I have Read the Worst Comic I have ever read (this week)

Don't mean to overuse that headline (and, actually, it wasn't really Arsenal-level bad), but I thought that this week's Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search For Swamp Thing #1 was pretty inexcusably poor.

My practical knowledge of how Englishmen actually really and truly speak is mostly limited to watching BBC shows imported into America, and a few late-night phone conversations with Neil Gaiman, but I am fairly certain that no Englishman ever actually sounds anything like what Jonathan Vankin portrays here (which is weird, because his two Vertigo Pop series [Tokyo and Bangkok] seem fairly culturally sensitive)

It's like.... mm, "Dick Van Dyke IS John Constantine!", y'know?

That sucks, no doubt, but what I actually hated more was the portrayal of John Constantine that has him casually tossing off magic (foiling a robbery, knocking out Alfred via remote, entering the batmobile, entering The Green?!?!?! sheesh), and paying no price for any of it whatsoever. The thing about JC was that it was pretty unclear if he ever DID magic (at least in those original Swamp thing appearances), or if he was just good at tricking people, and that what we know he DID do, ALWAYS had a price, hopefully paid by someone else.

I might like to see that version of JC, especially in the waning days of the "old" DCU -- Batman getting turned into those weird backwards head babies or whatever, Hawkman going mad, and leaping out of a window without his wings or some shit -- but not this "a seedy Zatanna" version.

Also, like WHICH DCU is this taking place within? 'cuz, see, *I* remember Swamp Thing terrorizing Batman and Gotham City in a pretty spectacular way when they took Abbey from him. Batman knows alllllll about Swamp thing, so to have JC do the remedial version for him, or Batman to call ST "the hero of Star City" is.... well it's pretty fucking weird and awkward isn't it?

(This is what I dread about the nuDCU that is coming -- we'll get a new Superman who, likely, was never married to Lois Lane, yet "Identity Crisis still happened", which is like "Um, how?" That book had Superman worried about... Lois getting hurt.)

Even if you assume "Oh, it's Dick, and not Bruce", Swampy nearly destroying Gotham City HAD to have made the national nightly news, right?

Then there's that last few lines of dialogue (uh, spoiler warning, I guess?): "If Alec [Holland] [Also] came BACK with his OWN consciousness, well, then, mate, we'd all be in a RIGHT mess, then, wouldn't we?"

We would? Ah! Ah! FEAR the middle-aged failed-biologist who was dumb enough to believe the Government wasn't trying to weaponize his discoveries! SCARY!

There's absolutely nothing likeable about this comic book, and it not only fundamentally misunderstands john Constantine, but makes Batman look like a moron, as well. Nice trick!

This was pure CRAP, or as this comic might have put it: "Strewth, that was a right load of cobblers, oi, guv'nor?"

But, what did YOU think?

-B

Flash(point Tie-Ins)! Aaaaaaah ahhhhhhhhhh! Graeme Saved Everyone of You From Having To Read Them!

I am a bad comic fan, I think, because I didn't manage to get to the store this week. On the plus side, it's because I was doing a bunch of other things, so maybe I'm just a busy comic fan. Luckily, though, DC thought to send me preview copies of this week's and next week's Flashpoint minis, so it's apparently round two of the great Flashpoint mini-series reviewathon: FLASHPOINT: DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1: Apart from a spectacular cover from Cliff Chiang - Really, it's lovely - there's little to this issue beyond the high concept, which is, admittedly, a great one: What if Robin's parents hadn't died, and performed in the same circus as Boston Brand, who also hadn't died? Sadly, everything done with that concept - They're touring Europe to bring joy to the hearts of those hit hardest by the war between the Amazons and the Atlanteans! They have the helmet of Doctor Fate, which can somehow see the regular DCU! - feels kind of pointless and filler, leaving this pretty Eh, even with the nice art by newcomer Mikel Janin.

FLASHPOINT: GRODD OF WAR #1: I would love to have been in the meeting where they came up with the idea for this one. "So, Gorilla Grodd has taken over an entire continent, right?" "Okay." "But he keeps picking fights, because he's got a deathwish." "The monkey has a deathwish?" "He's an ape, but yeah. And, get this: His limo gets blown up by a bunch of kids hardened by war, but he kills them and then lets one live so he can grow up and kill him! Deep, right?" "The ape drives a limo? And, wait, he kills a bunch of kids?" "You did say we needed 20 Flashpoint books in June, didn't you...?" "Oh, alright then. Just get someone like Ig Guara to draw it and make it look better than it deserves to." Crap.

FLASHPOINT: KID FLASH LOST #1: I'll say this for this book: I didn't think Flashpoint would somehow manage to have two dystopian alternate DC universes, but apparently anything's possible with time travel. Weirdly enough, it actually kind of works - something I'll lay firmly at the feet of writer Sterling Gates, who manages to get the tone of this just right, even with the potential doom and gloom surrounding it. He also gets points for doing something interesting with two dangling threads from the end of Geoff Johns' Flash run (Jeff will be happy to see Hot Pursuit back), and, surprisingly, tie it into the Superman work he did with James Robinson awhile back. For fans of Kid Flash, this is Good, and will make you even more sad that Gates' announced Kid Flash book never ended up happening.

FLASHPOINT: LEGION OF DOOM #1: Hey, remember what I said about Citizen Cold a couple of weeks ago? This is pretty much the same thing, all shitty psychology and posturing, and very, very Crap. The last page reveal in particular is all manner of disappointing.

FLASHPOINT: LOIS LANE AND THE RESISTANCE #1: Like everyone who likes DC Comics, I'm convinced that there's a great Lois Lane book out there, waiting to win over fans and non-fans alike ready for a series about a smart, funny, capable woman who doesn't let anything keep her for a story. Until then, there's this, sadly, which is Eh at best, and Awful for those not feeling as charitable. The art is annoyingly cartoony, the story reduces Lois to plucky bystander who tries to make a difference when fate gives her the chance, and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning - who are actually British - somehow manage to make their British character Penny Black (Cute name, for all the stamp lovers out there) sound as if they've never, even been to Britain in their life ("Wotcha, Lois. American, eh? Well, as you yanks like to say... We've got to book!" Trust me, Americans: No-one in Britain actually talks like this. Not even in alternate reality Britains. Pretty much a massive missed opportunity.

FLASHPOINT: THE OUTSIDER #1: Like Secret Seven before it, this feels like it's got too much potential to be thrown away at the end of Flashpoint - in large part because, at the end of the first issue, I'm still not entirely sure I understand who the Outsider is, in a good way. Oh, he's very charismatic - James Robinson writes him as, essentially, a dandier Shade from Starman - but his motivations and larger schemes seem unknown after this first issue, and I find myself wanting to know more. Maybe this is one of the characters that'll escape, Age of Apocalypse-style, into the reborn DCU at the end of the series, and take over as the DCU's big bad behind the scenes, replacing Lex Luthor. After this Good debut, I kind of hope so.

FLASHPOINT: REVERSE FLASH #1: First off, ignore the front cover that reads "First Issue of Three," because it's a oneshot. Secondly, ignore the rest of the issue, because if you've already picked up Geoff Johns' Reverse Flash spotlight issue of the last Flash series, you've pretty much read this already. Like the Grodd issue, a pointless cash-in oneshot, and one that only gets Eh because Joel Gomez' art ably synthesizes Scott Kolins' an Francis Manapul's.

FLASHPOINT: WONDER WOMAN AND THE FURIES #1: More backstory of the Atlantis/Amazon war, and this time Abnett and Lanning come up with the goods - I particularly liked the far-flashback into the first meeting between Diana and Arthur, before they'd settled into their roles as Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and the whole thing unfolds nicely, despite the stiffness in Scott Clark's otherwise pleasing enough artwork. I'm not sure whether the cliffhanger ending here confirms or contradicts descriptions of events in the Emperor Aquaman book, but I'll probably stick around to find out. Good, surprisingly enough.

For those keeping track: No, we're still not through all of the tie-ins yet. There's still Hal Jordan, Project Superman, Green Arrow Industries and The Canterbury Cricket to go. I know, I know: You're as excited about those last two as I am, aren't you...?

Burble Burble Burble, Hibbs fufills a promise to review

I said I was going to review, so here's a few quick hits. I've been spending a lot of time this week on the back end of the site, you'll notice some of the real estate has changed. That "uncategorized" number will shrink over the year as I go through the older, blogger-era posts (sheesh, we have nearly 2000 posts here at this point!), but the tag cloud will really only be utilized properly going forward from here.  

If you have any mechanical/aesthetic suggestions for the site, now is the time to do so.

Putting that aside, what stuck with me in the last two weeks?

PUNISHERMAX #14: I wrote up #13, but #14 compels me to speak again. Jason Aaron has found this astonishing sweet spot to tell the origin of the Punisher that neither directly involves 'nam nor that fateful day in Central Park. I had thought that all veins of the Punisher were as mined out as could be, but Aaron has found a genuinely new place to get us into Frank's head that feels resoundingly realistic to this reader. What's great is just how well Aaron has mastered the language of comics here (ably aided and abetted by Steve Dillon) -- at least I'm assuming that all of the awesome scene transitions and juxtapositions are in Aaron's script. The story is centered around what must be Stock Punisher Cliche Story #1: Frank's in Jail! and yet at no point am I thinking "Damn, been here before". This is possibly the weirdest recommendation coming from MY lips, but I think that this book is one of the five best appearing on the stands "monthly" these days, and, certainly and BY FAR the single best title that Marvel is publishing today from a perspective of craft. This is seriously bravura work on this storyline -- Eisner level work, in spite of the character -- and should be selling 4 or 5 times what it is currently. Flat out EXCELLENT.

FEAR ITSELF: FEARSOME FOUR #1: Is really everything that Graeme said in his review, but, damn it, he didn't bring up the fact that half (or so) of the issue is drawn by two wicked awesome illustrators: Michael Kaluta, and Simon Bisley. And each of those sections are gorgeous looking (for wholly different reasons). I mean, talk about two tastes that don't even remotely go together -- soaring, delicate fine linesmanship of Kaluta bouncing against the explosive putrid grunge (and, hm, I mean that in a good way) of Bisley. There's a third artist involved (Ryan Bodenheim) who looks like the same artist that drew the last Howard mini (or was it a one shot? It blurs) in that strange small-bill version, but Kaluta and Bisley are drawing the "real" Howard (mostly). I wonder if it is now more important or less important at Disney HQ that HTD properly looks like Donald? Serously, there could not be a more jarring looking book that makes no visual sense of any kind, but you have to admire the king size stones of an editor that's commissioning pages from such disparate sources and thinking for a second that it might work. It's really and truly an AWFUL comic to try and read, but as a curious-ass artifact of how comics are made? I'll say GOOD. This is something ten years from now you'll kick yourself for not having this issue.

GHOST RIDER #0.1: For a "and this is how Ghosty becomes a chick!" comic, I thought this was remarkably entertaining (even though the chick-ing comes in #1, I think, and this is just a way to get Johnny Blaze to not be Ghosty any longer) (is it just me, or is this a really short second run for JB?) -- even though I wouldn't want to hazard a guess if the series to follow this might be any good or not, since it won't be about these characters. I had low-to-no expectations here, and, yeah, I thought it was a low GOOD.

KIRBY GENESIS #1: As you will recall I was so-so on #0, but I thought this one was a tremendous comic. Part of it is that the Kurt Busiek that is writing it is the "Astro City Kurt", and the choice is made to squarely focus on the human character. I know that Jack Kirby's worst ideas are probably more compelling that many guy's best ideas, but I'd generally suggest there's a reason that most of these concepts on display didn't go anywhere. I mean, the market has had a few chances to decide it didn't want Silver Star, right? I really didn't care much about the JK characters running around, and yet I still thought that KIRBY GENESIS #1 was the best comic I read the week of 6/15 because of the human heart centering it. So, yeah, a strong GOOD.

AVENGERS #14: plot-wise, I dunno, it's really just a bunch of punching, but I thought that Bendis was really smart here by counter-pointing the big stuff with the little-insets-of-oral-history-interview technique that I've previously thought was kind of cloying. This time it worked pretty well, as Romita JR really does excel at the two-big-guys-punching stuff -- it is just wonderfully kinetic -- while the insets let the pacing to work out so that it isn't a 30-second read. I don't find a Worthy-fied Thing nor a Red Hulk at all compelling, and I kinda moaned when the new Avengers Tower came crashing down (plus, like, how does it have force fields that can protect the people inside, but not protect the building itself? Buh?) since that just seemed so cliche, but this was a rare issue of AVENGERS that I thought was (if on the lower end of) GOOD.

OK, I have to get back to editing old posts, and getting ready to go into work... what did YOU think?

-B

The Audition

I know that I told you that I'd be the first one to punk out 0n the every-week reviews -- and guess what? I was right! (But I was writing Tilting, and a very special DC-Relaunch ONOMATOPOEIA that you can actually download as a full color PDF until June 28, so I don't know, maybe that counts?)

Anyway, Jeff and I were talking about how much we like John K (UK)'s comments every week in "Shipping this week" threads, and we thought "Well, let's give him a shot".

(Important note to everyone who constantly asks to become a Critic -- this is actually how you do it. You write nd you write without any expectation of anything other than amusing yourself and others, and then we invite you without you asking whatsoever. There will be no more discussion of this.)

So, accordingly, here's John K (UK)'s first shot, below the cut. Make comments in the comments section, with your thoughts, though the final decision is absolutely mine and Jeff's.

(I really should have some reviews of my own up tomorrow, I am pretty sure)

Without further ado: John K (UK):

FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT #1: Wow, do you like your Dumb wrapped in Ugly? Then have Marvel got a Speedball story for you!  How about a page which is just J Jonah Jameson saying: “I hate superheroes, me, I do, it’s true.” It’s one of the nicer Chaykin pages the self-proclaimed Jew From The Future has recently secreted but it’s still definitely one he just did to be able to afford his RDA of Mai Tai mix. Peter Milligan does a bit I’ve already forgotten but I’ve never forgotten that his and Duncan Fegredo’s ENIGMA is fantastic. And the folk of Broxton are horrible. What a bunch of self obsessed platitude panting dingleberrys. Are we supposed to empathise with them? Is this how the Marvel Landscape Gardeners view us commoners not blessed by The Muse? I’m being unfair; I know that the stress and financial hardship of the current recession that I and my family were experiencing was alleviated no end by the fact that Marvel were excreting an oily link of overpriced comics about Nazi robots and magic hammers. CRAP!

iZOMBIE #13: I swear stuff happens in this comic but I can’t remember what all from issue to issue. It’s just horribly frothy and weightless, an astronaut’s milkshake affair. Everybody’s a zombie, or a vampire, or a mummy, or an old man in a chimp’s body and they’re all just dating and, like, RPG-ing and totally worrying about lattes and how to recharge their iPod in a crypt. It’s like Scooby Doo for people who are legally allowed to have sex but are emotionally incapable of doing so. Look the fault is mine, I’m 41 years old I should have got out as soon as I saw “paintballing vampires”. Golly, it’s so cutsey and coy I can’t really process it. Every month it turns up and smiles at me and demands to be loved but…I can’t. I’m just not built that way. I graze on Hate. I think I’m buying it because I like it and I think I like it because of Mike Allred but I think, actually, I just liked X-FORCE/X-STATIX. And this ain’t that. So few things are, bubba.

JONAH HEX#66: I don’t know much about Fiona Staples but I know that she knows enough to know that you don’t draw snow. (The Master of not drawing snow is of course Mr. Joe Kubert.) There’s a super (almost) wordless sequence where you know what its leading up to but you kind of hope that it isn’t (it’s called “ suspense”) and its delivered nicely by all parties. Words and pictures successfully working together towards the common purpose of entertaining actually happens a lot less than you might think but it happens in JONAH HEX quite a lot.

JONAH HEX #67: This is a typically taut and tasty tale in which Jonah Hex must save the life of the very man who framed him! Which sounds teeth grindingly predictable but I assure you it is not. It’s a decent done-in-one but really it could just be Jonah sat on his porch digging cow muck out of his spurs with a sharpened matchstick because Jordi Bernet is in the saddle this issue. Like Brynner’s boys dealt in lead Jordi Bernet deals in awesome. Bernet! Spread the word!

(Y’know, I’m not convinced that having Jonah Hex fight Hush in a stovepipe hat is going to bring in a whole new audience. But then again I am baffled by the fact that there is no real audience for a comic as consistently well written and excellently drawn as JONAH HEX is.)

JSA #50: Despite being a mobile fossil I don’t know much about the JSA as before 1986 the only way we got comics in Blighty was when they washed up on the beach after a U-Boat had scuppered some luckless cargo ship. Were the silence broken by so much as a fruity trump kids would be hurtling to the nearest beach hoping to find a sandy four colour treasure. Distribution was patchy is what I’m saying. Luckily the JSA are introduced in Part One, illustrated by George “Ladies wrestling? Yes, please.” Perez. Unluckily it totally fails as an introduction to the JSA. Predictably the big guns elbow all the others out of the way and then stamp on their feet with their heels until they have to move to the back of the room near the stinky damp patch of carpet.

Look, can I just personally ask DC to, for the Love of all that is Holy, to stop telling me about Hal Jordan and Barry Allen! Stop it! You’re making me crazy here! I mean look at Mr. Terrific , he gets about three panels (Usually when faced with a scene where a young man on a bridge is approached by some creepy looking guy in green underoos talking about “voids” and the need for their “filling“ you’d get some kind of hilarious rudery. But I’m better than that. And I need you to know I am better than that.) which leave you none the wiser really. Luckily I know all about Mr. Terrific (He’s the world’s third warmest man, his wife is deaf and he is invisible to heavy machinery) but you won’t learn any of that in here. Golly, it’s a good job no one is expecting him to support his own series or anything. This chapter was a mess but George Perez drew it so it was a pretty dynamic mess.

Part Two involved time travel and how to fill a lot of pages with very little. Beards still equal evil in parallel universes in case you were wondering.

Part Three and please put your hands together for – HUAC! Because the JSA without HUAC is like a Day without Doris! Howard Victor Chaykin does the pictures here. DIAGNOSIS: MURDER must have finished because it actually appears HVC was almost engaged with this. He gives everyone a different face, some of them don’t even look like they are composed of uncooked dough, and he does a nice job of layering his drawings over his now obligatory clip art compulsion. Delightfully he also effectively communicates the inherent visual comedy of having a bunch of Cosplaying adults in a stuffy legal setting. It’s okay this bit but there’s a slight possibility I might be biased.

Part Four is how I guess most issues of JSA are on a regular basis which explains why I don’t buy JSA on a regular basis. Give me a mystery – I’ll solve it! No charge.

JSA #50 was very much like turning up to a party no one actually wanted you to turn up to. I don’t think that was the idea. AWFUL!

MIGHTY THOR #1: Oh God, this priest. This priest is the worst priest ever. He appears to have been written by someone who has heard of priests but only actually experienced them via the distorting medium of popular culture. I’m no priest defender and I’m certainly not Ricky Religious but I’m pretty sure the accepted role of the priest isn’t one of scaring the living piss out of the congregation. Having a priest act like that at a time of crisis is like having a fireman show up during the Watts Riots only for him to proceed to hose down burning buildings with gasoline while screaming racial epithets. Faith, pal. Google it sometime. Oh yeah, Galactus drools when he sleeps. Heck, he probably scratches his cosmic nuts when he forgets other people are around as well but I don’t need to see that either do I? EH!

Verse Chorus Verse: Jeff's Capsule Reviews from 6/8

Does it bode ill for my reviews when I can't think of a clever thing to say while convincing you to follow me behind the jump for capsule reviews?  It probably is, isn't it?  Ah, well.  I just finished watching the screen adaptation of The Black Dahlia.  I mean, I'd heard that movie would be bad, but there were wrong casting decisions, terrible direction, and some bad mistakes in adapting Ellroy's skeezy epic to the screen. As a quasi-fan of Brian DePalma, it's a painful, painful movie to watch.  And I blame it for my inability to bring you a witty intro: the movie is a like a form of slow-acting toxin to the higher brain functions. Anyway, after the jump:  lower brain function reviews of Empowered: Ten Questions for the Maidman, Invincible Iron Man #504, Witch Doctor #0, and more.

EMPOWERED: TEN QUESTIONS FOR THE MAIDMAN:  Maidman -- the cross-dressing vigilante of Adam Warren's Empowered universe -- gets his own one-shot with alternating black and white sections by Adam Warren and color sections by Emily Warren. It was a book I wanted to deeply like, but really only admired. You can read this one-shot as a deconstruction of Batman (Maidman is one of the few non-powered superheroes in the Emp universe and easily the most feared), a deconstruction of Batman analogs (in some ways, this is the funniest issue of Midnighter never published), or maybe even a spoof of the cape industry's current trend in Mary-Sueisms.  Alternately, you could also take it as a face value, with Warren using the same gimmicks to get the reader to like Maidman that Johns or Bendis or a host of others use these days -- (a) introduce character; (b) have everyone talk admiringly of character; (c) show character doing something impossibly awesome; (d) profit.  Empowered: Ten Questions... shows Warren as being as skilled a practitioner of the current bag of comics writing magic tricks as anyone currently working.  I'm glad he at least has his own little universe to toy about with, but I wish I could get more worked up about a more-or-less OK one-shot...in no small part because I worry about him getting it yanked out from under him if the sales aren't there.  Vexingly OK.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #504:  Really interesting to read a book where the regular writer is caught off-balance by the obligatory line-wide event when the same guy is writing that event, too.  I mean, that two page scene with Tony and Pepper is really quite good for what it is.  But the meat of the issue, where Tony goes to Paris because one of the hammers of the Worthy has landed there, is underwhelming. Fraction clearly built the issue to that last page climax but it feels like that's the only thing he's trying to  accomplish.  So when you get to that last page, it definitely has some punch to it but it also eaves you feeling super-empty and annoyed immediately after.

Also, that last page what feels like part of an ongoing tug-of-war between Fraction and Larrocca. Instead of focusing on rendering that kinda-important pile of stones Tony is on top of, Larroca focuses on the building beside it.  It doesn't feel quite like a "fuck you" from one collaborator to another, but it does suggest painfully opposing goals\.  $3.99 price-tag + ineffective storytelling + forced event crossover=AWFULness.

POWER-MAN & IRON FIST #5: Similarly, last issue of this miniseries turned out very meh in the end despite my modest expectations.  Wellinton Alves' work ended up rushed and ugly, and Van Lente's script tried to do wayyyy too much in too short a time.  Not only do both heroes have romantic relationships resolved in this issue, but a mystery is solved, fight scenes are had, and the creepy Comedia Del'Morte are...well, frankly, I have no idea what happened to them.  It's a shame because I was won over by so much less with that back-up story from Amazing Spider-Man. (On the plus side,with very little rejiggering, Van Lente and Alves could re-tool this as an arc of the post-Morrison Batman & Robin and it'd fit right in.)  I'm tempted to get all Rex Reedy on you and say this puts the EH back in "meh," but I won't...in part because it was AWFUL.

SECRET AVENGERS #13: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! No. CRAP.

WALKING DEAD #85/WITCH DOCTOR #0:  Although I like the swerve Kirkman made with this storyline a few issues back, I don't know if there's really much more going on than that.  I suspect as we come 'round issue #100, Kirkman's biggest flaw --his ability to dramatize character development is rudimentary at best, and so he has to have scenes where his characters explain their motivations to one another for us to get it --  is getting more and more apparent. While I'm at it, Charlie Adlard's biggest strength -- drawing a large cast of characters to keep them easily identifiable without resorting to any flashy tricks -- may also be hindering this book:  the dramatic scenes either run to the inert or the occasionally overheated.  Energy, ambition and craft have gotten these guys farther and higher than anyone would've suspected and I in no way mean to diminish their achievement.  But I think if this book is going to make another 85 issues, they're going to need to shake up their skillsets for a change, not their storyline. OK stuff.

As for WITCH DOCTOR #0, despite having very little interest based on the material I'd seen online, I ended up enjoying the hell out of it.  Everyone [by which I mean at least me] has always wanted to write a biologic explanation for vampires, a la Matheson's treatment in I am Legend, but writer Brandon Seifert really goes to town here. Lines like "his saliva's got the usual bloodfeeder chemistry set-- vasodilator, anticoagulant and an anesthetic--plus some interesting mystical secretions.  I think one's a anterograde amnesiac--" make my heart go pitter-pat, and Seifert has a lot of them.  I can easily see how it might feel dry to some, but to me it showed a commitment to research and world-building I think you really need to make a series about a doctor (even a mystical one) work.  As for Lukas Ketner's art, it's enjoyably quirky, especially when it chooses to go detailed and when it decides to loosen up: panels of this remind me of Wrightson, others of William Stout, and still others of Jack Davis, and I could never figure out when the next swerve was going to happen.  VERY GOOD stuff and I'm definitely on-board for the first few issues of the regular title now.

WOLVERINE #9:  Not the most recent issue I know, but so much more satisfying than issue #10, I figured you'd forgive me for writing about it instead.  I mean, to begin with:  God damn, this is some gorgeous looking work.  Daniel Acuna (who I guess is doing both the art and the colors) really sold me on this story about a mysterious assassin (Lord Deathstrike) and Wolverine both trying to hunt down Mystique on the streets of San Francisco. But I should point out that there's three full pages of wordless action that feel perfectly placed in the script and I think writer Jason Aaron should really be commended for having the confidence to let the art do its stuff.  And there's also a hilariously over-the-top assassination scene at the beginning that I loved.  I suspect this book is going to have diminishing sales in no small part because Aaron just can't keep away from writing Wolverine's adventures with a strong dash of the absurdly extreme, and a larger audience for this character really want this stuff served straight-up.  I can understand that desire (especially when you get issues like #10 where it's Logan vs. the Man with the Jai-Alai Feet) but when you get such an artist who can sell you on both the sweet & sour sauce of Aaron's mix of awesome and absurd? It's really pretty satisfying.  This was one hell of a  VERY GOOD issue.

UNCANNY X-FORCE #11:  I guess this is what you can do with okay art and good characterization--you can make me care somewhat about stuff I wouldn't ordinarily care about. I missed out on the original Age of Apocalypse stuff powering the plot here and yet, thanks to a forty-issue Exiles habit, I'm pretty familiar with what's going on.  In fact, arguably I'm too familiar as I felt like I was at least a beat or two ahead of the plot at all times.  But at least some of the time I was surprised by what the characters said or how they said it.   I still quietly pine for the awesomeness of the first five issues, but this was on the high end of OK for me.

SECRET AVENGERS #13: Seriously, though.  Do you need to know why I thought this was terrible?  Well, let's just say when your plot about a Washington invasion hinges on the fierce determination of a congressman who also happens to be a magical negro mutant, and that leads to Lincoln from the Lincoln Monument and all the dinosaurs from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History rising up to hold the line, then I think it's safe to say things have gone wrong.  Weirdly, I could've bought it in a DC book -- for whatever reason, I expect the surreal and the schmaltzy to intermingle more freely there -- but here it seems like a big ol' misfire.  Again, to sum up:  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! No. CRAP.

And that's my week in pamphlets.  As for my TRADE PICK....

BAKUMAN, VOL. 5:  Oh man, how I love this series.  It's not an easy sell, I know, and I'll be the first to admit that first volume is more than a little forced.  And in fact, here in volume 5, there is still a surprising number of misfires:  for example, there's a chapter here about an artist who is so committed to proving his worth to his writer that he draws pages outside her window in the middle of a blizzard and it's really treacly and ineffective. And there are more than a few hilariously cynical moves by the writer and artist to pander to their publishers:  in more than a few places, the editors and publishers of Shonen Jump are treated with a degree of reverence that borders on the fanatical.

On the other hand, Bakuman has changed my understanding of how manga is created so much I've since read other titles with new eyes --I doubt I would've enjoyed my thirteen volume romp through One-Piece nearly as much without it. And even more than that, I'm totally a sucker for the way Ohba and Obata have introduced so many different young manga creators and then blurred the lines between enemies and allies so much you realize none really exist.  As a book about the comics industry properly should, Bakuman is very much about who you have to decide to trust and the possible long-term implications of those choices.  But it's also a book where competition doesn't preclude comradeship and that totally hits a sweet spot of insecurities and needs I didn't really know I had.  Really, the series is so very far from perfect it's kinda painful...and yet the last four volumes now have been some of my favorite reading of the last year.  VERY, VERY GOOD for me, but you really not might feel at all the same.

Six Slices Of Terror: Graeme Looks At Some Fear Itself Tie-Ins

So, last week I did lots of Flashpoint tie-ins, so I thought I'd play fair and read lots of Fear Itself tie-ins this week. Well, it was that, or give you my terrible joke in place of a real review of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #159 ("Peter Parker may be taking a long time to die in this "Death of Spider-Man" arc, but Brian Michael Bendis has successfully killed off one thing pretty quickly: Any interest I had left in this series." Yeah, I know. But it's Crap, let's be honest). So: Let's get fearfilled, shall we? FEAR ITSELF: DEADPOOL #1: I'm sure I should like this more. God knows, playing Deadpool as Ambush Bug and making fun of Fear Itself has a lot of potential, and I like the repeated Doctor Who in-joke (In-jokes are cool) (See what I did there?), but after a fun start - I like the idea that families in the Marvel Universe would consider buying security systems to keep them protected from super-powered terrorists - it quickly turns into something that's not got enough jokes to make it worth reading. Then again, I've never really thought Deadpool was anything more than Eh.

FEAR ITSELF: THE DEEP #1: Oh, let's be honest; it's The Defenders. Why no-one at Marvel wanted to let it be called The Defenders, I don't know, but nonetheless: Dr. Strange? Namor? The Silver Surfer? She-Hulk, subbing in for a Worthy-Hulk who's off doing nothing in the main series? That's totally the Defenders. As an opener, it's slow but has potential, if potential that I worry is going to stay weighed down by the resolution presumably being handled in the main series at some point. A low Okay for now, though.

FEAR ITSELF: FEARSOME FOUR #1: If you want to know what's wrong with Fear Itself as an event, you could do worse than pick up this issue. No-one really gets properly introduced, with the exception of Man-Thing - who isn't even one of the titular four - and Nighthawk (who seems curiously out of character, with parodic Frank Miller Batman narration, but I've not really been keeping up with him recently, so maybe he's been doing that for awhile), and the situation gets a lip service intro that just confuses matters even more than they already were. Why is everyone so afraid? Well, if you believe Howard the Duck, "the news has been pumping it into us for a good long while, but now it's outta control..." although we don't find out why. So, instead, you have characters who are essentially meaningless unless you knew them already running around trying to do something that doesn't necessarily make sense because of something that doesn't make sense either. Awful, in other words.

FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT #1, 2: One of my genuine surprises about Siege was that Siege: Embedded was one of the best things about it. After suffering through Civil War: Front Line and World War Hulk: Front Line, I thought, "Wait! Maybe they've got this "ground level tie-in" thing right, finally!" And then I read these two issues, and... They're just a mess, with Speedball going undercover in an organization dedicated to hating him for... some reason (And then they find him out! But Miriam Sharpe, the woman whose son died in Civil War and who got Tony to side with George Bush and who, let's be honest, no-one has actually thought about for years, saves him from a mob because, hey, everyone can get past their fear, right? Right?) in a garishly-illustrated, horrendously-written story, backed up with pointless two-pagers by Howard Chaykin - Seriously, he's gone beyond phoning it in with these; he's now texting his assistant to phone it in for him, it feels like - and apparently a random series of shorts with various Marvel characters dealing with the still-unexplained-in-the-main-series psychic fallout from the main series. And it's all just there, with no shine or energy. It's checklist comics, flat and Awful.

FEAR ITSELF: SPIDER-MAN #1,2 : Right up until the last page of the second issue, I was thinking to myself that this was the tie-in that was doing everything right. I felt engaged in the story, and it felt as if Chris Yost was doing far more heavy lifting explaining thing than anyone else (Showing what "The Fear" actually means on a human level - I really, really like the line "That's one of the benefits of the mask. I can weep openly pretty discreetly," for some reason - and managing to connect it to the Asgardians story from the main series, with Spider-Man asking himself "Is this what happens when the gods abandon Earth?" Which, you know, I'm glad someone is trying to tie everything together). Mike McKone's art is great, as well, clear and bold and all in all, this feels like a great little mini... up until the last page of the second issue, when we get the teaser for the next page, and all of the small scale stuff that's working beautifully gets thrown out in favor of seeing Spidey up against the Worthified Thing next issue. Now there's something to be afraid of: Watching someone make a tie-in work, only to get that solution wrenched out of their hands at the last moment in favor of one of many "The Worthified Thing vs. Hero X" stories that are going to appear in the next few months. That said, there two issues are Good.

FEAR ITSELF: YOUTH IN REVOLT #1: In comparison, this is just Awful, with Sean McKeever trying to fit way too much into the book at the cost of credibility and clarity: Of all the heroes Steve Rogers asks to lead a new Initiative, it's one of the Slingers? And he manages to get an army of super-heroes together in how short a time? And they can all get to Washington DC even though the rest of the country is apparently a mess because of The Fear how? Still, it's good to know that, despite everything going to hell, there's still time for overly familiar soap operatics between generic superheroes that have no discernibly different personalities. And then - get this, we've never seen this before and especially not in The Home Front series - the regular people are so scared they turn on the superheroes! Shocking! Or, perhaps, just shockingly familiar, and filled with no characters that seem to be worth caring about.

One thing about reading all of these books together: You realize (a) how little there is to mine from what Fear Itself has given us so far (Apparently either "People are afraid and the superheroes have to stop them doing something bad" or "The Worthy have hammers and like to fight people"), which seems... odd, and wrong somehow. Shouldn't the idea of a world gripped by fear, even if it is for reasons that make no sense yet - The mention of a "Fear Wave" that I thought was in Spider-Man seems to have been my imagination, brought on by the timeline of "The Fear," weirdly enough - have some more weight and potential to it? I feel that, for all its claims of being a new Civil War, Fear Itself is like a bad photocopy of Blackest Night, but even more repetitive. But surely we're going to get some kind of midway point reveal that will change everything, right? Right?

Graeme Will Review 9 Comics In A Flash: Flashpoint Month 2, Weeks 1 & 2

As promised yesterday, here're the Flashpoint-centric reviews I was meaning to write, before I launched into a Fear Itself diatribe... FLASHPOINT #2: If there's an award for the most exposition-filled comic of the year, it'll have to go to Flashpoint. Almost every character spends a ridiculous time just explaining things to other people in this series; I almost want to see a spin-off series called Barry Allen and AltBatman Explain It All with the two heroes tackling different subjects each month. And yet, somehow, despite everything, it works. Maybe it's because there's a sense of things slowly being put into place - The introductions of Aquaman and, to a lesser extent, Wonder Woman in this issue feel appropriately important, and I like when they appear, after their mentions in the previous issue - or, more likely, it's the comedy and "big idea"-ness of Barry's "Clearly, I need to get my powers back" scheme (Where was this Barry Allen in Geoff Johns' Flash series? Decisive, bold, actually doing things instead of running around and being confused and frowning... This is a Flash I would have enjoyed reading about!), which walks the fine line between genius and stupid so well that I have no idea what side it's actually on. For the second month, I am genuinely surprised that this is better than expected, and actually Good. That said, next month, it'll probably all go to shit, right?

FLASHPOINT: ABIN SUR - THE GREEN LANTERN #1: Well, I'll give Adam Schlagman this: He can do Geoff Johns very well. In just one issue, he's already got both the tied-up-in-continuity and inflated-sense-of-its-own-importance of the regular GL series down. Of all the Flashpoint stories so far, this feels most like a What If? story, especially with the final page recasting Flashpoint as Blackest Night in terms of prophecies. Felipe Massafera does a fine enough job, and I'm sure the synergy folks are very happy to see Sinestro look like his movie incarnation. Let's say tenuously Okay if you like that kind of thing.

FLASHPOINT: BATMAN - KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1: Jeff's right, it looks lovely, but there's nothing here that really catches my interest. Azzarello doesn't make Thomas Wayne that interesting, it all feels pretty much like an undercooked Elseworlds Batman book and who hasn't read too many of those already? Eh, and that's mostly for the art.

FLASHPOINT: CITIZEN COLD #1: In theory, I really like The Flash, and equally in theory, the Rogues are a large part of that. I like the idea of a bunch of supervillains who are just pissy about one particular hero, and who have a sense of camaraderie and bros-before-superheroes mentality. That said, almost everything Geoff Johns has done for the Rogues has never worked for me, and this series, with Scott Kolins writing, is like everything I don't like about the Johnsian approach to the character in one sensitively-rendered-in-pencil-and-overpowering-colors package. Crap, even before you get to the "So, DC is really ripping off Jimmie Robinson's Bomb Queen? Really?" set-up.

FLASHPOINT: DEATHSTROKE AND THE CURSE OF THE RAVAGER #1: I've never liked Deathstroke, and making him a pirate really doesn't do anything to change that. Like Citizen Cold, this is one of those comics that seems to think that bad people doing bad things because they're bad is inherently interesting, and... Well, it's just not for me, really. Eh, because it's probably fine for people who are into this genre. If nothing else, there's some interestingly Sean Philips-ish inking on Joe Bennett towards the end of the book that I'd like to see again.

FLASHPOINT: EMPEROR AQUAMAN #1: And after two books where the set-up of "Bad Guy Is Bad" turned me off, here's one where I liked it despite myself. That's not to say that Tony Bedard's script doesn't have flaws - The structure is all over the place, and the dialogue tends towards the melodramatic - or that Ardian Syaf's art (Very late 1990s, not as Kuberty as recent appearances) is spectacular, but there's something not just about seeing Aquaman as a bastard, but the specifics of his plan to destroy the surface world - Yes, it's Aquaman as more successful Namor, pretty much - that hooked my interest. Okay, although I doubt I'll pick up the rest of the series because I'll be surprised if the threads I'm interested in don't get resolved in the main Flashpoint book.

FLASHPOINT: FRANKENSTEIN AND THE CREATURES OF THE UNKNOWN #1: It's very, very much early days for this series still, but I'll admit it: I really like Jeff Lemire's take on Frankenstein, and am happy to see him write the post-Flashpoint ongoing series announced today. Ibraim Roberson's art is... just there, really, neither exciting nor disagreeable, although it's weirdly reminiscent of William Tucci's work for some reason. An Okay opener, and enough to get me to stay on for what's next.

FLASHPOINT: SECRET SEVEN #1: Firstly, Enid Blyton must be rolling over in her grave when she sees what Flashpoint has done to her beloved creations. Second: This is really just Milligan writing a Shade series again, and I'm loving it. It's not his Vertigo Shade, of course (Sadly), but there's enough hint of that ("Why am I talking to this thing? It isn't real. I feel the same way about myself. No. I have to get a grip. I'm real."), mixed with some Ditko-esque lunacy to make me a very happy man indeed. Admittedly, like Frankenstein, this acts more as a taster to get me involved in the post-Flashpoint version of the book (Justice League Dark, which is a terrible name but a promising looking book), but even so: It's Good.

FLASHPOINT: WORLD OF FLASHPOINT #1: Ah, finally, a comic that challenges Flashpoint in the exposition stakes! I guess it makes sense, but I'm clearly a sucker for this kind of thing because this was one of the more enjoyable tie-ins to me, even though nothing really happens until the last half of the book. That said, I like the Runaways-ripoff set-up enough to have some weird goodwill for the book, even if I'm not sure it's got enough legs even to take it to the end of three issues. That said, it was Okay, and I might even pick up the next issue. Who knew?

Fluff Itself: Graeme Gets Into Marvel's Summer Event Book

I really meant to write capsule reviews, honestly; I got mailed the first two weeks of Flashpoint tie-ins, and thought "That would make a good post," and then I started writing about Fear Itself and got into a bit of a rant. So Flashpoint will come tomorrow, and instead, here's me getting carried away about Marvel's big summer event book. FEAR ITSELF #3: Maybe I was far too into the whole DC mindset last week when this came out - In a week like last week, I really didn't feel like I had any choice but to dive into the DC mindset; they really won the comics internet last week, didn't they? - but... I can't be the only person who sped through this issue, got to the end and thought "This is it?", can I?

Ignoring the fact that everyone in the entire world saw Bucky's death coming - and, in case you hadn't, Bucky even makes a point of announcing it midway through the issue when he says "What, you want to grow old and retire?"; there's winking at the reader, and there's flipping them off, and I'm genuinely not sure which this was. Also, Bucky's death was one of the variant covers for the issue, released online before the issue actually came out - thereby spoiling the one "surprise" in the issue, it has to be pointed out: Nothing interesting really happened in this issue. We got lots of what should be filler material (That Hulk scene? Seriously, what was the point?), and four pages retreading last issue's "transformation into the Worthy" scenes, only this time, it's the Thing! And he can speak English, unlike the Hulk! And... Oh, I give up.

Unless you really, really care about Marvel minutae, this is a pointless series that's so amazingly self-satisfied that it can't see its own irrelevance. Bucky's death aside, the major event of the issue is apparently "The Thing destroys Yancy Street!" Well... yes, but so what? The importance of Yancy Street isn't explained anywhere in the book, so it's meaningless, four pages that just seem like the other Worthy transformations and have no other impact. Everywhere else, characters tell you how important everything is ("Sir, we... you're masterminding a global response to a cataclysm of unknown size and escalating intensity"), but it's all weightless, a feeling not helped by characters who change their minds purely because the plot demands it (#1: Odin is pissed at Thor, pissed at the humans and leave Earth. #2: Odin gives a speech about why the Earth is screwed and how Asgard won't get involved. #3: Odin lets Thor escape, go back to Earth to save the day and even gives him his hammer - "Here. You'll need this. You can't say your father never gave you anything," he says, another smirky moment by Fraction that utterly undercuts whatever drama he was going for - and... why, exactly? Well, because Thor says "I wanna go" and Fraction needs him to rejoin the Avengers next issue. It's just ridiculous).

Also: This is the end of the third issue - essentially halfway through the series - and I still don't feel like we've really had anything explained to us beyond "There's this guy that Odin is scared of, and he's back, and he's turning everyone into monsters with his magic hammers, and so that should stop." Why is the series called Fear Itself? I have no idea (That's not true, the tie-ins suggest there's some kind of "fear wave" going around, but that's not been mentioned anywhere in this series). Who is the villain, and what does he want? Similarly, no real idea. Why is he turning people into monsters with magic hammers? Again: Who knows. I'm all for mad ideas and moving past talky comics, but shouldn't we have had some explanations by now? Or, failing that, more interesting things happening?

(I know, I know: That's what the crossovers are for. Each issue ends with a handy key: "Follow The Thing's rampage in Fear Itself: Spider-Man #3" because, you know, having the core series do something with the bad guys it's spent so many pages introducing would just be old-fashioned. I wonder what this will read like as a collection: "Hey! The Hulk's gone bad! I can't wait to see what happens next! Wait. Why doesn't he show up again? Oh, never mind! The Thing has gone bad too! Man, I can't wait until he... Hang on, he's gone as well. What's with all these Nazis? Stop showing me the Nazis!")

In so many ways, this feels like it's a parody of an event comic instead of the real thing. Fraction seems to be writing the whole thing ironically, inserting completely out-of-place dialogue in places that jolts you out of the experience and points out how stupid things are, and the plot just careers from event to event without any momentum. Really, truly Awful, and only saved from being Crap by the fact that Stuart Immonen and Laura Martin make it look far, far more beautiful than it has any right to be.

Backwards Lap: Capsule Reviews from Jeff

Yes, dammit.  I am currently committed to this capsule review thing, if only because it forces Hibbs and Graeme to also write reviews and my WASPy upbringing inherently enjoys guilting people into stuff. After the jump: comics from last week, last year, and a very cool fan letter.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #169-173:  Still pretty much a mixed bag for me, but I do love how loose story plotting becomes during this period:  issue #169, for example, teases J. Jonah Jameson showing pictures proving that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but that's barely more than three pages of the story and the rest has Spidey beating the crap out of people he encounters essentially at random.  #172 is the debut of the Rocket Racer, but he gets only the opening four pages and then the rest of the book sets up the return of the Molten Man...and even then, interestingly enough, the cliffhanger is Spider-Man being drawn on by two armed security guards.  (The first page of #173 is Spider-Man getting shot by one of those cops and escaping, only to get jumped by bystanders, one of whom has been taking mail-order kung fu lessons.)

I know I carp on this again and again but: although none of that shit would pass muster in your basic Bob McKee workshop (or, as I recall, Dan Slott's advice sessions on Twitter), it's very fun in the right doses and it helps contribute to that "man, anything can happen" feeling...even when every issue opens and closes with a fight scene, and you have Molten Man coming back from the dead and then dying for the fifth or sixth time.

All that said, the highlight of this batch of issues for me was the following letter from issue #169:

Yup. It's that Frank Miller, approximately nineteen years old, saying everything it's taken me the last thirty-five years or so to try and articulate...and doing a better job of it.  I'm heartened but not surprised to find out Miller's a fan of Andru...but the mention of John Buscema is a little odd.  I wonder if that's why the two of them worked on that very odd issue of Daredevil years later?

Anyhoo, it's all pretty low-stakes stuff but I honestly think it's OK or better. The nostalgia factor bumps it up to a low GOOD for me, but I don't think I should really factor that in.

CRIMINAL: THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT #1: I really shouldn't read interviews.  If I hadn't perused Brubaker's interview with Spurgeon over at Comics Reporter, I think it'd be easier for me to see this as an excellent take on the "guy kills his cheating wife" crime tale with the metatextual stuff being a nice little bonus. But having read the interview, I walked into this expecting the metatextual to be meaty and satirical and a brilliant insight on nostalgia and it was...just kinda okay.  I'm hoping there will be a way that stuff goes a little further: it seems to me that Criminal has always been packaged in a nostalgic way -- Sean Phillips' amazing covers clearly reference those Gold Medal Books, among others -- and I think it might be uniquely suited to comment on more than the "wow, now we think of the past as somewhere safe but it was fucked up, too" element of nostalgia, but the "we even miss the fucked up stuff" element that is a little more distressing.  Is it a form of innocence to pine for something evil? Or is it a sign of corruption? I think this book is going to address this stuff (god, I really hope so), but the first issue didn't really deliver on that for me.  It's still GOOD, mind you -- well-written and lovely as hell, but I'd been primed for something great.

FLASHPOINT: BATMAN: KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1:  Thomas Wayne as Batman? Don't care. The Flashpoint version of The Joker? Don't care.  Art by Eduardo Risso, colored by Patricia Mulvihill?  I didn't care...until I saw it. Risso's art is just eye-wateringly good and in the sewer fight scene he has this neat trick of using the page turn to up the surprise by reversing the angle or tightening the focus (or, in some cases, both).  A fight between Batman and Killer Croc in the sewers isn't anything we haven't seen before but I don't think I've ever seen it quite like this. I wish the story had been more than your usual alt-universe blather, but danged if this didn't strike me as a GOOD stuff, anyway.

HELLBOY: THE FURY #1:  Also, in the "Holy Shit, Look At This Art!" category is this book, which somehow manages to be jaw-droppingly beautiful from the first page to the last.  Like Flashpoint: Batman, I don't really care know or care what's going on, but the art by Duncan Fegredo (and colors by the amazing Dave Stewart) and the pacing of Mignola's script miraculously negates all that.  I felt flashes of dread and wonder and, more than once, something like awe.  (I guess this'll sound obvious to you if you've read the issue, but reading it made me feel exactly the way I did when I first watched John Boorman's Excalibur, that same weird mix of the epic and the creepy.) I always feel weird giving books VERY GOOD ratings or higher based on nothing more than just the art but here we are.  Amazing stuff.

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #623:  The art didn't fry my burger this time around but I'm still enjoying the story and Gillen's take on Loki.  In fact, the mix of classic myth and the story's own sensibilities reminds me of the stuff I'm reading in the Simonson Thor Omnibus.  I wish the art didn't look so wispy, but I think I'm gonna give this one a VERY GOOD, nonetheless.

This Time, John Stewart Is A Bad-Ass... IN VIOLET: Graeme on War of The Green Lanterns

I'm keeping this intro short so you'll all scroll past and read Brian's post about today's massive DC news, but: COMICS. WAR OF THE GREEN LANTERNS: I love Green Lantern, but in recent years, it's become a weirdly distant love. I'm not going to lie - It's not me, it's him. The bloom dropped off the cosmically-powered rose somewhere after the (very enjoyable) Sinestro Corps War, and Blackest Night aside, I've found it increasingly hard to care about all the various colors of rings and the amazing amount of navel-gazing required to keep up with it all - and this from someone who likes Millennium. Nonetheless, I've found myself buying every issue of this crossover between Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps and Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors for reasons that I can't quite understand, and it's... Okay? Maybe? Perhaps? It's this thing that I know isn't actually good, and yet, I can't help myself but enjoy it.

I can't pretend that there's not an amazing variation in quality depending on what series is telling the story; Tony Bedard and Tyler Kirkham in Corps aren't up to the same standards as Peter Tomasi and the visual double-entendre-loving Fernando Pasarin on Warriors, which itself isn't as slick as Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke on GL, and it makes for a weirdly choppy reading experience, as well as one where it's really tempting to ascribe all the ideas you dislike (John Stewart's entire portrayal, for example) as being down to one of the lesser talents of the enterprise on some level. But, despite that, there's something oddly compelling about the way that the book is managing to make what are, ultimately, small changes in the overall mythos of the series into seemingly massive deals.

I mean, the three big plot points from the crossover so far, nine chapters into the ten chapter story, are as follows: The Guardians are possessed by the personifications of the various multicolored lanterns, with the exception of Parallax. Parallax has returned to the core Green Lantern, restoring the yellow impurity to the rings. Mojo has been destroyed, robbing the Corps of its moral center/resting ground. Only one of those things is not restoring the franchise to the way it was before Geoff Johns took over, and even in that case, there's still plenty of time to get those Guardians free of the lantern god thingies.

What fascinates me about "War of The Green Lanterns" isn't the breathless "OH MY GOD IT'S US AGAINST EVERYONE ELSE AGAIN" plotting - Seriously, by this point, Hal, John, Guy and Kyle should be used to the idea that they will be the only ones standing against the Corps for one reason or another - but the oddness of reading Geoff Johns undoing his own run in front of my very eyes. It completely changes the whole story for me, and turns what should be just a run-of-the-mill crossover that misses the energy and immediately-graspable high concept that even new readers can understand of Blackest Night into something much, much more compelling... if for almost entirely the wrong reasons.

Given that we already know that the DCU is being rebooted in a few months - and that the final part of "War" is also the final issue of the current run of Green Lantern, I fully expect Hal Jordan to either die or become a Guardian of the Universe at the end of this storyline, thereby bringing Johns' run to a surreally over-the-top close that even he isn't in full control over... I'll be there to pick it up, even if I'm not entirely sure why.

Hibbs Swirls from 5/25

I already promised Jeff and Graeme I'd be reviewing today, so the reaction to THE BIG NEWS is going to have to wait a little bit, let me charge into this as fast as I can (below the jump) (Seriously, WTF is up with me picking exactly the wrong week of the entire year to go on a "Vacation" with the boy? Universe, give me more rope!)

(Oh, and, yeah, I won't even READ a comic next week until Monday, so I'm going to pre-doubt that I'll hit next week's target)

GREEN ARROW #12: OK, so "Rise and Fall" ostensibly existed in the first place to give Green Arrow a "shocking new direction" (or some other words like that, I am sure), right? I'm sure we all remember how a judge told Oliver Queen he'd never be allowed to set foot in Star City ever again, right?

So, sure, the last page has Ollie marching back into Star like nothing ever happened. *sigh*

This title is probably everything I absolutely fear about this DC reboot all wrapped up in one pretty bow -- a new direction that doesn't have anything to do with the protagonist wahtsoever; history/important beats completely ignored; plans changed at the last possible second (Seriously, WHY go through the entire BRIGHTEST DAY exercise to bring Swamp Thing back to the DCU if you're just going to reboot the ENTIRE UNIVERSE a few weeks later?)

I thought I was going to say "Awful" when I started writing this, but the news broke between, and, ugh, all I can think is CRAAAAAAAP!

KIRBY GENESIS #0: Twelve story pages. Arguably only one has anything to do with human characters, and most of the rest are just non-story beats of character designs. The art is pretty as heck (though I had to check twice to make sure it wasn't actually Brent Anderson layouts... is it just me?), but even for that thin American buck this doesn't seem to me to be a good introduction to this new title (or is it a line of books? I can't tell from this). I'll give it a big fat EH

X-MEN LEGACY #249: I intellectually know that that cover is supposed to imply Magneto being all angry and Rogue comforting him over the horrors of the concentration camps, but it's too overwrought and over-rendered for that to work. Frankly, I get a sexual vibe from it, which is pretty wrong (especially since the issue ENDS that way) -- I don't know, I think the new fucked-up characters are all kind of interesting, and that this new direction could be alright.... but it doesn't feel like "X-Men" to me, in some undefinable fashion. OK

THE TATTERED MAN:  I'm too meta for my own good. The text piece at the back starts with Jimmy Palmioti talking about how they're always getting approached to pitch to movie and TV people. "The Problem we keep running into is," Jimmy says, "that they really don't want anything too original."

Thus this comic is absolutely perfect for these phantom producers, because it appears to be a rejected pitch for a Ragman comic.

A gory one with tons of swearing.

It didn't suck, or anything (in fact, the Savage Critic says: solidly "OK"), but man, it's hardly even disguised, how blatant the rip is. Yikes.

XOMBI #3: Still loving this... but it's going to start over at #1 again in 2 months? Really?

Ugh, I think I'm done.

What did YOU think?

-B

Inventory/Fanfare: Jeff's Capsules Reviews, Barely

Dang, man.  You try to show a little love for the website by doing capsule reviews and then next thing you know you're stuck in a Hibbs-styled Death Race 2000 "who will blink first?! Who will die last?!" event.  [Okay, Hibbs didn't say that, but I'm pretty sure that Kirby did in one his next issue blurbs...] Anyway, after the jump: What Jeff Writes About When He Hasn't Been to the Shop That Week.

BEST OF DICK TRACY TPB:  IDW just published this sucker, as far as I can tell, because it was easy as hell to do so--although I can't confirm it, I'd swear this book had been released earlier (but my current Internet/browser configuration punishes the shit out of me every time I try to research it).  Certainly, the "stories picked and introduced by Jay Maeder/project edited by Dean Mullaney" credits make me suspect some sort of re-packaging situation.

The only reason I mention that is because this book works great as a sampler for the IDW's complete Dick Tracy hardcover series, since it carefully introduces each of its story excerpts by villain and year of publication--how hard would it have been to include a pic of the cover for  the corresponding IDW collection?

Anyway, this compilation of work from Gould's long history on Dick Tracy is far from ideal--it's very much a greatest hits collection and the comparatively slim length (128 pages!) to the daunting period surveyed (forty years of daily strips!)--but it is the most convenient way to get a measure of the man's body of work without plunking down too much coin.  For example, flipping through the ones at CE, I'd assumed 1938 was still too early for me to get to the dark, brutal stuff I'd gotten hooked on in my youth but, in fact, there's a very nasty little sequence from that period where Gould shows Tracy shooting a slaver sea captain right between the eyes...in close up.  That and a sequence where Tracy is nearly killed in an improvised death trap featuring a diver's pressurization chamber made me realize I should probably pick up IDW's '38 volume as soon as I could afford it.

Also, if you're a fan of Art Spiegelman or Marti or the collage artist Jess, you might already have an appreciation for the strangeness of Gould's work, and  skimming through the latter half of this book just to see what catches your eye is a great aid to that end.  Gould's inking just got bolder and more assertive as things went on, and by the '50s, the panels are all but socking you in the eye with its linework. By then, it feels like every character has turned grotesque, and every object requires an arrowed caption to label it, a paranoid's world where nothing can be dismissed.  It's no wonder Gould took Tracy into space in the '60s to have adventures with moon people.  By then, he probably longed to look around at everyday objects again without seeing their capacity to inflict violence.

I'm conflicted about this collection because it could've been so much more, but, like I said, as a fast survey of a remarkable career, it's VERY GOOD stuff.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #165-168:  After a longish bout reading GHOST RIDER, THE HOBO OF HELL on my iPad, I'm back to making my way through the period of ASM between #121 and #200 (a.k.a. "my" era).  I'm not nearly as much of a fan of Wein on the book as I am of Gerry Conway--although his plotting was flawed as all hell, Conway had a definite emotional arc for Pete after Gwen died that kept the book grounded and tied the supervillain stuff as closely to the supporting cast as possible.  By contrast, only when the gang throws Peter a surprise housewarming party in issue in issue #163 do we get any kind of real attention paid to the guy's social life.  As D.B. Webb puts it in the letters pages of #167:  "When was the last time we saw four whole pages of Peter Parker? I'm not sure, but it was far too long ago.  These four pages were worth the thirty cents alone."

(Fuck.  Thirty cents.  Also, because issue #167 has the circulation statement filed September 30, 1976, I can tell you that the average number of copies sold during previous 12 issues of ASM was 278,909 with the single issue nearest to the filing date selling 323,762 copies.  No wonder why some of us think all we have to do is drop digital comics to under a buck and suddenly we'll be up to our necks in comic book readers again.)

(I'm not sure whether I'm one of those people or not, BTW.)

Anyhoo, ASM #165-166 has a very fun storyline with Spidey caught up in a battle between The Lizard and Stegron The Dinosaur Man which has the latter reanimating dinosaur skeletons from the Museum of Natural History and having them rampage through the streets. Issues #167 and #168 has Spidey battling both a Spider-Slayer remote-controlled by J. Jonah Jameson and "Marvel's most shocking new superstar" the Will-O'-The-Wisp.  The character apparently died at the end of #168 and was so dull I'm surprised anyone brought him back.  (But of course they did, though.)

But even those #167 and #168 are kinda awesome, because Ross Andru is working his ass off to give us New York in all its comic book glory.  Not only does issue #168 start off with a battle in the 30 Rock skating rink (where it is rendered as properly dinky) but finishes with a seven page fight scene on Times Square. Even though it's just  a throwaway panel, Spidey using the statue of Father Duffy to pull himself out  of an attacking crowd underscores for me just how seriously Andru took the work.

(Oh, and if you're into making connections between the stuff I choose to review--probably not a very good idea, I admit--maybe you can help me figure out if the final scene of ASM #168, where Stegron is able to avoid Spidey during a snowstorm but then succumbs to the cold and crashes through a frozen lake without the nearby hero even noticing, was influenced by the amazing end to the Shaky storyline of Dick Tracy, where Shaky hides from Tracy under the boardwalk during an ice storm, but then gets trapped and slowly and painfully dies with everyone searching for him just a few feet away.)

[Hey, I think I figured out where my lifelong fear of snow came from!]

They're not my very favorite issues of ASM--not by a long shot--but I'd like to think it's just some really god-damned stellar craft and not spellbound nostalgia that makes me think of these as GOOD stuff.

IRON MAN IN "CITY CRISIS":  Oh, also in ASM #167 and #168 is an ad for Hostess Twinkies wherein "Kwirkegard, a philosophically sinister villain, aims his existential depression ray at New York City's water supply."  Thanks to kids being unaffected ("because they haven't forgotten how to play!" according to a scientist pointing at a chalkboard drawing of a hot water bottle), Iron Man is able to overcome the effects of the ray.  In the last panel, Iron Man tells a bunch of kids in Central Park, "It's up to you kids to save New York.  Your laughter is the city's only hope.  Be happy, and here are Hostess Twinkie Cakes to help you!"

Um...

You guys are lucky I'm not Jean Baudrillard because I would Jean Baudrillard the shit out of that ad.  But suffice it to say: did millionaire industrialists urging on commercialism and gentrification help New York shake off its aura of filth and decay? Did it do so by rendering rational thought and history a cartoonish villain?  Obviously, the answer can only be FUCK YES.

Hibbs' some of 5/18

It looks like Graeme and Jeff and I are now playing Chicken again.  Which of us will blink first?  

(duh, me!)

ALPHA FLIGHT #0.1: Ugh, seriously? We're now attaching fractional numbers to numbers before #1? Given that a rational person might think "Ah, this will be about who Alpha Flight is, and what they've been doing since the last time we saw them", but no, it isn't.

Let's see if I can make my own version of a "0.1", then?

Alpha Flight is a reallyreally weird team. They had those great cameos in those Byrne/Claremont X-Men, and everyone thought they wanted more, but then it turns out that no one really has any good ideas for STORIES with them, just the sketched out concepts sound good.  Even John Byrne himself didn't have the slightest idea what to do with them when he launched a solo series.

That series astonishingly lasted for 130 issues despite it really never having much of a direction or voice, which is why they keep trying to bring it back -- the problem is that very few people who read any of those 130 issues are reading comics today.

Marvel's latest solution to the Alpha problem is somehow rebooting the team, mostly -- we're pretty much back to the "original" cast, with even Mac Hudson back from the dead... and Heather is there by his side, too. I have a vague recollection of this happening during... "Chaos War", was it? but I'm utterly fuzzy on the details, but there's no, zero, none, zilch explanation in this comic of how (OR WHY!?!?!?) they resurrected a 20-something year dead character.  I could see THAT being a compelling story -- you've been DEAD for 20 years, not just frozen in ice or "presumed missing" or something, but actually deceased, how is that dealt with by the government, or your team mates, or society.

But there's nothing like that here, and, actually, these characters are all portrayed as complete and total ciphers -- you're expected to KNOW who they are and WHAT their backstories are supposed to be... even those those appear to be mostly the backstories of older incarnations of the characters. The only one with half a personality is Northstar, and his half is "he's a jerk, but a loving gay!", which... well fine, whatever.

Anyway, I think that who this comic is aimed at is "fans of John Byrne's Alpha Flight, but not fans of anything he DID with those characters" which is actually really probably fair enough when you think about it, but is not a well coveted demographic, really, but I guess it could work somehow?

So, yeah, no personalities, just page after page of each member running off to become Alpha Flight (and, no, "... and this one is actually a meter maid; no one likes meter maids!" isn't actually a personality!), then they fight the some silly enemies in the most illogical manner ever. First up half the team fights some generic "anti-government FANATIC in an adamantium exoskeleton" who isn't espousing any kind of understandable political position that I can ascertain, and he's beating them until... until... untillllllll.... man, I don't know what happens at that point -- Marrina says "come with me, LAND MOLLUSK", then Shaman has swirly things around him, but "Citadel" doesn't seem to be confined or in any trouble, in fact he's just spouting off more, and then they vaguely cut away from that team and the enemy with no explanation of what happens next.

Next,  it's Purple Girl, who was once a member of Beta Flight, and she's the daughter of the Purple Man with the mind controls and everything.

PG here, mindcontrols the crowd to form a giant person out of people, and, erm, Alan Moore stories notwithstanding (if you're going to steal, steal from the best!), that wouldn't actually, y'know, make any forms of propulsion or combat or anything because mind control doesn't *actually* change the physical laws of our universe or anything. But, whatev, lets go with it.

Finally, Snowbird comes along and Purple Girl can't actually control her mind because Snowie shapeshifts a bunch and "Gahh - transforming too fast -- too many minds -- can't-- " and kapow that's it -- but that's not how I understand PG's powers to work, but ah, whatevs!

The giant made out of people... well, we don't know what happens there, they didn't show it, but presumably it falls apart, and several people fall many stories to their deaths, but whatevs!

Alpha then poses for a picture, despite most of them not actually doing a thing here. Anne-Marie has her legs spread. No one mentions the other fight they had, or what happened to Citadel.

Then, suddenly there's an inset panel at the bottom of the group shot where Marrina (I think?) inexplicitly starts shouting that she's an alien, and "BITE ME, EARTH MEDIA!" Wait... what?

We cut away from that from-nowhere outburst to re-establish that Northstar is a good gay and he kisses his boyfriend, but uh oh, he forgot to vote. I think what they mean to imply by the final shot is that Gary Cody is the new... well, I'm guessing Prime Minister of Canada, but it's not actually made clear anywhere in the text what he's running for, so it could be Ottawa Dog-Catcher for all I know, but it actually looks like he's just finishing the speech he's started at the beginning of the comic, and not actually won an election, so I don't really know for sure.

Wow, lousy lousy comic. CRAP.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #504: That may be the most violent comic book I've read since that issue of Miracleman where KM destroys London while he waits for MM to return. Gross. Also very effective in actually conveying that horror, which is rarer than rare in a crossover issue, but, still mostly gross. OK

ROCKETEER ADVENTURES #1: Look, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to try and do "more" of Dave Steven's fun little character... but IF you're going to do it, then doing it with John Cassaday, Mike Allred and Michael Kaluta is probably the way to go. Not one of those stories was of an particular weight or consequence, yet I very much enjoyed looking at them all. Pretty pretty stuff. Fluff, too, but sometimes pretty wins. GOOD.

IN the "I don't have anywhere else to put it" department, I want to publicly boggle at the Giant game of Telephone that the internet is.

Whenever a new tilting comes out, I always spend a few days googling "hibbs tilting" and "latest results" looking for blogs and message boards I don't normally read, but even I am kind of shocked by Comic Book Resources.

A member over there took the latest tilting and decided the point of wisdom to glean from it was to decide what books should be cancelled right now. He posted threads in both the Marvel and DC sections of CBR's forums that were "WHAT SHOULD BE CUT RIGHT NOW!" and linked to the column.

People then start posting, without, I believe, reading the underlying column.

4 or 5 pages into the DC one a user from Sweden says

"I dont care at all for some american comic shop owner and that he want to sell more of the big superheroes. I enjoy many of the smaller dc comics and if they were cancelled i would vote with my wallet,punish dc by buying less Batman type."

the next reply:

"I still don't see how canceling a bunch of books is going to help anyone other than this guy who doesn't seem like he can even run his own store."

the Swede again:

"Exactly but he isnt a reader who wants a good story no matter how small or big a comic is. He just cares about selling, he doesnt need smaller,acclaimed series for that."

Which is almost exactly the direct opposite of everything I think and believe, stand for, and present in my store... wrapped up in one comment thread. Yay Internet!

As always, what do YOU think?

-B

(Almost) All DC, All The Time: Graeme On Some 5/18 Books

Wow, Jeff's really laid down the gauntlet with a second week of capsule reviews. Let's see what I can come up with, even with the short amount of time I have... BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM #1: I talked about this some over at Techland last week, but I admit to liking this far more than I'd expected to. It's not that I didn't have any faith in Scott Snyder - I'm a fan of both his Detective and American Vampire runs - but there was just something kind of... unnecessary about the whole idea of this series from the start, as if it was being rushed out for some reason (A co-writer? Why couldn't it just be a Detective arc? etc.). But I ended up thinking it was somewhere in the region of a low Good or high Okay, nonetheless, in large part due to my being entirely sucked in by the mystery at the heart of the story... Trevor McCarthy's weird, animation-cell-esque art helped, in a strange way, as well; I'm not sure if I like how the book looks, but it's definitely got its own look, and not trying to copy the many other Bat-books out there, and that's got to count for something, right...?

BOOSTER GOLD #44: I've been on a Booster bent lately, picking up the trades to Dan Jurgens' run on the new title from the library and finding them to be... workmanlike, but nothing inspiring. Unsurprisingly, then, this issue is exactly like that, and feels like nothing as much as "An Idiot's Guide To Flashpoint." Wonder what the hell is going on in #1, and didn't quite understand the exposition there? Here's a simpler version of the same thing, with functional but generic art to make it go down easier. The attempt to raise the stakes for a series that deals in alternate timelines (The Flashpoint world is, according to Skeets, somehow the "only" timeline) doesn't really make any sense, but... Well, that's not entirely unsurprising. How else are we supposed to know that Flashpoint will change everything forever no really honestly we're not joking this time? Eh, but I can't help but feel as if it's weirdly necessary for some reason.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #57: Talking of books I've recently read from the library, I picked up Cry For Justice as well, and... I'll leave that for the next Wait, What Jeff and I record. But it has to be said, James Robinson's JLA feels a million miles away from that series and, ridiculously cliffhanger aside, this issue continued what's quietly turned into one of my favorite runs on the series. I couldn't really tell you why, beyond saying that there's something weirdly nostalgic and comfortable about the mix of ambition, rushed character dynamics and familiar faces that Robinson's turned this book into; it feels like an updated version of Gerry Conway's 1970s/1980s run on the book in ways that I can't quite explain or even understand. It also feels, for the first time in a long time, like a book that's aggressively part of the DCU in a way that doesn't feel shoehorned in or inorganic, even with the weird continuity issues with other books (This storyline apparently happens midway through the last Justice Society story? You'd think the JSA might've noticed the moon being split in two, but apparently not. Also, what happened to the Spectre's beard? Or is he not Crispus Allen anymore, and I missed that?). It's one of those comics that you end up loving, but can't really work out why. In case you've never had any of those comics for yourself, let's just call this a potentially-biased Very Good and move on quickly.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #158: I'm pretty sure that anyone who ever wants to know how to provide readers of a long-running series a wonderful jumping-off point will, in years to come, just look at these last issues of Brian Michael Bendis' run and find everything laid out for them. Never mind the entirely forced, entirely meaningless "crossover" with Mark Millar's Ultimates - in part because Bendis clearly didn't put any effort into it - what's wrong with "The Death of Spider-Man" is that it all feels heartless and written on auto-pilot, with characters reduced to machines acting out the too-obvious plot, and all of the sense of fun or family that this series has excelled in completely drained. That Mark Bagley has returned to replace the more stylish, more modern, more appropriate David LaFuente and Sara Pichelli speaks to the lack of soul here. It's Crap stuff, and so bad it kills whatever curiosity I may have had for the upcoming relaunch.

But, as the Hibbs has been known to say, what do you think?

Littlest Voice: Jeff With A Few Capsule Reviews for You.

Cue the "Hello, I Must Be Going" music: I thought it'd be a lark to do two of these in two weeks, but I admit I'm a little hampered by my lack of reading in stuff that's current (my visit to the store last week was super-quick) or complete (I feel like I've been reading that Simonson Thor Omnibus forever and I'm only two hundred pages in) and there are a few other (SavCrit) related projects I've got to work on. But, you know, considering my current writing project is all shot to hell--why not?

(And with those awe-inspiring words in mind, follow me after the jump for some thoughts on a few scattershot books, will you?)

BATMAN AND ROBIN #23: Thanks to Guillem March's cover, I've finally realized how much the Red Hood's chest logo looks like Blinky from Pac-Man.  Doesn't that seem like that could've been a fun novelty gang for, I dunno, Robin to fight at one point? And yet, weirdly, I would've been disappointed if, at the end of this issue, Jason had been sprung by three other dudes with other Pacian chest logos--in fact, I wasn't thrilled by the appearance of three Thundercats and Sgt. Dinosaur, either. I guess that's because I (still!) find Jason Todd/The Red Hood an appealing character (or idea for a character), despite how terribly he's almost inevitably handled, and think the dude deserves a little more gravitas than a toyetic shout-out.

In fact, as far as gravitas goes, this issue has very little but I still enjoyed what felt to me like any number of subtextual and metatextual shenanigans, starting with the cover.  I mean, I don't think Judd Winick is openly declaring war on the post-Morrison status quo, no matter how blatant that cover--which is very clearly Batman & Robin #1 being shanghaied by the Red Hood--might make it seem.  But certainly, that first scene, in which Bruce visits Jason and refuses to compare notes about resurrection or even to answer a question as basic as "But tell me...how are you?" doesn't work half as well with what we know of as the post-Return Bruce.  And Jason's dismissal of Bruce's death ("Darkseid fries you with his omega effect?  Please.  Too much metaphysical horse crap.") can be very easily read as a dismissal of a huge chunk of what Morrison's done in his run.

It feels like a cold war--one in which the Red Hood is fought over the way the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. did over those crucial satellite countries--but I'm not sure it's being fought on any conscious level.  I think it's just that Winick is tweaking Morrison's conception of Jason just as heavily as Morrison's tweaked Winick's and, in the process, inadvertantly points out how entrenched "gritted-teeth Batman" is for some writers and artists--and how the ancillary characters they write about interact with him.

For myself, I like the Jason Todd of this issue much more here than the one from those hideously drawn issues of B&R:  his casual, floppy-haired manner in the first scene seems deliberately modeled on Bishonen/Shojo manga to me, and I've thought for a few years that's really one of the best directions you could take the Batverse. In fact, Jason seems to me to be the pinnacle of that internal drama aspect to the Batverse--where nearly a dozen characters rotate around Batman, each with a different desire to prove themselves to him, and each with a slightly different relationship to him--that Morrison has played down in favor of a Bat-army where the relationships are far less personal but the scope is refreshingly larger.  (It's the difference between family and business, I guess.)

Morrison used Jason as a prop, as a way to examine where a grim and gritty conception of Batman led (deformed sidekicks, absurd villains who are unstoppable, uninteresting killing machines), but based on this issue, I don't think that very valid point is going to stop Winick or anyone else from writing Batman as the hardasssed father figure whose overwhelming responsibilities drive him to withhold affection from all his many sidekicks and satellite characters.  It's that conception of the character, as much as any desire to conjure the ghost of Frank Miller's Dark Knight, that is going to keep this little cold war going--because it's true to the ancillary characters as established, it's a quick way to provide drama to all the non-punching exposition, and it feels like something recognizably human (to me, at least).

All that said?  The scenes with Jason in prison are rote and dull, the breakout stuff equally so except where it's muddled (so Jason's whole plan was to get into prison, kill a bunch of dudes and then just go back to Arkham?  That's...limp.)  This issue is no more than GOOD, if that. It' s just I like this conception of the Red Hood--the wayward son acting out to get his dad's attention and to take revenge on his dad's disapproval--and I guess I read comics for the characters as much as I do for the crazy, big ideas.  And so the parts I like, I liked a lot.

FEAR ITSELF: SPIDER-MAN #1:  That scene with the Iranian cab driver getting beat up by a fear-crazed crowd of New Yorkers really reinforced for me how essentially cowardly I found the robo-Nazis at the end of Fear Itself #2.  In fact, although I found Chris Yost's listing of various fears running through various characters in the storyline maybe a bit too ripped from the headline and on-the-nose, at least I felt like I was reading what had been sold to me as the event's pitch. But, man, if Fear Itself #2's ending is that everyone--as they are here--are flipping out so much the heroes can't respond to respond to Cap's call? I did not get that from the ending of that book at all...which is not great.

KISS & TELL & EMITOWN TPBs:  Agh.  It must be so annoying to be a female creator and find yourself  habitually thrown into the critical gladiatorial pool, again and again, with other female creators.  (Unless you're married to a male creator, in which you can count of having your work compared to and weighed against his, again and again and again...)  And yet, I picked up these two books within a month or so of each other and realize now they've got enough in common that their differences and similarities can highlight stuff I wanna say.

Which is:  Emitown is a 400 page cartoon diary by Emi Lennox and is $24.99; Kiss and Tell is a 330 page romantic memoir by MariNaomi for $15.99.  Emitown is gorgeously drawn, consistently clever, alternately gossipy and elliptical.  Kiss and Tell's art style is little more than functional (to my eye, it looks a lot like Marjane Satrapi but without Satrapi's limited abilities), a little pedestrian, and sticks to its concept (a memoir centered around every romance from earliest childhood to earliest adulthood) in the most superficial way possible.

And so it says a lot about the essential hook of "and then what happened" that I much preferred Kiss and Tell.  Emitown has just about everything going for it, but with each page representing a day and having no real flow to the next, it rapidly turned into an exercise in bored page-flipping for me.  I loved what I was looking at but I had mistakenly thought when I bought the book sight unseen I would get a narrative--even if that narrative was no more than the rise and fall of the diarist's obsessions.  Lennox has a lot of talent--really, just boatloads of talent and charm to burn--but Emitown was not the book for me. That's very much my fault:  I know enough to take praise from well-connected types with a grain of salt, and it's not like I couldn't have gone online and read the archives to get a taste for it first.

By contrast, Kiss & Tell does indeed give you a string of narrative and MariNaomi is committed to the book's essential propulsive gimmick--who's she going to hook up with next, and why is it going to fall apart?-- all the way to the end. In some ways (okay, a lot of ways), it feels like David Heatley's "My Sexual History" stretched out from 15 pages to 300 and downshifted from an NC-17 rating to a soft R...which means the impact and the candor of that work is diluted, hopefully in exchange for more insight or context.  But Kiss & Tell is exasperatingly contextless, and even when lovers get more time on the page, there's no added depth to them: the model who speaks six languages and ends up in prison isn't any less of a cipher in 14 pages than the punk rocker who gets one.

In fact, although I give MariNaomi credit for breezily skimming through topics other authors would happily make hay with--three months of homelessness gets distilled to one page with a decent punchline--only the cartoonist's first acid trip, with its combination of telling detail and narrative shape, is truly memorable. And yet still I gotta admit it:  I did pick this book up and read it all the way through in one go.  It sounds like the most damning praise ever, but it is more of an accomplishment than we tend to realize.  And it was pretty cheap, too.

Although I give both Kiss & Tell and Emitown the quasi-dreaded EH rating, I suspect it's Kiss & Tell that will end up checked out of libraries and or bought and read by bored teens and adults browsing the shelves. On the other hand, I suspect Emi Lennox could easily give more to the medium in the long run.  Or, if you don't care as much about narrative as I do, but are happy to peruse a thick pile well-put-together pictures and pages, Emitown is for you.

ORC STAIN #6:  Had a surprising amount of trouble jumping back into this storyline.  Perhaps that would be different if I'd just sat down and re-read the first five issues before doing so (something I just don't do anymore, nor was I ever one of those dudes who would re-read every book in a series before the new book came out, the way some did) but I feel like it's more than that--I wanted more of that patented Stokoe over-saturation of detail but the first dozen pages of this felt a little slight--admittedly by Stokoe standards, if nobody else's.  Fortunately, I made it to the end, where a crucial flashback for One-Eye (and a related gorgeous two page spread on the very final pages) gave me everything I wanted and then some.  And along the way, I realized how well-thought out the cartoonist's world view is and how sharply the story turns are sculpted.  (When one character throws everything away in the name of his blood oath, it's that much more chilling when another character takes up his at the end.)  Everything in Stokoe's Orc Stain is too much--much too much--but that gives any of the subtle bits unexpectedly satisfying heft.  I came for the David Cronenberg's Flintstones by way of Ralph Bakshi's Conan, but I think I'm now staying for the story and I don't think there's anyone more pleasantly surprised by that than me.  Highly GOOD stuff.

POWER MAN & IRON FIST #4:  It's weird how quickly "densely plotted" can become "exasperatingly overstuffed," isn't it?  Almost everything I liked in the first three issues--a surplus of new characters, new situations, and constant action--led to me making unhappy faces as I quickly turned the pages here.  Probably that's because there's not nearly enough interaction between the new Power Man and Iron Fist and what there is feels really forced. Van Lente has put more on his plate than he can probably handle (certainly more than Wellinton Alves can handle) and the feeling is exacerbated by the murder mystery hook supposedly driving the story.  As mysteries go, it's definitely more "The Two Jakes" than it is "Chinatown." By the time I reached the last two pages, the stakes had never been higher...or my interest lower.  God-damned shame too because I was enjoying the book until now.  EH, but I'm really hoping the final issue of the mini makes up for it.

XOMBI #2:  Pretty god-damned great, right?  I hope you guys are still buying this because it really does scratch my "Man, remember how good Vertigo books could be in the early to mid-'90s?" itch in a way that hasn't been scratched since...well, the early to mid-'90s, I guess.  VERY GOOD stuff and well worth you searching out.  Seriously.

Yes, Why Not? Jeff Does Some Capsule Work As Well....

I admit it--I'd kinda thought I would post a round of capsule reviews for the anniversary, then I thought, eh, maybe I should hold off for my actual anniversary of appearing on the site?  (which is something crazy like May, 2002--which doesn't sound right to me at all...)  And I was/am a little burnt, what with podcast editing and this other SC-related thing I worked on today. However, since Graeme was kind enough to post...let's see what I can come up with after the jump, shall we?

UNCANNY X-FORCE #9: Ugh, that stunk up the joint, didn't it?  I actually didn't mind Tan's first issue--the inker did some kind of crazy magic to make it feel not unlike the amazing four or five issues or so--but this was genuinely terrible.  To be fair, though, I've seen elephant vaginas tighter than the scripting in this story so I don't know if any artist could've made this work.  (David Aja? Jim Steranko? Bernie Krigstein?)  It could've been a kinda okay eight pager, but for whatever reason, Remender thought he'd blow it out to twenty-two fucking pages.  Good will can be earned and good will can be spent--it says something to how much I enjoyed the first half-dozen issues of this title that I can consider this issue a big old pile of CRAP and yet still be kinda looking forward to next issue.  Please don't break my heart, gentlemen.

FF #2 and #3:  Speaking of squandering good will, did you catch those two pages in FF#2 where Valeria mentions Doom needing a back-up of his brain and then waiting for Doom to catch on?  That same panel, ten times, spread across two pages, with only minor changes to Doom's and Reed's heads on two panels. Easily the most convincing case made yet for bumping comics back to 20 pages.  (By the way, what is it with Marvel writers and their obsessions with brain back-ups?  (I'm thinking of here, Fraction's Iron Man, and I'm sure there's another bit I'm forgetting.)  I'm secretly convinced there's some kind of weird anxiety about identity going on with the writers in that place if they keep coming back to personality as something you can plug and play at will. (Oh, and the future is a big scary place--all of it seems predicated on the idea that there are big scary things coming down the pike and the only thing that will save us is being able to whip out a USB stick with a better version of ourselves on it.  Is this what it means to be a freelancer with a mortgage during the peak oil/global warming era?)

As for FF #3, it finally answered some questions and I thought did so in a relatively clever way.  Should that cancel out the fact I found it pretty obvious and everything still seems predicated on an exasperating passivity on the part of the FF? I'm gonna give #2 an AWFUL and #3 an OK.  The Internet would probablygrade these a little higher, I admit.

AXE COP BAD GUY EARTH #3:  You know that old screenwriting dictum, "show, don't tell?"  I'm wondering to what extent superhero comics used to function as a weird, unholy mix of showing and telling--the narrator in superhero books from the '50s, '60s, and '70s was pretty much omnipresent and it allowed the story to zip from scene to scene, from event to event, with the writer telling you stuff and the artist showing you stuff. It led to some inelegant storytelling (as, say, in the panels here where Bear Cop buys a cup of zombie blood, drinks it, and becomes Zombie Bear Cop, then eats the President and becomes President Zombie Bear Cop) but, on the other hand, it allowed for some motherfucking economy.

As a result, this issue has Shabaccus, a monster that can fly and shoot lava out of his feet and has machine gun ears, an evil fat lady who bounces around and smashes dogs with her huge bottom "and fire farts on them," the bad guy axe cop team, the death of axe cop's team, yo-you man, a squish machine, a battle in the Age of Swords with two psychic brothers armed (unfairly) with machine gun jetpacks, Rat Cop, Axe Cop Lava Bull, and the President of All Presidents.  THIS IS ALL IN ONE ISSUE. (AND I LEFT STUFF OUT!)  Fear Itself and Flashpoint are currently running a distant third to me  behind Axe Cop Bad Guy Earth.  And while that sounds kinda dumb, I feel like "Hey, remember when everyone was all excited about the return of Big, Dumb Ideas? They don't come much bigger or dumber than this."  I enjoyed this miniseries from start to finish and really gotta rank it in the upper end of the VERY GOOD spectrum.

BATMAN INC. #5 and #6:  And this is where things gets tricky--because if I rate Batman Inc. by the same standards I rank Axe Cop Bad Guy Earth, then it should also be in the VERY GOOD spectrum, right?  I mean, you've got a guy in a wheelchair and a Mexican wrestler's mask being punched, a member of "Her Majesty's Super Secret Service," a chick named in a modified helmet, swimsuit and laser scorpion tail called Scorpiana, Dr. Dedalus, Leviathan...and that's all just issue #5.

But, I dunno.  You ever have a friend fuck with the balance on your stereo while a song is playing?  You know, bounce the sound from one set of speakers to the next and back in time to the music?  I almost feel like Morrison is doing something like that with Batman, Inc. where he pushes what the artist shows, and then entirely drops the sound out of what he as writer tells, and then will crank the shit out of the tell side of things while barely giving you enough show to hang your hat on.  There are probably lots of good reasons why he's doing it--to keep us off-balance, to break up the rhythm of his own storytelling patterns--but it just kind of leaves me headachy and cross and waiting for David Uzumeri to tell me why I should give a shit.  Is it that my expectations are higher for a Batman comic than for Axe Cop?  (And if so, why?)  Or just that I'm an old, old man incapable of zipping up my pants without catching the hairs of my gray, waist-long old man beard? I wish I could say.  But either way, I feel squirrelly giving these issues anything more than just an OK.

Graeme Tries To Remember How This Capsule Thing Works For Some 5/11 Books

Call me a sentimental old fool if you must, but it feels to me like the best way to do a post on the 10th birthday of the Savage Critics is to go old school, and try and remember how those capsule reviews of yore worked... (Click through for nostalgia! But scroll down to read Hibbs' post, if you haven't already!) BATMAN INCORPORATED #6: This has been a really curiously uneven series - Not helped by equally uneven scheduling - but this issue really feels like it's trying almost too hard to say "No! Wait! There is a bigger picture behind everything! It's not just camp and New Batman Of The Month shenanigans!" I really liked some of it - Red Robin and the Outsiders, in particular, is something that I hope sticks - but other parts really just felt awkward and desperate (Who Is Wingman? feels out of nowhere and, at this point, uninteresting). Okay, I guess, but I'm going to need some more issues like #4 to convince me that this book is worth keeping up with longterm, I think.

THE FLASH #12: On the other hand, ending the latest Flash series with this issue really feels like an admission that the whole thing was a failure. There are a lot of reasons why this run of Flash hasn't come together (Again, terrible scheduling, the fact that neither Scott Kolins or Francis Manipaul really worked on the book, as good as their art could be at times - although Kolins art here is clearly rushed and nowhere near his best, the black hole of character that is Barry Allen), but what really struck me after I finished this issue was that nothing actually really happened in the entire series. Every story was a prelude to something else, whether it was "The Road to Flashpoint" or the Rogues from the future in the first arc, who were here to warn about future events that may or may not be about to happen, or even the Reverse Flash origin that was, also, a Flashpoint tease, it seems. There was, to overuse the metaphor, no forward motion to be found in the entire series... and who really wants to read a year of books about a character running in place? This issue was Awful, and the entire series, at best, has been Eh.

FLASHPOINT #1: So this was... Okay, I guess? I don't know. I liked it more than I expected to, but the more I think about it, the more I wish it were just a Flash arc and not a "This Event Will Forever Change The Comics World Forever No Seriously" thing. I'm curious about how Barry will find his way home - I am completely expecting the ending to be that Barry has to recreate "our" DCU somehow, and whatever changes occur are a result of him essentially having a bad memory - but I find almost no interest whatsoever in anything else about the alternate reality. Still, at least it's only four months long.

G.I. JOE #1: As listeners to Wait, What? already know, I have somehow become a GI Joe fanboy in my old age - I know, I'm as surprised as you are - but I'll admit, issues like this one might make me change my mind again. There's nothing particularly wrong with this relaunch, it's just that it pretty much covers much the same ground as we've just read in the #0, and as a result feels ridiculously light. Let's go with Eh, then, and hope that next issue is something more than being told that everyone in Cobra is trying to kill as many Joes as possible again.

SUPERMAN #711: I'll admit it, I'm not entirely sure where "Grounded" is going right now - It feels as if Chris Roberson is taking as much advantage of the "done in one/guest-stars every issue" format as humanly possible, but the overall arc of the story seems to have fallen into the background as a result. I'm not that bothered about that, it has to be said (Did anyone really expect any other outcome than "Superman feels good about himself and has his faith in humanity restored"?), but it lends a weird shape to the issue, as we get a Good Superman story and a couple of pages of the "Grounded" villain being in a strop, seemingly out of nowhere. Also out of nowhere: Iron Munro is back! Somewhere, Roy Thomas is a very happy man.

...And now I wish that I'd bought more books last week, if only to complain about them here. Maybe I should start doing this weekly again, after all. But anyway: Happy Birthday, Savage Critic, and congratulations to the Daddy Duo that's responsible, Mr. Brian Hibbs and Mr. Jeff Lester. As ever, this site - my posts, or lack thereof, aside - continues to be Excellent.

(Inset witty title here)

Why is it that that the weeks with lots and lots of things to discuss are weeks where I have some other deadline driven project (order form, ONOMATOPOEIA, whatever), but the week's I have time to write there's not a lot I actually want to say?  

Still, I've been horrible the last few weeks, and while I did a lot of writing for the next Savage Symposium, I don't think you'll see that for another week or three? So let's me dive into what I have to say here...

PUNISHERMAX #13: This book seriously lost its momentum when it went on that hiatus (seriously, we lost like 1/3 of our sales here at Comix Experience), but I have to say that this current "Frank in jail" story is pretty terrific. Ultimately I care little about Frank in jail, because I've seen it so many times, but I thought the rapid intercutting between in-jail, and returned-from-vietnam was pretty astonishing well done. VERY GOOD.

One editorial note, however: Story page 11, panel 2, speech balloon. the word you want there is "grisly", not "grizzly". How that slipped past AT LEAST three sets of creative eyes (writer, letterer, editor) I couldn't possibly tell you. "Editors" don't really edit, do they?

FLASH #12:  If you want to know what happened in FLASHPOINT #1, you sort of need to read this... though by the same token you really sort of don't NEED to, because it kind of doesn't matter, and it's all kind of chatty nonsense anyway. (Though I sorta liked what happened with "Hot Pursuit")

This is also the final issue of this version of FLASH -- the solicited #13 is apparently NOT coming out, and I gotta say, looking back over this "volume", man this series has been a creative failure. I know Graeme liked the art, but I still really don't even know why Barry was back, etc. FLASH: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE (the Bart allen series just before this) was as strong creatively.. and everyone hated that book.

Also, F:FMA #13 (the last issue of that series) sold in 76,860 copies back in 6/07. FLASH #9 (the most recent one that we have numbers posted for) sold... 55,980 copies. Hrm.

FLASHPOINT #1: Now having said that.... I really really liked this. It might be like the thing about the THOR film -- my expectations were so low, that it couldn't help but exceed them... but I don't think it's quite that either.  In fact, after I read the FCBD bit, I opined to Matt, "Wow, that didn't whet my taste, and, it actually made me not want to see what happens next", so when I picked this up and found out the FCBD stuff was just the FIRST SIX PAGES OF #1 I got extremely leery.

Thankfully, the rest of the issue picked right up, maybe as soon as the next page when we find out the Flash isn't even in this comic book series, which makes that cover pretty weird, really.

Anyway, I was pretty happily amused with all of the world-building here -- probably not amused enough to actually want to read any of the individual mini-series, but that whole rooftop sequence was extremely crisp and strong. The last page twist was also amusing, but not as jaw dropping or game changing as some people have said. It was also deeply undercut by the three pages of badly placed ads.

I have a lot more to say... but well I think this is part of the next Savage Symposium, so I'll keep it to myself right now. What I will say, however, is that given the end of the book, most of that initial narration doesn't actually make any sense whatsoever, it being stuff the narrator *can't* know.

I might be premature here, but I did like this, and I think I'm going to give it a VERY GOOD. I sure hope they can pull of the ending though -- if it turns into another BRIGHTEST DAY fiasco, I'll be extremely sad.

Right, so who wants to place early bets on who/what will Nate Gray this?

NEW MUTANTS #25: Speaking of Nate, NM gets a "new direction" which made me laugh -- "cleaning up old X-Men business". Man, there's a premis that could last you another 20 years or more! Abnett & Lanning take over the scripting, and it works as well as you'd expect it to, though the art bored me to tears. I also really liked the Ilyana scenes, and hope that she has a chance to stay in this new remit. Solidly OK.

X-MEN LEGACY #246: The other bit of the post "Age of X" storyline, and this one seems a little more ragged to me -- while NM gets a clear new path, these sort of seems like more of the same to me, except people's memories are jumbled. It isn't just that the AOA stuff adds something  new to the characters (though you certainly can argue that), but the problem is that it does so in such a way that you need a thousand word preface to explain it before you can actually begin to deal with it. Many impacted characters will have it "mindwiped" away according to this issue, but those that don't... I really don't see anyone other than Carey making any hay from this? Especially with a major character like Cyclops? I don't think I can do better than EH here.

BATMAN INC #6:  I just loved this issue. Have I said that I hope Chris Burnham stays on this book for a good long while? I don't know, that cover just made me giddy with joy, and the notion that Bruce indulges in internet sock-puppetry made me howl with glee. But the best parts are how many times Bruce smiles. VERY GOOD.

And that's it for me this week -- what looks good to YOU?

-B

Geeks on Film

I'll get back to print in the next day or so, but I wanted to dive into a few things-on-film for a moment.  

(I quite imagine there will be SPOILERS here, so be careful, kiddo!)

THOR: Saw an advance screening on Saturday morning (10 am, what an odd time for a preview screening!), and yeah, pretty decent film. My reaction could possibly be the result of low expectations -- I mean, seriously, did anyone ever think there could possibly be a Thor movie based on the comic, prior to 3-5 years ago? Let alone a good one?

It largely kept my attention, and it has some astonishing design on display -- I particularly liked their interpretation of the Rainbow bridge -- but while it won't win an Oscar or anything, it will keep you chewing through your popcorn just fine. I'll call it an easy GOOD.

It has problems, to be sure. For the first thing, I couldn't figure out Loki or his motivations AT ALL. Loki *should* be the master trickster and manipulator, but as on display here he was far more capricious than clever, actually telling his family about his betrayals, rather than playing it off. Plus the denouement was a PHYSICAL FIGHT between Loki and Thor which is... well, that's just stupid, isn't it?

I also think that most of the earth-based stuff really didn't work -- part of that stemming from the SHIELD-centric nature of the earth stuff, part of that from giving Jane Foster a comedy-intended sidekick -- but mostly going off the Odin arc.

Odin, as we all know, sends Thor to earth to learn humility. In the comic, Odin does so by binding Thor to a mortal man, where here he just depowers Thor entirely. The thing of it is, when Thor eventually regains his powers, I can't see HOW he learned humility? There's a thing that happens that I think is meant to be "ultimate humility", but it really isn't. Let's try this for a strained metaphor: it's like I take you to a batting cage, but put you in handcuffs. Yes, sure, you will then learn "I need to use my arms in order to hit a ball", but you still aren't even a single step closer to learn HOW to hit a ball.

Then there's the whole Big Kiss at the end, and, again, I was thinking "where the hell did THAT come from?" -- it's not like there's ANY reason for Thor to be majorly into Jane like that was presented on the screen. And, anyway, he should have a thing for Lady Sif, shouldn't he?

I mean, I guess if felt to me like the movie was still getting rewritten up to the very moment they shot it, or something. Or maybe a bunch of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor, or something? If you know the story that already exists, in terms of Loki's motivations, Odin's or Jane's actions, whatever, then you see that they "got to where they should be", but what's ACTUALLY UP ON THE SCREEN doesn't really support any of that happening.

I also thought it a smidge unusual that there was much taken from THE ULTIMATES, rather than Stan & Jack proper -- particularly  that interrogation sequence, and the implication that Thor is just nuts (except that the audience, in this case, KNOWS he's who he says he is, so it kinda doesn't work), and the look of "Hawkeye" (who I don't think is actually called that in the film -- just "Barton")

But despite all of that, I still liked it fine -- and seven year old Ben who I was with proclaimed it EXCELLENT! which is maybe all that matters?

Last note: because of the preview nature, and wanting to sit in our 4-person group, rather than scattering in the theater, we ended up in the first row, which is normally just fine, but in this case, made the 3-D nearly unwatchable. It was 100% fine in any dialogue scene, but once things switched to heavy action, with shaky zooming cameras and all of that usual modern film trickery, it was nearly impossible to tell at all what was going on. I imagine it was better if you were in the "sweet spot" of the middle of the theater, but, based on my experience, I absolutely suggest trying to find a non-3-D showing.

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: Not any particular episode, really, but this whole new season has been pretty batshit insane, so far. Absolutely embracing the Morrison-thought that every Batman story is true, we've had utter insanity like adaptations of the Bat-Manga, Bat-Boy and Rubin, and Scooby Doo team-ups; we've had a joker-POV episode (including changing the opening titles to be "The Joker: The Vile and the Villainous") where, among other things, he entirely explodes Kamandi's future; we've had mummy-Batman, and Aqua-Batman, and a really really fucked up episode where Batman becomes a Vampire and kills all of the JLA; hell we've even had an episode with (cowboy) Vigilante breaking out a git-tar and singing about the legend of the blue and the gray.

This show is OFF THE CHARTS CRAZY, and in an utterly great way. I'm horrifically disturbed it hasn't been picked up for more, because this is everything you want in a Batman cartoon (that isn't TAS) -- this is KITCHEN SINK BATMAN. I truly hope they put out a complete series boxed set at some point, because this is just way too good of a show to not preserve. I love this show, and will give it an overall EXCELLENT rating.

A GAME OF THRONES: I love love love love love the books (even if I'm afeared JJM is going to croak before he finishes all seven), which I would liken to the same kind of thril you get from WALKING DEAD -- that is, NO CHARACTER, even the leads, ARE NOT SAFE, and the most crazy fucked up shit happens to these people. I was pretty nervous about the show, but, so far (I've seen the first two), I'm thinking its doing a really good of adaptation of the books.  Adaptations are always hard, and usually butchered, but they got the gist pretty close here.

If you've seen the show, but not read the books, then I really urge you to pick up the books; and if you've done neither, then, yeah, pick up the books. EXCELLENT stuff there.

I'll give the show a VERY GOOD, mostly because I don't care for how they framed a few shots (the finding of the direwolves was pretty weak), and I'm largely unsure if the actress playing Daenerys has half of the chops needed to make it work -- her thread in the novels is my favorite, and so far my lest favorite in the TV show. Peter Dinklage is AWESOME as Tyrion, though.

ACTION #900: I'm putting this in the "television" column mostly because of the crazy coverage the news media put on this. When I read the comic (before the story of Superman's citizenship broke) I thought "Man, is that a poorly phrased way of putting that" because OF COURSE Superman isn't a US Citizen -- he's a citizen of the world, and always has been.

SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, anyone? Here: from wikiquotes:

***** Superman: Madam Chairman, I don't represent any one particular country, but I'd like to address the delegates. U.N. Chairwoman: Well, in that case, you will need a sponsor. [ALL delegates raise their hands] I believe that will do. Please.

*****

Superman is not an American, per se, and hasn't been for at least 24 years (and I'm certain I've read 60s era comics espousing the same principle, so probably more like 40+ years)

Either way, "Superman" couldn't possibly be a citizen of anything -- it's an assumed name!

Anyway, what did YOU think?

-B

Abhay: Traditional Capsule Reviews

I was out all week, so spent tonight in, recharging.  I usually try to avoid the capsule reviews-- I don't think I'm very good at those.  But I thought I'd try again tonight.  My apologies before we begin-- I can't really promise much here.  Just some randomly selected books I've read in this past month, I think... The Lil' Depressed Boy #3 by S. Steven Struble & Sina Grace: I have no idea what this is, but it's published by Image Comics apparently. Impulse buy. It's about some hipster whose body looks like it's made out of dirty socks, and his cutesy relationship with some random girl with a nose-ring. There are "jokes." Then, the random girl invites him to a party, where him and some other random hipster bond over the fact they hate the other hipsters at the party for being hipsters-- it's not clear if either the characters or the artists creating the book realize the fact that those characters are at the party themselves makes them hipsters, too. Or the fact that one of them is named Jetson...? Oh, whoops-- spoiler warning. Anyways, then the band The Like shows up. Which is an actual band-- I went to one of their shows at the Viper Room, like, six or seven years ago. Afterwards, River Phoenix and I overdosed on heroin in the bathroom. That's just the sort of lifestyle I live--you probably guessed that.  So, anyways-- that happened. I guess...?  Mostly, this fucking comic book just made me feel old.

The Blue Estate: The Rachel Situation #1 by Victor Kalvachev, Kosta Yanev, Andrew Osborne, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, and Robert Valley: Oh, this was a very nice looking comic, as you'd expect with the art team they lined up-- Victor Kalvachev, Nathan Fox, Toby Cypress and Robert Valley. I like all of those guys-- well, Kalvachev was a new name for me, but the latter three are all welcome names; Valley, especially, I wish would do more work as his MASSIVE SWERVE comics are such eye-candy.  Again, published by Image.  The story-- it's "Tarantino-esque." Back in the 90's, and a little bit even in the 00's, there was this genre of bad movie, the Tarantino-esque movies, hyper-active psuedo-crime things that were nothing like actual Quentin Tarantino movies but were all labeled "Tarantino-esque" in reviews or overly optimistic marketing material. TWO DAYS IN THE VALLEY, LOVE AND A 45, BLOOD GUTS BULLETS & OCTANE, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN, VERY BAD THINGS, SMOKING ACES, 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG, SUICIDE KINGS... pretty much all of them were useless, though I was probably a little more fond of THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD and WAY OF THE GUN than I should admit to, today.

This has that same thing of ... a large number of "outrageous" characters colliding in lieu of a story being told. But I don't think that's a formula that's been done to death in comics, so I'm fine with the idea of sticking around for more. It's pretty, and I'm shallow. And I don't know-- bigger than life crime weirdos... That's a genre of comic I guess I'm generally in for. I think I'd rather read Grotesque Crime than another "Oh, I'm sad about having sex with all of these women something something whiskey something something murder" Jim Thompson impersonation. Which isn't to say that I'm going to avoid the next CRIMINAL but...

ACTION COMICS #900 by Paul Cornell, Pete Woods, Jesus Merino, Paul Dini, Richard Donner, Gary Frank, David Goyer, Geoff Johns, Damon Lindelof, Ryan Sook, Brian Stelfreeze, and More!: I guess people are all worked up about the "controversy" of this issue. There's a story where Superman renounces his U.S. citizenship, which has random people mad on account of politics or whatever. Mostly, I'm just confused on a nuts-and-bolts level: in what capacity was Superman a citizen of the United States, to begin with? Was Superman paying taxes? He wasn't paying taxes pre-Crisis, but I don't know about the status of those loopholes post-Birthright.  Or if he's a citizen-- did Superman have a driver's license? Why would he bother-- hello, Superman can fly? Or even if Superman got pulled over, and he didn't have a driver's license-- it's not like a cop's going to give Superman a ticket anyways. What kind of horrible human being would give Superman a ticket? Forget about the ingratitude that would take-- politically, that's just career suicide.  Or if Superman was a citizen before, was he voting twice? Was he voting one time as Superman, and a second time as Clark Kent? That's voter fraud. Was Superman committing voter fraud?

So, I'm just confused by the whole thing. But if nothing else, seeing people talk about Superman is just fun for me because... It's like... Marvel can kill the Human Torch, right? Marvel can kill the Human Torch, and have Doctor Doom stuff his dead body full of dog poo, so that his funeral is ruined by the stench of canine feces-- which is what I assume is what happened in the Jonathan Hickman FF; I'm pretty close, right? Based on the other Jonathan Hickman comics I've read, I'm going to go ahead and assume the death of the Human Torch in some way or another was reminiscent of dog shit. (Oh, that's a joke. Or... that's 55% joke. That's more joke than not-joke...).  But anyways, they can do all that, and publicize it in the NY Post or whatever-- but all Superman has to do is mutter about politics for, like, fucking TWO panels in the back of a 96 page comic, and people care a billion times more. So: I think that's kind of neat, how much more people care about that character than ... than well, sanity or perspective, as it turns out, but...

How about the rest of that comic, though? I liked that Brian Stelfreeze pin-up; it's a shame Ryan Sook's work is being overshadowed; I like Pete Woods, generally-- it's a shame he's moving on.  I thought the lead story was a cute end to the long-running Lex Luthor plot-- I don't have a theory as to why, but the best Lex Luthor stories tend to  build to a "How ridiculously far can we take it to show how much Lex Luthor hates Superman?" ending.  (Well, one of my favorite Luthor stories ends with Superman helping Lex Luthor to celebrate Einstein's birthday, but...).  That's sort of the classic ending for that character, which is weird to me because... I like Luthor for being the "Scary Dad" to Superman's "Good Dad." I like him best when he's just a scary, bald psychopathic genius that terrorizes Metropolis because he hates people and wants to conquer them all. I'm not as interested in the "villain as shadow version of the hero" idea that I think modern comic writers are maybe overly-obsessed with. But that ending for Luthor does just tend to work, so there's something to it, something I must be wrong about...

Green Wake #1 by Kurtis Wiebe, Riley Rossmo, Kelly Tindall, and Jade Dodge: Another book published by Image.  I read some review that was flipping out about this so I picked this up, though I forget now who did the review. This might be something, though. It's sort of in a Dylan Dog vein, about an investigator in a supernatural city of secrets, dealing with a rash of strange murders. The art is by Riley Rossmo, who's improved pretty significantly since Cowboy Viking Ninja, where I thought his work was underwhelming. I liked that he's cast everything in these sickly green hues, everything pustulent and wet, everything dying and diseased. I'm not sure what I make of the story yet-- it's all still a little vague by the end of the first issue. But I thought as a total package, it conveyed a mood successfully, at least. People flipped out hard for NONPLAYER but I got more of a buzz off this, though maybe just by virtue of getting to discover it for myself rather than have to cope with that much hype. I mean, it's early though. Still, I hope this GREEN WAKE thing turns into something...

Hulk #31 by Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman, Elizabeth Breitweiser, Ed Dukeshire, and Pals: Oh, I had liked the couple issues I'd seen of Jeff Parker & Gabriel Hardman together on AGENTS OF ATLAS, so I thought I'd check out what one of their HULKs felt like. Apparently, there's a Red-colored Hulk, who I guess is General Ross...? He's a Red Hulk now. And he's fighting army guys in the desert now instead of the Green Hulk. Which, you know, seemed like a reasonable premise for the Hulk. It fit the basic parameters of what I'd expect from a Hulk comic, you know? Except at the end, a lady version of the Watcher turns up. Which is gross because then the reader is inherently invited to think about what it'd look like when Watchers fuck one another. Giant, hydrocephalic baldies grunting over one another-- that's just gross. I never wanted to imagine Ed Asner fucking Sinead O'Connor, but here we are. Thanks, Incredible Hulk!

Anyways, blah blah blah, they kept Elizabeth Breitweiser on the team, which I think was key. I think she's probably the key part of what I dig about that team actually, more than Parker or Hardman. Those guys are fine, and what have you, but I actually think Breitweiser's taking them from a 6 to an 8. There's just a layer of textural information that I suspect she's bringing to the pages-- smoke and dust and debris-- that I think that I'm responding to more than all that words/drawings bullshit.

Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker #2  by Joe Casey, Mike Huddleston, Rus Wooton, & Sonia Harris:  The first issue of this Image comic got by me, so I picked up the second one. This was just gibberish, though, impenetrable. I'm going to go ahead and assume it'd have been legible if I'd read the first issue, but-- oh well...?   It was kind of neat to look at, at least. At one point, it seemed like it was about to turn into Smokey & the Bandit, and I got excited about that, I suppose.  Sure: there was a big rig in some of it-- I like the big rigs.  I think people overlook how much this country depends on its trucking infrastructure and takes it for granted-- especially right now with these gas prices. I mean, it'd be nice if they eased up on the crystal meth, and maybe murdered a few less hookers, but... pobody's nerfect. So, yeah:  after the comic was done, it ended with 6 pages of Joe Casey writing about how he feels about Art, which made me laugh at least after 20-something pages of ... whatever was going on here (?). I thought the discordance of that was entertaining, at least.

Next Men #3, 4 and 5  by John Byrne, Randa Pattison, Neil Uyetake and Chris Ryall: I always assumed that me having liked NEXT MEN back when, that just said something about where I was at mentally, at the age that I read it. Because the other John Byrne comics I've read, I've not really connected with, to put it in a polite way. But five issues in to the revival, from IDW.... I'm not really sure what's going on, but I'm kind of right back in it. I don't know what it is exactly about NEXT MEN that I respond to, where his other comics have left me so cold. There's just something fucking trashy about it, especially, especially in its earnestly serious moments. These issues have featured the Next Men taking on slavery, Elizabethan sexual hypocrisy, and the Holocaust, which... I know we're supposed to never forget the Holocaust but can't we make an exception where Next Men comics are concerned?  And the great thing about it is it's all presented seriously...?  I don't really know if it's naive camp or deliberate camp, but I think or at least hope that it's the latter. To the extent it even matters.

Uncanny X-Force #7 by Rick Remender, Esad Ribic, John Lucas, Matthew Wilson, VCs Cory Petit, Jared K. Fletcher, Jody Leheup, & Pals: I got this because I noticed Esad Ribic drew it. That's just one of those automatic buy things for me. The story is that the X-Force team are wandering around in some surreal space, fighting some guys, until Deadpool's homosexual panic leads him to decapitate a senior citizen, at which point the comic ends. I guess meat-headed bros might find that kind of thing funny...?  Remender's usually pretty strong on long term plotting, so maybe this is a good comic in all of the issues before and after this one that I'm not going to read. That's entirely possible.

The Girl & The Gorilla by Madeleine Flores: This is a graphic novel published by Blank Slate Books-- they seem to be a pretty interesting outfit in the UK: handsome editions of good-looking comics by some names that are new to me, at least...? This particular book-- well, I am not the intended audience for this book. It's about a young girl who chases a gorilla into the land of Creativity, where she learns a valuable lesson about the importance of writing stories, and the imagination, and ignoring criticism, and Oh god. I am miserable old man, with nothing to warm my cold black heart but half-memories of concerts I went to 12 years ago. So, this was a little on the precious side for me, even setting aside that I don't think I agree with whatever it is this book was trying to say about rejection letters. To be perfectly honest, there was more than one part where I found myself rooting for the villain to stamp out the "creativity of young people." Is that normal? Maybe that's not normal. On the other hand, I really did quite like how Flores laid out her pages. She eschews panel borders, which gives the whole thing a more improvisational feeling that I think suits the subject matter.  Some of the purely visual sequences were enjoyable.  There's probably an audience for this book, but a MUCH, much younger one-- or hell, maybe just a nicer one. After I read this, I found myself thinking alot about GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE, remembering how much I'd liked it at 20-something, wondering what it'd be like if I read that for the first time now.

I also found myself eating cookies. They were pretty delicious.