O Come All Ye Faithful: Graeme's reviews of 12/20 books.

The secret joy of the Holiday Season is that I somehow managed to find space in the middle of my day to do reviews for this week's books early. It would be a Christmas miracle if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't like half of them. NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI #1: Because you demanded it - The entire history of the Marvel Universe... retconned so that Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange, Professor X, Iron Man, Namor and Black Bolt murder lots of Skrulls! Yeah, that was a weird start to this series, and something to harsh the mellow that was my excitement about the potential fun that this could offer. No matter how pretty Jim Cheung's art is - and it really is, by the way - it can't overcome the bitter adolescence of Brians Bendis and Reed saying "No, they've been bastards all along - Look, they were even killing aliens when Roy Thomas was writing them, it's just that you didn't know about it until now!" as justification for the Civil Warring of the Marvel Universe. It's not as "They're raping my childhood" as Identity Crisis, but I'm getting fed up of writers finding it easier to retroactively create motivations for behavior in flashbacks and "untold stories", instead of actually trying to either do something new or at least build on what was there before. Eh, and that's mostly down to the art and remembering how much I liked Iron Man's armor back in those days.

IRON MAN/CAPTAIN AMERICA: CASUALTIES OF WAR #1: Less a story, more Marvel's way of saying to the fans, "Yes, Iron Man and Captain America used to be friends and weren't always dicks, happy now, fanboys???" And it only costs the fans $3.99 for the pleasure. Writer Christos Gage was given a pretty impossible task with this special - Have Iron Man and Captain America meet in the middle of the Civil War to talk, but NOTHING CAN HAPPEN because Civil War is already written - and it shows; there's nothing but continuity porn here, the two characters just referring to past story followed by past story followed by past story before, bizarrely, having a fistfight and walking away from each other, having resolved nothing. It's a completely pointless Crap book, made all the more so by...

IRON MAN #14: In which Captain America and Iron Man meet in the middle of the Civil War to talk. Iron Man seems to be getting the shitty end of the stick in this "event" in general; the character becomes completely confused, with his depiction varying wildly depending on who's writing the issue in question (Is he really troubled and trying to do the right thing, as in this issue? Is he a Machiavellian megalomaniac, as in anything J. Michael Straczynski writes? And, more to the point, when will Marvel realize that that doesn't make it a nuanced story as much as a clusterfuck of miscommunication between creators?) and his book doomed to repeat storypoints that happen in other books that ship on the same day (This month's Iron Man/Cap talk, last month with Tony Stark being offered the directorship of SHIELD in both this book and the same week's New Avengers). That said, this is probably the more successful of the two secret meetings of the two heroes, if only because they actually talk about the murder of Goliath and the conversation ends on a more believable plot point (Cap's side ambushes Iron Man). Sadly, the rest of the book is less interesting, especially when the Invisible Woman appears to accuse Tony of breaking up her marriage, because nothing says "strong intelligent woman who's committed to her relationship" than someone who abandons her family and then, instead of talking things over with her estranged husband, attacks a third party and blames their troubles on him. I mean, sure, it's being proactive and all, but still: Sue Richards. I know you know better than that. Eh at best, and that's not even touching the odd "Iron Man euthanizes his best friend using his magic technology telepathy" subplot.

CIVIL WAR: WAR CRIMES #1: Bringing up the rear of the Marvel books for this week, this oneshot that surprisingly turns out to be the best of the Civil War-related titles for awhile, if only because it actually answers a genuinely hanging plot point from the main series - What've the villains who aren't part of the Thunderbolts been up to while the superheroes are beating each other up? The answer, apparently, is "They've all been pawns of a game of chess between the Kingpin and Hammerhead, of all people," in what turns out to be an oddly sound, if unspectacular, Okay attempt at gritty-ish crime drama. The version of Iron Man that appears here, by the way? Easily-fooled-but-well-meaning Iron Man. Gotta get 'em all.

Now, shall we do some non-Marvel books about things other than superheroes being dicks? Let's.

THE BAKERS MEET JINGLE BELLE: So, Hibbs gave me a hard time when I was asking about this, the other day. I made some comment about Jingle Belle - which I've never read before - seeming like an okay idea, because how can you go wrong with a cute elf girl? His response, loud in volume if low in wordcount, was that That was all there is to it. She's a cute elf girl. That's all. It's the ultimate in meaningless high concept: Jingle Belle! She's a cute elf girl! And... she's a cute elf girl! Yay! Sadly, having read this special crossover between said cute elf girl and Kyle Baker's autobiographical family cartoons, I have to say: He's right. And worse, once you take the autobiographical away from Baker's The Bakers, then they're just as bland: They're a cute family with a grumpy dad and smart mom and fun lovin' kids! And that's all! Put both flavors together, and you end up with something that's completely forgettable, and (surprisingly, considering the creators involved) boring. Crap, sadly.

CRIMINAL #3: Worth mentioning not because it's continuing to be very well done, although it is, but because the change of pace in this issue towards something less heist/crime/plot driven (even though it is, undoubtedly, the calm before the storm of plot resolution in the next couple of issues) makes me want to see Brubaker and Philips try their hand at something in the romance genre at some point. Very Good, as ever.

WALK-IN #1: Dave Stewart - Pop star, very very bad artist (he tried to remake himself as a Damien Hirst wannabe in the mid-90s, if I remember correctly), filmmaker of movies starring All Saints, and now the man behind Jeff Parker's latest comic. Ignore the horrendous cover, with the outlandish breasts and attitude that you won't find on the inside, and you'll find something that's not quite there yet but interesting enough to catch your attention. Right now, it feels like a Vertigo book from when that line launched (Strippers and slackers and realities crossing over. It's practically early '90s Milligan. Just add sexual neuroses and wordplay), but in a good way... Kind of aimless but charming, nonetheless. It's cautiously Good right now (with a stronger artist - someone like Brendan McCarthy would be perfect, but anyone who could make reality a bit grimier and the fantasy more fantastic would do - I would be much less cautious), but then, I've always been a sucker for stories like this.

Y: THE LAST MAN #52: I promise you, Brian K. Vaughan - If you don't get Beth and Yorick together by the time this series ends, I will be pointlessly upset and probably write something bitchy about you here. So, you know, not much change, really. But the last page cliffhanger of this series teases that we really may see the two lovers reunited after all, and reinforces the feeling of everything coming, however slowly, to a close. Still Good after all these years, and still probably the strongest Vaughan book in the long run.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Criminal, if we're going by, you know, what the best book of the bunch is. If you're going for novelty, though, then go for Walk In. It's interesting. PICK OF THE WEAK will be the Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War book, because there is no reason for it to exist apart from Marvel's omniverous desire for the almighty dollar. TRADE OF THE WEEK, although I haven't read anything released this week, is probably the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA HEREBY ELECTS... collection, because that really goes straight to the heart of my superhero nostalgia. That said, the new Fables trade, WOLVES, is also out this week... Me, I've been reading an early Christmas present: that big ETERNALS BY JACK KIRBY collection that came out a few months ago. Boy, that Kirby liked to just throw ideas out there, didn't he...?

I'm still going to try to do that trades only post, by the way...

I am Retsel Ffej: Graeme reviews last week's books.

Well, the weather outside? Frightful. And that fire? So delightful. And since there's no place to go, and baby, it's cold outside, your lips sure do look delicious... No, wait, I'm getting my songs mixed up. But, as I said in my comments to Jeff's reviews, he and I are at yuletide opposites this week. Let's call him the Grinch and me Good King Wenceslas, okay? 52 WEEK THIRTY-TWO: There are issues of this where I enjoy it more than usual, and I'm not entirely sure why; this may be the most enjoyable week of the series for me since week nineteen, perhaps because it feels like the biggest "reveal" since that issue. Except I'm not entirely sure what's been revealed; Is Ralph dead, having killed himself way back in week one, and everything that's happened to him since then has been some kind of near-death thing? Has he been shown that there's no such thing as death? And is there no such thing as death, seeing as we're told twice that death is just a trick of time, and this series is all about time being broken? The reason, maybe, that this issue has the same effect on me as the (spoiler!) Skeets is evil issue is because both of them don't offer plot resolution as much as advancement that just opens up more questions. Because, yeah sure, it's fun to watch Black Adam fly about and be grumpy for awhile, but the glimpses at a bigger point to the whole series are what keeps me involved in the book. Good.

ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #17: I'm completely conflicted on Chris Ware. On the one hand, I find him to be an amazing graphic designer and his techniques precise and breathtaking - the exhibition of his artwork that was here a couple of years (?maybe?) ago was stunning, especially the roughs and the pencils to his pages - but more than not, his end-result always feels too clinical to me, for some reason - The same preciseness and cleanliness that I appreciate as a designer acting as an anaesthetic to the story that he's trying to tell, bringing in a distance to whatever emotional core that the writing is trying to reach. It leaves the end result feeling very artificial and studied, to me (Yes, even on Jimmy Corrigan, which blew my little mind on first reading, but didn't work for me on subsequent attempts). It's the same thing here - the writing on Rusty Brown is layered and very Altman-esque (or perhaps more Paul Thomas Anderson-esque, come to think of it), but visually it doesn't work with the imagery that Ware uses in anything other than the scenes with Rusty and Chalky; the simplicity and iconography that's used there fits, but as soon as we move to the sister or the teacher (and the teacher being a Chris Ware is something that is cute, but I can't work out if it's in a good way or a horrible way, yet), I wanted something... more. Or different. Or both. Technically, the book is beautifully designed and the writing is interesting, even on the shorter gag strips. But it didn't work for me; I didn't get it, and so it ended up just being Okay.

I'm going to alt-comics hell now.

DCU INFINITE HOLIDAY SPECIAL: It may not be the best holiday-related release this week, but that's purely because of the weaker stories in here (That would be the Green Lantern and Shazam ones, in particular, although I didn't really get that much from the first solo Batwoman story, either). But the stories that did work are very enjoyable indeed; Ian Boothby's Flash and Joe Kelly's Supergirl are firmly in the sentimental schmaltz category, despite the selfconsciously grumpy stars (Although Kelly's take on Supergirl finally works here, helped enormously by Ale Garza's art - Hey, DC? This is the guy you should have on the regular Supergirl book; he has the "big eyes" thing from Michael Turner, but it works because his style in general is more cartoony. Also, he does a good grumpy Girl of Steel. Seriously; he'd be a much better fit than Ian Chuchill - and the fact that the story, for once, doesn't revolve around Kara "trying to find her place" in the DC Universe) and hit those points well and good, but the stars of this particular show are Bill Willingham and Kelley Puckett, for the Shadowpact and Superman stories, both of which have a sense of humor and ridiculousness that nonetheless end up as some of the most heartwarming things DC have published all year. Both of those stories have great art, as well; the Shadowpact one is illustrated by Invincible's Cory Walker, and Pete Woods shows yet again that he should be a massive superstar artist with his Silver Age tale on the characters in the Superman short. Those last two stories are Excellent, and half of the book is a high Good, but the whole package is let down by the not-so-good stories and, really, is just Okay.

THE ESCAPISTS #6: Hey, how did this have a last issue that got Very Good after the - to me, at least - mediocre middle issues? Perhaps because it felt as if the story was about the characters again instead of the plot; the resolution of the plots that were set in motion over the last couple of issues even happen off-panel and are explained to us in expositionary narration here, allowing Brian Vaughan to get back to the more important themes of escaping/embracing family bonds that the earlier issues were about, and I couldn't be happier. Perhaps it's just my reading of the issue, but the move away from literal plot dynamics to a more abstract focus gives this issue my favorite scene of the entire series, where Case realizes that working at a New York Graphic Design House isn't for her. There's a comment in the lettercol at the end of the issue where editor Diana Schultz makes some comment about wishing this series was an ongoing, but I'm glad it isn't; the story ends perfectly with the last page here. I'd love to see Vaughan do more about creation, but these characters? They're finished. They've escaped.

GEN 13 #3: Gail introduces a really strange religious tone to the series with this issue - Not only is one of the mysterious voyeurs revealed to be a minister who preaches against sins like, oh, logging onto the internet to watch snuff porn, shall we say, but the first supervillains the team have are called "The Heavenly Choir" and have a Christian theme to their powers and look. Is this something from the original series, or an unexpected new flavor particular to this version...? Either way, it's a swerve I didn't see coming, and end up feeling confused by; what is the morality of this book? Are we being preached to about buying books that are often more about violence than anything else? What's with the religious iconography...? Is it shock tactics, or is there something more going on behind the surface...? Right now, it feels too early to tell, but I'm also left, three issues into the series, still unsure about what book I'm reading from issue to issue... A cautious Good, but I wonder where everything's going here.

GHOST RIDER #6: You know, Daniel Way gets a lot of shit online for decompressing his stories, but I actually kind of enjoyed the first half of this two-parter (with art by Richard Corben, which is why Hibbs pushed it on me in the first place - It's the best I've seen Corben's stuff look in awhile, as well); it moves along at a nice enough pace for you to understand what's happening in both timeframes. I mean, it's still not my cup of tea and all, but it's well enough done, you know? Good.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #4: This really should be more exciting, shouldn't it? But it all feels like overkill, for some reason. Eh.

THE SPIRIT #1: The most enjoyable book out this week, and almost moreso because of its deliberately light and throwaway nature. It's pulp, and has no pretentions to be anything more than pulp... But Darwyn Cooke's pulp still manages to be better than most other creators' attempts to create something profound and lasting (Spider-Man: Reign comes to mind), which either says something about him, or about almost everyone else working in the medium these days. It's the details that stick around from here, more than the plot, as much as Jeff didn't dig most of them - The ridiculous name of the TV anchor (Ginger Coffee) or the scrolls along the bottom of the TV screen ("two headed killer puppy captures jurors' hearts"), or the Spirit hiding inside the car, or Ebony getting a hard time because of his name - because the only way that stories like this work is because of the execution, not the idea... Cooke's art is, as ever, beautiful, and all the better for avoiding an Eisner pastiche. Because I'm a pessimist, I'm convinced that this book won't last two years in this market - It doesn't tie in with any Universe, it doesn't follow the storytelling conventions or tone of the popular books, and it has a sly humor that doesn't go for the obvious Wizard-esque cheap jokes - but for now, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. Excellent.

WOLVERINE #49: And this turns out, surprisingly, to be the Holiday book of the week. It's a fill-in issue and steals the plot from Die Hard, but Goddammit if there's not enough enjoyment in seeing Wolverine standing atop a pile of (potentially dead) evil dwarves dressed as Santa's elves saying "Feels weird fightin' people smaller than me. I think I like it." Or his continued assertions that the bombs in the building aren't real until they start going off. Only the end of the issue - a rushed climax that's visually confused and out of tone with the rest of the book - disappoints, but up until that point, the whole thing is a successful (culture?) clash played for laughs as much as action thrills and spills. Based on this issue, I'm tempted to look at whatever writer Rob Williams gets up to next. Very Good, and who would've thought I would've said that about a Wolverine book?

WONDER MAN: MY FAIR SUPERHERO #1: Am I the only person who is bored of the stories that start in dystopian futures and then flash back to the main story? The start of this book really annoyed me because of that, and I'm not entirely sure why. It felt unnecessary, an attempt to try and make this story more "important" and give it more weight, and kind of working against the tone of the rest of the story, which is closer to Peter David's usual lighthearted schtick with injokes and puns. Although it may be that the main story feels more light than it's meant to, thanks to Andrew Currie's pencils, which are very unusual for a Marvel book - imagine John McCrea, but moreso, and you're kind of close. I think the inking makes the art look worse than it actually is, but that may just be me. Overall, though, it's an Eh book that doesn't quite gel together yet.

PICK OF THE WEEK would be The Spirit, because, dude. It was great. PICK OF THE WEAK would be Justice League, because I'm still waiting to find out how the Red Tornado can manage to possess a corpse and give it superpowers, even as we see bad guys steal his robot body because that's supposed to be the thing that made him so powerful. TRADE OF THE WEEK is an old one - Essential Luke Cage, volume 2. What better time of year to read about a man who likes to yell "Sweet Christmas"?

Coming up this week, if I have time: That trades only post I keep promising to do. But don't hold your breath.

The Sick Trick: Jeff's Review of 12/13 Books.

I'm not capital-S Sick but I am little-s sick: mildly feverish and runny nose to beat the band, sore throat when I wake up, etc. Combine that with the newsletter deadline and a shortened workday on Friday so I could attend the non-CE holiday party, and you've got the makings for a whiny, weepy & short set of reviews. Speaking of whining and wailing, has anyone made the jump from Blogger to Blogger Beta and, more specifically, the jump from Haloscan to Blogger Beta's improved commenting system? We're going to be making the jump soon (like by the end of the year soon) and I'm trying to figure out if I should muck about with the template so that Haloscan is still accessible. Any comments or advice you'd want to share would be welcome.

And with that:

52 WEEK #32: It would've been nice, although too much to ask apparently, that Ralph's tour through the magical side of the DCU showed how the universe's magical side had been broken post-Crisis rather than highlighting how much it's always been broken. Here, Mr. Dibny gets an "all is love; time is an illusion" message from Rama Kushna that doesn't quite seem to jibe with, you know, hell and everything that Ralph's already visited--to me, it just underlines how the magical DCU is a bunch of utterly contradictory ideas and intentions awkwardly jammed under one celestial roof. An overall Eh issue, I thought.

BATMAN #660: I spent most of the issue thinking, "Johnny Karaoke? That's an awesome idea! No, wait, that's a horrible idea! No, wait, awesome!" It seems to require a certain balancing act that maybe Mr. Morrison could have pulled off, but Mr. Ostrander certainly cannot. Finally, that final line of Batman's ("Get ready to bleed.") seems very pre-OYL Bats, doesn't it? (And also kind of silly: is the bad guy supposed to let out the choke on his corpuscles or something?) Considering this shipped only two weeks after the last one, you'd think the editor might've taken a little more time to straighten things out. Drops to an Eh for me, because I expect more from an issue with a character named Johnny Karaoke, and more from an issue of Batman than a "hmm, what've we got in the inventory drawer?" approach.

BLADE #4: Despite that awesome cover and the hilarious blurb from the Spurge, and an enjoyably candid letters page, I was pretty meh about the issue--I just didn't buy that a body-shifting creature would work itself into a corner that easily. It's still probably the best Blade title Marvel's ever published, but my OK rating is still being a bit too generous, probably.

BULLET POINTS #2: Hibbs entered his judgment of "Who cares?" back with the first issue, and this second issue proves him right on the money. While there's some lovely visuals--that Hulk rampage looked fantastic, I thought--the point seems less "how completely different the world will turn out" and more, "and that's how Matt Murdock became Galactus's herald" which I had more than enough of back when I was reading What If. Will likely prove to Hibbs right, in short, and utterly Eh-worthy as a result.

DAMNED #3: This is the issue in which I realized I will be picking up the trade--it's clever and sharp and not quite readable without the other issues nearby. Good stuff, though, and worth picking up.

ESCAPISTS #6: Despite the character beats feeling a bit rushed, I liked the ending to this quite a lot--it seemed very faithful to the Jack Kirbyishness of the Escapist, as our heroes miraculously turn defeat into victory. It's kind of a shame that Dark Horse finally gets a creative team that can handle Chabon's ideas with something approaching the original novel's alacrity and it has to end after only six issues. I guess that's the way it rolls in our to-the-trade industry but it's a shame I won't have more Good issues to be on the lookout for.

EX MACHINA #25: Took a character I didn't much care about--Bradbury--in a title I've been cooling on, and manages to turn it all around on a dime. My bipolar love affair with Ex Machina continues as I found this to be a pretty Good little done-in-one.

EXILES ANNUAL #1: I liked just about everything this book did--took the classic trope of two versions of the same team battling one another, added a shiny red reset button for anyone who might want to use it in the future, and brought back one of my favorite villains--but I was left pretty cold about the way it did it all. If nothing else, the two teams, despite having largely different line-ups, had essentially the same characterization and that underscored how generic and samey the title has felt for a while. Eh, unfortunately.

GHOST RIDER #6: Bizarro comics week continues as the most annoyingly disposable title in Marvel's line-up becomes compelling thanks to the addition of artist Richard Corben. The story was pretty disposable, cutting badly back and forth between the present and the past, but Corben's art made it all spooky, funny and strange: Hibbs pointed the title out to me because he was impressed with how Corben made the Ghost Rider really look like a flaming skeleton, but I thought Corben brought a glitchy stoner washout look to both Blaze and Blaze's cellmate that was similarly fresh and appealing. I hate advocating books solely on the basis of the art, but for $2.99 you get some damn Good art here.

SPIRIT #1: Now, as long as I'm advocating books for the art, I can totally give this a Good: Cooke's art and visual storytelling are amazing and I kind of can't believe we're going to have the good luck to get it at $2.99 a pop rather than hefty prestige format prices. But once I look past the art, I think this first issue runs dangerously close to being a flop. As relieved as I am that Cooke didn't try for the difficult mix of noir and vaudeville Eisner utilized, going for just the noir isn't going to cut it. If The Pill--more visually grotesque than any Eisner villain I can remember--is an indicator of where the book is heading, then it's a road I'm not going to enjoy travelling down. (And if the little crawlers at the bottom of the NNN broadcast scenes are indications of what we're in for if Cooke tries to develop the humor angle, I'm not too optimistic about that development, either.) I thought the scenes with Ebony were quite good, however, and the art really is first-class so I'm definitely along for the ride. But I think even I weren't feeling sick and lousy, I'd be griping about this title. I guess we'll see, won't we?

WOLVERINE #49: Hmmm. You'd think sticking Wolverine in the middle of Die Hard would be great in a "hot dog wrapped in bacon" kind of way, right? In fact, it's kinda lame although compelling art & some clever dialogue will half-convince you otherwise--Wolverine has to share the spotlight with an underdeveloped John McClane type and the story doesn't end so much as messily stop, and so a lot of the set-up doesn't deliver. (The whole thing suffers by comparison to the iconic wit of the cover, too.) If I didn't have to pay an extra buck for it, it'd be OK, but at that price it too gets consigned to the endless fires of Eh-dition.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Either of the Vaughan books, Damned if you can get all the issues all at once, maybe Ghost Rider, and maybe The Spirit.

PICK OF THE WEAK: 52, Batman, Bullet Points, and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn't get around to reading.

TRADE PICK: Finally, the real reason why I'm cranky comes out: I've got both The Drifting Classroom and Sgt. Frog sitting unread in my pull box where they'll stay until next week. It pains me, it really does.

But I'm sure you weren't nearly as cranky as I was. What'd you think?

Jeff's UnCleverly Titled Reviews of 12/6 Books.

Ahhh, the holiday season. Does anyone ever end up with enough time to do what they need to? I was in such a rush my original title for this post pretty much ripped off Graeme's without even realizing it. Oy. But enough of that. Here's this:

52 WEEK #31: On its own, the issue didn't do too much for me but, combined with the comments thread for Graeme's post, I found the whole "who is Supernova?" thing kinda interesting, as cases are made there for both the Flash and the Atom. (If the second "key" Ralph refers to is "Keystone City," then I'm thinking The Flash...) Unfortunately, as writers try to stay one step ahead of the Internet hivemind, they're also more than happy to cheat like nobody's business. ("Sugar? A-a-and Spike?! You were Supernova?" "Glpxl!") In short, I guess the issue is Good for keeping the World Wide Web merrily abuzz, but it honestly didn't strike me as much more than OK.

BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #1: Whilce Portacio's weird artistic tics with all the grimacing and finely detailed clothing folds synch up to Batman surprisingly well, and Diggle does a fine job of taking his cues from Batman Begins, but there's still an overwhelming waft of "Why?" coming off this title. Will this book really be anything more than Legends of the Dark Knight with a temporary shot in the arm saleswise? OK book, but, wow, do cheap sales ploys leave me cold these days.

BEYOND #6: I'm not much of a spoiler dude normally but...killing off Gravity? Utter cheapness, barely excused by caption blab suggesting Gravity might be coming back...or will he? Kind of a drag since, now that I think about it, the Marvel Universe might've been better served by having some--or all--of the other characters axed. I liked most of the art, and most of the story for this, so I'm giving it a Good, but I'm pretty aware the book coasts on the feelings of C-Lister love a certain segment of Marvel fanboys like myself might possess. Although no one really expected much from this, it could've been much, much better, frankly.

DESOLATION JONES #8: The exhausted world-weariness, so much a part of Ellis's work and authorial pose, is taken to new heights as Jones tries to track down an old friend and ruminates about his past in a Los Angeles set, if the skies are any indication, in a universe in the last stages of thermodynamic heatdeath. I'm curious to see where the PKD stuff is going (by which I mean I'm only half-convinced it's going to work), the art is amazing, and the writing is strong. Even with my reservations, I'd call it Very Good work.

DETECTIVE COMICS #826: Yeah, let's see this one end up in one of DC's holiday anthologies--I mean, it is a done-in-one Christmas story, isn't it? I liked it a lot, being a sucker for a decent Joker story, a good done-in-one, and a nasty little hook of a story idea, although I've got some quibbleage (the set-up seemed a bit forced, and, like any fan of the Joker, I've got maddeningly specific ideas about how the character should be handled that should have no real weight or bearing in a review that nonetheless affect my reading experience). Let's call is a super high Good, or a low Very Good, depending on where your own biases might lie.

DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #3: Too bad I didn't try harder to push that "New Fun" idea down the Internet's throat, because this book certainly falls under that banner: it's light and funny and clever with an affection that keeps the book from feeling campy (or else it's camp of the very highest order, the kind Ms. Sontag might have characterized as laughing the laughter of the inclusive). Good stuff, although I can't figure out if I would like it more or less if I was an actual Dr. Strange fan.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1: Somewhere in all the frenzied jibbity-jab and face-meltery of Identity Crisis, I lost faith in Geoff Johns. So, in place of all the potentially cool stuff in this book, all I saw were the faults--why have Mr. America mention at the top of the page that he'd ruin his friend's career if his identity was exposed, just to have him unmask at the bottom? Why doesn't his friend know that the murder victims are in Mr. America's house, since he knows Mr. America's identity? For that matter, is Mr. America so busy telling us his backstory that he doesn't realize he's running into his own home? Huh? Who? What? Consequently, whereas others see a exciting bit of (to use Graeme's phrase) continuity porn, I feel like I'm reading the first issue of "In Pictopia: The Maxi-Series." Even the appearance of a charming character like Ma Hunkel's granddaugher makes me worry about what the poor thing is gonna be put through by the time issue #50 rolls around. It's probably Good, this issue, but to be honest, I've lost nearly all my appetite for this kind of thing and really can't rouse more than an Eh.

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #22: As with the Spidey-suit story last issue, Fred Van Lente takes a fun part of the mythos(the Hobgoblin/Green Goblin schism) and boils away the absurdly byzantine continuity to get a fun workable story. However, I gotta say that reading a Spider-Man book without ongoing soap-operaish subplots is a bit like getting your cat neutered--sure, the place stinks of cat piss a lot less and you don't get your arm sliced open half as much, but you can tell the experience has grown markedly less catlike at the same time, you know? Highly OK, but if we could get some emotional growth and development in there--just a panel or two per issue!--I'd be much happier.

MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Marvel's got this weird "boutique pricing" thing going, have you noticed? It's like they take stuff they clearly don't give a shit about (like that follow-up to Joe Casey's Avengers miniseries, or this book) and dump it on the market with a higher price tag than their flagship books, as if double-daring the customer to buy it. It's a drag too, because the stories in the book are actually a lot of fun (that follow up to last year's Fin Fang Four was awesome, but I thought the AIM holiday party was quite enjoyable, too) but padded with horrific filler (I don't know who didn't come through with their eight pages, but the hideous rip-offness of the cover gallery was only topped by those bullshit "ornaments"). You know I'm too much of a cheap bastard to recommend a $3.99 book if I think it's overpriced, and it's a shame because a lot of the material is quite Good. The presentation, however, is Crap.

NEW TALES OF OLD PALOMAR #1: Back in the old days, when Fantagraphics was stuck in its loveless marriage with the direct market, they might've called this book "Crisis on Infinite Palomars" in a fit of cheeky snark and the title would've been kinda appropriate--Beto throws in lots of half-page intro shots that would be meaningless to the new reader but sends all kinds of pangs to people like me who remember reading the first Heartbreak Soup story more than two decades previous. So, in its own way, this book is continuity porn just as much as JSA #1, but, unlike JSA where some superhero beats up a villain and then angrily asks "Now who's a bitch?!", most of the extreme material (which Beto normally wallows in)is absent or dialed down to the point of genuine discretion. The story's charming with an enjoyably disquieting undercurrent, the art is open, relaxed and vibrant, and the price tag is about three dollars more than I'm comfortable with (because I'm Cheapy McChintzalot, remember?) and I'm going with an OK because I think there's gotta be a real perfect storm as far as the customer profile goes (an old, indy, spendthrift completist, essentially) in order for the book to really resonate.

NEWUNIVERSAL #1: Arguably, Ellis's recasting the world as a different one from ours (one where China is ascending in importance even more rapidly, for example) obviates the whole point behind the original New Universe, but I can't really see how he could have stuck to "the world outside your window" without the book reading like Supreme Power or Morrison's first issue of The Authority or any number of things out there (Heroes, as G. points out). Instead, it seems like Ellis, the midnight ruminator, is looking at The New Universe through the prism of Watchmen, which potentially might be really interesting since, after all, it was through Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, not The New Universe, from which an entire generation of comic book creators took their cues for "realistic" comics.

Sadly, I had more fun typing that paragraph than I did reading this issue. This ground is very well-tilled by now, and there's not much to the plot or the characters that suggests that we're going to get anything other than a crop of the same old mung with differently colored leaves and shoots. I'm going with an optimstic OK, mainly because Ellis can take his analysis of genre conventions into interesting areas if he feels like it, so I'll see what later issues bring.

NIGHTWING #127: Considering how Dan Didio was ready to off Nightwing in IC but didn't, the meta-conceit of Nightwing clawing his way out of a grave where he's been buried alive is kinda cute. And while, normally, the old-school genericism of Wolfman and Jurgens would leave me cold, but here it's almost comforting, like Wolfman's baloney is the perfect complement to Jurgens' whitebread and mayo and Nightwing's good old processed American cheese. If that strikes you as the most left-handed of compliments (or the most damning of culinary analogies), it is: I read this issue and thought it was pretty OK but I also felt kinda blucky about myself. That's the kind of issue this is.

OUTSIDERS #43: If you've ever ridden one of San Francisco's electric busses, you know what it's like to read The Outsiders--at the slightest touch of the accelerator, the bus leaps halfway up a hill, and when the driver takes his foot off, the whole thing comes to a shuddering, old-lady-spilling halt. So, while this issue shoulda been awesome, really--it's actually pretty cool that Winick has had this whole master plan clearly worked out from the very first issue and, finally, three and a half years later, we finally find out what it is--it's comes as off as just one more spastic jerk contributing to a feeling of superhero motion sickness. It should've been better than Eh, but for me, it really wasn't.

SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1: No, no, Kaare, you've got to do it the way Mark Millar does it: with subtlety. I did like how the bow tie made Peter Parker look like the palest disciple of Louis Farrakhan ever, though. Pretty, but Awful.

STAN LEE MEETS SILVER SURFER: Almost worth it for the full-page of Galactus saying to Stan: "Jeezis, would you shut this guy up already?!" But, it's $3.99 so it's really not. That reprint didn't really do Stan any favors, either, since John Buscema apparently didn't bother to mention on the back of his artwork why Spidey and the Surfer were fighting in the first place. Also, since The Surfer was apparently a breaking point between Lee & Kirby, I wonder if this issue, being the last, was meant by some clever staffer to underscore how Lee's relevance pretty much dissipated once Kirby left, but that's neither here nor there. Eh, in any event.

SUPERGIRL #12: Very different from the issue described over at DC, and probably much better since it features the art of the glorious Amanda Conner, which adds immeasurably to its charms. It's just a fill-in issue, and it's still slightly skeevy, but it was I thought it was Good.

ULTIMATE VISION #1: Mike Carey writes a competent follow-up to the Ultimate Galactus saga, and Brandon Peterson apparently likes drawing himself some robo-boobs and ass, so I guess it's OK. I'm sure if I liked robo-boobs and ass, I'd rate it higher.

UNCANNY X-MEN #481: Finally, some X-Men in my X-Men book! And Rachel is going to have a doomed romance with the guy from Final Fantasy VII! Awesome! Or highly OK, maybe. But either way, I'm interested again.

WALKING DEAD #33: Completely botched, if you ask me. Sure, sure, you can break out on the dry erase board and show why this event had to happen, and that event had to happen, and how this is all gonna pay off Walking Dead #50, but just about every choice made in this storyline seemed either obvious and/or inept (all those pages establishing the zombie girl on the chain, and then she just entirely disappears in the fight or torture scene, for example. Huh?) In the back pages, Kirkman talks about how this book is his baby and how he wants to take his time with it, and not milk it and/or exploit it and if that's really, really true, I gotta say: dude, maybe you should cut back on your other work. Or something. Because I've gone from being able to recommend this book with complete confidence to kinda coughing and scuffing my shoes when someone brings it up. Awful, because it's been--and can be--so much better.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Hmm, I was kinda crabby, I guess. DESOLATION JONES #8, it looks like.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Starting out, I thought it'd be SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1, but I realize now how frustrated I am with WALKING DEAD #33. Go back to being good, damn you!!

TRADE PICK: I'm not very far into it, but if you want to see ambition to burn, check out ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL 2 TPB. The first couple of Len Wein written issues are okay fine Marvel '70s stuff, but then there's a three issue storyline from Steve Gerber concerning The Thing, Dr. Strange and a handful of people whose lives are changed by a cosmic harmonica that cannot be beat for audacity and crazy "what the fuck"-ness. (I'm also impressed at how Gerber mentions smells and sounds in his captions to put the reader in the scene--it really convinces you that this is New York as it was, in all its overwhelming glory). Also for those of you who love to ponder the strangeness of alternate worlds so like--and yet unlike!--our own, check out WHAT IF CLASSIC VOL 3 TPB. Not for the stories (which generally suck ass) but for the circulation statement reprinted on one of the letters pages: Marvel was printing something like 270,000 copies of a stinky little book like WHAT IF back in the late '70s. Take that, Civil War!

Uh, which is to say: And you? What rotated your tires this week?

Until the 12th of never: Graeme reviews today's books. No, really. Today's books. Who knew?

Surprisingly early reviews this week, because I'm out of town this weekend - Kate and I are off to Mendocino to escape the rat race for a couple of days - and I'd feel bad if I didn't get the chance to tell you about Kaare Andrews' Frank Miller fetish. For those of you who're interested in what Kate's watching on TV as I type this, it's a Johnny Mathis concert from PBS last night. Apparently he's a native San Franciscan, which I was kind of surprised to learn. The PBS host said that something that made most San Franciscans proud was that Mathis was born in their city, which is either overstating Johnny's importance to most people or a telling fact about how disconnected I am from the San Francisco zeitgeist. But, while Kate looks up Johnny's Wikipedia entry, I guess I should tell you about the comics that came out today... 52 WEEK THIRTY-ONE: Well, that was surprising. After the relatively relaxed and low key last few issues, we have the return of intensity and foreboding disaster: Everything goes horribly wrong in space! Captain Comet dies! Aliens get possessed by some evil monster! And back on Earth, Ralph Dibny starts acting like a detective again and makes me feel dumb for not knowing who Supernova is yet. We're still playing the delayed gratification game - actually, the space plot brings the first look of the big bad, so that's some gratification, I guess. And perhaps that's really the building suspense game, on reflection? - but we're getting somewhere again, it feels like. And there's something unexpected and strangely fulfilling about the introduction of destruction caused by an honest-to-goodness bad guy again after thirty weeks of soap opera and shades of grey. Yes, I'm shallow, but this was pretty Good, if you ask me.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #22 and MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2006: I loves me the Christmas comics. They manage to completely bypass my cynicism and bad feelings about the world of comic books, and put me in a warm and happy mood that makes me want to listen to Phil Spector telling me about how great the holidays are. The Justice League book completely fits into this; it's a pretty generic story - Flash needs to learn the true meaning of Christmas, so the Phantom Stranger appears and takes him to the Christmases Past of Batman - but there's something traditional about that familiarity, so it magically gets a Good that it probably would miss at any time that wasn't the most wonderful time of the year... The Marvel special (featuring the cover of the month from Frazer Irving - It's a Norman Rockwell tribute! With a really, really cute grumpy She-Hulk on the edge of the page!) is a bit more of a mixed bag: The three strips are enjoyable (especially Wong teaming up with Fin Fang Foom, with art by Roger Langridge), but that's only 22 pages of this 52-page book. The rest is a collection of adverts, an Official Handbook entry for Santa (a nice idea, but it wears thin after four pages), reprints of previous holiday special covers and, most oddly, "holiday ornament" cut-outs, which are recycled cover art remade as clip-art for you to trim out and trim the tree with. Because, really, what says yuletide fun more than Civil War? The strips are fun and Good, the package brought down just to an Okay by the filler at the back of the book. Ho ho oh.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1: Okay, ignoring the rest of the book for a minute, can I say how much I enjoyed the last page of this issue, and the four panel look at the storylines from the next year of the book? Don't even concentrate on the hints themselves (although the return of Golden Age Superman again and the apparent murder of Batman are attention getters aimed directly at the continuity porn fans that this book is made for), it's the format that I found refreshing and one I want to see copied elsewhere - Boasting that there really is some longterm planning, and also that the rest of the series will offer something different from the soap operatics that fill this premiere issue. Sure, the pacing is nice - the new team gets gathered in the first issue, including introducing all of the brand new characters - but nothing really grabbed me about the plot itself. Someone is killing off DC's "legacy" characters? Wasn't the plot of the first arc of the last JSA series? I wonder if that's repetition or intentional callback? It's also something less... I don't know... optimistic, maybe, than what I'd hoped for? Don't get me wrong, it's all very competent and perfectly Okay, but I'm still disappointed, for some reason.

MANHUNTER #26: It's back! DC's version of Spider-Girl, the book that won't die, returns with this new issue that's meant to be new reader friendly and... isn't. As a non-Manhunter reader, I'm lost with the subplots even as much as I appreciate the (somewhat obvious) introduction of the main character through Wonder Woman's guest shot. But that's kind of problematic as well, because her guest shot is so firmly rooted in pre-Infinite Crisis continuity (Wonder Woman's still dealing with the fallout of murdering Maxwell Lord? But that happened, what, two years ago?) that her own book is doing its best to ignore. It's fine, but nothing special. Eh, but I hope it works out for them nonetheless. I like the underdog thing, what can I say?

NEWUNIVERSAL #1: Yes, I know it's meant to be all lower case, for some reason, but I'm ignoring that wankiness. There's something false about the set-up in this issue - Characters speak in unnatural dialogue that sounds like bad movies, while captions introduce characters and places clinically and make a point of being inorganic. The plots that cycle into action midway through the book are nothing original, either: Murder and falsely accused murder and mysterious symbolism, all of which have come part of the popcultural landscape thanks to shows like X-Files, Lost and... well, Heroes. There's something about this book that feels really reminiscent of Heroes - the mysterious appearance of powers in a group of indivduals who don't understand them, but are linked in ways they don't understand, the mythology and explanations that will come out in time. Given the choice between the two, I'd go for Heroes right now - It seems more outwardly aware of the history and cliches that it's playing around with, which is the kind of thing I dig - but, I admit it, I'm in for this for the next few issues, just to see where it goes next. Nothing really new, but that doesn't stop it being a cautious Good right now.

PURITY #1: Hibbs hands this to me, and tells me to look at it, because the art's worth seeing. And he's right, for the last few pages - Something happens there to tighten up the way everything looks and suddenly it goes from looking like Ron Lim to being Geof Darrow-esque, and I stop thinking that maybe he's gone insane from having to read everything that comes out each week. But even Darrow-esque artwork doesn't save writing that seems to steal the "What if angels were film noir characters" idea and change it into "What if angels were Quentin Tarantino characters only without the dialogue?" There are some terrible cliches here in place of characterization - the beating up gangbangers scene being but one of them - but this isn't one of those series that really cares about such small things as characterization when there are people to shoot through the head with special guns that kill angels. It's fine for what it is, but hardly likely to sell to anyone outside of an audience already predisposed to stories where the spiritual aspects are there only as disguise for the bloodthirst. Eh.

SPIDER-MAN: REIGN #1: I can't really remember where the "It's like Dark Knight Returns, only with Spider-Man" buzz for this book began, but having read the first issue, I'm now convinced that it came from some Marvel staffer trying to undercut the inevitable realization that this book is Dark Knight Returns, only with Spider-Man. And not in a good way. It's almost impressive how close the rip-off... um, I mean "homage" is: You've got the hero as a broken old man who'd rejected the superhero ways of his youth who does the fragmented narration that comes impressively close to noir parody (Or here, Frank Miller parody) and at the end of the first issue reclaims his costumed identity and with it his youth (The narration for these scenes really is a bizarre wannabe Miller moment: "The mask thinks it's funny. It's laughing. Laughing. I can't take it. My ears can't take it. So I stop listening. I turn off the volume."). You've got the forces of authority that have become corrupted and dystopian. You've got the dramatic scenes in the rain. And, to make the whole thing complete, you have the expositionary dialogue from insincere television talking heads pretending to be savvy media and political criticism. Quite clearly, writer-artist Kaare Andrews read Dark Knight at a young age and was permanently scarred, and all of his career has been leading up to this particular series... It's just sad that, well, it's so amazingly close to one of the most well-known superhero comic books of all time that you can't get past it and appreciate it as anything on its own. Which is a shame: Andrews' artwork is amazing (some odd computer generated inserts aside - Is that a photo of a car on the last page, stealing attention like that?), and deserves a stronger story than it's been given; it's nicely idiosyncratic (especially for a Marvel book) and kind of close to some of Kyle Baker's more cartoony work, but works with the grim tone because of the color palette he's working with.

But, yes, it's a grim tone. Which fits for the whole "I wish it was 1986" thing, but not for the whole "It's Spider-Man" thing. Am I the only one who thinks that Spider-Man may have been a melodrama, but one that had a constant undercurrent of jokes and humor and, you know, not being completely, pointlessly bleak? I might be judging this too early; for all I know, the next three issues will move more and more towards a lightening up and an idea that - hey! - Everything is not pain and misery. But... somehow I doubt it. I'm sure it'll be grim and gritty and self-important, and as spectacularly illustrated as it will doubtlessly be, I'm also sure that it'll stay as needlessly derivative and Eh as this first issue.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #2: Man, but Tim Sale can draw. Darwyn Cooke likes to play up the insecurities of the younger Man of Steel, but it's still Sale's show here - The look on Superman's face on the last page says more than any amount of word balloons could ever do. Good.

ULTIMATE VISION #1: Oh, I give up. "I'm a robot! But a sexy robot! And I want to save the universe, but... I'm overpowered by a man taking advantage of my naive nature!" Mike Carey takes an old-school plot and brings his own brand of sexual subtext to it, making it... well, more interesting but not necessarily any better. I'm not sure we're supposed to really take the innocent female falling prey to the evil male thing too seriously or read anything gender specific into the story, but that's kind of inescapable in a book where the cover features the title character fainting towards the reader, breasts first, robot breasts or not. Crap.

WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #1: You've got to love a book that has a reach that exceeds its grasp, and that's definitely this book. There are some great ideas here, but the execution is frustratingly scattered - The artwork doesn't sell the characters right now (Is it too cartoony to sell the drama? Maybe, but more importantly too many of the faces look too similar, which isn't good on a new book with so many brand new characters), and the script is too big on scenes and bringing characters on stage to have enough space for a plot to bring you along with it. But the end of the book, and the start of the real (first? Is this a mini or an ongoing?) plot caught my attention much more than anything else: A closed-room murder mystery? Now that's a story I haven't seen enough of in superhero books lately. What I'm left with, then, is a new series that wants to be different from everything else around, but tries too hard and feels unfocused, but still manages to make me want to read the next issue to see what happens when things settle down and it works out what it wants to be. Okay, and here's hoping it gets better as it goes along.

PICK OF THE WEEK is probably 52, surprisingly. There were lots of good things to read, but nothing really great - although I still haven't read this week's Dr. Strange: The Oath, but I'd be surprised if that doesn't knock the pants of everything else when I get to it - and the PICK OF THE WEAK book is Spider-Man: Reign. It might not have been the worst thing I read, but it was probably the biggest missed opportunity. The choice for TRADE OF THE WEEK is even easier than complaining about Batman rip-offs, though; ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOLUME 2 came out today, and that means that lots more non-team weirdness from the '70s is available for the masses to read, enjoy and secretly wonder what happened to Marvel's quality control back in those days, and who could want more than that?

So, before I skidaddle to a world offline, what's everyone else been reading?

The Ghost of a Post: Jeff's Reviews of 11/29 Books.

Well, that'll learn me about posting from work. I started a post here, opened another browser window, and the browser bombed right out. This is how companies plan to win the productivity wars, I guess: by keeping their computers so underpowered they can't even access the Internet without exploding. Grumble, grumble.... Anyway, before someone sends me an email and crashes my entire desktop:

52 WEEK #30: Bringing back the Ten-Eyed Man was a fine bit of cheek, but the issue was un-fun and perfunctory in the extreme. First, the writers win me over to their slapdash and wack-a-doodle ways, and then they break out Batman soul-searching and plot-convenient cancer coughing? Eh, except for the cover which was weird and lovely.

BATMAN #659: Morrison-less, but better this than the book being delayed six weeks, right? Something about this issue reminded me of the Moench/Colan issues of Detective Comics (that was, what, late 400s?), where Batman got a new villain and a new love interest every three issues (and half the time they turned out to be one and the same). OK, because Mandrake and Ostrander are professionals, G-Mo's first Batman arc was a mixed bag, and I'm obviously a nostalgic slob.

BATMAN THE SPIRIT: As Graeme said, a goofy bit of fun with damn lovely illustrations and an opening sequence (Spirit and the collapsing logo) that sold me on the book. As it went on, however, I thought it suffered a bit from Loeb-itis (lazily glib comparisons and contrasts between the two heroes and their viewpoints, a rogue's gallery assembled for the flimsiest of reasons, super cheaty last minute switcheroos) and had just about worn out its welcome by the time it crossed the finish line. But I admit it was worlds better than I thought it'd be, and the stuff that did work worked very, very well, so I'll say Good--and if you've never read a single issue of Superman/Batman, you'd probably go even higher.

BLACK PANTHER #22: Either Civil War is bringing out the best in Hudlin, or he's getting better and better every issue. I thought this had a pretty good take on the Civil War and the characters and I'm more or less down with heavy-handed media commentary (that page where two different newsteams present the same crowd in completely different lights). Still, I'm mother-fuckin' tired of the mother-fuckin' Civil War--seeing Iron Man now gives me the exact same shudder and eye-roll I experienced whenever I saw an OMAC at about month two of IC. Enough already. OK.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #24: The art on this was really, really weird--like Mike Perkins was getting his eyes dilated every day before sitting down to work. I kinda thought he was rushing because he had some awesome double-page spread to focus on but when I got to that, it seemed borked too. It was great to see Arnim Zola, though, which is exactly the kind of Cap-fanboy comment that skews this to Good.

GREEN LANTERN #15: Normally, I like Ivan Reis's neo-Adams approach, but it was so dull here I expected every page turn to end in fruit pies being thrown. Actually, the issue was pretty damn dull overall: I had more fun entertaining the notion that, a la Reverse Flash, Star Sapphire is going to possess the annoyingly nicknamed Cowgirl and she'll become a new villainess called...Reverse Cowgirl! Really, that's how bored I was. Eh.

GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1: If you ask me, the only thing that stops Jog from being an unstoppably dead-on comics reviewing force of nature is that he's too nice. I picked this book up based on his review, and realize I am absolutely incapable of giving Chaykin the same benefit of the doubt as ol' Jog--seems to me H.C. is kinda trying, like late period Kirby, to create a standardized, simplified layout strong enough in its innate dynamism to allow the artist to skimp on detail and keep the pages coming quickly. Unfortunately, Chaykin has always downplayed the thinness of his line by the accumulation of detail and, without it, his work looks shaky. Like, mighty shaky. Like, I-felt-like-I-was-reading-this-book-in-the-backseat-of-a-moving-car shaky. Mix in a high price and a cavalier disregard for previous continuity (which, on the one hand, who cares, and, on the other, why not make this Gus Gooferson Collateral Damage then?) and you've got sub-Eh, as far as I'm concerned. Chaykin in his prime was a revelation and the man's got a right to make a living, but I can't endorse helping him pay the rent with this one.

IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1: If you want an unbiased review of this, read everyone else: they're the guys who are all "hmm, Iron Fist, yes, a third-rate Marvel character and I suppose for what's done here, it's done very well as it a c-lister potentially interesting..." But, see, I'm an Iron Fist fan and this is dangerously close to the Iron Fist book I've missed for close to thirty years, packed with lots of shout-outs to the stuff that made this great way back when. Rooftop fight in the midnight rain with ninjas, right out of Marvel Spotlight, only with Hydra and robomantises and better drawn? Check. Mysterious appearance of the Steel Serpent, complete with scar and black jumpsuit? Check. Potentially mystical forces operating behind the scenes, possibly by Iron Fist's own uncle? Checkity McCheck. Even if I wasn't an Iron Fist diehard, I'd recommend this because David Aja's work is dreamy and terrific. But since I am, and since this makes up for every asstacular previous attempt by people who clearly didn't give a crap about the character, this gets a relieved Very Good from me. May it sell jillions and bajillions of copies.

NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #10: Pretty great, particularly when Immonen goes berserk and starts drawing the Nextwavers' Forbush-Man inflicted alternate lives in the style of alternate comics (Machine Man by Clowes was easy to spot and hilarious, but but those Captain Marvel pages as if done by, I dunno, Farel Dalrymple, were funny and actually kind of affecting). The upside down church and the melancholic alternate lives all lead me to suspect this is Ellis giving Morrison a good-natured, bruise inducing nipple tweak, but that's the beside the point: This title has climbed back up to the Very Good pile and I hope it stays there 'til the end.

POWERS #21: Bendis shows Bendis how Bendis probably should have handled Secret Wars and/or Avengers: Dissembled. Hopefully, Bendis is taking notes. Very Good.

STAN LEE MEETS DR DOOM: Stan really doesn't have much to say in this one, and that, combined with the lovely "nothing-much-happens" art makes me think it was written in classic Marvel style, where the art's done first and Stan sits down with a shaker of vodka tonics to write the dialogue next. Also, weirdly, of the three Jeph Loeb books on the market this week, this is the only one where nobody says "Oy." Doesn't that just seem wrong, somehow? Oy--I mean, Eh.

SUPERMAN BATMAN #30: A shame to see such pretty work wasted on such a "who cares?" kinda script. If you told me this was a retooled JLA Classified story, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Eh-tastic.

WHAT IF WOLVERINE ENEMY OF THE STATE: Doesn't that title give you a headache? It needs a verb and an article in the worst way. As for the story itself, I liked how strangely Aeon-Fluxish the art looked, and the story had tons of cheap dramatic visuals (Captain America, Amputee, for example) and really dumb ideas (Wolverine, like some homicidal Bugs Bunny, apparently tunneled all the way to the secret island hideaway). In a way, very true to the originals What If books (most of which were also cynically morbid and hilariously stupid) but frankly most of them were sub-Eh, too.

PICK OF THE WEEK: IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1, yessir.

PICK OF THE WEAK: GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1, I guess. I certainly spent enough time bitching about it, anyway.

TRADE PICK: A lot of good stuff this week: Vol. 6 of BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD continues to delight me, even though I gladly concede it seems a little lost once it took its main character to a new level, and ESSENTIAL MAN-THING TPB, which I haven't even begun to crack. But, as I recall, I also thought that PUNISHER MAX VOL 6 BARRACUDA TPB was one helluva story when it came out, too.

NEXT: God help us all, probably one more column as I mouth off about a few books I read during that month off, and review some of the manga I've been reading lately.

And youse?

Thank God November is done: Graeme's reviews of the 11/29 books.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these here parts, as we start to think about where to put the tree and all other holiday decorations. It's also beginning to look a lot like lots of first issues this week, for some reason. Whatever happened to the holiday slowdown...? Other than it meaning that Civil War gets pushed back, of course. 52 WEEK THIRTY: Admit it - When you've sat around at home, wondering just how Batman stopped being a dick and got his batgroove back, you never imagined that it would include a group of demon killers with eyes on their fingers. This is an Okay issue; there were some good parts (I especially liked Robin's conviction that Bruce Wayne had snapped and that his reason for taking he and Nightwing around the world was to train Nightwing to become the new Batman, and Batman's "My soul is black" confession was curiously satisfying, in a weird way), but it wasn't a story that really belonged in this title. I can see that it seemed like a good idea back when the book was first being planned out, but by this point, it felt less "And this is what's going on with the more famous characters" than an interruption to the regular storylines that wasn't entirely welcome. The only regular characters to appear were Montoya and the Question, and that plot has become less satisfying to me with the sudden introduction of the Question's disease a few weeks back - a cough that has now caused him to become bedridden and days from death, despite his never showing any symptoms up until that point. I read this immediately after last week's issue, and the difference between the two was very apparent - This was more deliberate and less interesting that seeing a homicidal egg kill people for laughing. The way forward for this book should be clear: Less icons, more freewheeling insanity.

BATMAN/THE SPIRIT #1: It's Jeph Loeb week, apparently, what with this book (co-written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke), Onslaught Reborn and his story in the Stan Lee book all coming out at the same time. For all I know, he wrote the Heroes episode that was on on Monday as well (Kate and I ended up watching the six-hour marathon of the first few episodes on Sci-Fi the other night and ending up hooked. Damn all of you who recommended the show to me). This is probably the best of his output, and a lot of that is down to Cooke's involvement - even with the weakest script in existence, this would still be a beautiful book (That splash page with the Spirit in front of the falling signage that spelled his name... Ahhhh....). Luckily, the story lived up to the artwork, being wonderfully retro and goofy, refusing to take itself too seriously and zooming through a silly and enjoyable plot involving duel femme fatales and a policeman convention taking place next to a supervillain vacation spot in Hawaii. Part of the charm for me was that it was so goofy - There are probably some who feel that the first meeting of two comic icons like this should have been something much more self-important and full of meta-commentary about Will Eisner's contributions to the medium or something, but the focus on fun and the speed and momentum of the storytelling felt a much more appropriate tribute. Very Good, and enough to make me very excited to see what Cooke comes up with on the new Spirit book that's launching later this month.

CROSSING MIDNIGHT #1: Maybe it's the title, which makes me think of some American indie movie about a white man discovering the native American experience or something - No, I don't know why, either - but I wasn't convinced by Mike Carey's new Vertigo book, based on this first issue. It just didn't come together for me, with the story feeling too overloded with expositionary narration and underloaded with, you know, things happening. Jim Fern's artwork was surpisingly nice, though. Eh.

THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST #1: Or, as I just mistyped, The Immoral Iron Fist, which would be an entirely different book altogether ("Hail Hydra, you said? How much would Hydra pay to be hailed, exactly?"). But this particular book: WHEN TITANS CLASH! Ed Brubaker's gritty realism meets Matt Fraction's more-humorous experimentalism and the results will blow your mind. Or, at least, provide a Very Good first issue. You can see touches of both writers here - Brubaker's very apparent in the structure, but you can see Fraction's lightness of touch in the dialogue, and the two work off each other remarkably well. David Aja's art has some really nice moments (his Luke Cage in one panel is weirdly hilarious), and gives the book a style unlike anything else in Marvel at the moment except for, maybe, Michael Lark's work over on Daredevil. Maybe we're seeing the start of an official Brubaker aesthetic...?

ONSLAUGHT REBORN #1: There's a page in here, with a close-up of Franklin Richards as he's holding some kind of magic ball that's never explained, where you can see Rob Liefeld really trying as an artist. I'm not being sarcastic at all; the close-up is not a traditional Liefeldian face at all - there's clearly been an attempt at observation into what people actually look like. Sadly, the same can't be said of the rest of the book, which is full of exactly what you'd expect from a book that's aimed directly at readers who thought that it was time to revisit Marvel's creative lowest point. The story, too, is subpar, hitting all the points that people normally use to attack comics from the mid-90s: Nothing gets explained, and it's presumed that you already know the backstory of Onslaught, Franklin Richards and the entire Heroes Reborn world... which, admittedly, may explain why the Fantastic Four is attacked by the world's dumbest supervillain (Here's a clue, Onslaught: If you can possess people, and one of the people who you've possessed is being suffocated by someone they're fighting, then possess that other person to stop them doing it. Supervillain telepathy 101, people. Come on). It's an Awful mess, albeit a brightly-colored one that's probably exactly what the target audience wanted.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1: I don't like the Punisher, I admit it. I think he's a one-note character, and don't really get his popularity outside of suspecting that a lot of people are projecting their desire to shoot a lot of other people onto him (Ian Brill, I'm talking to you, here). That said, there were two moments here that I found myself wanting to buy the next issue of this series, and both are down to Matt Fraction's sense of humor. The first is the fairly minor use of the phrase "Government space gun," which amuses me greatly for no immediately apparent reason, but the second was the monologue that finishes "And Russell Johnson played the Professor on Gilligan's Island. Nobody gets me. Maybe it's the big skull on my chest. I don't know." That's all the indication I need that, just maybe, this book will have the right lack of reverence for the character after all. Good, and I really didn't see that coming at all.

STAN LEE MEETS DOCTOR DOOM #1: Have you seen the cover to this? It's as if Salvador Larocca thought "Doctor Doom? He's just like Darth Vader. I'll do a Star Wars thing." Seriously, what's with the space ships? Inside, it's more of the same from the earlier Stan specials, more self-loathing, but with even less story... maybe the law of diminishing returns is starting to kick in, or perhaps it was asking a bit much for one joke to stretch across five different comics when it's as weak a joke as this. For this one, the punchline is that Doom blames Stan for his bad reputation, until Stan proves that he's a nobody nowadays by showing that he was Willie Lumpkin in the Fantastic Four movie. Uh... ha ha? Perhaps? The fact that the final book in the series has Stan meeting the Silver Surfer scares me, because I'm worred that it's going to be the one where Stan gets serious and tries to be deep, and really, who wants to see that? (Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness do a back-up which is fine but pointless - although it does make me want to see McGuinness on the FF book from now on - but the star of the show is probably Tom Beland's two page tribute to Stan, which manages to laud his achievements even as it makes fun of his showbox personalty). Okay.

ULTIMATE POWER #2: It's Generic Marvel Plot #1: Heroes met, have a misunderstanding and fight. The problem is in the execution, which shows up just how mismatched Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Land are; Bendis's thing is all about the dialogue, and even more than that, about the asides within the dialogue... It requires someone who can handle subtlety and body language well, and Greg Land, um, isn't that guy. Much has been made about Land's use of the photo reference, but his bigger fault to me is that he really can't do anything other than melodramatic overacting - His characters never speak, they shout (especially his women, who more often than not, have their mouths wide open in full-on screaming mode), and that plays especially oddly when given Bendis dialogue. Characters don't quip anymore, they kind of yell lines while women stand in the background with mouths agape and chests pushed out. It makes for bizarrely uncomfortable reading, as if The West Wing was performed by pornstars or something. Awful.

WONDER WOMAN #3: Can you imagine if this book had come out on time? I'd be able to tell you that it's a well-done, Good story that actually turns out to take the "Who is Wonder Woman?" title in two different directions at once, with three characters making claim to the identity (Four if you include Hercules, who assumes the role without taking the name), while also examining what it means to be Wonder Woman ("I never called myself 'Wonder Woman'. The press did. She's an idea. A symbol. She's not me." "Ah, but symbols have power, Diana... and you have wasted yours."), all against the backdrop of crazy superbattles with characters who are clearly introduced for new readers, and you wouldn't be able to counter with, "Well, that's be great if it didn't take them three months between issues." If you can ignore the delays, though, this is pretty much old school superheroics done right.

PICK OF THE WEEK, I think, would be Batman/Spirit, although Iron Fist comes a close second. PICK OF THE WEAK is Ultimate Power, which cements my wrongness for many people, because it means that I really genuinely think that something is better than a Jeph Loeb/Rob Liefeld book. I'm sorry, everyone who's offended. TRADE OF THE WEEK is an old one, for me; Hibbs pushed the first ASTRO CITY trade, LIFE IN THE BIG CITY, into my hands this week after my review of the most recent issue last week, and God damn if it wasn't everything he'd promised. I also picked up the first volume of SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE due to recommendations from Newsarama readers, and greatly enjoyed the soap operatics therein, as well.

What about the rest of you?

Hibbs on 11/22

I'm so totally, crazily, not in the mood to write, but since G didn't get his comics last week, and Jeff is still NaNo-ing, I guess I should say something, even if it is short and crappy. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #536: I liked the first half (or so) of this filling in the blanks of CIVIL WAR #5 (BTW, #6 isn't listed on the 12/20 Marvel FOC list, which means it isn't going to hit that revised ship date, I don't think. What that means for #7 is even a bigger question) -- yes, there's your failsafe sequence, yes that makes point A match a bit better to point B, but then, suddenly, there's a time jump forward and we're told to read CIVIL WAR #6 (twice!) to have it make sense. Uh.... what? So, oddly half GOOD and half AWFUL.

BOYS #5: I almost cried when Hughie met Nice Girl (or whatever her name is.... does she have a name? I know I've forgotten) on the park bench. It just feels so contrived, and I can see where that's going. This book is really By-The-Numbers, and yet, and yet... I like D's art and I like G's writing, and I approve of the premise in general ways, and I like the characters more or less. So why am I so under-whelmed by the final package? OK

CONNOR HAWKE DRAGON BLOOD #1: I don't really have anything meaningful to say about this -- I just need to fill out the column inches til I get to the next book I *want* to say anything about (PWJ, so, yes filler indeed). Utterly competently done (though how ON EARTH someone having an Archery contest can never have heard of Ollie Queen is... weird), but Connor is mostly defined by what he isn't, rather than anything he is. That's why he needs Eddie as a sidekick, to provide really any color whatsoever. There's absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with this comic... but there's nothing too thrilling about it either. Competently OK

DRAIN #1: Sexy ninja Vampire fighting Evil. Yeah, sounds like an old-school IMage book. Again, competent, but dull. EH.

FANTASTIC FOUR THE END #6: Like I said to Jeff on Friday, it's really really pretty, but it is a "What if....?", AND it is set in the future, so that's pretty much 2 strikes against any relevancy whatsoever. Which is too bad, because it IS really REALLY pretty. For the art alone: GOOD. For how much I care? OK.

PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #2: I barely remember the first issue, but we finally meet the Pirates, and I don't like any of them whatsoever. Oh well, EH.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1: I think I'm on record that Punisher-as-cartoon works really well for me, but I'm a little less sure that Punisher-as-snarky-blogger (c'mon -- "Asshat"?!?!) is a workable tone for the long run. I definitely laughed, HARD, in a couple of places, but I kind of can't imagine that anyone who LIKES "Punisher in the Marvel Universe" is going to enjoy the tone of this. I really want to hear what someone like ex-CEer Gary Barger has to say about this, because he's the target audience, not me. No, not me.

I also think it is of extremely questionable judgment of Marvel to have an "mainstream" and "adults only" version of a character running around at the same time. Some guy in Arkansas or Iowa or something is going to end up taking a raft of shit from some parent pretty soon, I fear.

All of that aside, I really really liked this. Like VERY GOOD liked it.

SUPERGIRL & LEGION #24: Just wanted to say, y'know who I miss? The Comics Shrew. Her last review is #12 of this series, so I guess its been a year. *sad*. I like a lot of the ideas in this series, but I've been bored with the execution. Its all moving so slowwwwwwly. And when you have a Legion of a cast, things need to happen faster, IMO. EH.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #102: I'll be damned if that isn't a better origin for Spider-Woman than the "real" one. I'll never live down this sentence, but: I'm actually enjoying this Spider-Man Clone War storyline. GOOD.

WALKING DEAD #32: Wait, where did Glen come from? How is everyone so casually skulking around in an armed camp? After all of the "Sh! Quiet!" stuff, they just smile and give Michonne a pat on the back as she decides to rip out the cancerous heart? This storyline is going on way way too long, and isn't making a ton of sense. A very rare EH for an otherwise great series.

WOLVERINE #48 and WONDER WOMAN #3: just Retail Intelligence, rather than reviews. Both took MASS dives from the last issue. WOLVIE shifts from "Civil War crossover" to "Casualties of War", and, book, 1/3 of the readership walks away like that. Despite it being epilogue to the last six issues which they bought. I no understand. WW lost a quarter of the people who bought #2, so thank you massive delays (and a pretty loony story, too, I think)

X-FACTOR #13: A "sequel" to a decade old X-FACTOR story (when some kid named "Quesada" was drawing it) with X-Factor on the Couch, and it's really terrific. So much so that Jeff Lester almost bought it, after reading it, despite not having #1-12, and not being likely to buy #14. Yes, its VERY GOOD.

ZOMBIES ECLIPSE OF THE UNDEAD #1: Actually didn't read this, but another "Retail INtelligence" thing -- zombies are done. Over. Jumped the Shark, as the kids say. If you're a creator, and you're thinking about it, please do NOT do another zombie book. They're completely flat with the audience today. Seriously.

PICK OF THE WEEK: There's some competition between it and X-FACTOR #13, but I'm going to go with PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1, just because its tone COMPLETELY surprised me. And surprise is good.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Is probably really something I didn't review, but of what I did? The second half of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #536, I think.

TP / GN OF THE WEEK: MOOMIN, LUCKY, 3 new SC versions of classic Eisner works, BUDDHA 4 in SC, a new volume of Y THE LAST MAN, and a I-can-kill-you-with-it version of Morrison's X-MEN run -- it was a good week for books, I think. I'm going to geek on my young adulthood, however, and go with SWAMP THING v9: INFERNAL TRIANGLES, however. LOVE that Superman story in there, and Veitch is an under-appreciated creator. It even has an INVASION! crossover that works. Ah, for the days when Vertigo wasn't Vertigo...

That's what I got for you. What did YOU think?

-B

Slowly catching up on everything: Graeme's reviews of the 11/15 books.

The Thanksgiving week turns out to be a week of kicking my ass - Not that I've really had that much to do outside of work and helping Kate to pull together a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, but still: I am somehow sick again (or, rather, I've not really recovered from being sick last week), and therefore haven't had a chance to get myself to the store to pick up this week's books. I've heard Punisher War Journal was good, mind you, but for now, let's talk about what you were reading this time last week... ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE BOOK TWO #1: I've never really read that much Astro City before - Maybe one other issue? - so maybe that explains just why I was so surprised by how much I loved this. I'd previously written this off as yet another Analog Hero book; you know, the ones where the characters are stand-ins for the more famous, more copyrighted characters that the creators really wanted to write about? But this is something more interesting, metacommentary about the comics industry that still works as a story, with characters who are fully-formed enough that you don't get distracted by trying to work out who their inspiration was. Surprisingly James Jean-esque cover from Alex Ross, as well. Very Good

BIRDS OF PREY #100: Well, that's a somewhat misleading cover blurb: "Who will make the cut in the new Birds of Prey"? Well, apparently, everyone, if this seeming-Mission Impossible set-up that begins this "new direction" issue is to be believed. The new team - really just the old team with the exception of Black Canary along with some new members at this point - seems interesting enough, but part of me wishes that this had been the first One Year Later issue. The book felt like it was losing momentum and direction over the last four or so issues, and I'm wondering if it's because Gail was playing for time waiting for this 100th-issue spectacular and reboot, which may have had a better chance of reaching a new audience before post-OYL apathy set in... Nonetheless, this is Good and hopefully setting up a status quo that lasts more than six months (as opposed to the last new members; Shiva was written out of the book, but did I miss something happening to Gypsy?).

THE ESCAPISTS #5: With an issue to go, I'm not entirely sure what kind of ending this series is going to have. It might just be me... Things are happening, but there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency to anything, and the whole story feels kind of weightless, despite the apparent death of one of the characters at the end of this issue. I'm not sure why I feel so detached from the story; Is it Brian K. Vaughan's fault for not making the characters seem real enough to me, after the first issue? Is it that I can't find that much drama in copyright disputes? Or maybe it's me, considering that Hibbs loves it? Eh, with qualifiers that I may just have lost my taste and/or mind.

IRON MAN #13 and NEW AVENGERS #25: Two Iron Man spotlights in the whole Civil War way of things hit on the same week - Way to schedule these things, Marvel - and hammer home the fact that Tony Stark is going to be the next Director of SHIELD, post Civil War (Both books approach it differently; the Secretary of Defense tries to talk Tony into it in his book, while Maria Hill suggests it in Avengers by saying that it would piss off the administration. By this point, I'm not sure if I really care about consistency in anything other than core plot points anymore with this event, mind you). Despite that, though, neither of the two books really did anything else to move the story forwards; Iron Man in particular was Crap, with no core story as much as a collection of random subplots and an especially weak "Why you're great, Tony" scene. New Avengers was more enjoyable as a story, and generally Good - avoiding attempting to explain Tony Stark's motivations in favor of showing the way that Civil War is affecting the regular people of the Marvel Universe. I've really enjoyed the New Avengers crossovers; they've been giving me a lot of the background material that I would've wanted to see in the main series, but at least I've been getting it somewhere...

OMAC #5: Oh, boy, this was Awful. Bruce Jones's issues with sex are something that he should really either get out of his work entirely, or focus on and make something interesting out of it. The underage hero seduces the love interest (nine years his senior) despite her problems with the age difference, and then admits that he's broken her run of celibacy because she trusts him, and then in a "shock twist" - he gives her OMAC AIDS! Appalling.

SUPERGIRL #11: This issue is so close to what I'd like to see DC do with their schizophrenic teenage superheroine (Seriously - The version of the character here isn't anywhere close to Mark Waid's version in Legion, who wasn't anywhere close to her portrayal in the "Back In Action" Superman arc, which wasn't really close to her appearance in JLA before it got cancelled, which wasn't... well, you get the picture) and yet a million miles away at the same time - As much as the plots and artwork (Especially Joe Benitez's kind of disturbing take here) don't serve the idea well, for some reason I really like the idea of Supergirl as an awkward, swearing teenager who doesn't know who she is (just who she's supposed to be) and has random crushes on the other superheroes... I'd just like it to be done well, instead of the way it's being handled here. Imagine if that kind of Supergirl was being done with Becky Cloonan or Philip Bond artwork and didn't have stories that made it necessary for her to go undercover as some kind of someone's-idea-of-sexy pirate girl, but was just more honest and less contrived and self-conscious. Who wouldn't want to read that kind of Supergirl? Eh, and I'm getting bored of the missed opportunity that this book represents, to be honest.

PICK OF THE WEEK would be Astro City, with PICK OF THE WEAK being OMAC, which was horrible no matter which way you look at it. As you all probably expected by the pre-release excitement I'd displayed, TRADE OF THE WEEK was easily ABSOLUTE NEW FRONTIER; It's a beautiful presentation for one of the best things that DC has done with its main characters in years. The new pages are gorgeously illustrated but, for the most part, non-essential (although a couple of the scenes really help explain the breakdown one character suffers about midway through the book), but the value of the previously-unseen pages is, for me, the Darwyn Cooke-written annotations to the story, where he identifies the influences and secrets behind his work - Grant Morrison is Captain Cold? I knew there was something untrustworthy about him - in a way that makes you want to go back and reread everything one more time. If you have the money, then consider it recommended.

How did the rest of the Americans spend your Thanksgivings, and everyone else spend their weekends?

Hibbs and 11/15

52 WEEK 28: The first boring issue in several months. There's a big part of my that thinks that since they're past the halfway point, they need to dramatically ramp up the plot, right quick, to fit everything in before the end. Unless it doesn't end, in which case a lot of people are going to be really upset. I'll tell you something else: planning more weekly comics? From either big publisher? Probably not a good idea. "52" is a sales success because of a number of specific-to-the-project things, and I think it's going to be VERY difficult to replicate them for try #2. If not flatly impossible.

Last thought: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER aside, a "prophecy" that doesn't come true kind of isn't a prophecy, is it? Anyway, this issue: Extremely EH.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #18: Liked liked liked this, but the last few pages of pacing felt like "we need twice as many pages" marring an otherwise very good conclusion down to a plain GOOD.

ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK 2 #1: Is that the first time we've actually seen the "Appolo 11" on screen? Totally not what I was expecting. Liked that. Liked the whole issue, really, though the long gap between arcs is a big drag and leaves me without any forward momentum. GOOD.

BIRDS OF PREY #100: I was really afraid that wasn't going to work, but it did just fine. I still kinda think that Black Canary *has* to be on the BoP team (see: the "Birds" part), but, yeah, I'll watch where it goes. a low GOOD.

CATWOMAN #61: This "Film Freak" story has gone on for like 3 months too long. He's not not NOT a compelling antagonist. AWFUL.

CIVIL WAR #5: My first thought upon putting this down was "Huh, nothing happened" -- which is odd, because there's a NUMBER of plot points in this issue... but you can really boil the whole thing down to looking at the cover. The cover shouldn't tell the entire story, no.

Graeme's review covers most of the dumb stuff about this one, but I'm personally probably most annoyed by the bait and switch of "oooh, we're using the most dangerous villians", and then it turns out to be Jack o'Lantern and the friggin' Jester. Oooh, spooky. The problem is, even beaten, bloody, semi-conscious, drugged, and wearing a suit that is 50 pounds of useless weight, Peter shold be able to handle THOSE two light-weights without the slightest of problems. To have the big "cool!" moment being, "THe Punisher returns" isn't especially cool when it's 2 third-tier losers who probably couldn't beat Katie Power from Power Pack, y'know?

In the "Retail intelligence" category, we've had a 20% drop in sales (not orders, SALES) between issue #4 and #5. That's 20% of a REALLY BIG number, so, y'know, owie. The various tie-in comics are off by about that same amount, too. The wait for #4 didn't seem to bother anyone too badly (only 3% there, which COULD be within normal mini-series ranges), but a lot of people seemed to have jumped off this one. Jeff Lester threw his pre-ordered copy back, too -- just like he said he would.

My bottom line: too much dense (as in "dumb") story logic, and way too much Plothammering = AWFUL.

DAREDEVIL FATHER #6: It had a OCT05 code, so I cut my rack order to 2 whole copies and said "fuck it, if MARVEL doesn't care, why should I?" I mean, the LEAST they could have done is resolicited the fucker, rather than leaving a hanging chad of an old ship date like that. I'm say bullshit! Didn't read it, didn't care, very INCOMPLETE.

DEADMAN #4: This is incomprehensible gobbeldy-gook, but you put the lead in the Bostom Brand costume, and at least a few more people are going to pick it off the rack out of curiousity. Don't think they'll be back for #5, however, as it was AWFUL. Even the art by John Watkiss (who I generally like [and I know I am in the minority]) seemed majorly phoned in.

ESCAPISTS #5: NOthing cogent to say except: VERY GOOD.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #6: If you would have told me six months ago that a Dave-freakin'-Gibbons drawn Green Lantern comic wouldn't even sell double digits off my rack, I would have laughed in your face, and called you an idiot. And yet, here's our evidence for the prosecution: we sold 16 copies of #5, and 9 copies of #6. We sold more copies of frickin' OMAC, if you can beleive that.

There's no one (NO ONE!) who thought getting rid of the GLC was a worse mistake than I, but the WAY they brought them back, all instantaneously and in-the-middle-of-Soap-Opera was clearly also a mistake. And teh way they've tried to leverage a successful Rebirth into a full-scale franchise (FOUR titles, are you nuts?!?) was ALSO a mistake. And it has yielded some really awful sales for us (ION is also a train-wreck, sales wise)

DC really screwed the OYL pooch, launching way WAY too many titles off of it, and that's yielded single-digit sales on a Dave Gibbons comic. Lame.

I thought this was highly OK.

HELLBLAZER #226: I don't like John as a "real" Magus, with lots of real magic running around. I've generally dilkied this "Empathy" storyline, especially since it doesn't seem like it is ever going to end. And, while in prose you can end a chapter with "What the hell is THAT?!", it doesn't work in COMICS because there's at least a one month gap between installments. Feh. AWFUL.

IRON MAN #13: Instead of a "What the hell is up with Tony" as you'd hope you'd get from the finally-we're-synching-up-with-CIVIL-WAR issue, there's instead a lot of blah blah with Spymaster. SPYMASTER? C'mon, he's not even in the top 20 of Most Threatning IM Villians. Foo. AWFUL.

OMAC #5: Sexually-transmitted super powers? More like O-CRAP, if you ask me.

ROBIN #156: a little on the preachy side, but I liked it. OK.

SHADOWPACT #7: Well, since it made it to #7, I guess it is going to make it past the first year, which I would never have bet on, but this here's a book I really don't understand how and why it is being published. There just doesn't seem to be a POINT to this. EH.

SQUADRON SUPREME #7: This book has lost its way. Big big delays, and this is just a run-of-the-mill fight scene, really. I used to love this comic, and now I just don't care (and haven't since it switched to "all ages") EH.

ULTIAMTE FANTASTIC FOUR #36: Reach exceeding its grasp, I think. Tonally, this is way way off from the rest of the ULTIMATE books, and we're bleeding readers hard. EH.

WHITE TIGER #1: I kinda liked it, be it was way too talky and ponderous. being a co-anchor of, say, a MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS, I might be more positive, but in the relentless expansion of Marvel and DC comics, I don't see a great reason for this to exist. OK.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Probably ASTONISHING X-MEN #18.

PICK OF THE WEAK: OMAC #5, yessir. Bruce Jones is 2007's Chuck Austen or Ron Zimmerman.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK: There's only one choice, and that's ABSOLUTE DC NEW FRONTIER. No, I mean, there's ONLY one choice -- I can't come up with a second place choice at all this week.

That's what I thought, hows about you?

-B

Tony Bennett is made of trees. Graeme gets distracted by television.

I'm swamped with a lot of stuff in the run-up to Thanksgiving - a lot of it being work-related, sadly - so only one review right now, soundtracked by the Tony Bennett special on NBC that should've really had Nellie Mackay involved, but doesn't. More later this week. CIVIL WAR #5: Oh, come on. They've stopped even trying now, haven't they? This issue literally just doesn't make any sense when you start to think about it. There are numerous plot holes that are scattered through this issue - If Iron Man built Spider-Man's armor and suspected that he was going to rebel, why didn't he have some kind of failsafe device to deactivate the armor? Why couldn't Spider-Man punch his way through a window when he managed to punch Iron Man through a wall a page earlier? Why did Iron Man threaten Spider-Man when he wasn't doing anything illegal, anyway? If Spider-Man could be tracked in the sewers, why can't he be tracked to Captain America's secret headquarters when he goes there afterwards? Talking of those secret headquarters, how did the Punisher not only find them but manage to break into them when we're supposed to believe that no-one on the side of the Pro-Registration argument can manage to do so? Why is the Punisher a better candidate to break into the Baxter Building than the Invisible Woman, considering that she used to live there until the last issue and therefore probably knows the building better than anyone else and can, you know, turn invisible? Why does no-one seem to notice that Daredevil isn't just not Daredevil but is instead Iron Fist, who they've all met before and should presumably recognize the voice of, if not the different height and shape of the body? - that no-one even vaguely attempts to address that go beyond bad writing and into the realm of some bizarro world where this managed to get past everyone in editorial without anyone noticing, and still manage to keep all of its schtick intact. And, oh boy, there's some schtick to be found.

This issue, we finally see why DaredevilFist was playing with a silver coin in the first issue - so that he could play out some awkward Iron-Man-as-Judas metaphor in the closing pages of this issue. Sure, it makes no sense coming from that particular character (or, for that matter, from any character), but that's pretty unsurprising considering the dialogue elsewhere is full of small moments that make no sense other than as attempts to be deep. Why does Spider-Man suddenly say "...Did you know my girlfriend died of a broken neck?" with no context or follow-up when he's being attacked by the lame cannon fodder Thunderbolts (When C-list characters Jack O'Lantern - whose head is now apparently a flaming pumpkin instead of just a pumpkin mask, judging from the way it explodes - and the Jester make appearances in a series like this, then there's only one reason why, and it's called "cheap deaths to try and emotionally manipulate the reader". Ask Goliath from last issue, he'll be able to tell you about it. Don't you remember Tom Brevoort and Mark Millar saying that there would be no pointless deaths in this series? Seems that their definition of "pointless" may be somewhat flexible)? And that's not even going anywhere near the trademark "edgy" Mark Millar humor(Johnny and Sue Storm have to have new identities as - wait for it, wait for it - a married couple! Oh, my sides are splitting. "I'm still annoyed Nick Fury couldn't find us any brother and sister identities. Pretending we're a married couple is the creepiest thing I've ever done," Sue complains, as an attempt at an explanation, even though it automatically raises the question of why the two of them had to have new identities where they were related in any way whatsoever. I mean, if you were really going undercover and not wanting to be recognized at all, you'd kind of not want to hang around with your sibling and increase the potential of being recognized, right? But then we couldn't have yet another Mark Millar incest moment, and would be missing out on the "funny").

As if a plot that doesn't make sense and dialogue that doesn't work as anything other than the voice of the author wasn't enough, the mechanics of the whole thing start to get wonky as well: The Spider-Man/Iron Man confrontation comes out of nowhere unless you've been reading the crossovers, and references things that the readers who have only been reading this series - or, down the road, the inevitable trade paperback - won't get (They may also wonder about the rubble that surrounds the characters, which seems unnecessarily starting things in media res - They could've easily have skipped the background details in the art and no-one would've known any different). The Negative Zone prison gets mentioned during this scene for the first time this series, which seems like a strange way to bring in what should be what is such a big concept for the story. Similarly, we get told that "the public's behind us [and] crime is at all-time low," but that's not been even vaguely hinted at at any other point in the series. Isn't that basic, writing 101, "Show, don't tell" stuff? Trying to set up a world where the registration act has been a success gets completely undermined because it's Reed Richards telling us, and he's been a schmuck up until this point, so why should we believe him, you know...?

By this point in the series, I should at least be able to tell what the context the story is happening in is, especially as we enter the third act and - presumably - get to the climactic changes. But, instead, the way that the story is being told - against logic, against consistent characterization, and without clearly demonstrating whatever the effects of characters' action so far have been - makes it impossible for anything to really mean anything anymore, even to the point of a reader having an idea what the rest of the world thinks about what's happening. It'd be nice to think that, with two issues to go before the end of the series and the unveiling of the "new status quo" of the Marvel Universe, that Mark Millar and Tom Brevoort would manage to somehow turn that around and make it all have some real kind of resonance, but on the evidence of this issue, I'm sure they'd much rather rest on their sales figures and indulge their worst instincts instead. Awful.

I'm sure that lots of people out there really didn't mind this issue, so feel free to use the Comments thread to tell me why I'm wrong. You won't change my mind, but at least then I'll get an idea as to why it's selling so much...

The ghost of Rick Witter: Graeme tries to concentrate on 11/8 books.

Kate's watching Good Eats, where Alton Brown is currently telling everyone how to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving. What's with the frying of the turkey? Does it taste good? For some reason, I'm not convinced about the whole thing. Considering Kate and I generally have small Thanksgivings - what with me not really being American and therefore not really "getting" Thanksgiving and all - that consists of the Macy's parade, dinner and watching Christmas movies, even the idea of going to all the trouble of setting up a turkey to fry seems like a bad idea, so I don't really see the potential joy of the whole thing. But nonetheless, Kate is hypnotized by the idea. (Kate's just turned to me and said, "I wish the turkey had been our national bird. I mean, the eagle's cool and all, but the turkey looks better.")

Which is to say, comics!

PHONOGRAM #3: I'm doing this out of alphabetical order because, well, this book is evil. You may not expect it by looking at Jamie McKelvie's clean and polite artwork, or by reading Kieron Gillen's Hellblazer-but-without-the-history script, but it is. It's not even the way that this issue in particular speaks to that particular part of me that's still a popkid who's somehow grown older but pines for a decade ago when the clubs were better and full of smartly-dressed people listening to music that wanted to be the music it'd grown up listening to, and does so in a way that feels true despite the magical framework (Maybe I'm missing the point, but I would enjoy this series more if it had less magic and more pop culture; the former feels too familiar in a bad way - which is to say, bordering on the cliched - and the latter familiar in the good way, personal and honest). No, this book is evil because, after reading the text pieces at the back, I've had Britpop also-rans Shed Seven's "Dolphin" in my head all weekend. "Would you give blood, if you had annnnnnnnnaaaaaaaay," indeed. Okay, but for those who like the pop music, well worth it for the essay in the back.

AVENGERS: EXPOSITION'S MIGHTIEST HEROES II #1: See what I did with the title there? I am so funny. But, sadly, that's what this issue felt like - a fill-in "slice of life" issue instead of the start of an eight issue series on its own. I'm sure that Joe Casey intended it to read like a love letter to Roy Thomas's Avengers run, but it does that too well, coming off as pointless as anything other than twenty-odd pages of advertisement for Essential Avengers volumes 3 - 5. It's a very dense book, as well - not in terms of plot, because there isn't really much of an independent plot outside of continuity porn (Did anyone really need to see that T'Challa met with the government to create a secret identity when he came to the US?), but in terms of dialogue; there's just so much to read here, more than necessary. It's overwhelming, almost, and when combined with the slowness of plot and exceptionally close ties to continuity from thirty-plus years ago, really doesn't help new readers get into things. Which is a shame, because Casey's clearly got a good handle on the characterizations, and has probably been dying to write some of these scenes since he got into comics, so strong is the fanboy feeling of the book. In terms of art, Will Rosado's pencils are fine, but I'm not sure that Tom Palmer is the right man for the inking job - the inks kind of muddy up Rosado's normally cleaner line, leaving something that looks more uncertain than either man's usual work, which is a shame but indicative of the wasted opportunity that this first issue feels like. As something to make you think, "Wow, those early Avengers books were awesome!", this does a Very Good job, but taken on its own, this is just Eh. Nice cover by Dave Johnson, though. If only the book itself had half of its sense of urgency.

BATMAN #658: Um... what? There are some nice touches in this conclusion to Grant Morrison's first arc - the rocket part and Robin's first words being "...s'okay... I stopped the bleeding..." being the main ones, for me - but did Grant forget to write a story for this issue or something? Nothing really felt organic, and the story just kind of stopped at the end without any attempt at resolution; it read as if it'd been plotted by Grant when he was five years old ("And then Batman finds the bad guy and flies there in a rocket and then they fight and then they blow up! The end"). Really, depressingly, unsatisfying, even if it's not actively bad or anything. Eh.

DOCTOR STRANGE: THE OATH #2: First off, yes, there are a shitload of adverts in this book, and yes, it's very offputting when you're reading and have to skip every second page (if not more) - Joe Quesada's reasoning for this on Newsarama this weekend (Essentially, "I wanted to change it, but we ended up selling more ads and people wanted to advertise so what can you do?") was a surreal moment where you realize that, really, the people in power at Marvel don't care about how the original comic reads like - but more than enough people are already talking about that. Enough people, in fact, that I'm almost worried that this comic will end up being remembered as "That one that has lots of advertisements in it," and not "That really rather Good book that manages to have its cake and eat it by treating Doctor Strange as a character with respect while having other characters point out the more ridiculous parts of the way he's been portrayed in the past - "By the hoary #%*-ing hosts!" - all the while spinning out an interesting story and being easily the best looking Marvel book out there right now," as it deserves to be. Brian K. Vaughan, you may be slipping with Ex Machina these days (Am I the only one who read the last issue and felt as if the series has completely lots its way?), but this is much more than anyone deserves from a Doctor Strange comic.

GEN 13 #2: There have been times, in the past, where I've gotten the idea that there's something really twisted about Gail Simone. Sure, she can write and snark with the best of them, but every now and again, there was something else - kind of perverse - that kind of peeked out and then disappeared again just as quickly as it'd appeared. Apparently, there's something about this revival of Wildstorm's grunge teen titans that's brought that side of Simone out to stay: The plot may be fairly generic in some respects (Teenagers with superpowers on the run from adults with nefarious designs on them), but there's something deliciously... off about the execution. What are the internet voyeurs really after...? Superhero snuff? Porn? It's not made clear and, to be honest, probably unlikely to be made any clearer. And what about the evil adults, who give metacommentary on what's they're doing that's detached and bizarrely reminiscent of Dave Eggers if he was an evil supervillain ("Did you hear that? That was us breaking the morality barrier. Boom, boom, oh my God, boom." "It was inevitable. I just felt a chill of remorse. There now, forgotten already.")? The forms of degradation that the kids are put through are interesting and well-considered, as well - Scary, but revealing about their characters, and revealing about the thinking behind the book as well. There's a lot going on behind the scenes here, and I'm wondering if the series can keep it up now that the main characters have escaped into the real world. Right now, though, it's surprisingly Very Good. Yeah, I know, Gen 13, very good. Who knew?

SUPERMAN #657: As Jeff said at the store on Friday, it's "Days of Future Past: The Superman Edition". And as good as it looks - and it looks amazing, with the opening double-page spread showing off the coloring and lettering skills of the team as much as the linework in particular, I think - it's a really odd thing to happen so soon in the Busiek/Pacheco run. The fairly traditional stories of the last three issues find themselves replaced by an exposition-heavy flash-forward that lays groundwork, I presume, for the next year of so of the book (if not a future crossover; Kurt is leaving Aquaman for some big DC event," after all), centering around a bad guy that we've never seen before and killing off the title character midway through the book before bringing him back as a zombie at the end. I can't quite work out if it's ballsy or just disorientating, but it's definitely an unexpected direction to take a Superman book. Good, I think, but I'm really not quite sure.

WISDOM #1: Even if you didn't know that the writer of this new "mature readers" version of the X-character was one of the writers of the new Doctor Who series going into the book, you'd be able to guess as much once you'd finished it, because this is just like an episode of Doctor Who: the dialogue, the structure, the attempts at mysteriousness ("Don't you tell me to - - !" "Mo, I know." "You know, I get the feeling you actually do."), all that's missing are the shitty special effects and David Tennant mugging for the camera (And I say that as someone who really likes the new version of Doctor Who). Surprisingly, it really works - This was much more enjoyable than I'd been expecting, perhaps because it doesn't come anywhere close to taking itself seriously, especially with a climax that's definitely, well, climactic, and more than a little piss-taking. There's even a thought-balloon in the middle of it, for cheap comic effect, and who can ask for more than that? Very Good, and I'm getting worried about the number of Marvel books I'm enjoying these days. What will happen to my reputation...?

PICK OF THE WEEK is Gen 13, because once you get the idea of Dave Eggers being a villain in your head, it's strangely persuasive. PICK OF THE WEAK is Batman, which breaks my little Grant Morrison-lovin' heart, but it deserves it. I'd say something about the TRADE OF THE WEEK, but I still have to write reviews of Fables and American Virgin, so I probably shouldn't say anything, but - hey - Project Romantic sure looked pretty, didn't it?

Next week: More dental surgery for me, thanks! But Absolute New Frontier apparently really honestly comes out on the same day, so at least I'll have something to bleed and drool over later. What did the rest of you read this week?

Vite, vite, vite: Jeff's Really Quick Reviews of 11/1 Books & Stuff....

Dude. I totally shouldn't be doing this. Nanowrimo. The regular job. Preparing for my brother in law's engagement party. Plus, the Net connection is slow as hell this morning. And I want to post about Vegas at some point... But just to fly in the face of common sense:

52 WEEK #26: What a weird little book this is--The Sivana Family meets the Black Marvel Family (and if I'm not mistaken, the Black Marvel Family is getting their own reptilian version of Tawny the Talking Tiger)--as every issue becomes more and more about a group of four ultra-fanboy comic book writers trying to amuse each other. And that's closer to a Good comic than you would think.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR #3: A lot of last issue's charm doesn't stick around--or maybe I was just irritable last Friday. Either way, this seemed like Pekar at his laziest, just pages of kvetching. Includes a piece on community renewal so ineptly structured you'd think Joyce Brabner wrote it. Sub-Eh.

AMERICAN VIRGIN #8: As ever, some little bits that I like, and a lot of stuff I don't. In fact, I think Other Side did a pretty good job of showing up this and Exterminators. Vertigo may want to think about their shipping schedules a bit. Eh, again.

APOCALYPSE NERD #4: The Daredevil: Father of the indie-nerd set. As usual, I wish some canny book publisher would nail down Bagge for a book of stories from the American Revolution. Though, looking at this book's publication schedule, it'd probably be wise if they paid on delivery. OK.

BEYOND #5: Makes me feel like less of a geek for collecting Englehart's run on West Coast Avengers. (Not that I am less of a geek, mind you, I just feel that way.) I dunno--if you're like me and like Marvel c-listers drawn with panache, you'll think this is Good (and like me, you won't really be able to justify it).

BLUE BEETLE #8: I just realized--Blue Beetle is the Gilmore Girls of superhero comics. This book is really funny, really charming, and widely ignored, which breaks my heart a little. I doubt this issue, with Beetle fighting a generic monstery guy, will win any converts, but...the fun! The charm! Good.

CRIMINAL #2: I think we may be entering a new golden era of the comic book text page. Sure, sure, the story is Very Good and all, but Brubaker's essay on Out Of The Past made me downright giddy--he just casually unpacked everything that was great about the movie, pointed out how it uses some of the great noir themes, and made his points cogently with no fuss and flash. Plus, there's that lovely illustration to go with it... Fucking great issue.

EX MACHINA #24: A nice bit of progression for the overarching story and body language that fit the action made this a Good read.

EXTERMINATORS #11: Like American Virgin, possesses likeable bits (that shot of the dining table in near-darkness after all the night-vision POV shots was great) amid a vast and crushing unlikeableness. I'm all for misanthropic social satire (or maybe I only think I am) but it's gotta have wit and incisiveness to work. Eh.

KILLER #1: Like Graeme, I picked this up at Hibbs' urging and, like Graeme, I was completely won over--it's a quietly assured little opener with a compellingly detached killer as the main character. Highly Good stuff and I'm look forward to where it'll go from here.

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #21: Because I'm slow to the point of retardation, it wasn't until the Newsarama article that I was made aware that the Van Lente toiling at the fringes of Marvel is the dude writing Action Philosophers, one of my favorite books. Althougn not earth-shaking, I thought this was a sensible little done-in-one that introduced a bunch of classic stinky Marvel villains (yay, Rocket Racer!) and the black Spidey outfit without a lot of fuss. Very OK and worth watching further.

OTHER SIDE #2: Cameron Stewart's expressive and detailed art lends this story a feeling of direction it might otherwise lack...if that makes any sense. Two issues in, it's very episodic and, apart from juxtaposition of the twin protagonists, might seem a little rootless. But the various episodes are either chilling or blackly amusing and Stewart's ability to fill the pages with detail that descends into clutter keeps it pretty devastating. Highly Good, with an excellent potential for more.

SHE-HULK 2 #13: Another fun book for oldschool Marvel geeks like me--I mean, this has got Thanos and Stargod in it, for Christ's sakes! I also loved the Rick Burchett art--simple but full. I hope they're yanking our leg about switching this to a "serious" book. Highly Good.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #1: As sometimes happens, Hibbs' description of the book before I read it was better than when I read it ("It starts off amazingly awful--like, narrated by Kryptonite or something?") I've never been particularly damp in the panties for Tim Sale's art, but I was kinda surprised by how underwhelmed by Darwyn Cooke's script I was. The "untouchables" angle on getting Lois, Jimmy and Clark to cover Lex Luthor seemed pretty damn lame--maybe we'll be lucky and Perry'll give a "they come at you with a knife, you hit 'em with correction fluid!" speech next issue. Eh.

TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #3: Hilariously odd--if the Monty Python TV show been a comic book, it'd be a lot like TDTT, I think. I'm too far away from my copy to quote it at length but if you like the funny, you should get it. Very Good stuff.

UNCANNY X-MEN #480: It's a very old-school approach to The New X-Men, so I don't entirely hate it, but mixing Vulcan with the Shi'ar is like pepping up your heroin with some tangy opium. OK in a very competent, face-clawingly dull kind of way.

WHAT IF AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED: My week as a froth-flecked Marvel fanboy ends here with a "What If" I found pretty enjoyable--particularly clever is the way the story is structured so you're not really sure for the first two-thirds if you're reading an alternate reality tale or not. And it made more sense than the original story and has roughly the same amount of heroes acting Out Of Character as Civil War. So call me crazy but Good.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Criminal #2, for the win but Tales Designed to Thrizzle #3 is right on its heels.

PICK OF THE WEAK: American Splendor #3? I dunno, my memory is shot--I either barely remember or don't have time to read the awful books any more.

TRADE PICK: I picked up COMPLETE DICK TRACY VOL 1 HC but haven't opened it up. I kinda wish I'd bought ART OF PLAYBOYS ELDON DEDINI HC, though: those cartoons bring me right back to those days of, as Garth in Wayne's World put it, feeling like I'd just climbed the rope in gym.

And you?

For all I know, this may be unreadable: Graeme's reviews of the 11/1 books.

I'm writing this on my new handy-dandy Mac laptop, so if there're any strange characters that appear in this post, then blame Steve Jobs. Also, if anyone knows of any cheap word processing software for a Mac that lets me change fonts (This is being written using TextEdit, which doesn't seem to want to let me do that), then that'd be nice to know, as well... Anyway. Comics, shall we?

52 WEEK TWENTY-SIX: I don't know quite what I was expecting for this halfway-through-the-series issue, but I'm sure that it was something more impressive than this. Not that this was a bad issue, as such, but nothing much actually happened; Black Adam had dinner and the Question met up with some friends, and... um... that was about it. But thinking about it some more, this kind of seems fitting, a sign that, by this point, 52 has become something all on its own in terms of pacing and expectations. That might not necessarily be a good thing, mind you, but still - there's a very particular way that this series has started to treat its characters and plotlines, with a lack of direct to-be-continued-next-issue cliffhangers and a very weird, leisurely pacing, that is unique in superhero comics these days, so why not have an important milestone marked by an issue kind-of about friends and family, in an indirect way? This issue was Eh to Okay, but the series as a whole has settled into a Good; the turning point, for me, was the nineteenth issue, where it felt as if the writers had finally worked out the kinks in juggling the storylines without particular characters being obviously missing and the timeline seeming screwy when they reappear (Although John Henry Irons still has that problem, I think, and where the hell has Batwoman disappeared to? She was given a big build-up, and then vanished, entirely. I know she's coming back in a few weeks, but I hope that there's going to be an explanation as to where she's been for the last few months), allowing for the series to regain some sense of momentum. But even with weird, stop-start, writing, it's been an interesting ride so far, with a lot of familiar faces making appearances (Greg Rucka proving, yet again, that he's the new Chris Claremont by bringing in characters from his Detective and Wonder Woman runs as if every single comic he writes for DC is part of one very large, ongoing, story that only he is paying attention to) and unfamiliar ones being introduced (The Great Ten, Batwoman, Isis, Osiris, the new Infinity Inc., Supernova, etc.), giving the series the feel of unifying and refining the DC Universe, sure, but also being really rather nerdy in doing so. It's the opposite of something like Civil War, where character continuity is ignored in the service of the ideal of being "new-reader friendly", but almost more enjoyable for the way it embraces the ridiculous past of the characters without shame. I mean, they even brought Egg-Fu back, and created a giant talking Crocodile Man who wants friends. That's all kinds of awesome.

CRIMINAL #2: This may be a much nerdier reference that Ed Brubaker would like, but my first thought while reading this was that Criminal is shaping up to be the Battlestar Galactica of comics: Very, very good creators doing some of their best work that transcends the genre that they're working in while also being exceptionally dark and depressing. Also, Criminal has the heroes being hunted down by robots who happen to look human - what, you thought that the cops were really cops? - so there's that, too. Anyway, things go from bad to worse for the main characters in this second issue as the heist gets all frakked up (Hey, I mentioned Battlestar Galactica; I had to work in frak somewhere) and people die much earlier than I'd expected. Brubaker's script is tight and full of tension, and Sean Philips' artwork continues to be deceptively understated and intelligent (The panel layout is simple and uncomplicated, making it easy for the mythical new-readers to understand, but the linework within the panels is evocative and packed full of information in the way the camera is situated and the body language of the characters). He also provides a great illustration to the text piece in the back of the book, about Brubaker's favorite film noir. Again, Very Good, verging on Excellent. Here's hoping it continues to sell better than Brubaker expected.

FANTASTIC FOUR: THE END #1: There was a point when I was reading this that I got excited about the way that Alan Davis seemed to have caught onto what I enjoy about the Fantastic Four: Dr. Doom was fighting the Thing, and the dialogue went "Give peace a chance, y'sick, psychotic nut!" "Ignorant, weak-minded dolt!" Ridiculously over-written dialogue! Punching! This was what I wanted! A shame, then, that that flashback ends and the book became stranded in a future where the team has grown apart because they didn't talk enough, and the plot was slow and stuck in a pseudo-political mode that mirrored nothing as much as Star Wars: Episode 1 (Seriously, why should I care about the "Methuselah Treatment" or the truce with the Galactic Parliament that's under threat from supervillain terrorists?). Solidly Eh, because of the way that the initial promise got cut off so dramatically. Alan Davis can still draw up a storm, though.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #100: My first taste of Planet Hulk, and it's... alright, I guess. There's more than a bit of deja vu about the plot, but that kind of works in its favor; yes, we've seen the "gladiator rallies the other gladiators against their rulers" plot before, but we've never seen it in space and starring the Hulk and had some religious prophecy thrown in there as well, right? There's something that reminds me of classic 2000AD in the shamelessness of the way the familiar elements are used, which makes me more of a fan than I would've been otherwise, but even so, the most interesting story in this anniversary issue is still the back-up, starring a new supporting character who works out why the Hulk isn't on Earth anymore. Maybe that's proof that I'm not the world's biggest Hulk fan, huh? Okay.

JONAH HEX #13: Jordi Bernet joins the creative team in time to illustrate the "shocking" origin of Jonah, and phones it in. In what is either a testament to Bernet's talent or an indictment of almost every other comic artist around these days, the art is still miles ahead of almost everything else that came out this week. Shame the same can't be said for the story, which gives Jonah an origin less shocking, and more "He got tortured during the Civil War and then got revenge". Okay, and that mostly comes from the artwork.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #3: There are so many reasons that I should really enjoy this, not least of which is that it has in some sense a Grant Morrison-esque ambition (The bad guys so far feature Starro, Amazo, Professor Ivo, and the brand-new brother of Mr. Miracle, Dr. Impossible, and we've seen an army of Red Tornadoes, which have different elemental powers depending on what color they've been painted). But it's just not working; the narration is uniformly awful - and, for that matter, awfully uniform; Black Lightning, Arsenal and Red Tornado all have the same voice - and the plot has taken three issues (four, if you include the Zero issue) to get started. The scale feels wrong, too, with Meltzer trying to simultaneously go for the massive action epic and small emotional story without hitting either point properly, leaving us with fight scenes punctuated by overly-sentimental schmaltz (Red Tornado's adopted daughter asking if he's going to die) or attempts at cryptic ("What I know, John Smith, is that by tampering with you - - they tamper with the balance... What you are right now is human. And in that is the greatest potential of all."). This is better than last issue, if only because something actually happened this issue, but still, it's pretty Crap.

THE KILLER: LONG FIRE #1: So, Brian hands this to me and tells me that it's his favorite thing he's read all week. I was skeptical, because the back cover blurb didn't look that promising - "A professional. A man of few scruples, nerves of steel, and a steady trigger finger. A man whose crimes might be catching up with him. A man on the verge of cracking." - but it turns out that man Hibbs knows his stuff. This is Very Good indeed, a book length monologue from an assassin about how he got into his line of work, the moral ambiguity of murder and the price he's unwillingly (and perhaps unknowingly) paid for his job, with lush artwork by Luc Jacamon. It shows its origin as a European graphic novel in the sudden break at the end of the issue, but more than convinces you to come back for the next nine issues it'll take to conclude the serialization. Between this and Criminal, it's a good week for double-bills of morally dubiousness.

LOCAL #7: Probably the closest of the series so far to Demo, as Brian Wood slips in a one-off story only tangentally connected to the ongoing story of lead character, Megan that also mirrors the hopeless feeling that haunted a lot of his earlier series. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. It's well done (Wood's really good with the ability to evoke not just a strong sense of place but a strong sense of personality in so few pages), but I spent the whole time disliking Nicky, despite the best attempts to humanize him and make him someone to empathize with. Perhaps I just missed Megan. Good.

MIDNIGHTER #1: Yeah, I don't really care. Sloppily done - The Midnighter is kidnapped and forced to kill Adolf Hitler (which seems like both cheap sensationalism and toothless at the same time - Yes, Hitler was an evil man, but he was so evil that he's almost become a safe choice to have as bad guy, if that makes sense) because he's "the most lethal man in the world." But in order for us to get to that point, the most lethal man in the world has just been beaten up, kidnapped, operated on, and apparently had some superpower that isn't really explained taken away from him. Doesn't that make the people who defeated him more lethal, if they can, you know, do all those things to him? Why can't they go and kill Hitler instead? - and full of dumb macho bits (Watch as Midnighter kicks away a missile that's been shot at him! And then kicks someone else's head off!), this is a book that feels generic and done for the money more than any other reason. I'm sure that it'll have an audience (It is written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Chris Sprouse, after all, so it's definitely professionally and coherently done), but that audience isn't me. Crap.

THE NIGHTLY NEWS #1: So, I was an art student once, many years ago. And when I was an art student, I was so impossibly pretentious about everything that I'm surprised that more people didn't try to punch me in the head and/or give me money to shut up and just draw or something. Not that that has anything to do with The Nightly News, a visually stunning book that really should not be read under any circumstances, of course. I mean, sure, the afterword by Jonathan Hickman says things like "I don't have the pavlovian emotional response to the word Democrat or Republican that seems to have infected everyone, and I certainly don't buy into the good vs. evil mentality that has infected intellectual debate in this country... What you can look for [in this series] is a full-on, no-holds-barred, dissection of corporate news and its relationship with both you and I. You know: consumers. How they talk to us. How they sell us. How they educate us," but that doesn't mean that he's being pretentious to try and impress upon us that he's intelligent and really, means it, man. Yes, narration like "There's a dying breed of human that thinks they changed the world. They thought that they were revolutionaries. Instead, they grew up to become Corporate Lackeys. Political Ideologues. Divorced Parents. It's important to know it was coordinated. That they were programmed" and "To find out more about media consolidation, read this section. However, if you're like me and only care about your own shopping convenience (certainly not anything like iPods made at work camps in China), keep reading at the bottom of the page!" may sound smug and patronizing, not to mention simplistically Them Vs. Us, but I'm sure that it's all meant very sincerely. Which may be the problem... It's funny and depressing that the most visually interesting new comic creator since Brian Wood comes along with a debut comic that is probably even more annoyingly self-conscious attempt at being politically and socially relevant and serious than Channel Zero; Reading this, I wanted to be able to talk back to the comic and tell it that, yes, I've read Greg Palast and Chuck Palahniuk as well, thanks very much, but maybe things aren't as straightforward as you want to try and portray them, you know? Hickman is definitely a talent to watch in the future - I'm curious to see if his writing follows the same process as Brian Wood's, after starting off in the same fashion, and matures as the personal begins to balance out the polemic. But right now, this book is a curiosity: Fascinating and rewarding to look at, and unpleasant to read. Which, I guess, kind of balances out to an Eh.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #1: Somehow, even more retro than I'd expected - that logo isn't sending out the wrong message at all, with the repurposing of the old-school lettering from DC's in-house ads from the '50s - as Darwyn Cooke gives us a Clark Kent and Lois Lane crusading against social ills and trying to use the Daily Planet to save the city from vice and temptation while dressed in sharp fashions that wouldn't look exceptionally out-of-place in Guys and Dolls, thanks to Tim Sale. In fact, as good as the writing is (and it is good, simple and direct, like Superman stories should be), this is easily Tim Sale (and colorist Dave Stewart)'s show. The artwork is beautiful, especially on the scenes that don't feature men in underwear leaping tall buildings in single bounds, and thankfully, such scenes make up the majority of the issue. As an ongoing anthology title, of course, this is doomed to the somewhat pointlessness of things like JLA Classified, but this opening issue suggests that the first storyline from these creators is going to be must-read stuff for people who like superhero stories done well. Very Good.

PICK OF THE WEEK is Criminal #2, which doesn't just prove that #1 wasn't a flash in the pan, but actually got better. How often does that happen these days? PICK OF THE WEAK would have to be Justice League, which wants to be something and just... doesn't manage it. It's oddly reminiscent to me of Bendis' early Avengers work, so who knows? Maybe there's going to be a similar learning curve for Brad Meltzer, and I'll actually miss him when he leaves the book after issue twelve. I'm going to keep TRADE OF THE WEEK until later in the week, just because I got a copy of the first AMERICAN VIRGIN book in the mail the other day and want to write about that some (and I still have to review the Fables book, I know, I know. Sorry).

Next week: Apparently the New Frontier Absolute edition comes out, but I'll believe it when I see it. What did everyone else read this week, though?

Kirby Kastoffs: Graeme on Seven Soliders and then paying lip service to other 10/25 books.

SEVEN SOLDIERS #1: Oh, alright: Holy crap. First read-through of this, I spent half my time thinking, “Wait, what…?” and the other half marvelling over the amazing job that JH Williams does on the artwork, shifting styles every few pages to evoke the various artists whose work has been seen elsewhere in the whole Seven Soldiers event (as well as Jack Kirby, because it turns out that the New Gods tie into more than just the Mister Miracle arc here after all). If nothing else, this would easily be the best looking book of the year, thanks to the stellar job that Williams does here; his ink washes looking just like Simone Bianchi’s, his Mr. Miracle pages having the weird look of Freddie Williams, and yet all of it reading like a whole instead of a patchwork, and in doing so, drawing all of the visual styles on each of the separate minis together into a whole as well… It’s an amazing job. But like I said, that was the first read-through. That was when the art was distracting me from what was going on in the story, so I was all “Hang on, what’s going on, how did he get there, and what does that have to do with everything…?” Because, boy, this is a dense issue – There’s a lot going on, and it not only needs your attention, but your imagination as well. But when it has those, it really, really delivers.

I’m in a pretty good place to have read this today – I’ve been rereading the various chapters of some of the 7S mini-series recently, so a lot of the back story to this is fairly fresh in my mind. If I hadn’t done that, I probably would’ve been a lot more upset by what happened in this issue, because there’s more than a little backstory needed for this to make sense, especially from the Mr. Miracle and Frankenstein mini-series. It’s interesting to see that each of the seven soldiers has their character arc end in a manner that reflects the individual series; Bulleteer saves the world by accident, reflecting her ambivalence about being a superhero (which makes you kind of wonder what had happened to her between this and her appearance in last week’s 52), Guardian saves his relationship before saving the city, Zatanna finds that it doesn’t matter if you screw up as long as you keep trying, and so on. I don’t know if it’s meta-commentary or not that Mister Miracle doesn’t join in the main battle at all – as much as any of the other characters join, at least – considering that his mini-series was the furthest removed from the main plots of all of them, but the revelation of just what the Sheeda are, and that they end up working with Darkseid, makes the whole thing into some weird-ass Kirby Fourth World sequel that you really didn’t see coming.

(Actually, I’m in two minds about that whole thing. On the one hand, it really does feel like it has thematic connection to the Fourth World books, and a lot of Kirby’s other ‘70s stuff, and I really dig that, but on the other… It almost reduces the whole thing to epic prequel to another story, especially with the last page that says “To be continued!” without using those three words, and that kind of makes me feel as if I’ve been cheated somehow. Does that make sense? The evolution of humanity becomes a New Gods plotline, which ties in with the Mr. Miracle series and the one completely unresolved plot from that book: Whatever happened to the New Gods? I mean, yes I want Morrison to tell that story – with Ladronn artwork, please – but now I feel as if the entire Seven Soldiers story was almost just a McGuffin to get you interested in an upcoming New Gods one. Which isn’t to say that this story wasn’t awesome, just more… well, it would’ve been nice for it to have had a less obvious “This story isn’t finished yet!” ending, I guess.)

(That said, when you think about it, three of the seven soldiers have a Kirby pedigree already: Klarion, Guardian, Mr. Miracle…)

(No more parenthesis. I got it.)

It’s interesting to note that this is the most… serious that Morrison’s writing has been for awhile. As much as I enjoy Batman, say, or something like All Star Superman or Wildcats, there’s something of pastiche going on there. Or maybe not pastiche, but a feeling that it’s Morrison at play, not really stretching himself but comfortably writing things that he knows inside and out. That’s not the case here; there’s a sense of urgency and intensity, of just taking what he’s writing seriously, that’s been missing from his writing since… what, We3? Or maybe even the Invisibles…? It’s both good and bad, because it throws his more recent work into a worse light, but still. It’s nice to get again.

This isn’t a perfect comic, of course. For one thing, it’s six months late, which is never a good thing – but in a world of Ultimates and All-Star Batman and Robin, not that surprising – and for another, it’s probably too dense for its own good, considering that a lot of people are reading it and feeling as if they don’t get it. Nonetheless, it’s Excellent, a great writer and artist at the top of their game, providing a satisfying and ambitious conclusion to multiple series, and delivering a superhero story that fufills the promise of seven different ideas of what it means to be a superhero that also manages to wrap in a classic science-fiction concept and more than a little bit of playing around with the language of comics itself. Yeah, it’s late, but this is really one of those cases where the wait was more than worth it.

PICK OF THE WEEK, easily. But there were, of course, other comics that also came out this week, so let’s talk about them quickly, shall we?

ACTION COMICS #844: Or, Superman The Movie comes to comics. Richard Donner’s co-writing (or, as I suspect, his plot suggestions as fleshed out by somewhat starstruck and faithful to the Movie co-writer Geoff Johns) isn’t the only reason for me saying that, as everything here feels as if it belongs to Donner’s 1970s version of the character than the current Busiek version (Which is, in itself, kind of interesting – We have a ‘50s/’60s version of the character with All-Star Superman, and now a ‘70s version. Let’s wait for Robert Kirkman or someone to start the Byrne revival with an ‘80s version, and we’re getting closer to a franchise character where every audience gets the version they want), and Adam Kubert’s Clark Kent owes a lot to Brandon Routh’s recent recreation of Christopher Reeve. None of which is to say that this isn’t enjoyable, because it is, very much so – The plot is simple and yet open enough to offer some potential future drama, and Kubert’s art is bold and clear, using double page spreads at every opportunity for the (somewhat expected) “widescreen” approach. Very Good for a first issue, although we’ll see what they do with the set-up in later issues.

NEW AVENGERS #24: And, finally, the plot monster that is Civil War comes to New Avengers. It has to happen, really; we’ve had, what, three issues of Civil War crossovers in this title that have provided the character beats that the main mini-series has been entirely devoid of, but finally the overpowering of character by what the plot demands has reached this title as well, as what is supposed to be a solo story about the Sentry’s struggle with what’s going on becomes a lead into Silent War (coming in January 2007, true believers), with the Sentry acting as exposition device #987 explaining why Civil War really didn’t come out of nowhere, no, honest, and the Inhumans respond by telling the reader why they’re going to be at war with the human race in a few months time, before Iron Man appears with a page-long monologue about just how hard Civil War is for him, honestly. It’s not just that none of it rings true, it’s that none of it feels in the least bit organic, which is one of the main problems I’ve had with Civil War in general: I can’t buy it as a story, because it feels like nothing as much as the manipulation of plot by writers who want to shock the reader instead of entertain them, and have no problem doing whatever it takes to do that (The portrayal of Iron Man, which is becoming somewhat schizophrenic depending on what title he’s appearing in, is the best example of that, I think, especially when you compare his “I will help [Captain America] open his eyes and see that the world around him once again has changed. And from there we’ll start the healing process” with his “Imprison all the bastards who oppose me in the Negative Zone for life” schtick in the J. Michael Straczynski-written titles). Pasqual Ferry’s art is his usual beautiful work, but it’s wasted on this Crap.

STAN LEE MEETS THE THING #1: Well, that’s kind of depressing. Stan’s third tribute book sees him play things more or less straight, which is much less interesting than his last two condemnations of what Marvel has become: Stan apologizes for making the Thing into a monster, and he more or less says “Hey, I get ta beat things up and get lots of pussy! Fergit it, skinny!” Which is… um, alright, I suppose. The back-up strip, by Roy Thomas and Scott Kolins, also falls victim to being too respectful, leaving the two-page cartoon by Johnny Ryan to be the highlight of the new stuff. And even that is pretty weak. Okay, and that’s only because the reprint of Fantastic Four #79 is really rather good.

SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #23: Fill-in creators Tony Bedard and Adam DeKraker disappear after a couple of months, and suddenly the book regains some of the momentum that it’s lost over… hmm… the past couple of months. Coincidence, or something more sinister? And not only the momentum, but the element of surprise, as well: Did anyone really see the return of where the majority of the issue takes place? Or, if you’ve been avoiding spoilers and solicitations, the return of that particular character on the last page? I don’t know if this return to the quality of the first year of the book is more than temporary, but I’m certainly hopeful that the focused storytelling that’s on show here sticks around, and a refocused-and-hopefully-less-under-the-52-deadline-gun Mark Waid continues to remember that, as nice as subplots are, it’s always nice to have an A plot, as well. Okay to Good, depending on where you fall on the Legion fanboy spectrum.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN ANNUAL #1: I may be sick, because I actually really enjoyed this remake – sorry, “reimagining,” if the cover is to be believed – of the origin of the World’s Finest team. It’s always nice to see Ed McGuinness art on Superman (It’s the way he does the chin, really), and even if he couldn’t do the whole book (I wonder if this was around the time he went Marvel-exclusive…?), the three other pencillers who complete the book keep the look pretty consistent. Joe Kelly, meanwhile, manages to keep his plot fairly straightforward for a change, and manages to get back to writing Deadpool thanks to shamelessly admitting the character’s “inspiration”. It’s not going to win any awards, but it was a nice fun little book. Good.

It was a pretty dull weak, all told. I wanted to read the Civil War: Choosing Sides book out of curiosity for how Marvel do books rushed out to fill a percieved gap in the market that are full of short teases for future Marvel product, but there was only one left in the store when I was there this afternoon, and Brian should probably sell that to someone who really wanted it. Bri did try to convince me to review this month’s issue of Rear Entry, which has a cover just like you’d expect it to after hearing the title, but I demurred, because of my shy demeanor and a desire to avoid Kate taking the piss out of me as I read it. So, we’re left with Seven Soldiers as the undisputed PICK OF THE WEEK, and I’ve already told you, and New Avengers as the fairly obvious PICK OF THE WEAK. The TRADE OF THE WEEK is the new Runaways collection, RUNAWAYS: PARENTAL GUIDANCE, which has Brian K. Vaughan managing to still make me upset when he kills off that one character, even though I knew it was coming. You bastard; she was my favorite character in the series.

(Yes, I know that I’ve promised you that I’m going to review FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL after getting it mailed to me this week. I’m still going to, but I wanted to gush about Seven Soldiers first. Sometime this week, honest.)

Next week: 52 hits the halfway mark, so I’m probably going to say something about that. And Superman Confidential, as well, which – if nothing else – has a really nice logo. But that’s enough about me and graphic design: What did the rest of you read this week?

(And now, when I go to post this, Jeff's already posted his reviews! Jesus! Okay, now I have to see if we're being psychic twins about Seven Soldiers or not...)

"Ooo, mama" and other insightful comics reviews from Jeff on the 10/25 Books.

Blab-blab-blab Vegas, blab-blab birthday, yak-yak Nanowrimo. However, a very sweet week for comics so while I've still got time:

52 WEEK #25: The crime bible is one of those really goofy things only comics can pull off, and so I'm very happy to see it here, used to beat people's brains in and whatnot. In fact, this issue seems to split right down the middle between feverishly odd and enjoyable ideas--crime bible, mad scientist island, some sort of Chinese cybertech Humpty Dumpty dude--and relatively by-the-book melodramatic scenes--some clever dialog spruces up the tired fight scene between the Dark Marvel family and a demon, and we don't even get that when it comes to the cautionary tale of Felix Faust (in which Ralph Dibny takes the wrong lesson, I should add: Dibny walks away from the story going "Yeah, yeah, I get it, Fate. Be careful of deals with the Devil" when the point of the whole story is that when writers don't know how to handle a c-list character, that character is in for a whole world of shit and degradation.) Highly Good issue, though.

ACTION COMICS #844: I wasn't expecting much from this, but ended up liking it for a really unexpected reason--Kubert's art was odd, whimsical and what the French deconstructionists would call "loosey-goosey." I think the story should have taken place out of continuity--as long as you've got Perry White and the supporting cast acting out of character, why not shoot the moon?--because the orphan of Krypton storyline doesn't have much weight if it's happening to the same Superman who went through most of this not long ago with Supergirl. But I'm in for next issue and I wasn't expecting that to happen at all. Low end of Good, high end of OK.

BLACK PANTHER #21: Hadn't heard good things about the last couple of issues, but this was pretty OK, truth be told. As Hibbs pointed out, it didn't have a Civil War crossover cover and it was probably one of the best Civil War issues of the past week or two. The Storm character isn't recognizable in the least, but at least there wasn't anything too offensive in her characterization, and Namor was written pretty well. A happy surprise but it's a shame they didn't market it correctly, though.

BOYS #4: Weirdly, I think this is the issue where the book has hit its stride, as Ennis's utter distaste, and Robertson's full enthusiasm, for the subject at hand somehow function together perfectly--but whether that subject is sex or superheroes, I really couldn't tell ya. I can't imagine the book will continue on like this for long (at some point, either the creators or the publishers will become too self-conscious) but what's amazing is it could: Ennis and Robertson could create original and offbeat scenes of superhero sexual degradation for a long, long time. But, like I said, someone's gonna flinch before too long so I'd recommend picking this issue up now. Very Good, if you're either a big fan of examining a work in light of it might say about the creator(s) and their other work, or you just want a book that makes Ennis's own The Pro read like an issue of Archie.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #23: Brubaker continues to have me in the palm of his hand on this one, even if he might be overplaying the "Bucky is such a bad-ass" angle a little. Very Good stuff.

DAREDEVIL #90: By contrast, things have slipped just a little since the first arc for any number of minor reasons but mainly because this just doesn't have the breathless "oh, fuck" of the first arc. Still, it looks lovely, reads well, and there's still a kind of noirish sense of doom to the whole thing. It's really Good, but I'm not quite rocking my world as much as previously.

CIVIL WAR CHOOSING SIDES: I dropped this out of alpha order so as not to muddle my Captain America/Daredevil reviews (and why isn't it on our ARRIVING list?) It runs the gamut from the satisfying (Ty Templeton writing a surprisingly strong Howard the Duck story) to the tantalizing (David Aja's gorgeous looking work on that Iron Fist preview) to the Meh (the remarkably bland Ant-Man story) to the what-the-fuck (Helloooo, Guiding Light preview). As I guess others have noted, very much like DC's Brave New World book except you're paying through the urethra for it. If it'd been only a buck I would've given it a Good (because yes, I'm just that much of a '70s Iron Fist and Howard The Duck nerd). At $3.99, though, it gets an Eh.

DEATHBLOW #1: In toying around with a standard genre convention--the guy who shows off a picture of his girl or kid in a war movie is doomed to die--Azzarello comes up with an idea (the superstitions of soldiers bent on staying alive, and the tendency of armed combat to kill them anyway) far more interesting than the rest of the stuff in the issue. If future issues similarly have something off-beat to say about war and the people caught up in it, then this'll be worth reading. OK.

EXILES #87: An okay twist on the Galactus mythos but how many times has Galactus appeared in Exiles already? I can think of at least one other time and that was drawn by Mike McKone so it trumped this issue. As I said, though, OK.

HEROES FOR HIRE #3: More-or-less OK until the tepid villainess from the previous Daughters of the Dragon mini escaped at the end, and then I felt like downgrading the issue to Eh. Less fickle reviewers may have taken umbrage at the whole "thought we'd really tie in to the main plot of Civil War? Psych!" and started at Eh to begin with.

IMPALER #1: The art was fine until something needed to happen and then it got pretty damn muddled, pretty damn fast. But if the book doesn't overplay the grim and dour angle, I'd like to see where it goes--the retirement scene of the cop with the dead wife was oddly affecting. The art doesn't leave me particularly hopeful but OK, nonetheless.

NEW AVENGERS #24: What happens when an unstoppable plot hammer meets an immovable editorial edict? I mean, The Sentry's real power, it appears, is to rewrite reality on the fly. So if he's so uncomfortable with the whole Civil War thing why doesn't he just wipe it out, or resolve it in a way that feeds his dangerously fragile ego? I feel like Bendis has an effectively creepy handle on the character (so much so, I wish he'd written that recent miniseries) but the contradiction just stops my appreciation for anything dead in my tracks. Eh, I guess.

NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #9: I thought this was absolutely hilarious, more or less from start to finish. And whether Ellis is examining how Marvel, from Not Brand Echh to The Ultimates, has used self-commentary to heighten its own self-mythology, or he's just having a royal piss-up, it doesn't matter. Either I was too hard on some of the issues around the middle or the run, or this book is getting a helluva second wind. It's Very Good smart-ass stuff.

PLANETARY #26: Since I barely remember a damn thing and refuse to re-read issues, you're not going to get the most incisive review from me on this. (Do you ever? Wait, don't answer that.) But I thought the character beats were quite strong, and we'll see what next issue's epilogue leaves us with. Pretty Good but you should check with the professionals to see whether it's actually stronger or weaker than that.

SEVEN SOLDIERS #1: As the post title goes, "Ooo, mama." I loved this, perhaps all the more so because I didn't understand it, and from what I can tell, it may not have mattered if I had re-read the previous issues and/or online annotations or not: I think Morrison's intention with this issue was to recreate the experience of the "first superhero comic book" you ever read. Remember that one? It was the one with the whole complex mythology filled with references to other events, and likeable characters and strange motivations and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, if you were, I dunno, devout enough, you could somehow make sense of the whole thing? I think that's what Morrison is going for here, and thanks to the more-than-capable hands of J.H. Williams III he gets it all--Kirbyesque prologue, Windsor McCay and Maurice Sendak influences, celtic designs, Sterankoisms, and everything else combining into a disparate yet unified whole. I may have a theory or two about what happened and what it means, but I'm actually pretty happy to just read it and re-read it, the same way I read that first superhero comic book from way back when, over and over again. Very Good stuff, in short, and I probably would've rated it higher if there'd just been more Frankenstein.

STAN LEE MEETS THING: This week on Stan Lee's "All The Lies That Are My LIfe:" Stan bicyles down Yancy Street and encounters The Thing who tells Stan it's okay that The Thing's a monster because women are really attracted to power, not looks. Also, as a bonus, Roy Thomas writes a tribute to Stan that reads like a pitch-perfect parody of a Roy Thomas story, Johnny Ryan does a very odd two-pager that looks like it had its original chubby-chasing, dual-felching punchline cut for obvious reasons, and a pretty decent Lee/Kirby FF reprint that maybe obliquely makes the same point Stan's opening story did so bluntly. Not my favorite of the "Stan Lee Meets.." one-shots (because I don't think there's any character so squarely at the intersection of Lee & Kirby as The Thing), but odd enough to be worth checking out, maybe. Eh but worth looking for.

SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #23: I wax and wane in my appreciation of this title. There's so much to like (clever dialogue, lovely art), why does the stuff I don't dig turn me off so much? I'm inclined to think the good stuff makes the bad stuff stick out that much more (a character thinking she's just in a weird dream for, like, months, is the main craw currently stuck in my throat) but I really don't know. Any ideas? OK because it's too accomplished for Eh even though my real feelings about it are indeed Eh.

SUPERMAN BATMAN ANNUAL #1: Satisfyingly dumb fun, believe it or not. While it may be just as in-jokey and hard-to-believe as the last issue of Loeb's Superman/Batman, I found it much more enjoyable for one of any number of reasons: art, dialogue, blatant absurdity, etc. The bellwether is pretty much Joe Kelly's joke that the Deathstroke of Earth 2 (you know, the crime earth from Morrison and Quitely's OGN) is, more or less, Deadpool. If you think that's funny, you'll like this issue. If you think that's absurdly self-indulgent (or, rather, too absurdly self-indulgent to be funny) you probably won't like it. Chalk me up in the "I liked it" column. It was Good.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #101: After all of the intense mind-fuckery of the last few issues, this issue seemed to spin its wheels. Maybe because the UFF showed up, got a free pass, then conveniently disappeared so Peter could still be left in the soup? Surprisingly Eh, this issue.

WETWORKS #2: Whilce Portacio's work is the stuff of migraines for me--I can't look at it for too long without getting nauseous and seeing odd visual haloes in my vision. So you'll have to turn elsewhere to find out if this vampires-versus-werewolves-versus-cybernetically-augmented-soldiers story is proceeding along nicely or isn't. I've got to go lie in a dark room for a few hours and not think about it. No rating.

ZOMBIE #2: Underwhelming in almost every particular. Kyle Hotz's storytelling has some weird hinks where action is involved and it looks like this is heading toward a very E.C.-ish conclusion, but those are about the only impressions I was left with. Eh.

PICK OF THE WEEK: What are you, crazy? SEVEN SOLDIERS #1, but there was a lot of stuff out there I enjoyed reading. Much better than I would've thought.

PICK OF THE WEAK: I think if I could've made it through WETWORKS #2 without the hysterical blindness setting in, but who knows?

TRADE PICK: Oh, man. The first forty pages or so of THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM, VOL. 2 really fucked my shit up and I mean that in the most "get out there and get a copy NOW" kind of way possible. I've got a variety of things I could rant about but I think most of 'em would be pretty spoilery (save for my weird belief that there's an odd Chester Gould vibe permeating Kazuo Umezu's artwork for this). Let's just say if you draw succor from seeing a talented creator unafraid to explore some really dark ideas, you'll love this. I found huge chunks of this almost unspeakably satisfying. Just amazing.

And you?

An Invitation, Plus Jeff's Reviews of 10/18 Books...

Oh, man. Thank God Hibbs has been posting and Graeme's back in the game, because I've been a busy little chimp. I'd like to say the worst is over and I'll be back to posting reliably, but...well, that's why we have three people writing this, I guess. Speaking of writing, National Novel Writing Month is right around the corner, and I wanted to invite any and all who might be interested in giving it a go. Nanowrimo is a great way to break old bad writing habits, develop bad new writing habits, and write a crappy 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I love it to death, although this may be the last year for me for a while--I've got five stinky first drafts sitting around and really have no need for a sixth--but I recommend it for anyone who's always said they were going to try their hand at a novel "someday." I've got a small mailing list of people doing Nano, so I also invite you to drop me a line at PIGdotLA/TINatGM/AILdotCOM (remove the two '/' marks and convert the rest appropriately) after you've registered at nano's website if you want to be part of my list. (Believe me, you'll find plenty of community even without my mailing list--Nano's message boards and community are supportive and extensive.)

So, there you go.

100 BULLETS #77: Too lazy to review TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED from last week, but wanted to echo the praise for the Dr. 13 feature there--the art was gorgeous, but even more stunning (for me) was Azzarello's successful creation of a voice different from his typical "who you think you are , winnie the fucking pooh?" "No, but I think I *am* winning this fucking pool" "Not once I finish skinning this fucking fool," etc., etc., you typically find here. If you're looking for something a bit different from "the Azz," go find that premiere issue of TALES.

52 WEEK #24: Last two weeks of this have been great fun although this issue took a strong turn into What-The-Fucksville right at the very end. The whole set-up with Super Chief only having his powers for an hour makes you expect that he's going to get chronoblasted an hour into the future, but, um, instead, he's, like, dead and stuff? And getting lectured by some spirit about who he fucked things up by expecting power without sacrifice and like that? Made not a lick of sense, particularly since one would think grandfather-smothering fits most traditional definitions of "sacrifice." Oh, well. Great art by Phil Jimenez (definitely the loveliest looking issue of 52 yet) and a prominent appearance by Ambush Bug puts this at a high Good, anyway.

ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #1: This should have huge crossover appeal: I know at least three people at work who swear by the Anita Blake books, and two of 'em might probably be tempted to pick this up. Me, I flipped through it and couldn't quite bring myself to read it--I know it sounds snobbish but if the work isn't being adapted by the author, I don't much care. (It's why I doubt I'll bother with the upcoming Dark Tower stuff from Marvel, as well.) But if your idea of a dramatic cliffhanger is seeing a vampire get a knee to the chump stump, then maybe you'll be more receptive.

AUTHORITY #1: I found both the Morrison Worldstorm books underwhelming, but for different reasons. Here, you've got some amazing Gene Ha art and absoutely nothing happening. I think I know where this is going--The Authority is going to end up in "our" world--and if so, the evocation of real life is fascinatingly dreary (I particularly liked the blurring as a way to evoke movement without resorting to any kind of speed lines and the associations with comice they might evoke). Lovely, but, seriously: Nothing. Happens. Supremely gorgeous Eh.

BIRDS OF PREY #99: Aw, and here I was hoping the new Batgirl would be, basically, Batmite (the teleportation, the thrown together outfit, the weirdo speech patterns--it all fit). Alas, no. Anyway, I continue to be emotionally vested in BoP, despite never quite being contented with any particular issue, and I can't imagine that's going to improve as we lose Black Canary. But who knows? Soundly OK.

BLADE #2: I know I read comics way too quickly, but at what point did Blade decide he was going to save Doom's mother instead of kill her? It seemed like he changed his mind between panels or something, didn't it? Still, if you've got to buy only one Chaykin drawn title out of the last year or so (sadly, the Chaykin fans I know have bought all of them), this is probably be the one to go--there's a lot more dynamism in the art here than I've seen from the Chay-man recently. Eh.

CABLE DEADPOOL #33: I don't get it. Why would you spoil your cliffhanger ending on the recap page? Is it some wacky "by spoiling it, I'm actually not spoiling it because the readers will never expect me to actually spoil it" double-blind? Middle of the OK scale for that reason, although it's a pretty decent issue overall.

CASANOVA #5: I've got quibbleage--for one thing, this issue is as heavy-handed in its way as some of the DC "message" books from the '70s (although I found that kinda charming, even as it dragged me right the fuck out of the narrative)--but five issues in five months and you can pick 'em all up for a hair under ten bucks? This is really Good work despite minor complaints, and a great deal.

CATWOMAN #60: Similarly, what I like about this title currently is what's also driving me crazy--like many of my beloved Marvel titles in the '70s, this title appears to be so far under people's radar that it's free to do all kinds of quirky, crazy crap. But it's also unfocused, draggy and almost all about the villain who, while entertaining, is really, really one note. It's Eh, unfortunately, and I'm frustrated I'm not having as much fun reading it as the writer seems to be writing it.

CHECKMATE #7: I missed last issue so: Hey! The Suicide Squad! Probably too little too late, as far as sales go, though. The story probably has too many ideas and characters already, as well, so--kind of a bust. More or less OK, and maybe better if last issue set things up well.

CIVIL WARDROBE: Ouch. I'm a fan of Rich Johnston's writing (I have the first two issues of Holed Up somewhere, although I can barely remember reading them) but this really stank. I thought the first three pages were kinda funny as Johnston does a parody of the opening of Civil War #1, but that's just a set-up for unamusing single-page riffs on Marvel characters--imagine Not Brand Ecchh as a pin-up book and that's Civil Wardrobe. I wanted to like this, I really did, but it was Awful.

DAMNED #1: Initially, I thought this was gonna be a slog--the milieu where gangsters and demons mix freely seems fresh from the High Concept Easy-Bake Oven--but the creators are taking their cues from Miller's Crossing (or The Glass Key, take your pick) and that helps makes the protagonist a cut above your usual hard-boiled mug. If it can keep itself from being too derivative of the work(s) inspiring it, it could be quite Good, and, frankly, even it does get a little too derivative, I'm a big enough Miller's Crossing fan to not care. Not great, but surprisingly Good.

DESOLATION JONES #7: Hmm. Interestingly, I think new artist Daniel Zezelj will make me want more from this than I did on the first arc. There, the suave J.H. Williams III made the various pop nods seem inherently woven into the theme of the work. Here, Zezelj's work brings a spareness that could make a similar approach feel flat (if Williams had been doing the work, I'm sure I would've been much more giddy to see the Phil Dick book pop up) as things become more--I dunno, unadorned?--in the telling. Fortunately, Ellis seems up to the challenge in Round I (I thought it was great that the characters introduced each other at the begining of each scene, for example. True, they were probably written that way before Zezelj signed on, but as it made the storytelling a thousand times so much clearer, I'm not entirely sure) and I'm lookng forward to the next issue. Finally, kudos to Jose Villarubia for helping ease the transition between two very different art styles--there's something about that urine-yellow sky that ties the two arcs together for me. Very Good.

HELLSTORM SON OF SATAN #1: A lot like the Son of Satan stories I remember reading as a kid: surprisingly superheroish art, an interest on the part of the writer in everything but Satanism, and capable of fostering the suspicion in the reader that, maybe, if you think about it for a while, the Son of Satan really *isn't* that cool an idea. Eh but I'm in for another issue because dammit, he's the Son of Satan! He could be really cool!

JOHN WOO'S SEVEN BROTHERS #1: Struck a pretty good balance--it read more briskly than most current Ennis work but it didn't seem like he phoned it in, either--and I think that Ennis has ideas about brotherhood, courage and sacrifice similar to Woo's, even if the work of the two men is different in tons of other ways. Highly OK, I thought, but hardcore Woo fans or non-Ennis readers probably won't think so much of it.

KING OF KINGS #1: This actually came out 10/11, but I'm so smitten with this book I wanted to mention it. It starts off in a futuristic, Blade Runnerish city and a sky car wherein a prostitute discuses Scripture with a client. Then, another prostitute (named, I shit you not, Gomer) shows up and the two prostitutes start arguing about the accuracy of Biblical prophecies, and then giant crabs show up and bite off people's shins. In short, if the words "Jack Chick manga" strike any sort of sympathetic chord with you, seek this book out. Beautifully drawn and batshit crazy, I loved it from start to finish. No rating, because we don't really have a "So Bad It's Heavenly" rating.

LONE RANGER #2: A little heavy on modern remake syndrome (where everything you expect is given a twist so that, for example, Tonto first appears saying "How. ...did you ever survive so many gunshot wounds?") but an unsettling and over the top villain, some fine art and a general intelligence make up for it. (Gotta say, though, between the evil, flensing murderer here, the cowardly pimp in Seven Brothers and the New Orleans muggers of Hellstorm, it's not really the best week for portrayals of African-Americans, no matter how Casanova #5 tries.) High side of OK--I'll be back for more.

MS MARVEL #8: First: The Shroud lost his eyesight in a ritual scarification ceremony that's part of his origin so I have no idea who this Shroud is. Second: Every character in this book is more likeable than the title character and I don't think that's really a good direction for the book. Third: I wonder if Marvel's sales are gonna drop post-Civil War because I don't know if I can take another four or five months of it. Fourth: Not that I'm any kind of canary in a coalmine about that kind of thing, because I ain't. Fifth: Highly Eh, because I like C-list Marvel characters (like the Shroud) and read the last three issues because of that.

WILDCATS #1: The more successful of the underwhelming Morrison Wildstorm books, just becuase stuff happens. Jog's of the opinion that this issue doesn't quite work because the Cats characters aren't mythic enough to have the characters presented the way they are in this first issue--I think the problem is rather that Mr. Morrison is currently exceeding his grasp (deadline-wise, if nothing else) and so everything he's turning out is pretty uneven. I mean, that page of Grifter killing guys while disembodied word balloons yell at you in German? Fucking awesome. But kaleidoscopic sex scenes and characters speaking in flattened metareferences (like when Spartan refers to the onset of superhero violence as "widescreen")? Pretty tired. Part of this may be Jim Lee's art, which has hit comic book entropy--some kind of storytelling heatdeath where every single scene is presented so dynamically, none of it has any impact.

Or maybe I just had my expectations set too high and this thing shipped later than it should have. A lowish OK, because who really knows?

PICK OF THE WEEK: Desolation Jones #7, for teh win!

PICK OF THE WEAK: Civil Wardrobe #1, for teh lose!

TRADE PICK: Lots of good stuff this week, but I dug into Vol. 5 of NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER like a starving man. Very episodic, but also very enjoyable.

NEXT WEEK: Me and the missus celebrate my birthday in Vegas! Got any good (non-pervy) suggestions for attractions?

Hibbs does 10/11

No preamble, not if I want to have a chance of finishing this today... (And, man, I really need a good idea for the TILTING I'm supposed to write tomorrow.)

DORK #11: What I loved about this was the sheer density of ideas. Even when some of them kinda sucked (I thought "Shitty Witch" was fairly well named), you just turned the page, and there were another 5 new ideas waiting for you. I wish Dorkin could give us an issue a year (or more), but I'll definitely take what I can get of this VERY GOOD comic.

GEN13 #1: Oh. A full-on hard reboot. Not what I expected, I have to say, and something that could really backfire, since if it doesn't take THIS time, well its pretty much over, ain't it? The whole relaunch of the WS books has kind of been a disaster, really, what with not being able to hit deadlines on the "flagship" title, and all, but I thought this was a fairly solid launch here. If only they'd been clearer about the intentions. I'll go with GOOD, albeit a very LOW "Good". It has my attention for 3 issues.

CHIP ZDARSKY'S MONSTER COPS #1: I love ol' Chipper (A deep, masculine love), though I keep waiting for the home-run humor of his online persona to really translate in a comic book. I was pretty meh about the first story in here, but then we got to the Vampirella one, and I just howled and howled. "Buh...buh...but I can't READ!" Beauty! And pure comedy gold. That story alone elevates the proceedings to a GOOD.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #1: Go read Graeme's review, because I think he nailed it pretty accurately. Me, I just want to add that I thought the Dr. 13 story was really wonderful. I'm not used to liking Azzarello's writing (Sorry), but here it was like a whole new guy. Oh, and that art! The Spectre stuff was pretty meh, but I liked 13 enough to give the whole thing a GOOD. Yeah, shocked me, too.

BOMB QUEEN v2 #1: Sure, it's pandering, but I thought it reasonably amusing in doing so. Unlike, say, TAROT, one gets the sense Jimmie Robinson's tongue is firmly in his cheek. A solid OK.

PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #1: Pretty enough, but badly paced. I'll give it one more issue, at least to find out about the eponymous Pirates, OK

STAN LEE MEETS DR STRANGE: Not as full-bore insane as the SPIDER-MAN one, but fairly close. At first blush I thought maybe that Stan just scripted this over a wholly different plot, but there are a few things in there that must have been from Stan, so... I'm sorta sorry he's so cynical about his creations, and their value, since a lot of us still respond viscerally to them, but, I guess that's what happens when your very name becomes household like that. Its funny, it probably takes me 20 years to gross what Stan does in one, and he's the one cynical about money. Ah well. The Bendis backup was, as Graeme observed, shrill, self-serving, and kinda blechy (Grow a thicker skin, it my advice), but, at the same time, I thought it was really terrific. And right, in places. It's just that someone OTHER than Bendis needed to make that argument. Overall, I'll go with an OK for the package.

ULTIMATE POWER #1: Problem #1 is the art. Ugh, so stiff, so posed, so traced-looking. I used to really like Land's work in SOJOURN (because the fantasy setting hid the photo ref?), but I can't hardly bear to look at it any more. Problem #2 is the story -- it's an adequate FF story, I guess, but it ends with such a huge awful thud when the Squadron arrives. There's no weight or power to it -- just a bunch of posed costumes with no context. Bordeline awful, but I'll be a soft bastard and just say EH, instead.

DMZ #12: I couldn't read it. Just couldn't. Way way way too soon in the series to release a "worldbuilding" sourcebook issue. Especially in the context of a regular issue. AWFUL.

On to the BOOKS:

ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION CARTOONS & TRUE STORIES HC: Here's the thing: if GRETEST AMERICAN COMICS hadn't JUST come out... or possibly if MCSWEENEYS #13 had never come out, then this might have been perceived as kinda great. Maybe. But those books DID come out, and that gives a benchmark to look at this against. See, it's not that this isn't a great big honking collection of suberb comics, because it is -- its just that we've seen this before, and better, at that.

Part of my problem, I think, might be that the book is kinda formless. Title aside, there's no clear theme when you're reading the book, and it jumps around in decades willy nilly. Plus, there's a sense of including stuff because (creator) "needs" to be in the book.... whether because it is "expected" or because they're pals with Brunetti, I can not say.... but it FEELS like one of the two.

When discussing the book with Jeff on Friday, the only thing I was able to seize upon was that, maybe, because it is published by Yale University Press, maybe the intent of the boo is to be a syllabus for a critical comics reading class. That might explain the excerpt from MAUS (8 pages from the middle kind of have no power on their own), or the section where "here's all the D&Q cartoonists" and so on. As a TEXTBOOK, it's not a bad package really.

Really, it is a package of really really good comics. REALLY GOOD... but if you already know comics, it's pretty formless, pretty toothless, and pretty damn dated. If all you've ever read in your life is SUPERMAN or X-MEN, then, damn straight, you should get this. But if you know your comics, then this package is a failure. A well intentioned, noble, lush, pretty failure, but a failure nonetheless.

The PICK OF THE WEEK is pretty obviously DORK #11 (and isn't the lack of Dorkin in Brunetti's anthology pretty glaring?)

THE PICK OF THE WEAK goes to DMZ #12 this week. Too soon, too slight.

THE GN/TP OF THE WEEK has 2 primary choices: DESOLATION JONES, which is just pure gold, and the ABSOLUTE SANDMAN HC, which, OMG, is a supremely lush version of one of the greatest serialized stories ever. The recoloring on those first issues is really damn good (though I wish someone asked around for some of the original art... I own the original for page 7, and could have given them a better scan of it than the "decolored" version they had)

I'm going to be an ass and lean towards ABSOLUTE SANDMAN because... well, because it was actually MY idea. Neil had complained about the original coloring for YEARS, and after the first "Absolute" (HUSH, was it?) came out, I called both Karen and Neil and suggested that they amortize the cost of recoloring on the back of an ABSOLUTE. "That's a really good idea!" they enthused, but 2 weeks or so later Karen told me that Levitz said no. Well, it took a year or two of convincing, I guess, but eventually he apparently came around, because here's the book. It's going to really pay off the next time they go back to press on v1 & 2 of the SCs, and they can use this coloring. Should send sales right upwards!

Anyway, I don't know if anyone up there remembers it was my idea (Certainly, there's nothing in the final book to suggest so), but I don't really care, because the more important thing is that it happened. And it looks GREAT. Best $100 you'll spend, really.

And that gives me 10 more minutes until the truck is supposed to show, so off I go to try to read a comic or two today...

What did YOU think?

-B

I should be asleep, or doing something more interesting: Graeme's reviews of some comics.

The downside of vacation? Potentially missing seeing Brian Hibbs eat insects, but I think that happened after I was back, but just nowhere near the store at the time. Still, how often do you see people eat bugs because they lost a bet? Brian Hibbs – Man of honor. Me – I’m a man of grumpy and overlong reviews, as you’re about to find out. BOMB QUEEN II: QUEEN OF HEARTS #1: So, despite the Mature Readers block on the cover (A cover that features the titular character lying on her bed in the throes of pleasure, her hand wrapped suggestively around a stick of dynamite acting as phallic symbol, with the shadow of a male lover against the wall behind her, ready for the male reader to project himself into the scene. That whole “Never judge a book by its cover” thing? Don’t bother; this particular cover tells you all you need to know about this particular book. Its purpose is some weird fan service titillation, and little else), there really is nothing in this book for mature readers. Yeah, there are breasts and swearing, but really? This is the kind of book a horny 15 year old could come up with, right down to the reductive – and somewhat offensive – portrayal of women as personified by the eponymous heroine. The plot, such as it is, is this: Bomb Queen is a hardass supervillain who meets a man, fucks him, and then falls in love with him, missing the point that he is plotting her downfall. Bomb Queen is gifted with such thought balloons as “Yummy British accent. Handsome. I want him.” and “Holy fuck! I think that was the best sex I ever had?” while showing off her nipples at any given opportunity, and the man she falls for spouts unbelievable “British” dialogue like “James Barry is what me mum fancied and I’m stickin’ with it.” It’s a really weird comic, as if some mid-level 1950s DC writer tried his hand at softcore porn, but somehow less interesting than that sounds and more Awful.

CRIMINAL #1: Yes, I know; everyone has reviewed this by now and loved it. I’m not any different. It really is Very Good and an amazing first issue, wonderfully evocative and still spare in the execution; there isn’t a superfluous line of dialogue and Sean Philips’ art is probably the best he has ever produced (helped a lot, it should be said, by Val Staples’ coloring, which keeps the palette of Matt Hollingsworth’s best stuff without seeming a complete copy of his work). Ed Brubaker’s writing is so tight here that it almost reflects badly on his mainstream superhero stuff, where things don’t flow as naturally or as well (even though they’re very enjoyable, especially Daredevil, which currently has a feeling not a million miles from this). You come away from the book feeling as if the crime genre is not only where Brubaker thrives the most, but also that it’s a genre with more potential than any other for interesting stories, the writing is so good. Although I doubt everyone will agree with me, I thought it was miles better than Sleeper, as good as that series was.

DOCTOR STRANGE: THE OATH #1: I’ve just watched the last three episodes of Venture Bros on TiVo, and as a result, find it very hard to take Dr. Orphe – I mean, Dr. Strange that seriously right now. Luckily, Brian K. Vaughan seems to be in the same mindset, having him complain about having to incant in Latin while manservant (and plot McGuffin) Wong kicks some gangster ass in the background. He’s not playing for laughs, though; it’s just that the jokes – Iron Fist grumbling about people asking him where Luke Cage is, Night Nurse’s amusement about Strange’s title Sorcerer Supreme – offset the potential overblown nature of the plot (Dr. Strange – spoiler – cures cancer!) without defusing the tension. Nonetheless, the star of the show may be Marcos Martin’s art, which is gorgeous, mixing Mazzuchelli, Lark, and Risso into something that’s spacious and simple and really rather special. Very Good, even if I expected Strange to say that he had to check his daughter’s closet at any point.

DORK #11: Despite Evan Dorkin’s self-depreciating commentary, this might be one of the funniest things you’ll see all year, with joke upon joke upon joke. With each joke being – with only a couple of exceptions, at most – four panels long, if you don’t find one particularly funny, there’s another one along in seconds. Luckily, most of the jokes are Very Good. Especially the Prisoner of Second Avenue one, which made me laugh far more than it probably should have.

GEN 13 #1: I’ll admit, I never read any previous version of Gen 13 (According to the indica in this issue, this is the fourth volume of the series, which seems kind of amazing. Isn’t the series only about ten years old?), so I have no idea if this is a new, grittier take on the characters or not, but this was much darker than I was expecting. Starting with date rape being watched on the internet by those who’d bid highest for the “pleasure” was definitely an unexpected opening, and while nothing else in the issue gets that unsettling, nothing here feels very light or fun, either. It’s obviously an intentional move, but one that feels curiously false for some reason, as if it’s dark for the sake of being dark, if that makes sense. Which isn’t to say this isn’t worth reading, because it was actually Good, but I’m really curious where it’s going next and whether or not the hand of the author (or editor, perhaps, in this case) will feel less obvious as the series progresses.

THE PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #1: I read East Coast Rising while I was on vacation, and saw Pirates artist Vasilis Lolos’s name in the credits in there, credited with toning Becky Cloonan’s linework. You can see Becky’s influence in Lolos’s own art here, along with the influence (as I think Beaucoup Kevin Church has already pointed out) of Supermarket’s Kristian Donaldson. It’s Supermarket that this book reminded me of, for the most part; Rick Spears’ script being reminiscent of Brian Wood’s writing when he does his disaffected young urban loners thing with the ultraviolence and sparse dialogue that always makes me think of Frank Miller’s teen gangs in Dark Knight Returns. I liked Supermarket more, perhaps because it had an easier-to-follow narrative, but this came together enough in the last few pages for me to want to check out the next issue, if only to actually see the eponymous Pirates and see what’s meant to be so great about them. Okay.

(East Coast Rising, by the way, was a lot of fun, and annoyingly short – it ended just as the story felt like it was getting going, although I was a fan of the fact that the plot really does center around a treasure map. Becky Cloonan’s artwork was pretty damn nice, as well, a step on from her Demo stuff.)

STAN LEE MEETS SPIDER-MAN #1 and STAN LEE MEETS DOCTOR STRANGE #1: Yes, I know that they’re both one-shots, but both of them are listed as issue 1s on the cover, just in case the world demands a second issue down the line somewhere. I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind seeing these as miniseries, just to find out if, if you keep Stan Lee doing these stories, he’ll end up breaking down in tears at what his creations have become. That’s the feeling I get from the Lee-written stories in both of these special issues, that there’s some part of “The Man” who realizes, with no small cynicism, that his characters are more commodities than anything else these days. How else do you explain him explaining to Spider-Man that he can’t quit not because of the “great responsibility” he once wrote about but because of the merchandising he has, or his recasting Dr. Strange as someone who has to sell t-shirts and tours around his house in order to make his rent each month? Yes, both stories are funny, but there’s something really sad about them as well, as if Stan’s acknowledging of the importance of business overpowering everything else represents something along the lines of an old man watching his life’s work being used for evil or something. Or maybe that’s just me.

The worst thing in either issue – where the Stan-written stories are backed up with short humor strips, reprints of other Stan work and longer stories by current fan-favorite Marvel creators – is the Brian Michael Bendis-written story in the Dr. Strange book, which is a bizarre passive-aggressive fuck you to fans who’ve complained about the current direction of Marvel: The Impossible Man comes to Earth, learns about Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Gwen Stacy fucking the Green Goblin, and Civil War, gets upset about his childhood being raped – and yes, he actually says “You’re raping my youth” to emphasize that he’s meant to represent the generic message board complainer, no subtlety here, true believer – only to meet Stan Lee who tells him that Marvel always was about change and people complained about Hawkeye joining the Avengers way back when, so shut up. It sticks out appallingly in the books so far, because it’s not a story about Stan Lee, but a story about Brian Bendis and his friends and their generic (and, to be honest, kind of weak) defense against criticism of their work, where Stan Lee is used as a figurehead instead of anything else. There are funny things in the story (Gwen Stacy’s one panel cameo kind of emphasizes what was so dumb about the whole “Sins Past” storyline), but overall it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It’s not enough to have books that sell so well, but you’ve got to get back at the few (but vocal) people who complain about your work? Isn’t that kind of petty?

(Joss Whedon writes the back-up for the Spider-Man book, a shaggy dog story with an end you can see coming a mile off, but the execution is amusing enough, and any story which ends with Stan Lee heading to PornWorld has to be given some kind of credit.)

Both books are Good in a really strange way, and both are almost worth it for the art alone; Olivier Coipel’s Spider-Man will make you want to see him on a regular Spider-book sooner rather than later.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #1: Ignoring the cover, which I liked a lot – not just for the Mike Mignola cover, but also the logos. Yes, I’m a geek – and the first thing that hits you with this book is that it really has the wrong artist. Eric Battle, who does the Dave Lapham-written Spectre serial, just can’t do the understated atmosphere that the writing calls for, for the most part. He’s too much of a superhero artist, wanting to make everything too dynamic but without the ability to play things cool when it’s necessary for contrast (I could make a cheap comment about his anatomy, as well, but it’s probably enough to say that the hand on page 2 apparently is symmetrical, with a thumb on either side). It’s a problem that’s made all the more apparent by Cliff Chiang’s artwork on the second story in the book, Brian Azzarello’s Dr. 13, which is by far the superior of the two. Compare and contrast: The Spectre gets curious about a tenement full of people with secrets, and The World’s Greatest Skeptic investigates the paranormal alongside his teenage daughter, about whom he has the kind of dreams that parents shouldn’t have about their children. Really, which one would you rather spend your time with? Overall, the book is pretty Eh, but the Dr. 13 strip is Good, and hopefully going to be collected on its own when the series is over and done.

ULTIMATE POWER #1: You know it’s not good when the thing I remember most about a comic is that Greg Land needs to spend more time with real people because of the proportions he gave a character in the first page of this issue (For those with the book, or who’ve seen the page online: Look how thin Black Mamba is! What’s going on there?). Yes, it’s another big event book from Marvel, and it’s all very competently done, but at no point does it make me care about anything that’s happening or make me want to come back for the second issue. Even the climactic reveal feels underplayed, because the arrival of the Squadron Supreme is done without dialogue; it’s just two pages of random people flying around (and posing, because it is a Greg Land book). If you haven’t seen the advance hype for the book and know who these people were, I’m not sure what you’d take from the ending here: “Oh. People are flying. Is that bad?” There’s just a lack of excitement in the whole enterprise, no tension in the story anywhere. Even the McGuffin feels stale (Reed tries to cure Ben, makes mistake, adventure ensues). Eh and then some, sadly. At least Civil War elicits some kind of response for the most part.

PICK OF THE WEEKS would have to be Criminal, although Dork should technically get it considering it, you know, actually came out this week. PICK OF THE WEAK is easily Bomb Queen, a book that you kind of feel that creator Jimmie Robinson probably read Tank Girl and took all the wrong lessons away from it about why women found it empowering. I have no idea what trades even came out this week, to be my TRADE OF THE WEEK; I’m still upset that apparently Absolute New Frontier hasn’t been released, because that was going to be my birthday present to myself in a strange way of my justifying the price tag in my head, and can’t focus because of that. Absolute Sandman really looked pretty, though.

So before I get hate mail about being so mean to Bomb Queen, what did the rest of you read this week?

Lotsa Books Plus No Time Equals: Jeff's Reviews of 10/04 Books

This is the second week in a row where I walked out of the comic store shaking my head in shame. Just tons and tons of books I didn't get a chance to read at all. Of course, part of that may be that there are more and more substantial book releases all the time as well--I spent a good chunk of this last Friday making my way through BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006--but, me being me, I'm perfectly happy to blame the complete and utter breakdown of my reading faculties (or is that facilities?) as 40 bears down on my unprepared ass. And on that merry note, will Steve D, Adam Stephanides and Sean, all of whom provided invaluable answers to my fat, slobby bad-ass survey of a few weeks ago drop me a line at pigDOTlatinATgmailDOTcom? Your valuable prizes have arrived!

And now, on with the four-color feeding frenzy:

52 WEEK #22: As Bri pointed out, this book is far better than a weekly comic really has any right to be. The scene with Will Magnus muttering "I don't want to be crazy, I don't want to be crazy" while his world falls apart around him was great, but I admit Super-Chief sort of kertwangs some deep liberal knee-jerk response in me--finally, a superhero for Native Americans who want to kill their mouthy grandfathers! Very OK, but when Bat-Hombre debuts by kicking out his mom's uterus to use as a magic bolo, don't say you weren't warned.

ALL NEW ATOM #4: Apart from the comment about Byrne's dynamism in dialogue scenes, I pretty much agree with Hibbs' review here, too. And did I imagine it or did the Atom's arch-nemesis lick his knife on the last page of this issue? Licking a knife is what today's kids do instead of twirling one's mustache, if you ask me. It's kinda played out as an "ooo, he's so eeeevil!" form of shorthand. More-or-less OK issue overall, though.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR #2: The good news: Chris Weston draws Harvey Pekar (at a comic book convention!) The bad news: he only does so for two pages. Still, a terrific line-up of artistic talent made this a Good issue if you go in for the Harvey Pekar kind of thing.

BEYOND #4: Four issues in and it's still playing its big, cosmic concept very small. While I think that's generally a plus--I was sure we'd have gotten a power cosmic Gravity wrist-wrestling The Beyonder for control of the cosmos by now--it feels like the story isn't going to ramp up as much as putter about and then tidily close up shop. I know I'm a contrarian, but now that McDuffie and Kolins have my interest, I'd like to see something bigger.

BOYS #3: Nothing particularly deep or snarky to say about the issue, but I thought it was interesting how Robertson can give his work an almost-Dave Gibbons-ish feel when he wants to--like that cover, for example. (I thought Cameron Stewart's work in Other Side looked a bit like Robertson's work too, as long as I'm saying whatever's coming to mind as I write this.) An OK issue, but if there aren't some serious fireworks in store by the end of the first arc, I wonder if enough readers are gonna stick around--which is kinda like saying I wonder if I'm gonna stick around, but kinda not. I can read this for free while working the counter, you know.

CRIMINAL #1: You picked this up, right? If not, you should. There's a lot to praise here, but the two things that struck me most were Phillips' way with a setting (and Val Staples' fantastic coloring), making a half-dozen different neighborhoods still feel like part of the same city, and the way Brubaker has compressed his already-taut storytelling--the bit about the newspaper strip was the only thing that I could've seen cutting (and I'm sure it has a payoff later down the line). Very Good stuff, in the way that, say, a '70s Don Siegel film is very good stuff--you're watching a genre work done by someone at the top of their craft who knows that genre front to back. A rare treat for comics, and worth picking up.

DETECTIVE COMICS #824: It's hard to believe that a competent done-in-one Batman comic is all I really want these days, but it's true. So the fact that this doesn't quite satisfy is unsettling. I think it's because I've been trained to expect the run to end in six issues, or for a huge crossover story to come in and wipe out the tone of the run, or maybe because it seems likely to me Dini's renovations of the Rogue's Gallery will be forgotten two issues after he leaves. Highly OK, but I guess the Bat-franchise has left me gun-shy.

DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #1: As mentioned in Bri's comment thread, the art in this was amazingly lovely--as with any good Ditko creation, Dr. Strange is actually receptive to stylization--and Vaughan's thoughtful way of connecting bits and pieces (Strange reciting the Hippocratic oath almost as if it was one of his spells) made for a Good read. Like Detective above, I can't really get too fired up about it because there'll be likely be an entirely different take on Dr. Strange coming down the pike in about a year. But that's my problem (or the marketplace's) and not anything having to do with the book per se, I... think.

FANTASTIC FOUR #540: Suffers a bit too much from "have the cake and eat it, too" as far as Reed's behavior is concerned--JMS has him as both the frightened tool of the government and the Lehrer-quoting critic. If you can get around that, though (and it seems like reading most of the Civil War stuff means willing to suspend disbelief as far as character behavior is concerned), I'd say this was pretty OK.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #13: I thought the art was blucky, and apparently Peter David wants "Friendly Neighborhood" Spider-Man to mean "time-traveling demonic enemy fighting" Spider-Man, so I think I'm pretty much through. Bummer. Eh.

GIANT SIZE WOLVERINE #1: Actually reminded of most of the Giant-Size books I used to buy in the '70s--lovely art, disposable story, eye-meltingly bad back-ups. OK but mainly because David Aja's work was really impressive here--a melange of great '70s artists like Wrightson, Ploog, Steranko, while somehow having its own flavor. Really not bad at all.

IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #1: You could teach a class off of Phil Hester's masterful handling of the overabundant text--it all went down more or less smoothly. Sadly, all that yakkity-yak didn't really have much of a payoff in this issue as the big reveal (the guy in the Ant-Man suit isn't Gallant, it's Goofus) is spelled out in the title of the book. There were a few other problems as well, but let's just call it a lowish OK and hope the book hits its stride next issue.

TO DANCE: A BALLERINA'S STORY: You may or may not know this about me but I'm a medium-sized ballet nerd. Friends got me hooked on the S.F. Ballet back in the early '90s when I was a huge HK film fan and it was a surprisingly smooth transition from watching John Woo and Jackie Chan films to watching pieces choreographed by Mark Morris and George Balanchine. This puts me in an odd place with regards to Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel's book, TO DANCE--not being a twelve year old girl, I'm far from the perfect audience for this, but I do think I know enough about the subject material to be frustrated by the work. While the illustrations are superb--Marc Siegel captures that perfect balance between weight and weightlessness in a ballerina's dance--the story as written seems to be one missed opportunity after the other: there's a million interesting things about in the story of a young girl attending ballet school while her family falls apart, and Siena Cherson Siegel knows enough to nod at them as they pass by in the narrative, but little more. It all slides by too quickly, too much anecdote and too little incident, and the protagonist manages to become entranced with ballet, have her family break up, lose her career at an early age due to an injury, and find a new life with husband and child, all without the reader really connecting once. And then there's the whole frustration for the ballet nerd of reading a graphic novel set at the NYCB during Balanchine's last days, with Barishnykov and Suzanne Farrell running around--apart from a brief, evocative recreation of Farrell's farewell dance to Balanchine after he died, it could just as well be the story of any gal growing up at any ballet school anywhere. And that's a damn shame.

I'm sure TO DANCE will kill with its intended audience--it's not too hard to imagine it flying off the shelves of savvy ballet shops during Nutcracker season--but rather than an EH children's book, it could have been an inspiring graphic novel, and it's a damn shame that it's not. At least according to this ballet nerd.

PICK OF THE WEEK: CRIMINAL #1, no doubt. Although OTHER SIDE #1, which I was too lazy to review, is also really worth your time and coin.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Obviously, I was more disappointed with TO DANCE than any other book I read, but that's just because of all the squandered potential. I'm gonna give it to FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #13 because I'm a complainy bee-yotch.

TRADE OF THE WEEK: THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006--it has a piece or two that didn't work for me, but apart from stuff I read and loved previously (like those killer McSweeney's pieces by Ware, Dietch and Heatley), the stuff I missed the first time around that was great--I think Justin Hall's "La Rubia Loca" makes this book worth the price of admission alone, but I'd probably think that about Rebecca Dart's "Rabbithead" is I hadn't already seen it. It's almost 300 pages of top-notch comics for 22 bucks, and the book itself is a lovely looking thing. If you've got the coin to spend, it's worth it.

COMING UP: Bug pictures to post! Probably in the next day or two. And hopefully I can get these fucking things written and posted a little sooner....

What'd you think of last week?