point review, other than to say that this did work for me, not so much because of the "OMFG! Galactus!!11!" factor but that there's a jump in time between the minis and this first issue so the characters have already changed and different relationships exist than the ones originally presented--it kinda reminded me of The Two Towers section of LOTR, weirdly. So it's The Lord of the Rings meets the movie of Starship Troopers but starring every cosmic c-list Marvel character from the '70s (with underwhelming art). Good enough for me, although without (a) a Frodo character, and (b) some bitchin' maps, it may not pay off nearly as well as the set-up.

BEYOND #2: Marvel poops so many mediocre minis out of its butt, I figured this would be more of the same. But I liked Scott Kolins' art here (c'mon, you really didn't like that view of the stitched together planet, with the volcano rising out of the lake and stuff?) and Dwayne McDuffie's script keeps everything lively--again, Graeme's description of this as Secret Wars told like it was the first season of Lost is really apt. Lowish Good because I think the characters are a little too lame for my taste plus the ending makes me leery that McDuffie is gonna try the whole "No, really, my take on [character presented on last page] was awesome! Here, lemme show you again!" maneuver that comic book creators occasionally try and rarely pull off.

DEVI #2: Meet issue #2, which really should have been issue #1. There's some neat stuff here--I really like the writer's attempt to create an Indian equivalent of Gotham City where a similar mingling of past and present urban motifs creates very different results from what you see in Batman's home town--and the art is very pretty and solid in some places (and very Top Cow Studios in others). It's far from great, but it beats the hell out of that Spider-Man: India codswollop from last year. Plus? Some of the oddest fuckin' text pieces you will ever read. So, yeah, OK.

ESCAPISTS #2: The charm takes a hit in issue #2 and there's probably a lot of reasons for it--the art becomes more of a muddle, for example--but I blame the pacing, as the absurdly effortless and breezy first issue becomes a huffy-puffy affair with excerpts from the creative team's new comic, an adventure of our new Escapist, and a possible romantic triangle jammed into one issue with all the indelicacy of someone jumping up and down on their too-full suitcase. (When the only female character is suddenly prone to kissing people on cheeks to express support, you know some vital piece of the creative engine isn't working like it should.) Still fun and interesting--at the risk of sounding like a dick, I think BKV is one of the few mainstream comics writers that respects (i.e., flogs the hell out of)the power of a good metaphor as much as top-notch prose writers do--but a real let-down from last issue. OK.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1: Yeah, what Graeme said. Plus, why'd they give him a skrull chin? Is that a clever nod to Marvel's shapechangers, or is it just that nobody was paying attention? I also wasn't crazy about the neck brace--is J'onn faking a disability claim to soak the JLA's insurance company? Is that how angry he's become? The whole outfit made me think of poor, fat David Ogden Stiers in a cape much more than the orignal costume ever did. Crap.

MS MARVEL #6: Hmmm. What does it say about Ms. Marvel that this issue, in which she barely appears, was the most interesting so far? What does it say about the future vitality of a work-for-hire universe that the only character who wasn't a female spin-off of an established male character was The Shroud? (This book had *two* separate female Spider-Man rip-offs.) What does it say about my attention span that this is only the seventh book I've reviewed this week and it all rhetorical questions? Eh.

SECRET SIX #3: Second issue dropped off my radar but this was a Good issue, even if there's not as much "dead means dead" as I would like (and also howzabout we shoot Vandal Savage into space for a year or two, huh?). The Mad Hatter suddenly suffering from what I assume will turn out to be mercury poisoning was a neat touch, though. Yeah, Good.

SHE-HULK 2 #10: If we can't get Bobillo on the art, I'll certainly take Rick Burchett: the guy's got storytelling chops, and his slightly cartoony art is a good fit for Slott's similarly fun but well-told stories. I'm a little worried about that silver bullet Slott gave the Two-Gun Kid back in that one-shot a few issues back, and the death-dealing on the last page was a bit jarring, but chalk that up to quibblage. A high Good, if you ask me.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2: Very much a follow-up to that recent arc in USM where all the same characters (Spidey, DD, Moon Knight and Punisher) showed up and kicked each other in the head for a while (although that also had, like, Elektra, and Iron Fist and MOKF and stuff, right?). Here, more head-kicking but with a far more clever set-up and a nasty, weirdly unresonant, pay-off. Good but in a "hey, these Hostess Twinkies are fresh from the delivery truck!" kind of way.

PICK OF THE WEEK: SHE-HULK 2 #10 was fun. (Come to my garage sale.)

PICK OF THE WEAK: MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1 was crap. (Come to my garage sale.)

TRADE PICK: Looks like all the goodness is smack in the 'L's this week: LITTLE LULU VOL 11, two works by the mighty Chester Brown, LITTLE MAN TP NEW PTG and LOUIS RIEL in softcover. (And on each side, LEGEND OF GRIMJACK and an all-Jeff Parker-scripted MARVEL ADVENTURES FF DIGEST). But I didn't go for the goodness, I went for PENNY ARCADE VOL 2 LEGENDS MAGIC SWORD TPB which I read and quite enjoyed--the art's still not at the point where I really fell in love with it (although they throw in a lot of extras to make up for it) but the jokes are pretty funny and I'm a slobbery fool for Tycho's writing and commentary. Also, if you haven't read them before, that second volume of ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP has some truly horrible work in it where Gerry Conway hacked out astounding levels of campy, shoddy, goofy work (I'll never tell you how depressed reading the second part of that Spidey/Man-Wolf/Frankenstein team-up made me, decades after reading part one). But God bless Bill Mantlo, he came on like gangbusters and kept Sal Buscema inspired--I don't care what anyone says, that issue with the Sons of The Tiger is awesome--and not a single story in this volume is less than three issues, all of 'em filled to bursting with affection, charm and something kinda like talent (if you squint hard enough). It's hard for me recommend, but it's kinda impossible not acknowledge.

NEXT WEEK: By which I mean Thursday! More details about the damn garage sale! Hope you can make it!

Punchy Punchy: Graeme's brief take on the 8/9 books.

So, after my commenting last week that I didn’t know anything about these new-fangled video games that you kids were all “up in my grill” about, Kate went out and bought a Gamecube just to teach me a thing or two. Admittedly, that thing or two seems to center around (a) how much Kate adores Lego Star Wars, and (b) how much fun the two of use have beating each other up playing Marvel Nemesis: Rise Of The Imperfects. Or, as we’ve chosen to call it, “Punchy Punchy Super-Hero”. But, wait, you’d rather hear about the comics, right…?

ANNIHILATION #1: I’ve seen this book explained around these comic internets as “Rann-Thanagar War done right,” which may be the very definition of damning with faint praise. Still, this may be something where faint praise is the only kind of praise you can give it – It left me bemused, more than anything, which probably wasn’t the point considering the tenor of the book is pretty much “HOLY CRAP! THEY BEAT UP GALACTUS AND FIRELORD! THEY MUST BE UNSTOPPABLE!” This is the kind of book that relies heavily on fans’ existing relationships with characters, as opposed to giving you reasons to care about what’s going on, and I have to admit that I never really got any of the characters here. No, not even Starlord. I also never got the appeal of Andrea Di Vito’s artwork, although I know that he’s got his fans; to me, though, he seems like a cross between generic 1990s storytelling with generic 1970s draughtsmanship… which is to say, pretty much the worst of both worlds. Eh, but I don’t doubt that it worked for the people it was aimed at.

BEYOND! #2: I really don’t like Scott Kolins’ art – Again, it’s the basic draughtsmanship, not anything else, but it doesn’t have any flow for me – and that’s a shame, because I’m convinced that otherwise I’d really like this book. Dwayne McDuffie’s script moves quickly, and recasts the basic original Secret Wars set-up as something closer to Lost or a 1970s disaster movie starring a stellar line-up of Marvel B- and below-list characters with humor working to offset the lack of suspense. I really like the script, some of the characters (I have a weakness for Hank Pym and the Wasp, I admit it), and have appalling nostalgia for Secret Wars, so there’s got to be something reason why this was just Okay, right…?

THE ESCAPISTS #2: Ian Brill was ‘round the house today, and leafing through this, complaining that he really doesn’t dig Brian K. Vaughan’s dialogue. I can see that – it’s definitely very stylized, especially when it comes to the way that all of his characters randomly work pieces of trivia into conversations – but it’s something I personally enjoy nonetheless. That said, this felt a bit like BKV on autopilot, which is a shame; the plot felt forced and gimmicky, and the robbery towards the end of the issue stands out – even without the switch in artists – as too fantastic for the rest of the story, which may be intentional (The line in the dialogue about it having “taken on a bit of a mythical aura”) but still took me way out of what was going on. New artist Steve Rolston finds himself in an awkward position, as well, trying to be both himself and (previous artist) Philip Bond at the same time, somewhat unsuccessfully. Considering how much I adored the first issue, this second effort suffers in comparison, even though it’s Good taken on its own merits. Nice James Jean cover, too.

MS. MARVEL #6: And this is what a book that doesn’t know what to do with an enforced crossover read like, apparently. It’s a Civil War crossover, but one where the main part of the plot comes from characters not normally associated by the series; the drama comes from the betrayal of a character who’s reintroduced in this issue purely for the purpose of being the betrayer… None of it rings true, and I’m not sure we’re ever given a reason why we should care, either. More interestingly for a series where the title character is pro-registration, it’s still the anti-registration characters who are the most sympathetic – Arachne sacrifices her family for what she believes in, but Ms. Marvel can’t even offer up a reason why heroes should register beyond “It’s our duty as Americans to do what we’re told to.” Between that, and dialogue that’s much more natural in the chatty scenes between plot points, the whole book has an air of a writer doing his duty as a Marvel writer to tie into the big event book, while wishing that he could write a story he believes in. Eh.

SHE-HULK #10: Dan Slott, on the other side, at least attempts to put forward a rationale for super-hero registration while writing a book that’s too busy having fun to be a proper tie-in to Civil War. This book’s become a sit-com-cum-soap-opera, and it’s all the better for it, zipping between subplots and a central plot that refuses to take itself too seriously (which, considering it stars an Astronaut werewolf, is probably a good thing). Rick Burchett’s art is a nice surprise, as well; I liked his work with Greg Rucka on various Batman books around the turn of the century, so it’s nice to see him back again. Good enough to make me want to pick up the next issue to see what’s going on with the Rawhide Kid and the Mad Thinker’s android, if nothing else…

SUPERMAN #655: Cover of the week, and it’s all down to that dialogue: “It’s all right, miss! You’re safe now!” “NO! You don’t understand! No-one’s safe! IT’S LOOSE!” Luckily, the interiors all but live up to the old-school promise of that tease, as Superman tampers with forces that he, of course, doesn’t understand while trying to save the day. As with the previous issue, it’s the small things that make this work so well – Clark getting used to his new powers, or Lana Lang finally being treated as something other than an ex-girlfriend or potential “other woman”. There’s nothing here that breaks new ground as far as super-heroics go, but that seems kind of fitting; it is a Superman book, after all. Instead, you just get old-fashioned superheroes done well. Good, and you get the feeling that Busiek and Pacheco couldn’t really do it any other way.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2: I wish that I read Ultimate Spider-Man on a regular basis. It’s a good book, and I enjoy the take that Bendis has on Peter Parker in it, but it’s not a book that I had ever really considered picking up on a regular basis; it’s not amazing enough for me to have to have it, and I’m not so much of a Spider-Man fan that I have such affinity for the characters that it becomes a must-buy, either. But if I was reading the series on a regular basis, I’m sure that this would’ve been a much better book for me. There’s a tight plot going on here, and the round-robin flashback structure showing how each character got to the main action in the story is a nice touch; Mark Brooks’ artwork manages to keep continuity with Mark Bagley’s, without being slavish to it, and he has a really nice, almost Mike Wieringo, take on the characters. It’s just that this is clearly the culimation of plots from the main series. None of the characters, or their relationships to each other, are really introduced as such, and so the climax – which I feel should be shocking – feels robbed of its true impact. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a Good book, but I felt as if I was missing out the entire time I was reading it.

PICK OF THE WEEK is probably She-Hulk, which was the most fun and complete in a week of books that weren’t that bad, but weren’t amazing, either. PICK OF THE WEAK is Annihilation, but that may just be my biases showing; perhaps I’m not cut out for the whole WAR IN SPACE thing. TRADE OF THE WEEK in this especially-Marvel-heavy week, is ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOLUME 2 (as recommended by Dave Robson, who also needs to email me at fanboyrampage at yahoo dot com, because I forgot his email address but Paty Cockrum will not be denied...), which is worth picking up just to count the number of times that Bill Mantlo calls New York “Fun City”. Either that was a ‘70s thing, or Bill Mantlo had some personal deep dark secret about the what he was getting up to in the Big Apple back in the day…

What were the rest of you reading, anyway?

The Hat Trick: Hibbs & 8/2

52 WEEK #13: The one-quarter-mark hits with a mighty and depressing thud. Clearly, part of this is me: I don't want to see Ralph Dibney under a burned out bridge crying and insane -- though I'm sort of hard-pressed to see how ANYone is interested in seeing that either. But the real sin here is the relentless and wretched plot-hammering. Some of this, I expect, is the nature of this project -- I can't picture anyway of making this work without a rigid chart of what HAS to happen and when, in order to get to all of the beats, and everything they want/need to do. This isn't a normal comic, where they can decide suddenly that they need an extra issue or two, or that other threads need to be cut off before they prove cancerous -- the structure seems locked and solid. When I left the house this morning, Jeff still hadn't posted reviews, so hopefully I'm not stepping on his toes or anything when I say he put it to me that the structure of 52 simply isn't working -- the central conceit that each book is a week, no more and no less, is crippling the dramatic through-line of the book. And I'm hard pressed to disagree, really -- it has been a full real month since we've even seen Booster or John Henry; even longer since we've heard back about the teleportation accident -- is Hawkgirl still 40 feet tall two months later? While "3 pages each of the 6 leads" would have been a worse structure, there really needed to be some sort of checking in with each protagonist week-by-week -- even if it is just a panel or two. How is it that it takes 2 weeks or more to get to the middle east? Even a panel of Renee on the phone on hold trying to get a flight, and being told they're all filled up because people with the meta-gene are fleeing to the region or something (anything) would have been preferable. See, unlike a monthly title where the reader largely needs to be recapped and hand-walked through the story-threads because enough time has passed and we've forgotten, in a weekly release, he audience is directly behind you, and needs forward momentum, more than anything else. Look at all of the complaints about the back half of the first season of LOST, for example. No one wants to see you spin wheels -- we want PROGRESS.

So, 1/4 of the way through the entire series, and, basically, nothing has happened -- not 13 issues worth of comic, a least. A bad comparison, to be sure, but look at what WATCHMEN accomplished in less issues, with a main cast roughly the same size. Economy should have been the watchword, something to have made 52 dense and compelling, and, instead, we're just watching paint dry.

My specific problem with week 14 is, as I said, the hammery hammer of plothammering. Ralph has to be broken and sobbing at the end of the issue, regardless of whether or not any of he staging makes any sense. An ACTUAL servant of god, and a man with a magic ring that can do ANYthing (like make "telepathic ear plugs") can't find a normal person 200 feet from their location? (Sure the "shadowy figure" could be to blame, but please!) Or how about the destruction of the "church"? Why is Ollie sending down shards of glass upon a bunch of confused kids? What the heck is GL blowing up on page 12? And why? What, exactly, starts the fire on page 14? Its not the superheroes, or any of their actions -- they're all accounted for on page 13; and it doesn't appear to be Devem or any of his acolytes -- they look to be just as surprised as anyone.

And I was kinda enjoying the first 11 story pages…

Feh, just feh.

Insult-to-Injury returns this week, but at least it isn't Dan Jurgen's fault -- now it's just the obnoxious juxtaposition of Ralph's origin against the tone of the preceding story. Gross.

I'm not as extreme as Graeme, but, seriously, that was AWFUL.

CREEPER #1: Didn't like this, either. Part of it is the constant rebooting of ideas -- apparently there never was a Creeper prior to this (Damn that Superboy and his wall-punching!), while part of it is missing out on the right lunacy of the core idea of the original -- the Creeper is madness and lunacy, not just another superhero secret identity. Losing any origin story set at a costume party is a dire mistake. I'm going to go with another AWFUL.

ALL-NEW ATOM #2: The only one of the "Brave New World" launches that has worked at all for me, becomes more compelling in its second round. I'm finding a great deal of affection of our new hero and his supporting cast (whom I HATED in the BNW special), and I like how the approach is from scientific curiosity, rather than super-heroics. Our first week sales took a mighty hit on this issue, though -- dropping to like 60% of #1, which is a really bad long-term sign. Still, *I* liked it: GOOD.

OUTSIDERS #39: I really wonder if Winick knows why the team is like this, one year later, or if he's just making it up as he goes along. Very EH.

INVINCIBLE #34: Reading this, followed within seconds by MARVEL TEAM-UP #23 made me realize something: Robert Kirkman is a really really good fan-fic writer. He clearly has a lot of love and affection for the Marvel tropes and characters, and, as long as he's having to twist them to, you know, be far enough away so he can't be sued, he rocks. But, put him on the ACTUAL characters, and it all turns wet and limp. That's also why MARVEL ZOMBIES was entertaining -- it is official fan-fic. That's what it looks like to me, at least. INVINCIBLE: a very high OK; MARVEL TEAM-UP: AWFUL.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #1: I, for one, would have preferred a period piece. This first issue suffers from a lot of need-to-recap from a 25 (is that right?) year old story, and the contortions to bring it into the modern MU. EH.

Bah, truck here already. I'll wrap up at...

....home.

So, uh PICK OF THE WEEK, right? Well, the best thing I read this week was published in 1986 -- I've been rereading THE QUESTION, and I have to say, MAN, were those first dozen or so issues really really excellent. It's not just the comic itself, but also the letter columns, with the recommended reading lists, and the heady philosophical debate, and the rotating behind-the-scenes at DC editorial matter (which makes Didio's weekly attempt to be fairly feeble), and, man, the house ads, too -- it's easy to forget just how fertile and experimental DC from like 86 to 88 really was. A lot of horrifically failed experiments, too -- but that was a fine fine period of books, really. Try to dig up THE QUESTION, you'll really dig it (but, absolutely avoid under all circumstances THE QUESTION QUARTERLY... man, what a sour and discordant note that book was). Especially fun are all the early appearances of Lady Shiva.... before, I think, anyone really figured out her character. (plus, her Sensei here really contradicts some of the BoP stuff, I think)

PICK OF THE WEAK: I'll go with THE CREEPER #1, thanks. At least 52 only has 7 days to get better (and I read Week 14 on the bus ride home, and liked it quite a bit)

TP/GN OF THE WEEK: Well, it sure isn't the reprint of BATMAN SON OF THE DEMON -- it is kind of a shame that Morrison is bringing that back into continuity, because it's exactly the worst example of post-DARK KNIGHT Batman story-telling. Swearing, ass-hattery, even Batman deciding it is cool to kill... as long as it is personal. And all the way through, I'm thinking, well, OK, it will probably end up well, as long as Ra's follows through on being Ra's, and pulls the big betrayal at the end. But when given a chance to take control over a weather satellite, Ra's decides that he should, instead, destroy it because that's what he promised Batman. Holy WTF, Batman!

What I will recommend, however, is stupidly expensive at seventy-five bones, but I think the production, design, and extra backmatter of ABSOLUTE KINGDOM COME to be a real joy. Yes, the story is overwrought, and largely becomes what it is condemning, but, man, that's pretty to look at "full size", and this is a great presentation.

If you're poorer than that being acceptable, then go for the LOUCHE & INSALUBRIOUS ESCAPADES OF ART DECCO TP, cuz it's just swank. I will, however, hate them forever, because it is going to end up under "L" in Diamond's system, forever, instead of "A" where it belongs.

What did you think?

-B

Thwarted by X: Jeff's Reviews of 08/02 Books.

First, an apology and some thanks. I intended to reply to a lot of the super-interesting responses to last week's review, but got thrown off working on Secret Potential Writing Gig X (which, sadly, looks at this point like it'll probably end up being Lost Opportunity X, but we'll see) and so didn't reply to anybody but Fred. But I really appreciated the quality and level of discourse and thank everyone who dropped in with their two cents. Speaking of two cents, you should both mark your calendars and adjust your Crazed Shilling Resistance Shields--I'm having another garage sale, Saturday, August 19th, and plan to begin inundating you with information and details because I have a ton of really cool stuff I can't have hanging around our teeny-tiny apartment any longer. People who attended last year's garage sale really seemed to appreciate the deals they got (one guy openly apologized for, as he put it, "robbing me") and I'm hoping the eight or so long boxes I'm offering this year will have some similarly great stuff. There's also going to be an absurd number of toys, DVDs, video games and ephemera (maybe I'll get lucky and finally find that Reverse-Flash I promised Arune I'd send him a year ago!) and my hope is to make it the best parts of every flea market you've ever been to, in one convenient place. You've been warned.

As for the funny books:

52 WEEK #13: I didn't hate this as much as Graeme did (because, really, who could?) but I was far from fond of it. Part of the problem were some serious storytelling hiccups--four and six panel grids are great when you're breaking down pages in a serious hurry, and they can actual give action scenes a lot of power when they're thoughtfully put together (see almost any issue of Stray Bullets, for example) but I think most modern readers think a four panel grid for a big superhero brawl lacks drama, particularly when it's six heroes against a bunch of cultists in a tightly controlled space: it's like watching a crowd of midgets wrestle in a VW bug. Also, I'm still (still!) annoyed that Ralph's tale picks up from the end of Identity Crisis while consistently and persistently ignoring the end of IC (whether because he'd either gone totally nuts or because he'd become spiritually advanced, Ralph had Sue back at the end of IC). I wasn't crazy about that ending, mind you, but it bugs me that the writers here are just gonna take what they want and ignore the rest, (I also loved Sylv's observation in the comments thread to G's post that Ralph's plot arc would make a great story in an original universe, as opposed to how it plays out here.) Sub-Eh, and particularly disappointing in light of last issue, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for me.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #1: I wanted to love this, mainly because Jeff Parker has done some impressive work for Marvel recently, and, you know, it's really very OK, which is better than most first issues. But I'm not loving it yet, and wonder if I will. Leonard Kirk, whose work I've also really dug elsewhere, does a capable job but maybe somebody with a slightly loopier art style could've underlined how crazy these pulpy characters are. Seen from a stoic superhero book approach, they just seem terribly underwhelming. I'm hoping it gets crazier from here while maintaining its respect and affection for the characters.

ALL NEW ATOM #2: Much better than issue #1, I thought, and you get the sense that everybody on the title is actually having (and here comes the dreaded "f" word) fun. You catch that very cool cast intro page where you see the crazed scientist guy and it's not until a later panel you see he's not wearing pants, done in such a way that the two panels cover a full head-to-toe profile of the guy? I thought that was really, really clever. Both of those threats presented here (a micro-invasion and a serial killer who may have also inherited the Atom's powers) are less than thrilling, but it's an OK book, fun and worth keeping an eye on. It certainly looks to be the best book to emerge out of Brave New World, that's for sure.

CREEPER #1: Wow. Stink on a stick, ringing impressively fake from start to finish. How sad is it that in an age of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Niles can't begin to imagine what a successful liberal talk show might look like? It just comes across as a broad caricature of a right-wing talk show with the political slant of the commentator and guest reversed. I mean, don't you think "Jack Ryder=Stephen Colbert" (a) makes a lot more sense, and (b) gives readers the idea you've watched television in the last five years? Also, I'm not hip to The Creeper's origin, so have no idea if the whole "He gets injected with scientific mystery stuff, shot and falls in the ocean, so it logically follows his hair is gonna turn green, his color palette is gonna go berserk and he gonna start giggling like a fiend!" origin presented here is basically the original, but if so? Niles comes across disastrously lazy for not updating it and, if not, he's super-disastrously lazy for coming up with what he did. I hate dumping on first issues because I'm learning it takes a few issues for a new book to gel (at which point its standing in the marketplace seems all but set in stone, usually for the worse) but, really, this was Crap.

DETECTIVE COMICS #822: A shame J.H. Williams III (and his fans) weren't around for this issue, because Paul Dini's script for this issue was damn good. You get a mystery, a take on The Riddler that strikes a decent middle ground on the muddle of previous different takes, and a sense of Gotham City as an actual city, not just a conglomeration of urban cliches. Like Graeme, I'm currently preferring this to Morrison's Batman, but we'll see for how long that holds true. Good stuff.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #11: Wasn't this going to be a Waid & Weiringo book before Waid dropped out and Peter David stepped in? The reason I ask is, about every other issue of this, I wonder if Waid dropped out because he stared down the barrel of editorial's "we're gonna make Spidey an avenger, then we're gonna kill him, then we're gonna give him a new costume, then we're gonna unmask him!" plan and figured he'd rather take his chances anywhere elsewhere. (In other words, I'm wondering if Mark Waid is one of the savviest guys currently working in comics. I'm kinda thinking he is.) If you like watching guys like Peter David rework their pitch on the fly so a haunted school story can still almost make a lick of sense in a context where Spider-Man outed himself because a bunch of schoolkids died due to their close proximity to superheroes, dig right in. Eh, but a very painful Eh, my friends. Very painful.

JONAH HEX #10: A nasty, little no-nonsense blood-and-guts done-in-one seemingly pulled right from the grindhouse screen (imagine a Western version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with gators instead of chainsaws) and consequently probably the best issue of the title, by far. If the creative team can deliver more of these, I'll forgive all previous "but, Jeff, of course you should have figured out that the little girl in the beginning is the guilty recollection of the girl in the middle! Duh, that's why he does that stuff with the mother at the end! The body language makes it obvious!" Good stuff, and hopefully the beginning of a new trend.

MOON KNIGHT #4: I know, I know, molasses slow. And yet, this issue put me back on the hook: Huston's continual insistence that Moon Knight is seriously fucked up gains a little more traction with this issue, not just in the scenes of Spector's cracking up, but in the "villain's" obervation that what people have called a hero was just a sadist with serious father issues. It's become pretty standard for the marketplace to have "grim and gritty" books with a cynical worldview--it's a relief to see a book where the worldview seems geniunely cynical, authentically grim. I can't say how true that's gonna stay by the time Moon Knight starts adventuring again (in issue #278, at this rate) but for now, I think this is pretty Good material, noir-black and bleak as hell.

NEW AVENGERS #22: All that really clever stuff that Graeme said? Ditto, particularly the "If Bendis ever managed to write a Luke/Jessica ongoing series focusing more on domestic sitcom than superhero slugfest, I’d be there in a second." Overall, Bendis's Civil War issues of New Avengers seem far less clumsy than regular issues of New Avengers, because it means there are lots of scenes of characters arguing, which is what Bendis does best. So, Good, but God help us if he tries to stage any sort of larger skirmish, though.

OMAC #2: Giving a comparatively positive review to a Bruce Jones book is an exercise in Orwellian double-speak--Hey, this was Unawful! Surprisingly Non-Crappy!--because honestly, it's not particularly good. But the glossy art is both pretty and moves well, Bruce Jones' "man-on-the-run" lothario fantasies are less annoying when they're not draped over previously established characters, and all the Infinite Crisis stuff did a fine job of making me forget there was once a charming, surreal and crazed book by the great Jack Kirby with the very same title. In short, we have always been at war with Oceania, Freedom is Slavery, and Omac #2 was super-double-plus Eh.

OUTSIDERS #39: There are times when I like this book, and it seems to be the times when Winick just decides to let his Claremont freak-flag fly--one scene in this book managed to bring back both Uncanny X-Men #98 and #109 simultaneously (don't hold me to those numbers because I pulled them right from the top of my head; it might have been issues #99 and #110). The times I like it least, unfortunately, are those times when I ask it to actually do what a team comic book should--make consistent internal sense, for example. For example, I get the feeling I'm never going to find out why Captain Boomerang's kid joined the team, and I guess I'm gonna have to be OK (conveniently, also my grade for the issue) about that.

PUNISHER #36: Thankfully doesn't botch the job, and provides a breathlessly paced finish to what's been the best Punisher arc on this title in a long, long time. Between this and that great Tyger one-shot, I find myself hopeful that Ennis has caught a (second? third? fifth?) wind and has new places to take the character. The art was goddamn sweet, too. Solidly Good stuff.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #98: Not much to say, other than I really, really liked this issue. (The art still looks a little rushed to me, though.) Accomplishes the goal of a taking a character you care about and making things worse and worse for them with every turn of the page. Now that the end of Bendis's run is in sight, though, I find myself increasingly worried/annoyed/bemused that he will have left having hit every single Spider-Man story touchstone and there'll be absolutely nothing left for whoever follows--they'll get to do six issues of Ultimate Civil War and that'll be it. Very Good, but, as I said, kinda worrying.

UNCANNY X-MEN #477: Not nearly as much fun as the first two issues because it's more or less an interlude where more shit is set up, but it's Good. I'm kinda hoping Vulcan gets a new name and a new look soon because, visually? Dudsville, daddy-o. Imagine an unused member of Atari Force, except his name is "Tribble," and that's pretty much the problem with Vulcan. Highly OK issue, though.

WORMWOOD GENTLEMAN CORPSE #1: Unsurprisingly, a lot of artists have tried their luck at the "whimsy and dread adventure" genre since Mignola and Hellboy invented it, but this little concoction by Ben Templesmith is the only thing I've read that comes closest to any similar sort of charm. Couldn't tell you really why it worked for me but if you can't see the innate charm of a supernatural adventurer who's apparently an ultra-intelligent psychic maggot capable of animating the dead with a biker and stripper as bodyguards, I doubt I could sway you anyway. Good, and I'm curious to see where it goes from here.

PICK OF THE WEEK: For me? Punisher #36. I just put that issue down and went "Fuck, yeah."

PICK OF THE WEAK: Creeper #1. I just put that issue down and went "What the fuck?" Yeah.

TRADE PICK: As you might have heard, I pushed FINDER: FIVE CRAZY WOMEN in Graeme's hands, in part because I wanted to see if a newcomer to the series would find it as delightful as I did. (Apparently so.) I was worried some of the character stuff at the end wouldn't work as well if you hadn't read a lot of the other books but since Graeme seemd to love it, lemme exhort you to go pick up this trade. Carla Speed McNeil's work is so fucking smart and funny and compassionate and talented, I always put down each Finder volume half-in-crazy-love with her. This book was a god-damned delight and my favorite read of the week.

NEXT WEEK: More reviews! I finally read some manga again! And more about an upcoming garage sale than you ever wanted to know!

Et vous?

I'm too fanboyish about 52, I know: Graeme's review of books from 7/26, 8/2, and 8/9 too.

When Lester and Hibbs are in full flow, it’s more than a little intimidating to follow them. Factor in the fact that Jeff was completely and utterly right in why Black Panther was kind of uncomfortable last week and the fact that my work managed to keep me very busy until late most of the evenings, and you’ve got all the reasons you’re going to get out of me for why I didn’t post anything last week. But now, it’s Sunday, it’s sunny, and Kate’s working away on her own job things – So let’s review, shall we? 52 WEEK 13: Well, finally I’ve read the most depressing comic of the year. I don’t know why I was so surprised by how soul-crushing this book was, because I never expected that Sue Dibny would magically return from the dead; I simply hoped that there would be some level of closure for the plot, and that Ralph (and we readers) would be allowed to, on some level, move on. Instead, I get an issue where Sue almost gets reincarnated as a straw-doll (and I’m sure there’s some “strawman argument” reference in there), but everything goes wrong and Ralph is left insane, with brand-new “My wife isn’t alive again because I made the wrong choice” angst to accompany his “My wife was raped because I was a superhero” and “My wife was murdered by my friend’s ex-wife as part of a deranged plot to bring her and my friend back together again” ones. I know that there’s three-quarters of this series left to run, and that “Ralph’s story is far from over,” but still: Wow. This was Ass and felt full of contempt from the writers for poor Ralph and the poor schlubs like myself who really enjoyed the original Elongated Man stories.

ACTION COMICS #841: In which I start to get paranoid that off-screen accomplice of the oddly familiar Auctioneer bad guy – Am I the only person who read this and was reminded of Manga Khan, from Giffen and DeMatteis’s JLI, years ago – who has the name of Grayum is some kind of strange dig at me on behalf of writers Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza. That aside, there’s a lot to enjoy in this issue despite the nagging feeling that it isn’t anything more than a fill-in arc (a feeling that can probably be traced to the slightness of the plot and numerous guest-stars, if you’re that bothered), not least of which is Pete Woods’ art and, like all of Busiek’s Superman writing so far, the nostalgic sense of fun in the story: Yes, it’s ridiculous, but reminiscent of the stories in the recent 50s-reprint Showcase collections, you know? Good, but probably not the stuff of three-part story-arcs; unless there’s more meat to the story next issue, I’ll be looking forward to Richard Donner sooner than I’d expected.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #1: One of Marvel’s recent launches that kind of got lost in all of the noise surrounding Civil War and everything Superhero-Registration-Act-related, this revamp of a superteam who’d only previously appeared as an alternate universe Avengers in a mini-series years and years ago is much, much better than it has any right to be. The keys to the success are the creative team: Leonard Kirk and Kris Justice come up with art that’s reminiscent of Stuart Immonen’s Superman work (That’s a compliment in my head, honest), and Jeff Parker’s script takes all of the ridiculousness of the concept – there’s a talking gorilla and a 1950s mad-scientist-style robot called M-11 in a team created to fight Asian supervillain, The Yellow Claw, for the love of God – and plays it up without playing it for laughs, coming up with something that’s just plain pulpy fun, and Very Good, at that. It’s the anti-52 Week 13, and I’m not sure there could be a higher recommendation for a book this week.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #534: So, apparently the point of the Civil War crossover issues is to make you buy more Civil War-related books. I’m not even talking about the main Civil War series, either; halfway through this issue, half of the cast disappear into a fight that we see for one panel here with an explanation that we should read Fantastic Four this month to find out what’s going on. Truly, this is the era of Mighty Marvel Cross-Marketing, true believers. Sadly, for all the attempt at filling in the characterization blanks from Millar’s central Civil War series, this ends up being entirely inconsequential and full of little other than “Peter Parker is conflicted” and “Iron Man is a bit of a bastard” foreshadowing. Eh.

BATMAN #655: Dear Grant… It’s the small things, isn’t it? That opening sequence, more than a wee bit heavy-handed – I get it, Grant, it’s a parody of how self-consciously “dark” Batman comics had gotten, complete with Commissioner Gordon saying “Everybody needs to lighten up,” very clever – has been what Jeff and Brian have been talking about, but it was other things that caught my eye: Robin appearing by sliding down the batpoles. The pop-art sound effects in the background during the party scene. Grant Morrison, you are trying to single-handedly trying to drag the Bat-franchise back to the days of Adam West and Burt Ward. And I applaud you for it. I’d just rather you did it in a speedier way that didn’t feel as if you were kind of tired and recycling yourself; the opening was a longer version of your NewXMen first page statement, the “day-in-the-life-of-Batman” page reminiscent of the first page of All-Star Superman, and the rest of the book just much slower than we’ve come to expect from you. Is it because we’ve been spoiled by All-Star Superman and Seven Soldiers over the last year? Are you spending more time than you should writing 52? Is it me? It is, isn’t it. It’s me. Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…

(It’s a Good book, by the way, but you’ve probably read it already.)

CASTLE WAITING #1: Perhaps I’m just too used to reading mainstream books where, you know, first issues have things like introductions to characters and settings and plot (Insert your own snark here), but I spent the majority of this issue completely lost and trying to figure out what was going on and feeling as if I needed to read the hardcover collection of the previous series to understand who half the characters were. Linda Medley’s art is nice, but when you finish a six-dollar book feeling as if you need to spend an additional thirty dollars to understand it, then you might as well be reading Infinite Crisis or something. Eh.

CIVIL WAR: YOUNG AVENGERS AND RUNAWAYS #1: Call me unfeeling and uncaring, but despite my love for both Runaways and Young Avengers as series, at no point during any of the Civil War stories previously had I thought “I wonder how the Young Avengers or Runaways feel about these events?” Thankfully, I’m not in charge at Marvel, because if I had been, this entirely pointless series would never have existed. Zeb Wells’ script is fine – the art less so – but the plot is completely generic, even going so far as to have the two teams meet with a misunderstanding and have a fight. Crap that exists only for the most cynical reasons.

THE CREEPER #1: This, on the other hand, is crap that exists for… no, wait, this exists for the most cynical reasons as well. Either that, or I’ve been missing the cries for another reboot of the Creeper the past few years; you be the judge. I might be being a wee bit harsh calling it crap, because there is something amusing about Jack Ryder suddenly becoming the liberal Bill O’Reilly, but it’s the one point of amusement or originality in a book that’s otherwise a cynical rehash of something that’s been rehashed too many times before. And next issue, the Creeper meets Batman! Because that’s never been done before either… Yeah, it’s crap.

DETECTIVE COMICS #822: Paul Dini’s obviously having fun with his new writing gig, and this second issue shows it much more than the first; recasting the Riddler as a crimefighter (and without a last page reveal that he’s actually still a bad guy at heart, surprisingly) and pairing him with Batman works as a distraction from the clues being planted throughout this fairplay mystery, as well as entertainment in and of itself. Nice to see Batman having underground friends and informants again, as well. Is it heresay to say that this is more enjoyable than Morrison’s Batman? If so, sorry, but this is Very Good.

FANTASTIC FOUR #539: Or, the second half of the story from the Amazing Spider-Man issue above. What’s interesting is that the crossover just doesn’t work – the shared pages (there are three pages of events and dialogue that are exactly the same in both books) stand out too much here, as if JMS accidentally got his books mixed up and put Spider-Man pages in an FF script, and the plot of the Spider-Man issue makes less sense when you know the larger context from the FF issue (Captain America leads an attack on a prisoner convoy, and then abandons that to go and fight Spider-Man? What?). Overall, this is more of a mess than the Spider-Man half of the crossover, because there are more immediately obvious plotholes (Iron Man can’t track down Captain America’s hideout, but the Yancy Street Gang can? We’re supposed to buy that neither side of the fightin’ superheroes cares about civilians at all, during their fight, and that the Thing is the only one who does?) ignored so that the main point of the story – Ben Grimm gives up on the whole thing and leaves the country – is reached by the end of the issue. It’s not a bad idea, exactly, but seems slightly odd when we’ve previously seen the Thing fighting on Iron Man’s side in the last Civil War issue proper, and feels more than slightly manufactured for the purposes of controversy as opposed to being true to character. Mind you, that wouldn’t be a first for the Civil War “event”… Crap.

HIGHLANDER #0: Oh, I have no idea. Since when was Highlander about Russian terrorists and not Sean Connery’s non-attempt at a Spanish accent? I’m sure that there’s an audience for this, but I’m so outside of it, the best I can do is shrug my shoulders and say Eh. Sorry, Joe.

JACK OF FABLES #1: Literally, if you liked the three-part Fables story about Jack going to Hollywood, you’ll like this series, it seems. There’s no shift in tone or pacing – or even art-team from that storyline – as Bill Willingham (and co-writer Matt Sturges) stick incredibly closely to the Fables style for the first spin-off series. I’m not sure that this won’t wear thin as an ongoing (Jack isn’t one of the most compelling of the Fables cast, in my opinion, and without the other characters or mythology to back him up, I can see it getting old very quickly. With the other characters or mythology, of course, it’s just the same as the regular Fables book, and I’m not sure whether the market would support two identical Fables series), but as a first issue, it’s Good enough.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1: So, this was lying on my doorstep on Friday evening, in an envelope from DC Comics. I’m not entirely sure who sent it to me, or even how they got my address, but considering that I’d said, only a few hours earlier that very day, that I wasn’t really planning on reading this, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some cosmic karmic payback thing going on. My problem with this series – based upon the preview in Brave New World and this first issue – is this: If you take a relative pacifist alien, the last of his race, who has grown to love humanity and believe in their potential, yadda yadda yadda, and then say “No, but wait! There are other Martians! They’ve been kept alive by shadowy government conspiracies and now that the Martian Manhunter knows about this, he’s so pissed that he hates humanity as a whole and he’s out for revenge!” then, well, part of me wonders why you’re bothering. There’s only so far you can go with an “Everything you knew is wrong!” story, and even less far with a “No more Mister Nice Guy!” story, and in both cases, you should at least be aware of what you’re giving up by setting up your shocking new directions. The basic idea behind the series feels like the creators were told to do something with the Martian Manhunter because the powers that be wanted a Martian Manhunter comic, but no-one could think of anything to do with the character (or were, perhaps, completely unfamiliar with the character – Hasn’t J’Onn gone bad at least a couple of times before? And hasn’t he already seen humanity do terrible things, without turning against them? Not only that, but we’ve also had the “there are martians after all!” plot a few times, as well, I’m sure), and so came up with a stunning new status quo that shows that you only thought you knew him, etc..

Beyond the basic pitch behind the series, the execution does nothing to lift expectations. The script relies very heavily on internal narration to sell us – not very successfully - on J’Onn apparently turning against humanity (including one scene where we seem to see that one of the reasons he’s done so is that people prefer Superman to him, strangely enough. “You don’t love me enough! I knew all of humanity were bastards!”), the new characters are more generic character-types (Hard-assed female boss, hard-assed deadly-assassin military man) than characters in and of themselves, and the art is static and drowned by murky coloring.

The saddest thing about this? I probably won’t be getting any new books to review for free from DC after panning this one. If there is an upside, though, it’s this: As bad as this book, it’s still nowhere near as bad as 52 Week 13. Crap.

NEW AVENGERS #22: First issue by new regular creative team, Brian Michael Bendis and Lenil Yu! Second issue in the “New Avengers Disassembled” Civil War-crossover storyline! Twenty-second issue of the series! Or something. Obviously, there’s rot settling into my brain from reading so many comics in one sitting, because I actually kind of enjoyed this issue. Sure, Bendis is still giving his characters entirely unrealistic dialogue due to his desire to make all the dialogue sound very realistic (“Now, I talked to - - wait - - I talked to the powers that be,” Iron Man says at one point, despite no-one attempting to interrupt him or needing to be asked to wait for anything) and the plot doesn’t make that much sense – Iron Man is trying to get people to sign up to his registration thing hours before it becomes law, and then sends the army to arrest the most prominent black superhero in America minutes after it becomes law for refusing to do so? I guess that those futurist types haven’t quite figured out that “Great way to stop people accusing you of violating people’s civil rights, Tony Stark” public relations thing, yet - but Yu’s art is gorgeous, and I was completely sucked in by the scenes between Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. If Bendis ever managed to write a Luke/Jessica ongoing series focusing more on domestic sitcom than superhero slugfest, I’d be there in a second. There’s still too much need for the Civil War crossover books to show characterization and rationales behind action that are missing from the main title, but it’s because of their doing so that I’ve been enjoying the crossovers much more than the main title itself. Good.

NIGHTWING #122: Last week, Hibbs gave me a copy of this to read, telling me that I needed to read something shitty. He really wasn’t lying; whether it be to deus-ex-machine “I’m Jason Todd and suddenly I have shape-shifting powers!” climax to the main battle – a battle that had previously been fought by Nightwing and his girlfriend, who is also Nightwing, apparently having gained the desire to become a superhero by sleeping with Dick Grayson, telling the bad guy that he has a really small dick over and over again – or the offhand way that Todd is then written out the book (In the last three panels of the issue, he sends a letter to Dick Grayson that honestly says “Leaving town to find my own way” and offers no other explanation or motivation), there’s such a slapped-together-don’t-know-what-we’re-doing quality to the writing here that it’s almost embarrassing to read. Bruce Jones is, of course off the book with #125, and I’m unsure whether that has to do with his shitty work on here to date, or the fact that he may have originally signed on to do a Nightwing book starring Jason Todd and bailed when it became clear that Dick Grayson wasn’t going to be killed off after all… Ass.

POWER OF 6 #1: Jon Lewis, who also provided less than stellar work on a Batbook a few years back (he replaced Chuck Dixon on Robin, around 2001-ish, before editorial killed his enthusiasm and his work – Something that he alludes to in his bibliography in the back of this book), returns with this Alternative Comics-published superhero book that owes a large debt to Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and Scott Pilgrim, amongst others (The main character’s powers feel very computer-game inspired, like some of the fights in the latter. But then, I’m an old man who doesn’t play video games, so what do I know?). It’s fun, but feels stuck-between-worlds, and almost too reverential to mainstream superhero books for its own good; for all the “hero accidentally releases great evil” traditionalism, I wanted to see things go further than it did, because it felt like it could, if that makes sense… Good, but it could’ve been better, goddammit.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Agents of Atlas, which will make you believe in superheroes called Bob and the rebooting of spies who are near death. PICK OF THE WEAK, as will come as no surprise to all of you, is 52. To add insult to injury, the (very good) two-page “Origin of Elongated Man” by Mark Waid and Kevin Nowlan that follows the “How much more misery can we bring to these formely comedic characters” main story only serves to underline who horrifically off-base the current storyling is. TRADE OF THE WEEK is something that Jeff Lester forced into my hands on Friday: FINDER: FIVE CRAZY WOMEN. I’ve never read any of Carla Speed McNeil’s series before, but this conversation/examination of five women that a particular “bad boy” has seduced is enough to convince me to read much more; smart, sexy and unafraid to be completely honest – I didn’t expect to see that Genie scene – with artwork (also by McNeil) that matches the boldness and effortless intimacy of the writing, it’s an intoxicating book that keeps you guessing, but more importantly, keeps you reading. I liked it a lot, in case you can’t tell.

So, what is everyone else reading these days?

WTF?!?!? Hibbs reviews for 7/26?!?!

The sucky part is I find myself almost completely incapable of any kind of "creative" writing right now. A lot of it is having the 2 year old in the house, of course -- while I had foolishly thought that a post-verbal child would need less maintenance (name your need, deal with the need -- that's much clearer than a pre-verbal "he's crying, dear god, WHY is he crying?"), it turns out that that's about as insane of a thought as I've ever had.

Benjamin and his mother share a common trait -- they both speak their mind, all of it. Don't get me wrong -- this is exactly the number one trait I love about Tzipora, but it's proven to be an.... adjustment to me to have TWO big Talkers in the house. When I finally get alone time, the last thing I want to hear is real human voices (include the ones inside my head)

Anyway, I bring this up partially as an excuse for why I've been such a lax bitch about writing reviews lately, but also because I'm astonished by just how fast Ben's vocabulary, and its accuracy, is growing.

He's 2 (and 3/4), and most of his friends are sort of not very past "Mama, hungry". Ben, well, he is.

We're walking to a park near us, and actually, let me sidetrack myself and tell you about this place. It isn't properly a park, really, more like a community space between houses. SF is pretty hilly, as you know, so we have several neighborhoods where the houses and property lines are really weird diagonal shapes as people try to build AROUND the hills, right? There are odd gaps here and there that aren't suitable for building on. So, at the top of one of these, someone built a community garden, but because the "bottom" part is just TOO steep for much of anything, some clever person decided to put it two custom slides built out of stone (finished concrete of some kind, but I'm not really sure). You'd never know they're there unless you lived in the neighborhood, and they don't have a name, or appear on any map, as far as I know. Just one of those cool, only in San Francisco, kind of things.

Anyway, so we're walking there, and one of the things in the garden is this big ass tree whose base largely resembles a pineapple -- with the blunt spiky things, or whatever. Ben asks me "Dada, why is that Pineapple so big?" and I say something like "Well, Ben, I think it is a Palm tree of some kind." and Ben fires back with...

(and do this in a 2 year old's voice)

"Actually, I think it is very similar to a pineapple"

Tell me, how many two year olds construct sentences like that?

So, because I'm spending all of my brain energy trying to keep up with BEN's brain-energy (a battle I am already losing at 2!), I find it very hard to find time to write "creatively" at all -- by the end of the day, I don't want to hear ANY living human's voice -- even my own, inside my head.

I can still do "business" writing -- TILTING; responding to idiots on Byrne's board; CBIA... or whatever -- because that's all just "brain in neutral" stuff. But writing reviews I *want* to be "entertaining", "funny" even... and bringing that on is hard in my verbal verbal house.

Only time I have to write creatively (though this will change come September and 3 mornings a week of blessed blessed pre-school for Ben!) is that brief 90 minutes or so between when I finish my Tuesday paperwork, and when the truck arrives with them thar funny books.

Like now:

52 WEEK 12: The ship is veering wildly from good to bad and back again -- this is a solidly GOOD issue; quite probably because it feels like there's some real forward movement on a couple of threads here. You know, if this was a MONTHLY comic, it'd probably have been cancelled by now, but the weekly shipping gave a certain momentum that the storytelling itself has been iffy on. More issues like this one, and maybe it will end it's run higher than I think it will. Oh, and can't go without mentioning the new "secret origins" backup thing -- a HUGE improvement of "The History of Crossover in the DCU, post-crisis" crap that ran for 10 weeks there. My only quibble is that the Wonder Woman sequence missed MY favorite part of her origin -- the masked Amazonian Olympics.

SHARK MAN #1: What a terrific first issue. Usually I hate Steve Pugh's art -- I tend to think of him as the artist that "ruins" books (cf Animal Man, etc.) -- but this is lush and gorgeous, and altogether stellar work. Went to backorder at Diamond of course, so let's see if I ever get more copies to sell... GOOD

CASTLE WAITING v2 #1: Really wonderful and fun material -- I missed these characters and setting quite a bit (esp now that we're past the Solicitine stuff, which derailed the forward momentum of the series pretty substantially) -- this is a great value, too, a nice chunky read for the price. VERY GOOD.

BATMAN #655: Unlike Lester, I was OK with the "meta" opening, but like him, I'm really looking forward to where this might go. Hated the coloring, though -- way too bright and colorful for the work. Still, VERY GOOD.

NIGHTWING #122: Uhmmm.... what? So, Jason Todd becomes sort of a protoplasmic blob? That's the best ending anyone could come up with? CRAP-tastic!

SPECTRE #3: Yeah, yeah "Crisis Aftermath", whatever -- I really wish they hadn't branded those books in that way. Set up an expectation that wasn't met. This was a perfectly adequate wrap up to this mini, but it was a bit telegraphed. The real problem is that it just basically resets the Spectre to where it was pre-Crisis -- except now he has a goatee -- there's really nothing left of Crispus in there, nor any real reason to have changed hosts. I'll give it an OK, but it should have been much more.

JSA CLASSIFIED #14 and JLA CLASSIFIED #25: I probably should have paid more attention to the solicit -- I hadn't realized that it was a continuation of the same story. A story which kind of makes me question the point of both of these titles (Other than "franchise expansion", of course) -- this would have been fine in 1980, but I expect more of a point to my comics in 2006. Extremely EH.

BATTLE POPE COLOR #9: We're into new stories now? At least, I don't recall this one from the first run. Kirkman is definitely going to hell for this, but at least it is a low GOOD.

SIDEKICK #2: Feels like a rejected pith for... well something. Its slightly funny, but I've read better takes on the basic material (anywhere from BRAT PACK to THE PRO, really). EH.

BLACK PANTHER #18: So, Jeff Lester and I were at a Klan rally the other day, and.... wait that's a terrible joke. Still, we have comments in this week's Jeff reviews thread that seem to suggest he's a racist for not liking this. Hoo boy. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that "let's put the two best known black characters together.... since they're black and all" to be a bit racist myself. Meh, what do I know, I'm as white as a marshmallow myself. So, let's judge this comic on its contents, rather than any racial thing: as a "Marvel wedding" with a tie in to the big summer crossover, this did everything it was supposed to do... well, except it was missing a super villain attack. (Parenthetically, I suggested to Jeff that we should round up the losers of Stan's WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO to form a Revenge Squad against who ever the "winner" ends up being -- that's how it is in the funny books, right?) I think the comic tries way too hard to try and convince us these two are a perfect match, when in real non-retconned continuity they’ve maybe said 6 words to each other, ever? Ultimately a pretty EH issue of a pretty EH series -- and one that, I suspect, forever puts Storm in "supporting character" status.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #20: I don't really like Cap (except as a concept), and I really didn't like the idea of bringing Bucky back (especially since it seems pretty meandering, and not leading to anything in particular), but I thought this was a rocking comic book, hitting all of my action-loving buttons jes' fine. GOOD.

DAREDEVIL #87: I, too, wish I hadn't spoiled myself on the 'net before this issue was released -- the reveal was handled excellently, and was strong storytelling. I particularly liked how it happened on a left-facing page, so that if you were flipping through it in the store, you were much likely to see it and spoil yourself. Plus, the Foggy stuff was just great, and Brube should be really proud of himself for pulling it all off. I'm not sure I really buy that there aren't 7583726 people who KNOW that Matt outted himself in prison, but I suspect I can suspend my belief enough to go for it. VERY GOOD.

ASTRO CITY SAMARATIN SPECIAL: Despite no one saying any names backwards, I took Infidel to be a Mr. Mxyzptlk analogue -- reality changing powers, regularly scheduled appearances, magic-based. And I thought it was terrific. But I'm totally annoyed, like a bad itch under my skin, that I can't remember what the cover homage is supposed to be -- I know I know what it is, but it's just not manifesting itself in my memory. VERY GOOD

annnnnnd... fuck, the truck arrived already. That's all I gots the time for, folks. Sorry, missed a lot of things I wanted to cover, too. Wrap this up at home...

....home now.

Um, PICK OF THE WEEK: CASTLE WAITING v2 #1, though either of Brube's books come close.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Oh, c'mon, NIGHTWING #122. Proto-red-hood-plasm = teh suk.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK: I think I'll go with HELLBLAZER ALL HIS ENGINES, one of the better JC stories I've read, and one that I actually thought was worthy of the HC format and price (so twice as nice as a cheaper book)

More.... soon.

What did you think?

-B

Not Quite Ill, Far From Well: Jeff's Reviews of 7/26 Books....

Maybe it's allergies and not a cold at all. All I know is, between it and all the Walgreen's Rest Easy Nighttime Cough syrup(compare to the active ingredients in Vicks Nyquil Cough) I've been consuming, I'm simultaneously most of the Seven Dwarfs at once: Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Doc and Dopey (good Christ, do I feel Dopey!) plus a few others left out of the original--Lazy, Coughy, Whiney and Rarely Ambulatory. Any words of condolence you wish to proffer to my wife will be duly forwarded. On the other hand: comic books! They're a pip, ain't they?

52 WEEK #12: I mean, check out 52. I dug this issue quite a lot, although part of that is undoubtedly me being smack-dab in the middle of that "Wow, that JoAnna Cameron was sexy" demographic they're courting with the debut of Isis, and part of it is being able to close the book without the taste of "Jurgenized" continuity in my mouth. But I'd also submit the longer scenes of the last few issues help stave off the sense of the book running in place, and some of the threads are finally coming together. As long as I can pretend that's not really Captain Marvel and not really Ralph Dibny but shabby impersonators, then I can think of this as a solidly Good issue.

ACTION COMICS #841: I also liked this as well, as Busiek has a solid handle on how to keep a Superman story interesting (keep it very, very busy) and the art was solid. There's a few things I could gripe about, but that's probably the cough syrup talking and if they're still bothering me next issue, maybe I'll mention 'em. Good.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #534: From what I can tell, JMS is running through a snug gauntlet of continuity (this issue crosses into his FF issue, and parts of it seems to take place between the pages of Civil War #3) and he does a solid little job with it--as I think I've said before, Straczynski seems to have a better handle on how to make the Civil War resonant than Millar does--even though it's really tough to buy that Spider-Man, one of the few Marvel heroes to be genuinely hunted by the authorities, would actually help perpetuate the burden under which he suffered. It kinda works as long as it's kept very rhetorical questionish--"if I'm doing good, why do I feel so bad about it?"--but once Spidey (or the audience) thinks about it for more than fifteen seconds (as he should have by now), things should be changing a lot more quickly than they are (or, presumably, will be). In short, I can feel the plot dampers in place, keeping anything from happening until the story outlines say it should, and that's kind of a drag. OK, though.

ANNIHILATION NOVA #4: One of the books I didn't review last week that I'm throwing in this week, because, you know, how could I have collected comics for over thirty years without becoming strangely compulsive in weird, hard-to-explain ways? Overall, this wrap-up did what it was supposed to do (with the added bonus of making me like Quasar before, of course, killing him off): Annihilus seems like a bad-ass; the Nova/Drax apprenticeship makes sense; and the mini wrapped up without seeming like too much of a blind money-grab. It was pretty OK, and left my chops at least mildly whetted for the Annhilation event.

ANNIHILATION RONAN #4: This ended up my favorite of the four minis and most successful overall, even though the art took an unexpected dive in the last issue because the artist was rushed, or decided to ink with thick sharpies, or something went awry in the repro process and fucked up the fine linework I'd been grooving on. It kinda sorta tied into the Annihilation happenings by having the wave arrive and fuck up everyone's Christmas (apologies to MC Chris for the incorrect use of the term). Also, the Marvel Universe isn't complete without at least one of all-powerful dude with a cosmic stick stuck up his ass, and the creative team made a fine case why Ronan The Accuser is the right man for that job. Good, even though, man, that art was just so tasty in the first three issue and just so very meh in the finale. I cry a little. I really do.

AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #43: Pretty Good, despite being unable to truly please anyone. Hibbs doesn't like it that it's too focused on Atlantis and he doesn't care about Atlantis. I don't like it that it's still too rooted in the DCU, and every other goddamned book is set in the DCU and I want an underwater Conan book dammit. Poor Aquaman: is Itunes the only place he can ever truly win?

ASTRO CITY SAMARITAN SPECIAL: Even though Hibbs probably won't write reviews this week (he has me in some sort of horrific Catch-22/quantum conundrum where if I post, he insists that he doesn't have to, even if all I'm is writing a plea for him to please just put aside some motherfucking time and motherfucking post), I won't cockblock his review and tell you all the cool things he thought about this issue. Instead, I'll just say this was a Very Good Astro-City story, which really doesn't require the reading of any previous issue (except maybe the very first) and posits an interesting twist on the "mad genius" archetype that a "Superman" archetype such as Samaritan might end up with. It reminded me of those later issues of Moore's Miracleman where the writer convincingly portrays the mindset of a vast and timeless intelligence. I liked it.

BATMAN #655: Kinda shocked I didn't love this. The truly deranged opening was a nifty piss-take on the current grimmer-than-grim take on Batman, but rather than it being framed as a dream sequence or a story-within-a-story, Morrison puts forward the idea that Batman and the authorities threw a gunshot Joker in a dumpster and then just drove off. Hmmmmm.... If you can get around that little bit of mission statement asserting itself as continuity (and, to be honest, I couldn't), the rest of the issue is pretty good, with Kubert being a surprisingly strong bridge between the Jim Lee Batman and a more retro (think Adams & Aparo) Batman, and all the story pieces being set into place with wit and charm. With severe reservations, I'll say this was Good, if only because I'm really looking forward to next issue's nine million Man-Bat ninjas.

BIRDS OF PREY #96: As ever with Birds of Prey, I truly love all the character stuff and can barely remember the action stuff. It took me five minutes to remember that the Birds had gotten tricked into fighting Black Alice and, honestly, I still can't remember how the issue ends--at all. (Although, you know, let's be fair and blame all the cough syrup.) (Oh, hey, wait. I remembered the ending! I guess we should blame the cough syrup.) This book is highly OK and Gail is clearly actively working to kick things up a notch and hold the reader's attention span, but in this reader's case, it's still not working. Wish I could say why.

BLACK PANTHER #18: I could spend 3,000 words on this issue and barely begin to touch on why it creeped me out but let me try to concisely summarize, at the risk of being misconstrued and mischaracterized: Say what you will about Chris Claremont, but for many years (before the psychic-rape fixation really kicked in) he made a African (and American) woman a popular figure in a genre that didn't exactly boast a surplus of such characters (or a surplus of such readers, for that matter) and she commanded, for quite a while, a lot of dignity and respect. And say what you will about Reginald Hudlin, but in making Storm a perfect mate for the Black Panther--she's now a princess, she now has family, she now has a love of her life for which she's always pined--he's stripped the character of anything recognizable apart from superpowers and physical appearance. Feminists looking for examples of the whole "marriage as slavery" argument will find a lot of interesting metatext in this issue as, despite Storm being a popular character in the most popular comic book of the last thirty years and the Panther being a cool character who can barely keep a book for the last six, the achievements bandied about by the BET presenters (and what a creepily self-serving plug that is, coming from the President of Entertainment for BET) are nearly all the Panther's, and all of the famous friends--"Reed and Sue Richards, Captain America, Iron Man"--are the Panther's, as well as it being the Panther's rules by which they marry, the Panther's country, the Panther's god which Ororo must appease, etc., etc., etc. In short, the book is creepy, cynical, self-serving, patriarchal and--seeing at it forgets that Ororo already received the approval of the Panther God in that recent X-Men Annual that ties into this story--sloppy. No, sir, I didn't like it. It was Crap.

BLUE BEETLE #5: The guest artist threw this issue off its game--that heavily symbolic showdown at the U.S. border looked more like a slugout in the parking lot of a Petco--but not by much: I'm still enjoying the charm of the writing and the design of the title character. It's a Good book. I hope you're reading it.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #20: The first of two stellar Brubaker books this week. I've groused (Christ knows, I've groused) about Bucky, pacing and what-have-you on this book, but this issue really pulled it all together. Dynamically paced, this was an effortlessly enjoyable read where you could feel every bit of careful character definition start to pay off. Throw in the return of an old-school character that looked enitrely creepy and menacing and you've got yourself one Very Good issue of Captain America.

CASANOVA #2: Last issue, I compared Fraction to Tarantino. This issue, I'm comparing him to Dave Eggers, not least because his afternotes seem, like Egger's preface to A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius, the work of a clever and witty second-guessing control freak deathly afraid of being seen as a second-guessing control freak. Don't get me wrong, it's a very fun issue, and solidly Good work, but I hope the emphasis in the notes of later issues try a little less to jujitsu me into complying with authorial intent.

CASTLE WAITING VOL II #1: Wait, but... is this all-new, or the stuff that Medley left out of the trade but with some new? I'm deeply confused and so held off on reading it although it looks really stellar. I should just cave in and buy it and the hardcover, despite all my original issues languishing somewhere in my storage space.

CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #4: Looking back through issue #3, I realized I was kind of harsh--I liked the main story and the Speedball story, but the other two pieces really annoyed me. Here, the annoyance is even greater--Paul Jenkins adapts a Billy Joel song about Vietnam into the most cringe-worthy back-up yet--but I liked main story and the Speedball story, aided considerably by Steve Lieber's art, was really good. So I don't know: Ehful? CrEhp? It's been a while since a title's needed the Comic Book Centrifuge to separate out the good and the horrid.

DAREDEVIL #87: The second half of Brubaker's stellar week: this storyline was incredibly well-handled from start to finish, just a stellar transition from Bendis and Maleev to Brubaker and Lark. My only complaint is one of Brubaker's cool little twists got spoiled (Although I really have no one to blame but myself. Well, and Marvel. And the Internet. Come to think of it, those are usually my top three suspects for everything's that wrong with my life...) I'm really excited to see where this book goes next and hope Brubaker can continue to hold on to this high level of quality as his workload increases. Very Good stuff.

ETERNALS #2: Far less inept than issue #1, which is a solid relief. Kind of taking its time, though, which seems to miss a very important component of Kirby's work right there. Hopefully, it'll continue to pick up the pace. OK.

GUMBY #1: If I'd done reviews last week, this probably would've been Pick of the Week--it's funny and charming and kind of melancholy and odd. If they can get Steve Purcell to do an issue as well, I'll be in cutesy clay-kid heaven. Very Good.

JACK OF FABLES #1: You know those shows you've watched maybe one episode of, and every time it comes on TV, it's the same god-damned episode? For some reason, every time I try to pick up a Fables title, I get an issue with naked Goldilocks in it. I have no idea what this says about me, but it's not a good sign since I never pick up another issue. Nonetheless, this seemed OK enough that I'll check out next issue. If anyone has any clues as to my Freudian naked-Goldilocks block, feel free to email me.

NIGHTWING #122: So. Nightwing and what's-her-name defeat one guy by talking about how inadequate he is in bed, and Jason Todd defeats the other guy by ingesting him and regurgitating him. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Bruce Jones lives in Los Angeles, home of the "sexual bitchery/eating disorder" one-two punch. I think an entire generation of fanboys have learned a vital lesson here: never bitch about Devin Grayson's scripts ever again. Basest Crap.

POWERS #19: There's a fine thesis out there waiting to be written about Bendis's conflation of sexual potency and destructive superpowers in Powers, but to do so a keener mind than mine will have to unravel what happened in those last few Night Queen pages. Her husband walked in on her? She walked her in on herself? Huh? Who? Wha? OK, in a "why did this book get 90% more naked all of a sudden?" kind of way.

SHARK-MAN #1: The main draw is the loveliest work I've ever seen from Steve Pugh (by far) but this very odd superhero book (it's Batman crossed with Aquaman, to put it bluntly) really does everything a first issue should--gives you cool imagery, introduces you to likeable characters and an interesting status quo, and then sets that status quo on its head and throws those likeable characters into hot water right at the end. It's an impressively solid piece of work, with maybe some interesting anti-work-for-hire snarkery going on sub-rosa. Believe it or not, Very Good and worth picking up if you see it.

SHE-HULK 2 #9: Another top-notch little issue. Hibbs, out of his mind on loco weed, thought the spit-take page was a waste. I thought it was hilarious. Very Good.

SUPERGIRL #8: Manages to lay off the ick factor thanks to several choice reveals, but still manages to make barely a lick of sense. Ripping a few pages from Howard Mackie's '90s playbook of "we can't tell you what the mysterious secret is because we haven't figured it out ourselves, but we're going to make it seem really, really ominuous" probably isn't the best maneuver, either. Eh.

XENA #1: Appears to have everything a Xena fan would want. Sadly, I'm not a Xena fan, so it's only OK to me.

PICK OF THE WEEK(S): Captain America #20 or Daredevil #87, definitely, if you've been following 'em. Otherwise, Gumby #1 or Shark-Man #1.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Boy, I did not like Black Panther #18, did I?

TRADE PICK: My loving analysis of Joe Sacco's But I Like It HC will have to wait for another week (it's busy as hell at the moment). But it was great, even if you had that issue of Yahoo from way back when (which I did). At $14.99, (I think?) that Hellblazer: All His Engines SC is more than worth the coin, as is Polly & The Pirates TPB, Museum of Terror and probably a lot more I didn't read. I'd also be a liar (by exclusion) if I didn't confess to the mesmeric hold that Dear John: Alex Toth Doodlebook had over me as well. There appear to be several full stories from Eerie wedged into there!