Ahead of the Invisible Curve: Reviews of 6/29 Books...

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Ahh, holiday weekends. They are truly lovely things, even if you're a guy stuck in an office on a Saturday. Now that I've finished the few crackpot jobs lying around, I've got time to grouse about this week's books for those of you who'll next check out this site on Tuesday...or Wednesday...or sometime, maybe. Despite all the fake-outs Hibbs and I have been pulling lately with the "I'm not doing reviews/ no wait, I am after all," he assured me that he's not doing reviews this week. He's off doing a family thing and is staying in some hotel down in, uhh, Santa Barbara, I guess? As always, Hibbs talked about it with all the gusto of a convicted prisoner describing his upcoming trip to the gallows, but the important thing is I can pass along his observations about the books (when I remember 'em) and not feel like I'm stepping on his toes. And it's not a review, so much as an observation, but didn't Land of the Dead kinda seem like what you'd get if George Romero and Gene Roddenberry had collaborated on a TV show pilot? Very odd...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #521: Nothing worse than an issue where the main characters have to act like genuine idiots in order to get any story going at all. (I'm too lazy to look up the exact entry, but google Kung-Fu Monkey for the term "carrying the idiot ball.") I'm kinda aghast at how far downhill JMS has gone on this title. Awful.

AUTHORITY LOBO SPRING BREAK MASSACRE: Although Giffen writes them in a straightforward fashion, I was delighted by how Bisley makes The Authority look like a pack of deranged supercreeps. I don't like Lobo and the story did more or less nothing for me, but the art alone (not even close to Bisley's best, mind you, although his rabbit dictator was amazing) makes this a pretty high OK.

BATGIRL #65: Hibbs liked the dark humor of the ending but thought this was nothing special otherwise; I thought it was both unrealistic and unnuanced. Although I haven't bothered to keep up with the Batgirl title for a long time, I kinda felt like the story was unfair to the character: apart from Batman, there was no conversation that didn't begin with a fight, end with a fight, or take place during a fight--and those were with her friends and family. Maybe that last match would've meant a little more if it'd been different from the rest of the issue. Eh.

BATMAN #641: Okay, finally with the reveal promised a bunch of issues ago. And I thought this worked well--the art is pretty and Judd's given the Hood an enjoyable mix of wit and bitterness that gave the issue much more emotional resonance than I thought it might. But it also had a very abrupt ending, and the ground covered in the discussion between Bats and RH sounded more like the talking points of one of Judd's interviews than I would have liked. There's a lot of potential in the storyline, but I worry that bad habits on the part of either the writer or editorial could wreck this pretty easily. Good.

BATMAN ALLIES SECRET FILES 2005: Hibbs was pretty funny about this: "Allies? Batman doesn't have any allies anymore! Shouldn't they call this the Batman Non-Enemies Secret Files?" I really liked the half-page Joker anecdote in Will Pfeifer and Ron Randall's story but thought the rest of it lived up to the sloppiness of the title. Super-low Eh.

FANTASTIC FOUR #528: You just gotta wonder about Reed Richards. He's the smartest guy on Earth, has supposedly been working on Ben Grimm's cure forever and still seems utterly out of it when it comes to the accident that created the FF--this is no particular slam against JMS, it's pretty much always been the case, but boy does it seem creakier every time it's trotted out. And Reed's analysis of why each of the four got the powers that they did made me nostalgic for a topless Adrienne Barbeau, since the idea seems cribbed from Wes Craven's Swamp Thing movie more or less outright. But the "Ben Grimm, Millionaire" plot has some potential, I guess. Let's go with Eh.

FLASH #222 and #223: I liked it, particularly since Johns loads two sub-plots into the Boomerang subplot. [Note: I'd missed the previous issue of Flash and so read both at the store. As Peter Adriaenssens pointed out in the comments, almost all of this review is about Flash #222. Oy!] I almost wish he'd tried for more: "Don't tell him who his mother is! And keep him away from his broth--Aghhhh! Oh, and I'm not his real father! It's actually Barry Alll--urghhh! But for God's sake, tell him to be careful with the anti-life equation tattooed on his testi--clahhhhh!" Good, because I did like it but seriously, between this and Teen Titans (and Wonder Woman...), I'm wondering if DC is preparing us for Infinite Paternity Crisis... [And since that was all about Flash #222, I wonder how good Flash #223 actually was. I remember it ended with The Reverse-Flash and the cosmic treadmill; I also remember Reverse-Flash kept insisting he wasn't a villain, which must make things a little complex when he's, you know, meeting with his Secret Society of Super-Villains and everything... Anyway, let's call both issues Good and go back to pretending I know what I'm talking about, okay? Thanks!]

GREEN LANTERN #2: Kinda dull, and can DC ever bring back one version of Manhunter, without bringing back every version of Manhunter at the same time? It seems to do no one any favors. Eh.

GRIMOIRE #4: Missed last issue (again), but I'll definitely be picking up the trade on this one when they get it out. A very enjoyable read. Good.

OMAC PROJECT #3: I am deeply confused by those last two pages. Isn't Clark out in space looking for that satellite? Is Max Lord doing his brain-worky thingy? Or did he travel back in time and space to impregnate Lara on the Planet Krypton? (Crafty Max Lord! Crafty Infinite Paternity Crisis!) Hibbs actually had a better take on the whole deal, since he noticed that Jack Kirby is getting a creator credit for OMAC on the title page. On the one hand, he pointed out, this is the sort of stuff that Kirby would *not* have wanted his name associated with it since Kirby was all about the sweep and the uplift of the new, and this is very much the grim and gritty retconning and regurging of the old. But, on the other hand, Kirby would have wanted his name on it if it meant Roz was getting some money, and got money every time OMAC appeared. If anyone knows what the arrangement is, we'd be mighty interested.... Eh.

OUTSIDERS #25: And so Judd Winick kills the only relationship in the book that I cared about. Also, DC talks a pretty good talk about "quality control" and "tightly managed crossovers," but this leads directly into the first issue of a mini that came out a month ago, dramatically stunting its impact. I can sorta let Judd off the hook since I really get the feeling the guy really wants to be Chris Claremont circa 1982, and it's the sort of thing that might've maybe worked if the rest of the team weren't snarly asshats, but DC, on the other hand, has no excuse. Between the scheduling snafus and the lack of crossover notices on the cover, the DCU comes across less like a meticulously coordinated universe and more like a clumsy daisy chain of "goddamned plotless free-for-alls" (to paraphrase Kurt Busiek's timeless quote on the CE bathroom wall). Somewhere between Awful and Eh.

PENNY & AGGIE #1: Not exactly brilliant stuff, but it's an attempt to bring a different kind of a book to the market (it's sorta/kinda like Betty & Veronica in a daily webcomic version of Clueless) and, although it straddles the line between incompetent and inept somewhat precariously, it never entirely flies off into the void of crapitude. Very much Eh, but with the hopes the creators get some chops, develop a more comfortable format to develop their storylines in, and find the skills to suit their ambition. It'd be worth it.

PLANETARY #23: A damned keen issue although the "Worst. Rescue. Ever." line harshed my buzz a little bit. A very admirable job of both filling in us in on the Drummer (finally!) and underscoring how much of the drama of the finale may well rest on Snow's internal struggles. Very Good.

SEVEN SOLDIERS SHINING KNIGHT #3: Sadly reminded me of my experience with Sartrean existentialism: Either there's no real there there and the same stuff just keeps gettting said over and over and over, or I am totally missing fine gradations of nuance and it just seems like the same stuff keeps geting said over and over and over. Considering how badly Morrison telegraphed the identity of the white-haired chick, I'm thinking it's more the latter. Barring an unforeseen fourth issue Hail Mary, this is a very disappointing Awful.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD #1: This is why Hibbs and I should do reviews at the same time more often: He, having never seen the movie, thought this was funny and a good adaptation; I, who have seen the movie, thought it was a well-intentioned disaster as punchline after punchline gets stamped on or blown. Adapting a movie to a comic is a torturous affair, to be sure, and the one element that suffers the most--timing--is the thing that makes or breaks a comedy. It's trying hard to do the impossible, but I thought this was Awful (particularly since, at $3.99 a pop, you can buy the entire movie on DVD cheaper than you can read the adaptation). Hibbs, on the other hand, thought it was Good and is now interested in seeing the movie, so go figure.

SOLO #5: Oh my god, this was good. Shockingly good. I'm a fan of Darwyn Cooke's since before New Frontier and I was still shocked at how good this was. Every one of the stories work, the interludes work, the fun page works, the pin-up page, right out of the heyday of men's magazines, works, and it all works well by being clever and intelligent and gorgeous to look at. I've been really freakin' stingy with the Excellent ratings since SavCrit got restarted as a blog, so pretend it came from Brian: this is Excellent work and absolutely the best bang-for-your-buck of the week. Go get it.

SPAWN #147: I check this title out every once in a while to make sure I'm not missing anything. I'm not. Awful.

SPIDER MAN HUMAN TORCH #5: If nothing else, a pretty great argument for why Spider-Man would make more sense on the Fantastic Four than on the Avengers. Darn heavy on the sentimentality, but arguably well-earned by all the preceding issues of the miniseries (and, by extension, all the Spidey/Torch stories of yesteryear). A good Spider-Man story is my weak spot, so I can't blame you if you disbelieve the Very Good rating (in fact, I can imagine Hibbs saying, "Yeahhhh, it was all right, I guess. It wasn't that good, though.") but I quite liked it. (Take that, Imaginary Hibbs!)

SURROGATES #1: Competent and assured science fiction (although Hibbs thought it started to fall apart if you read the text pieces, which I didn't); kinda reminded me of prime Bradbury (without the treacle) (and that example probably doesn't really tell you more than how generally apathetic I am about science fiction literature). I quite liked it, faux Ashley Wood/Ben Templesmith style art and all. A high Good.

WONDER WOMAN #217: I'm no continuity nerd, but...it looks like the events at the end of this get Wonder Woman caught up for DC Countdown, right? So why does Wonder Girl still think her dad might be Ares in issues of Teen Titans that take place after Countdown when she finds out for sure here? Whatever. Eh.

X-MEN #172: Come back, Chuck Austen, all is forgiven! My new theory is that the editor on X-Men refuses to accept any script outlines that do not read like bad fanfic, and this issue is Exhibit A. Awful, but more like Ewwwwful.

X-MEN KITTY PRYDE SHADOW & FLAME #1: Paul Smith did the art for this and it breaks my heart: a great talent working on a less-than-great script. Beautiful but less than Eh. So sad.

YOUNG AVENGERS #5: The romantic stuff with Iron Lad and Giant Chick seemed to come out of left field, and some of the action scenes caused some head-scratching but I am really enjoying this comic anyway. There've been missteps with every issue and yet each issue has enough Good stuff to it, I don't care.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Solo #5 by the remarkable Darwyn Cooke. No question.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Shining Knight #3 because of the whole dashed expectations thing, or maybe Spawn #147 because it just keeps sucking and sucking and sucking...

TRADE PICK OF THE WEEK: Haven't really started anything, but I was pretty damn excited to have taken home The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa, and am looking forward to reading it over the holiday weekend.

I still haven't written anything on The Push Man and would still like to, and may let you know when I post the latest Fanboy because I was pretty amused when I wrote it, but that'll probably be around the middle of the week. Happy Fourth to those of you celebrating it!

Shipping 6/29, and a Mea Culpa (or Hima Culpa, I guess)

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Of course, Jeff posts his reviews, despite telling me he wouldn't, JUST WHILE I'm writing mine, making me look the Asshat. I will get you, Jeff Lester, be assured of that, yes.

10TH MUSE VOL 2 #2 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #15 ALBION #1 (OF 6) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #521 ANGEL THE CURSE #1 (OF 5) ARANA HEART OF THE SPIDER #5 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #162 AUTHORITY LOBO SPRING BREAK MASSACRE BART SIMPSON COMICS #24 BATGIRL #65 BATMAN #641 BATMAN ALLIES SECRET FILES 2005 BETTY #148 BILLY THE KIDS OLD TIME ODDITIES #3 (OF 4) BLACKLIGHT #1 BRIAN PULIDOS MEDIEVAL LADY DEATH #4 BRIAN PULIDOS WAR ANGEL #3 (OF 3) BURING SANDWICHES CITY OF TOMORROW #3 (OF 6) ELKS RUN VOL 1 #2 ELSINORE #2 (OF 9) FANTASTIC FOUR #528 FLASH #223 FORGOTTEN REALMS DARK ELF HOMELAND CVR A #1 (OF 3) GENIE #1 GI JOE AMERICAS ELITE #1 GREEN LANTERN #2 GRIMOIRE #4 HELL MICHIGAN #1 HELLBLAZER #209 HUNGER #2 INTERNAL FURY #1 JLA CLASSIFIED #9 JUGHEAD #166 KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #104 LAST HERO STANDING #5 (OF 5) LEGEND OF ISIS #1 (OF 4) LOSERS #25 LULLABY WISDOM SEEKER #3 (OF 4) MACHINE TEEN #2 (OF 5) MARVEL MILESTONES DR DOOM SUB-MARINER & RED SKULL MR T #1 NEW X-MEN HELLIONS #2 (OF 4) OFFICIAL HANDBOOK MARVEL UNIVERSE FANTASTIC FOUR 2005 OMAC PROJECT #3 (OF 6) OUTSIDERS #25 PACT #3 (OF 4) PAKKINS LAND VOL 2 #2 PENNY & AGGIE #1 (OF 4) PLANETARY #23 RUNAWAYS #5 SEVEN SOLDIERS SHINING KNIGHT #3 (OF 4) SHAUN OF THE DEAD #1 (OF 4) SOLO #5 SPAWN #147 SPIDER MAN HUMAN TORCH #5 (OF5) SURROGATES #1 (OF 5) WITCHBLADE #86 WONDER WOMAN #217 X-MEN #172 X-MEN KITTY PRYDE SHADOW & FLAME #1 (OF 5) YOUNG AVENGERS #5 ZOMBIE TALES #1 ZORRO #2

Books / Mag / Stuff ART OF JOHN VAN FLEET HC AVIGON GODS & DEMONS GN BATMAN SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN TRINITY TP CAVALCADE OF BOYS VOL 2 TP COMPLETE INDIGO PRIME TP COMPLETE JON SABLE FREELANCE VOL 2 TP DAMPYR #3 SAND SPECTERS DEVIL DOES EXIST VOL 2 EZRA VOL 1 EGYPTIAN EXCHANGE TP HELL HOUSE VOL 4 TP ILLUSTRATION 05 MAGAZINE #1 JOHNNY CARONTE VOL 1 ZOMBIE DETECTIVE & REVOLVER GN LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK TP LOEG THE ABSOLUTE ED VOL 2 OVERSIZED HC LUCIFER VOL 8 THE WOLF BENEATH THE TREE TP LURKERS TP MODERN MASTERS VOL 5 JOSE LUIS GARCIA LOPEZ SC PERFECT DAY FOR LOVE LETTERS VOL 1 GN (OF 3) PREVIEWS VOL XV #7 RICA TTE KANJI GN SATIROPLASTIC HC SUPERMAN INFINITE CITY HC W.I.T.C.H. VOL 1 GN WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE HOUSE OF M CVR #166 X-FILES VOL 1 TP X-MEN PHOENIX ENDSONG HC YURI MONOGATARI GN

Reviews of 6/22 books

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OK, Jeff sent me an email that he doesn't have time for reviews this week... and oddly, I don't either (Both ONOMATOPOEIA and having to finish this month's Diamond order put a serious crimp on my weekend -- it REALLY sucks when the next PREVIEWS ships the same week the order is due!) Having said that, there's not much point in this site if at least ONE of us isn't doing our thing, so let me do what I can, and see if I can do some short reviews... maybe "old school" Savage Critic short, even.

ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE #1: A VERY GOOD issue, not that we'd expect less from KB and co. I don't like the trade dress though -- "Astro City" receded into the cover design, and sales were MUCH slower than I was expecting because of that. (I think, that's it, at least)

BATMAN JEKYLL AND HYDE #3: Average stuff. OK. The Batman movie hasn't moved the needle a jot on regular Batman comics, BTW -- though there's a lot of demand for the "classic" TPs (DARK KNIGHT, etc.) Too fucking bad that YEAR ONE and ARKHAM are OOP as SCs. Coulda sold a lot of those. Ah well.

BLACK PANTHER #5: We kept cutting away from the Panther to show his family members -- none of which has become a resonant character yet. Given the bad things that a reboot of BP does to the Marvel timeline, I find this an unfortunate turn of events. OK.

BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME #12: Oh, super fucking yawn. "I betrayed you! Ha! I didn't! Psyche!" Man, I've seen that way too many times. Not any better here, and a weak-ass resolution to this really unpalatable storyline. Doesn't this also kind of fuck the "life during wartime" subtitle? AWFUL.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #7: Except for the fact that this character development stuff is rendered pretty moot by the ending, I liked this just fine. GOOD.

CATWOMAN #44: I thought the end was pretty cheesy (Selina's smarter than all that), and "East End is mine" is growing really really thin, but other than that, an adequate start to the new creative team. I DO seriously think its time to start pruning all of these ancillary bat-books, especially when I can't get much more excited than EH.

DOC FRANKENSTEIN #3: Liked it quite a bit -- there's some fun world building going on here, too. GOOD.

DOOM PATROL #13: Man, when even the characters in the book are commenting about what a ripoff of a TV show your story is, don't that suggest that you're wandering down the wrong path? On the other hand, the last page proves that something clever could possibly come out of it. I'll go with an EH because of that last page.

DREAM POLICE #1: The problem is that this isn't exactly an idea for a STORY: The cops from DRAGNET, except instead of LA, it's "dreams". Here's the problem: the cops from DRAGNET can't, won't and don't WANT to change. A story has to affect SOME change upon a character to work. Interestingly, Jeff and I both flashed to Alan Moore's infinitely better, done-in-8-pages "Chrono Cops" from 2000 AD. I thought this was extraordinarily EH.

GIRLS #2: Better than issue #1, in fact, I think I would have liked #1 if that last page here was the last page there. I still think some of the characters and dialogue is too close to cliché, but it's warming on me. OK.

HELLBOY THE ISLAND #1: It's Hellboy, it's EXCELLENT, that's easy.

HOUSE OF M #2: Fuck me, the series is a quarter of the way done and NOT A THING HAS HAPPENED. I was really really REALLY hoping for more than a big ol WHAT IF...? story, because WHAT IF...? stories CAN'T matter. Even if this series DOES allow certain aspects of the Marvel universe to be "rebooted" "naturally" BECAUSE OF the WHAT IF...?, the main content itself is just a inconsequential thing. I wanted more. I'd also have liked better sales -- we're hovering around the 65% mark, which is fucking awful for a big summer event, so clearly my customers were smarter than I. Worst thing is, it's well drawn, it's well written, but nothing happens. How do you rate that? I'll go middle-of-the-road and EH.

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #7: Back on the building curve now -- I'm really liking this quite a bit. VERY GOOD.

NEIL GAIMANS NEVERWHERE #1: Comic adaptations are, by themselves, kinda Meh for me. Especially when I keep thinking "No, that's not what they look like". Still, I guess Neil would know better than me, and I'm sure he told Fabry. Trying to approach this as if I'd never read the novel, or watch the BBC adaptation, and I guess I'd give this a high OK.

NEW AVENGERS #6: As Big Bam Boom goes, I guess that was an OK wrap-up to the arc, sorta kinda. I was really struck by Cap's "No Killing" fever, then not, y'know, stretching out his shield arm to protect the Widow. OK, I guess.

QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 3 #1: Terrific stuff, inside The Troubles in Ireland. Comparisons to any number of Garth Ennis comics is inevitable, but I thought it really rose to the challenge, and gave me an EXCELLENT read.

ROBIN #139: Brucie's little speech there at the front.... well, wow. "Now you're thinking like an insane person who has chased all of his friends away!" Let's give this one to 12 year olds! EH.

SEA OF RED #3: I'm real curious as to where this can go, giving that every issue has been a 90 degree turn from the one ahead of it. Like it though: a very strong OK.

SHAOLIN COWBOY #3: Not as full-on crazy as last issue (though, how could it be?), and, hence, not as much fun. Still, a few good wacky ideas and images. A mild GOOD.

SPIDER-MAN HOUSE OF M #1: Even more so what I said about HoM up above -- at least there's a chance that "something" will happen before issue #8 (Probably: someone kills Wanda, and reality restarts itself in a big ball of white 'splody), but, here, what CAN happen? Oh, sure, I guess Peter can "remember his one moment where everything was perfect and wonderful, and be tortured by it forever", but "defining moments" like that kinda don't work if, in order to explain them, you have to explain the plot of half a dozen other comics as well... Worst part is, this was very well written and drawn -- an easy GOOD, except I Just Simply Don't Care At All. So: OK.

SUPREME POWER #17: "We see no reason to keep SP a MAX book" goes the interview... published right before the issue set in a strip club. Am I the only one who expected a little "Man Of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" moment there at the end? Or even a comment of any kind whatsoever? *shrug* Despite that, I'm still liking this tons: VERY GOOD.

TEEN TITANS #25: If you're going to have a cross-book crossover SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT ON THE FUCKING COVER YOU FEEBS. Damn, I still have half my OUTSIDERS order left over because the editors can't figure that out. No, sure, they'll tell us something else is a crossover when it's not... but when it is? *sigh* Storywise, I'm ready for this to be resolved quickly... not really enjoying this at all. EH.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #20: Heh, the Mad Thinker, that's cool that I didn't figure it out. Nice Jae Lee art, even with the deadline-past-due silhouettes everywhere. GOOD.

YEAR ONE BATMAN SCARECROW #2: Ultimately I think this might have ran a bit long, and was definitely overpriced... but it was nice to see Batman do some Detecting for once. a very low GOOD.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Lots of fine fine comics to choose from, I think I'll go with QUEEN AND COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED v3 #1 though, despite all of the potent competition.

PICK OF THE WEAK: BOOKS OF MAGICK #12 was probably the worst read of the week, but HOUSE OF M #2 let me down too much to be anything but the Weak pick.

As far as BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK goes, I think I will go with WHATS MICHAEL VOL 10 SLEEPLESS NIGHTS TP. Fun, charming stuff, immaculately drawn, and very funny.

That's it, that's what I thought, how's about you?

-B

A Glimpse of the 6/22 Books

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Between last week's reviews and the CE newsletter, I wrote close to 9,000 words--I'm pretty burnt out, to be honest. So there aren't going to be a lot of reviews from me this week, they're not going to going into a lot of depth, and they're going to be crankier than the books probably deserve. I felt it only fair to warn you. CAPTAIN AMERICA #7: A reasonably enjoyable game of cat and mouse being played with the reader's expectations here, but that runs the risk of losing readers altogether if that gets played out too long (I believe they call this "Howard Mackie Syndrome"). Good, I thought.

DOC FRANKENSTEIN #3: The part of my brain that read past page 7 or so got erased, I guess. Either I didn't finish it or it became so dull and pedantic I forgot about it already. It's issue #3; why isn't he kickboxing Jesus yet? Eh.

DREAM POLICE #1: Exactly like those really clever and amusing eight page stories Alan Moore used to do for 2000 A.D., except it's not clever, it's not amusing, it's not eight pages and JMS, whatever else he may be, is no Alan Moore. But other than that, it's identical. Awful.

HELLBOY THE ISLAND #1: What's not to love? I can't even begin to figure out how something so creepy can be so much fun to read. It's a rare achievement. Very Good.

HOUSE OF M #2: So it's a quarter over already and nothing's happened? Hey, great! The more protagonists Bendis has, the slower things seem to move. A little bit of in media res would have gone a long way here. A very low Eh.

IRON GHOST #2: Enjoyable enough, I guess, although I'm a long way from being personally involved in the storyline. I also keep second guessing Dixon's choices for the story, probably because the hook is so good. Eh.

NEW AVENGERS #6: I love how Cap goes to such great lengths to save Yelena from Wolverine and then, after she runs off--you know, on fire--he's all "Meh. Guess we should get home so I don't miss Fear Factor." This is--how you Americans say?--Awful.

NIGHTCRAWLER #7: That Darick Robertson draws like a sumbitch, and the story looks like it's going to get moving, but if there's one thing NuMarvel has driven out of me, it's appreciation for the full-issue fever/dream/fantasy sequence. Scraping the bottom of the Eh barrel.

SHAOLIN COWBOY #3: Not as insane as the previous two issues, but still enjoyably apeshit and that double-paged spread of brutally murdered bodies knocked me out--I just can't help but imagining Darrow whistling a jaunty tune while he draws stuff like that. Very Good.

SPIDER-MAN HOUSE OF M #1: More enjoyable than the first two issues of House of M, but there's still sort of an innate "who cares?" to the whole thing--not only is it unlikely that any of this will matter in the larger scope of things when it's all over (I'm assuming all of the "House of M" stuff is going to end with the shiny red rest button being hit) but I also feel like I've read this before. Well done but still Eh.

SUPREME POWER #17: Anything I would say about this would be just cribbing even more egregiously from Hibbs than I normally do. Hopefully, he'll chime in this week. Good.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #20: The all-silhouette art in the second half was a really impressive cheat--to get the issue out on time, I'm assuming--but I thought the story was ace. It worked perfectly well on its own, but once Rhona starts crabbing about the x factor, and the android shows up, and I realized this was the Mad Thinker--well, that was some extra-tasty frosting on top of an already Very Good cake. A really keen stellar pair of issues.

PICK OF THE WEEK: In fact, let's give it to Ultimate Fantastic Four #20. That just worked.

PICK OF THE WEAK: There was a lot of stuff that was pretty stinky that I didn't even bother to review, but the pricey half-assedness that was Dream Police #1 is a pretty easy lock for the title.

TRADE OF THE WEEK: Barely cracked 'em, but I've really enjoyed what I've read of the MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGESUB-MARINER VOL. 1 (although I didn't realize I'd be getting so much of The Angel for my money). I also picked up WALT & SKEEZIX VOL 1 HC, LITTLE LULU VOL 4, BATTLE ROYALE VOL 13 (or should have; I must not have marked it on the sub form), and am curious to check out MBQ GN at more length. I also read a review copy of THE PUSH MAN and will try to post some thoughts on that in the next couple of weeks.

Comics Shipping 6/22

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Jeff's right, as always -- my ass is kicked this week, and I can;t write reviews until I clear off this OLD plate of work... Thankfully I checked the site before posting the shipping list, I was going to lead with something like "See, neither were able to review this week"

Here, though: My PICK OF THE WEEK was POWERS #11, and my BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK is either SADNMAN MYSTERY THEATRE V3 or WARS END PROFILES FROM BOSNIA HC. Haven't read Scott Pilgrim yet, since I was dumb and ordered too few, and have to wait until this week.

Gonna be BURIED in comics this week, look at this INSANE list of shipping!

2000 AD #1441 2000 AD #1442 ARCHIE #558 ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE #1 (OF 16) (RES) BATMAN JEKYLL AND HYDE #3 (OF6) BLACK PANTHER #5 BONEYARD #18 BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME #12 (MR) BUGTOWN #6 (OF 6) (MR) CANTON KID #1 (OF 4) CAPTAIN AMERICA #7 CATWOMAN #44 CONAN #17 DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #5 (OF 6) DARK MISTS #1 (OF 4) (MR) DEAL WITH THE DEVIL #2 (OF 5)(NOTE PRICE) DOC FRANKENSTEIN #3 DOGWITCH #17 (MR) DOOM PATROL #13 DREAM POLICE #1 EASY WAY #3 (OF 4) (MR) FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #6 (OF 6) FANTASTIC FOUR THE MOVIE #1 FELIX THE CAT SILLY STORIES #1 FLAMING CARROT COMICS #3 (NOTE PRICE) GIRLS #2 (MR) GLOOM #1 (OF 6) GRAVE GRRRLS DESTROYERS OF THE DEAD #2 (MR) GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #5 (OF 6) HEAD #11 (A)3) HELLBOY THE ISLAND #1 (OF 2) HOUSE OF M #2 (OF 8) HUMAN RACE #4 (OF 7) IRON GHOST #2 (OF 6) JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER SPECIAL PAPA MIDNITE #5 (OF 5) ( JUDO GIRL #2 (OF 4) KARNEY #3 (OF 4) (MR) KILLER STUNTS INC #2 (OF 4) (NOTE PRICE) KOMIC FANTASIES VOL 3 #5 (A)3) LAST HERO STANDING #4 (OF 5) LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #7 LETHAL INSTINCT #2 (OF 6) (NOTE PRICE) LEXIAN CHRONICLES FULL CIRCLE #1 LITTLE SCROWLIE #10 LIVEWIRES #5 (OF 6) MAD MAGAZINE #455 MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN #2 (OF 4) MANGA DARKCHYLDE #2 (OF 5) METAL GEAR SOLID #10 MONSTER WAR TOMB RAIDER VS WOLF MEN #2 (OF 4) NEIL GAIMANS NEVERWHERE #1 (OF 9) (MR) NEW AVENGERS #6 NEW X-MEN #15 NIGHTCRAWLER #7 OTHERWORLD #4 (OF 12) (MR) PHANTOM #7 POISON ELVES VENTURES #1 CASSANDRA #1 (MR) POWERPUFF GIRLS #63 PURGE BLACK RED & DEADLY #1 (OF 4) (MR) QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 3 #1 (OF 3) (MR) ROBIN #139 ROGUE #12 SAVAGE DRAGON GOD WAR #3 (Of 3) SEA OF RED #3 (MR) SHAOLIN COWBOY #3 SHUCK THE SULFURSTAR #1 SPELLBINDERS #4 (OF 6) SPIDER-MAN HOUSE OF M #1 (OF 5) SUPREME POWER #17 (MR) TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #3 TEEN TITANS #25 TEEN TITANS GO #20 THE GIFT #12 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #20 ULTIMATE X-MEN #60 UNCLE SCROOGE #343 VAMPIRE PAGEANT ONE SHOT VAMPIRE PAGEANT ONE SHOT SP ED (NET) WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #658 WARGOD ONE SHOT WOLVERINE SOULTAKER #5 (OF 5) YEAR ONE BATMAN SCARECROW #2 (OF 2)

Books / Mags / Stuff ANGEL FIRE GN4) BATTLE ROYALE VOL 13 GN (OF 14) (MR) COMICS BUYERS GUIDE AUG 2005 #1607 FORTEAN TIMES JULY 05 #198 FRUITS BASKET VOL 10 GN (OF 14) G FAN #724 HARDY BOYS VOL 2 IDENTITY THEFT GN HI FRUCTOSE TOYSPLOITATION MAGAZINE QUARTERLY #1 INCAL VOL 2 THE EPIC JOURNEY TP (MR) JACKSON 500 VOL 1 HC LIBERTY MEADOWS VOL 3 SUMMER OF LOVE TP LITTLE BOOK OF HORROR WAR OF THE WORLDS HC LITTLE LULU VOL 4 SUNDAY AFTERNOON TP4) MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS WOLVERINE CLASSIC VOL 1 TP MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGESUB-MARINER VOL 1 NEW ED HC MBQ GN (MR) NAIL VOL 1 TP (MR) NANCY DREW VOL 2 WRIT IN STONE GN NEW X-MEN ACADEMY X VOL 2 HAUNTED TP PRINCESS AI VOL 2 LUMINATION GN (OF 3) SEIMADEN VOL 1 (C:3) SHOJO BEAT JULY 05 VOL 1 #13) STEVE RUDE THE MOTH VOL 1 TP4) TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSEVOL 3 TP (MR) TEREBELLA SMOOT AND THE UNSUNG MONSTERS HC TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #135 WALT & SKEEZIX VOL 1 HC WHATS MICHAEL VOL 10 SLEEPLESS NIGHTS TP

More Excuses than Reviews: Jeff and the 6/15 Books

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Right. Well, not only was it Father's Day yesterday, but Hibbs had the start of an impressive cold on Friday. I'm assuming he'll be down for the count this week, but I'm hoping I'll be as off with this prediction as I was with the last one. As for me, the CE newsletter is on my plate and I spent most of the weekend working on that, but since this week has a little bit of everything (at least in the trades), I thought I would dash off some very quick comments while I can.

Oh, and Batman Begins: pretty good, huh? I thought Hibbs' review was spot on, so I won't add anything.

Also, last week saw the release of Danger: Diabolik on DVD, kind of an amusing compare and contrast to Batman Begins. It's a pretty great package, cheaply priced but lovingly layered with extras (informative fun to be had watching Steve Bissette dissect Mario Bava's visuals). Like the only other Bava film I've seen (Planet of the Vampires), Danger: Diabolik alternated between delightful and deadly dull but I'm really glad I saw it--if you're the type to watch your films while, uh, medicated, I'm sure you'd find it delightful through and through.

And let's see what I can misremember about this week's comix:

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #641: Superman encounters OMAC yet again and continues to remain impressively clueless about the whole thing, while the sassy police captain kicks the shit out of Pete Ross--ooo, she beat up not just a helpless ex-president, but also my suspension of disbelief! Hopefully, we'll get to see her push Jimmy Carter down some stairs next ish! As long as OMAC can just show up, kick ass and disappear untraceably, these type of crossovers are gonna be Eh at best, and get tired mighty fast.

AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #9: Remember how Ellis did three four issue arcs with Authority, each one going more over the top until the team essentially beat the shit out of God by the end? I think a similar mix of bombast and concision would have really helped this. Eh.

BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #4: Pretty much a big ol' time-waster, which this mini (or any mini, frankly) can't afford. And at this rate, by 2030, we'll have Bruce Wayne's entire pre-Batman life mapped out, right down to his dramatic struggle with fear while exiting a bat-shaped birth canal. Eh, because I'm generous that way.

BIRDS OF PREY #83: I think this is supposed to read like a fast-paced, breakneck adventure where the stakes get upped every few pages, but it actually reads to me like an ambitious writer keeps putting more and more on the plate even though there's too much there already. The announcement the other week of Geoff Johns' overseeing the DCU's path into and out of Infinite Crisis couldn't be more timely, because a lot of the DCU writers are starting to Geoff Johnsify their work already. OK.

EX MACHINA #12: Seems on much surer footing than last issue did, which is a relief. Good.

GIANT SIZE X-MEN #3: I doubt there's any way an eight page story is going to be worth this kind of money, no matter how much they were gonna pull out the stops, but I thought felt kinda slapdash with both Whedon and Adams showing their weaknesses (shticky and fussy, respectively) rather than their strengths. Though if Marvel'd just tossed this in an issue of X-Men Unlimited or something, I'm sure it would have felt like a charming little treat. Awful.

HAWKMAN #41: So we finally get one issue where the whole "Hawkman is Conan but he can fly" idea gets the full treatment and people, unsurprisingly, seem kinda skeeved out by it. I thought it was pretty good fun and would gladly read more in the same vein but all the head-loppery and flesh-stabbery underscores how bad a fit that approach is with a character smack in the middle of the DCU. Might be a bit of a moot point what with those last few pages and all but worth pointing out, anyway. OK.

POWERS #11: As someone who's read this book since its very beginnings, this issue kicked my ass up one side of the comic store and down the other. If you're a fan of Powers, I can't imagine this not doing the same. If you're not a fan, I almost want to advise to start reading the book just so you can have the grim pleasure of this issue. Very Good work, to be sure.

SEVEN SOLDIERS KLARION THE WITCH BOY #2: This paid off for me tremendously well, mainly because of all the interlocking bits with SS: Guardian #2, but also because Morrison kept changing up the plot every few pages or so. Lovely, lovely art, too. Very Good.

SIMPSONS COMICS #107: A strong return to form for Boothby, I thought, with finally a bit of a change-up on the splash page joke, and just a lot of amusingly silly situations. If there's something that didn't work for me this issue, I don't remember it--also Very Good.

VIMANARAMA #3: Late but worth it: this easily cleared beat the dashed expectations left after issue #2 and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Maybe because Philip Bond got to focus on the small human interactions where he really excels, or maybe because G-Mo's character developments, which previously felt a bit slapdash, here add up to a sum a bit larger than their parts, or maybe because it reminded me of some of Salman Rushdie's fizzier writing. But whatever the case, felt like a Good read to me.

WOLVERINE #29: That cover made me very uncomfortable, as probably any cover where Wolverine is hurtling his groin at my face might. Fears of forced oral copulation aside, I thought this was better than the last two or three issues as the art and story seem to have a bit more spark to them. Good.

And so we move to this week's trade section, which really made the week for me:

AEIOU GN: On the one hand, this felt like a rehash of too-similar material Brown's already explored, which may well be the point--how many times do we go through the same experience of love, but with different partners, until it finally changes? On the other hand, Brown's keenly observant about the small moments that make and break a relationship, and it's precisely those moments I love reading about. But I got more and more restless as I made my way through the book, suspcious that Brown may feel he has to do one of these for each of his failed relationships to prove that the most recent was as important to him as the first. Some of the dramatic shifts in time and place in the middle of the titled sections were a welcome jolt, and points to an awareness on Brown's part that this material needs to be shaken up a little bit. Maybe it's time for pure fiction, where the observations can inform and be informed by the pleasures of plot? OK.

CAPTAIN AMERICA BY JACK KIRBYBICENTENNIAL BATTLES TPB: Proves the sad truism that anything I buy on Ebay will be collected less than two years later. I love Kirby's material and it's a delight to have this in easy access--plus the issues of CA where Kirby riffs on an idea (a planet of lunatics) straight out of Phil Dick. Bonus points for the occult shiver received by seeing Archie Goodwin listed as consulting editor(!) If you're a Kirby fan, OK to Good.

DER STRUWWELMAAKIES HC: Tony Millionaire's latest Maakies collection, designed again by the mighty Chip Kidd. Surprisingly, it's taking me a bit longer to get into the material than previously, but the gay dentures joke at the start gave me a pretty good laugh and I don't doubt there's more to come. Preliminary prognosis is between OK and Very Good.

ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 4 TPB: You know how they say chocolates cause the production of some of the same endorphins as when you're in love? For me, this holds true with Kirby inked by Sinnott. This stuff resonates so deeply in me, it must be lodged near my medulla oblongata--I may well have trembled as I read it. Gorgeous stuff and at the top of my Very Good rating.

SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 2 VS THE WORLD GN: I was almost relieved when I didn't initially take to the opening flashback section--although worried that Bryan Lee O'Malley had hit something like sophomore slump and had already promised more volumes of this narrative than his interest or skills could sustain, I was secretly glad that I wouldn't have to play the role of frothy-mouthed proselytizer, jumping all about like some sex-crazed chimpanzee, telling you about how O'Malley had met or exceeded the potential of Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life and that you should dash out and buy his book and give him all your money for doing something impressive and delightful and great.

And then I got to the end of the flashback section, and the book proceeded to work a horrifying magic on me, and make me an even more fevrent frothy-mouthed proselytizer than I could have imagined. Scott Pilgrim Versus The World is brilliant, and a real delight and you should dash out RIGHT NOW and buy a copy of this book and give O'Malley ALL YOUR MONEY. The references to video games, RPGs, autobbio comix, manga and anime are still there and arguably better than ever (my heart swelled with love over the Mithril Skateboard gag) but, in making Scott a tool who barely pays attention to the hearts he breaks, O'Malley begins to add shadings to the narrative that speak to human nature (who hasn't oblivously broken someone else's heart? Who hasn't had their heart broken by someone oblivious?) and grounds it all in a more emotionally real context than you'd expect. Throw in some real Toronto locations (and the knowledge that O'Malley and his wife Hope Larson have relocated from Toronto to Halifax) and the second volume suggests that the Scott Pilgrim series may end up a far more clear-eyed farewell to youth than all the giddiness and hilarity and finishing moves might indicate.

In short, I absolutely loved this god-damned book. Please check out the first two volumes when you get the chance, please. Excellent.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Scott Pilgrim! Scott Pilgrim! Scott Pilgrim! But if I had to pick a floppy, I'd go with Powers #11, Klarion #2, or Simpsons #107, depending on what you follow. They were all yummy.

PICK OF THE WEAK: I didn't bother much with the stinky stuff this week. From what I follow, I was very disappointed in Batman: Dark Detective #4.

TRADE PICK: Scott Pilgrim! Scott Pilgrim! Scott Pilgrim!

6/15 comics

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It's daddy's birthday today -- I'm 38! Got to work on finishing my TILTING though :(

Here's what CE got this week:

2000 AD #1439 2000 AD #1440 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #11 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #641 ARCHIE & FRIENDS #92 ARCHIE DIGEST #217 AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #9 (OF 12) BATMAN BEGINS MOVIE ADAPTATION BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #4 (OF 6) BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #66 BATTLE HYMN #3 (OF 5) BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #134 BIGFOOT #4 (OF 4) BIRDS OF PREY #83 BLACK DIAMOND ON RAMP BRIAN PULIDOS BELLADONNA #5 (OF 5) BRIAN PULIDOS MEDIEVAL LADY DEATH #3 BRIAN PULIDOS WAR ANGEL #2 (OF 3) CABLE DEADPOOL #16 CAPTAIN GRAVITY AND POWER OF THE VRIL #5 CONAN & THE JEWELS OF GWAHLUR #3 (OF 3) DAREDEVIL #74 DARKNESS VAMPIRELLA ONE SHOT DAY OF VENGEANCE #3 (OF 6) DEATH JR #2 (OF 3) DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #329 EX MACHINA #12 FRANK MILLERS ROBOCOP MILLER CVR #8 (Of 9) FREEDOM FORCE #6 (OF 6) GAMBIT #12 GI JOE #0 GIANT SIZE X-MEN #3 GLA #3 (OF 4) HAWKMAN #41 HERCULES #3 (OF 5) HERO CAMP #2 (OF 4) JLA CLASSIFIED #8 JON SABLE FREELANCE BLOODLINE #2 (OF 6) JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #232 (C:4) KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #103 LAST HERO STANDING #3 (OF 5) LUCIFER #63 MANHUNTER #11 MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #1 MARVEL KNIGHTS 4 #19 MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #278 MNEMOVORE #3 (OF 6) NYC MECH BETA LOVE #2 PENCIL FIGHT #2 POWER PACK #4 (OF 4) POWERS #11 SCOOBY DOO #97 SEVEN SOLDIERS KLARION THE WITCH BOY #2 (OF 4) SIMPSONS COMICS #107 SKYSCRAPERS OF THE MIDWEST #2 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #150 SPIDER-MAN BREAKOUT #3 (OF 5) STAR WARS GENERAL GRIEVOUS #3(OF 4) STAR WARS REPUBLIC #76 STORMBREAKER SAGA OF BETA RAYBILL #6 (OF 6) STRANGERS IN PARADISE #74 SUPER MANGA BLAST #52 TALES OF BLOODY MARY #2 (OF 8) TEENS AT PLAY SUMMER SPECIAL TRIGGER #7 UNCANNY X-MEN #461 USAGI YOJIMBO #84 VERONICA #162 VIMANARAMA #3 (OF 3) WESTERN TALES OF TERROR #4 WILDSIDERZ #0 WOLVERINE #29 YEAR ONE BATMAN RAS AL GHUL #1 (OF 2)

Book / Mag / Stuff AEIOU GN ALCATENA DRAWINGS SC ALVAR MAYOR LA CIUDAD DE ORO DE LA PATAGONIA ARGOSY QUARTERLY #3 BATMAN BEGINS THE MOVIE & OTHER TALES OF THE DARK KNIGHT TP BATTLESTAR GALACTICA VOL 1 SAGA OF A STAR WORLD TP BIG BEEFY BOOK OF BART SIMPSON TP BUGS BUNNY VOL 1 WHATS UP DOCTP CAPTAIN AMERICA BY JACK KIRBYBICENTENNIAL BATTLES TP CEREBUS HE DOESNT LOVE YOU T/S LG CEREBUS HE DOESNT LOVE YOU T/S XL CINEFEX #102 DAFFY DUCK VOL 1 YOURE DESPICABLE TP DER STRUWWELMAAKIES HC ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 4 TP FOLLOWING CEREBUS #4 GIANT ROBOT #37 HEAVY METAL LIVE VOL 6 PHOTO OF JULIE STRAIN SC HEAVY METALS DRACULA HC HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY TIES THAT BIND GN JSA VOL 8 BLACK REIGN TP MARVEL AGE SPIDER-MAN TEAM UPVOL 1 HELP FRIENDS DIGEST TP METAL GEAR SOLID VOL 1 TP SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE VOL 3VAMP TP SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 2 VS THE WORLD GN STRANGE KADDISH TALES YOU WONT HEAR FROM BUBBIE GN 2ND PRTG STRANGERS IN PARADISE MOLLY &POO TP STREET ANGEL VOL 1 TP SUPERMAN GODFALL TP SWORD OF THE DARK ONES VOL 2 VIDEO WATCHDOG JUNE/JULY 2005 #120 WARS END PROFILES FROM BOSNIA1995-96 HC WASTING THE DAWN NOVEL SC ED

Reviews for some 6/8 Books.

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No clever opening for me, I'm afraid. I didn't see the preview of Batman Begins, probably because my luck with movies have been so bad lately: this week I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (dull, cliched, frustratingly inept), Butterfly Effect (hey, I liked Final Destination 2 so I thought it was worth a shot. Boy was I wrong) and Electra Glide in Blue (starts off as an exemplar of everything great about '70s Hollywood before becoming everything terrible about '70s Hollywood). Thank God, I guess, for HBO on video: just finished watching Season Two of The Wire and loved it: different from Season One, but still great. Oh, and thank god for comix, too. Because this was a pretty decent week:

ACTION COMICS #828: Okay, that Villains United tie-in is pretty gratuitous if not nearly nonsensical. (Rather than wait for Dr. Polaris to get carted off to jail, you're going to grab him right from Superman's hands and tip him off to the formation of your super-gang? That seems…dumb, to say the least.) But this really hit all the right beats for a Superman comic, with a convincingly romantic ending. I hope Gail avoids the urge to grit this up, and Byrne's content to turn out this art, because this is the most I've enjoyed a Super title in too long. Good.

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS ALL SEX SPECIAL: Previously, Action Philosophers was more of a book I felt I should like than a book I actually liked, but this issue was flat-out great: Dunlavey and Van Lente's work reminds me of Larry Gonick here, able to tackle complex issues with a light touch that doesn't undermine the subjects. Covering St. Augustine, Jefferson and Ayn Rand in one issue also was a great touch, as one can track how the philosophical breakthroughs of one allowed for the very different philosophical developments of the other. It's far from perfect (Van Lente's work is expressive and cleaner than I remember it, but it's a shame that he couldn't nail that Kirby Manichaeism sequence as much as evoke it) but it's a full 32 pgs. of fun and fascinating reading for $2.95; how can I not give it a Very Good?

BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #3: For better or for worse, times have changed. Back in the '70s, one probably could get some genuine pathos out of the idea of Two-Face gaining and losing a second chance at life via a Harvey Dent clone, but now it just seems embarrassingly quaint. Throw in a heavy dose of emotional speechifying and I'd be hard-pressed to give this an OK for more than sentimental reasons, if it wasn't for some beautifully evocative Marshall Rogers art—I'd probably give this a high OK for that alone.

BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #192: The Chase team of Williams and Johnson turn in a rock-solid script, but it's Seth Fisher's art that really gives this some oomph: it's filled with little details to an almost Geoff Darrowish degree. We'll see where this story ends up going, but for now, a really Good issue.

BETE NOIRE #1: The $9.95 price tag puts this very much in a half-empty/half-full conundrum: compared to Kramer's Ergot, this is a chance to sample similarly outré cartoonists for a much cheaper price. However, compared to Hoax #2, this is an anthology that's three times the price and of varying or equivalent value (I ended up much preferring Hoax, frankly). Apart from a few of the Japanese cartoonists (lumped together toward the front, oddly), I wasn't much struck by much of the material here and at least pricey anthologies like Kramer's or Non (or, of course, the progenitor, Raw) have appeal in and of themselves as attractive objects—this, by contrast, feels distressingly like an overpriced comic book. Please keep in mind all my many biases (I almost always preferred the narrative to non-narrative pieces in Raw, for example) when I tell you this ranked squarely on the Eh side of things for me.

GOTHAM CENTRAL #32: On the one hand, a very nice done-in-one about crooked cops in the GCPD. On the other hand, I'd gladly read about these guys in every issue and the ending makes that seem a bit unlikely. Still, Very Good.

GRAVITY #1: Cute, and my blessed ignorance of mid-'90s Marvel characters (Hibbs reassured me Rage really is a character and really was both an Avenger and a New Warrior) actually made this even more amusing and McKeever's script hit all the right beats. In fact, although it's probably soon to say this, there weren't any real surprises—the first issue read just like I imagined it might. And although the art is clean, I wish it could have captured more of a sense of New York--the simultaneity of its grit and its splendor, to say nothing of the sheer crush of its population (that double-page splash is the only time we see more than eight people in the background). But I'm willing to go up to a low Good for this first issue because it's a promising start and I'm still relieved to pick up a book from either Marvel or DC that isn't trying to eyerape me with its gritty ultra-importance.

HOAX #2: As I said above, I preferred this to Bete Noire, although that's due largely to both price and a preference for narrative--Nate Neal's contributions are solidly told and entertaining, if a little heavy on the authorial sneer, and I thought Lydia Gregg's "Law of Bone Healing," which mixes Gonick style educational comix with a piece of war abuse propaganda, was an effective and promising piece of work. Only "Reflex" struck me as not worth the pagecount, but overall this issue conjured some of the enjoyment I had reading issues of Weirdo the first time around (minus the patented Crumb genius, of course): the sense that cartoonists are struggling to develop a style and engage with the world, and that the struggle is not just worth having, but worth reading. Good.

HOLMES PERIPHERY FLIP BOOK: A very clever idea (Holmes being a dope-addled fiend; Watson his Dr. Feelgood) that never gets off the ground--and by "ground," I mean "inside cover" where the idea is pitched outright. While that certainly makes the book very inviting to new readers, I found it troubling it more or less had to spelled out at the beginning. There's just not enough to the story, which starts as a Holmes pastiche and quickly ends up an outtake from a Victorian Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. For me, the enjoyment would come from seeing the story work as both simultaneously, but instead all of the elements are just haphazardly thrown into the pot in the hopes it'll end up as a really good soup. That it didn't is quite a bummer. Going with the Eh here.

ICE HAVEN GN: The great thing about working in a comic store like CE on a slowish Friday morning is being able to sit down with a book like this and compare it page to page with the original issue of Eightball. The slicing of each page into two pages worked much better than I thought it would, and the new material (what would have accounted for, at most , three pages in the original Eightball) did a brilliant job of bringing the reader's focus more explicitly on the book's themes and a plot point or two (the ending in particular underscores an important part of the plot that had previously zipped right over my head). Very Good work (in fact, if this had been the original issue of Eightball with the additional material I think it'd be Excellent), but it's three times the price for very much the same material and I kinda can't get away from that fact. I'm sure of far greater interest (and relevance to the book's success) will be reviews from people coming to the material completely fresh, but if, like me, you've already got the original issue, I say inveigle your local library into getting a copy and check it out then.

JLA #115: Liked this because the focus was more on the Injustice Gang and the JLA deciding to tell Batman, than any sort of Bat-histrionics as promised on the cover (although I'm sure that'll come later). Also, a lot more character scenes and a lot less of the relentless crash and bash than Johns' scripts have had lately. So I'll go with a high Good and hope it goes to some interesting places from here.

LITTLE STAR #3: Latest issue didn't knock me on my ass quite as much as last issue because the dramatic change-up felt both a little too subtle and too sudden-- a few too many pages about the partnership between parents that felt a bit redundant in the face of previous issues, maybe--but still near the top of my Very Good rating. I'm really enjoying this book.

MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #15: Why I read this, I can't really say although, thanks to the Mark Buckingham flashback pages, I liked it a lot more than the previous two issues. But particularly on the face of the recent JMS story, having another of Peter Parker's unpopular ex-classmates seemed very, very groanworthy. Throw in a very gratuitous Punisher sequence and I'm still gonna go with Awful.

NEW WARRIORS #1: Skottie Young's art is dynamic, fluid and colorful, but bleeds so fully into the cute edge of the spectrum (it seems almost more Disney-influenced than manga or anime), I can't imagine your typical Marvel fan--or whatever remaining New Warrior fans might still survive--enjoying this. Nonetheless, I liked this fine, and hope Frank Tieri, doing a very similar concept in Hercules, looks to this as primer on how to get a miniseries up and running quickly and smoothly. Will win no awards but a very high OK, nonetheless.

NIGHTWING #109: No need for that Villains United crossover blurb on the cover, if you ask me. And I'm still incredulous from previous revelations (mainly that all the mooks know that Dick Grayson is Dick Grayson) so this really can't get better than OK although I liked it fine.

PULSE #9: Would make me want to read Secret War, if the issues I'd already read of that hadn't felt like a waste of time and money. Also, having your bimonthly book tie in so closely to your quarterly (at best) miniseries is not the savviest use of marketing synergy. Will I remember any resultant desire by the time Secret War hits the stands? Maybe in Bendis's dayplanner, but not here in the real world, I'm afraid. A high OK.

PUNISHER #22: The art seemed a little flat this issue, or maybe the coloring washed it out (although I got the impression the colorist was actually trying to do the opposite) but this still continues to be the best arc since the reboot. I wasn't sold that Frank is so out of control he can't help but knowingly put his ass into that trap but maybe I might've if this had been paced a bit differently. OK.

RANN THANAGAR WAR #2: I made it to page three before a crippling case of the don't-cares set in. The art did make me want to dig up my old copy of Superman Versus Muhammad Ali, I'll give it that. A very low Eh.

STARDUST KID #1: Mike Ploog's still got fearsome chops, but I've never been a mighty big fan of DeMatteis in winsome mode—he practically makes Ray Bradbury read like Ernest Hemingway by comparison—so I can't really say this deep fried my twinkie. But it sure did look mighty great, and maybe it'll work better for its intended audience than it did for me. OK, at the very least.

STRANGE GIRL #1: Some luminous coloring initially obscured some real shortcomings in the storytelling and art, I think, and I was also more engaged with the first half when the Rapture comes than the second half where the demons have sway over all and our heroine is all grown up—I would have much rather continued reading about that young girl and how she manages to survive than jumping forward in the narrative so the artist can now feel comfortable centering the panels around her ass. I'll give it an OK because I really was drawn into the first part, but if it goes downhill from here I won't be a bit surprised.

STRAY BULLETS #38: That psycho Huss is a perfect foil for Virginia (who's not particularly well-adjusted either) and Lapham still excels at putting his characters in uncomfortable situations and making the reader feel they're right there with them. On the upper edge of Good, but my dissatisfaction Lapham's use of flat and rounded characters (too much of the former, not enough of the latter) keeps me from going higher.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #19: Back before Galactus, Stan and Jack's FF stories seemed centered around the team running down trap-laden hallways, so this was a really great update by Mike Carey and Jae Lee of a very old trope. If you're a seriously old school FF fan, you might also find this Very Good.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #78: Hey, an issue of USM where Brian Bendis actually seems to know what he's doing! Remember when we used to get that every issue? Although I can't tell if there was more than one case of misdirected captions, and can't tell if everything's gonna go right back to frustrating, Good is Good.

X-MEN #171: Unsubtle soap opera with blatantly sexual themes that seem to assume the worst about human nature—are we sure Chuck Austen's not back on the book? I think this was big pile of Awful.

PICK OF THE WEEK: As I said, a lot of good stuff this week, I thought, but ACTION PHILOSOPHERS ALL SEX SPECIAL was an enjoyable, educational and thought-provoking read. UFF #19 was also a nice cheap shot of good fun.

PICK OF THE WEAK: MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #15 didn't work for me, to put it lightly.

TRADE PICK: Get Ice Haven into your public library, and get Age of Bronze Vol. 2 TPB into your own. Eric Shanower's retelling of the Trojan War is top-notch comix.

Want to see BATMAN BEGINS for free?

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We duly handled our first batch of tickets for Tuesday's showing as the promotions compnay asked us to... but today we got in multiple envelopes of tickets for a showing on MONDAY JUNE 13th at 7:30 PM (at the Metreon), and we have no instructions on these. Therefore, I exercise executive privilege, and will give first crack to those of you reading this website.

Here's what you have to do: come into the store while *I* am working (Friday 2-7, Saturday 2-4 or thereabouts) and ask *me* for one. DO NOT ask Rob or Jeff about them, that will get you automagically disqualified.

Now I will probably ask you a question or two to prove you actually READ this blog, and you aren't just some guy, but other than that, that's that -- no purchase necessary and all of that jazz.

I've got maybe 10 passes left, and they're (unlikely most passes) "admit ONE" -- I will strictly only be giving out 1 per person, so factor that in your calculations.

Hopefully we'll see you tomorrow or Saturday, and we can talk funny books!

-B

Hibbs' earlyreview of BATMAN BEGINS

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Just got back from a preview screening of BATMAN BEGINS. (and how cool is this? I went with my Dad.) Let's get some initial thoughts down while everything is fairly fresh in me head. I'm going to try to be as spoiler-free as I can, because, y'know, the thing don't come out for 10 days or whatever, but this is a review, and I might let something slip. You have been warned. It's a very good movie, but it's not like the second coming of superhero films, or anything like that. Several reviewers are way overselling it, man.

It's got a brilliant first act, it has a very solid second act -- the third act though, eh, didn't work too well for me.

Part of the problem is how the action is staged -- virtually every fight is cut so fast from angles where you really can't tell what the fuck is going on. Since the third act depends so much in the Set Piece Big Fight, that isn't how I would have staged it.

A good example might be the first fight Batman gets in -- Batman is treated nearly like the alien in, well, ALIEN -- you hardly catch a glimpse of him, people start dropping, someone hits... don't know, Batman? their partner? I can't tell, there's shooting, but it is at shadow, and it's all too damn fast. It's like watching it from the POV of the thugs being taken down. That's how THEY see Batman. Which is great, but I want to see what he's doing... that's the fun of Batman, isn't it?

But, of course, you can't really show Batman doing all that stuff, because it'd look like shit. You'd never be able to believe that costume, in motion, could possibly move that much, that fast. Thankfully you almost never see the full Batman costume, because it looks pretty silly. In the few shots where it was just shoulders up, talking, it looked like Bale would topple over from the top-heaviness of the suit.

They generally do an excellent job of covering their limitations in most places -- Batman haul-ass runs more than once, but the angle and cape effects cover for it great; and there's plenty of excellent "Batman as gargoyle shots"

Another part of the problem is that the movie is BIG, I don't mean in a "Hollywood Blockbuster" kind of way (though it is that, too), but in that a whole whole WHOLE lot of subplots happens, and there's tons upon tons of characters, so everyone has to be able to get to DO something in the third act, which leads to more than a few awkward moments I thought (I'd single out one of the Batmobile's drivers, he said, trying desperately to remain spoiler free).

The performances are pretty uniformly excellent. They'd almost have to be with the cast assembled here -- I thought Katie Holmes was probably the weakest, but then her character wasn't much of a character (though a thousand times more of a character than any *other* Obligatory Female in a Batman film) -- she exists as childhood friend, crusading DA, and moral center, but those are plot roles rather than personal character. Not Katie Holmes' fault though.

I generally liked the changes to the Batman mythos itself. While I always resent "Nemesis comes from origin" as a storytelling crutch (cf: Joker in the first Burton film), the bits of that they do here usually fundamentally work, because they're actually *about* something. They have psychological weight, if nothing else.

On the other hand, I thinking changing Ra's motivation in the way that they did probably weakens the character. I mean with comic book Ra's I might even be with him pretty much everywhere up to "so, then we kill 90% of the population!" This one I was definitely less down with.

There's something else I'm not mentioning because it would totally be a spoiler, but I thought it was very very cool. You'll know it when you see it.

Gary Oldman did a whole damn lot with very very little. Morgan Freeman was Morgan Freeman, which rocks. And Michael Caine... well I liked him, but a "lower class" Alfred is so strange. It's like "Whot's tha', guv'ner? Batman? Roight! I'm game!"

Bale, himself, I thought was the best screen portayal of Batman so far.

So, yes, I enjoyed it -- it had depth, it was thoughtful, it built its themes, and it all comes down to explosions and punches, as such things do. Without the need to give pretty much every character some sort of role in the climax, I think it might have been more satisfying.

I can't explain what I thought much better without spoiling the hell out of it.

You do want to see this in the theatre, and you actually DO want to see this in a theatre with a bunch of people and not wait for a DVD or something, it will be more fun with the oohs and the ahs and the laughs. So, yeah: VERY GOOD.

Oh, and the new DC logo at the top of the film? It doesn't move or spin, as I thought it would. And the comics flashes (What DID flash up there? anyone know?) weren't connected at all TO the logo. Foo!

-B

Reviews of 6/2 books

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Right, so, as always very little time - Ben and Tzipora are out at the playground, so we do this in what would be, in any decent and just universe, my videogame time. But it's not a just universe, so how about some reviews, instead? FIRESTORM #14: I know they put the "America's #1 Nuclear Powered Hero!" on the cover as code that this was a good "jumping on" point, as Stuart Moore's first issue, but god, how tacky was that? Also, it was on the wrong side of the cover. Most stores either rack left-to-right overlapping, or top-to-bottom overlapping, and the blurb is barely visible from the latter and INvisible from the former. Ah, well, that's what the ivory tower brings you. Actually, in a world with a smart marketing department, they would have waited a year and let the series go fallow until it could be fully relaunched. This said as a man who despises "fake" #1s. Thing is, this may as well have been a brand new #1 -- while (2? 3?) of the characters are the same, it is a whole new rethinking. That might have even worked had the bait-and-switch of "Ronnie's back!" not just happened, surely leaving "original Firestorm" readers even colder than they were to begin with. Ultimately, I can't see much of a new audience coming in for #14 as they've had 2 chances to jump on now, with this being try #3 in around a year. Now, having said that, I thought this issue worked pretty well -- solid setup and new status quo. The art is competent, and the writing solid. In fact, I can fairly easily give this a low GOOD -- I just don't think it will make any difference.

HOUSE OF M #1: Certainly there's plenty of crisp writing here, with good character voices and POVs. It's also pretty slow, and not much of anything happens until that last page. Sales were slow this weekend -- probably running around half of what I expected, and I think one of the problems is no one really knows what the series is ABOUT. There's been a lot of vagueness, and promotional tools like the sketchbook were so intensely underwhelming, I don't think anyone feels impelled to add another mini-series. On the plus side, that should mean I'm stocked just fine when #8 comes out, something that is always hard to say with Marvel comics. I can imagine what I THINK this mini-series might and should end up doing (changing reality organically to make some of the universe-backstory start making sense once more. [example: Magneto is anchored to WW2. The time differential is starting to cause problems]), but who knows if I'm right or wrong? Not enough to tell from this first issue at least. In addition, I was faintly shocked that in all of the conversation of "how do we stop our crazy friend with God-powers?" at no time did any X-Man bring up Jean Grey. Pregnant pause in the middle of the comic for this reader at least. Hard to rate this, really, not enough occurred, but I can go with, I guess, a low GOOD.

JSA #74: I just want to say that the new DC logo looks pretty good when rendered in a variety of colors. There's an exception though: JSA *just* got a new logo, one that extends out to the edges of the cover, and the DC logo looks like complete ass, sitting on top of it. The new logo also looks like shit on the Johnny DC books -- the recently redesigned trade dress is artistically opposed to the "now!" of the new DC logo. As for JSA itself, I don't have much to say - there's good character moments in every scene, but there's so much Boom! Boom! in every issue, I'm starting to long for a quieter arc soon. Again, a low GOOD.

LAST HERO STANDING #1: What's odd is that I can't even give away SPIDER-GIRL. I have one subscription customer for it, but most of the time when I buy a rack copy, it ends up in the dollar box. We even had a subscriber add it to her list, trying to support titles with a female lead, but she dropped it 2 months later. "Wow, that's really awful!" she laughed. I don't know WHY I decided to order 5 copies of this SPIDER-GIRL "spinoff" -- certainly, it wasn't the SAFE move, and, especially when it's a weekly mini-series, which means order adjustments, the norm on Marvel books, become practically meaningless, and reorders will run a week behind (I'll be able to restock #1, if they have any to sell, when #3 is released). It's really the kind of book stores HATE to order, yet I gave it some support -- and we sold all of them by day #2. So, that's why retail can drive you crazy some days. Now, it is possible that people didn't REALIZE it was a SPIDER-GIRL "spin off" (that cover DOES mostly feature contemporary-looking characters), but, I dunno. Anyway, typical Tom DeFalco comic, in the "classic Marvel Style". I didn't care ABOUT any of it, set in the possible-future as it is, but I was entertained enough as I read it. Pure cotton candy, and probably worth an EH.

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET #1: I like Ryp's artwork a whole lot, and I have a weird fascination with Freddy (I've seen each installment in the theatre -- even when I had to go to the seedy, sticky-floored, smell-emporium down on Market st. for it. It was never worth it, really), so I'm altogether too biased. But I thought Pulido did a pretty good job on this one: good use of "getting killed by what you think makes you you", and there was almost a point to the story (as opposed to a scenerio just to kill people) -- unlike TEXAS CHAINSAW MASACRE #1, also this week, with which I was completely befuddled, as it didn't go at all with my recollection of the (original) film. This was not high art, by any means, but for a licensed comic, it held a high standard, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of the same. I'm surprised too, I'm giving it a GOOD. (TCM #1 gets an AWFUL)

ORORO BEFORE THE STORM #1: Action packed street-urchin adventure! Which is about as exciting as it sounds. Filled with kids who talk like adults, this might have been a better fit in the ADVENTURES line, though I wonder how good it really is to sell kids a role model who is a pickpocket and a thief? A big EH.

SEVEN SOLDIERS ZATANNA #2: Liekd it much better than #1, and I might have even liked it better than GUARDIAN #2. If all American comics were this smart and crisp, this blog would be called THE RAINBOW CRITIC. Great terrific fun, and VERY GOOD.

SON OF VULCAN #1: Didn't really like the ameri-manga art. And I thought the use and explanation for Woodrue was pretty babble-tastic. And I really don't at all remember the original Son Of Vulcan (Charlton character -- maybe some sort of sword-and-sorcery thing, maybe?), and yet I thought this was kinda fun. "What if Batman was killed on Robin's first day out?" could be the one-line high concept. I thought the minuses (esp the art) will keep it down to an OK, but I'll be keeping one eye on this series as the next issues develop.

SUPER FUCKERS #1: James Kochalka's ode to the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (pretty much), and it perversely wants me to see him do it straight. I got some grins and giggles, but I think it was probably priced too high for its content, so I'll go with a very low GOOD.

SUPERMAN BATMAN #20: Like many people, I now wish I hadn't read Jeph Loeb's interview on Newsarama -- I might have missed some of the specific jabs. All of that is unnecessary. Hand to God, "friendly rivalry" is a wonderful thing between 2 publishers. It's sorta charming, even. This jarring and personal trash-talking that's going on these days? It doesn't make me like comics any better, kids. I liked the lunacy of some of this -- I thought Bat-zarro's captions mirroring his words was the most perfectly-perfect idea in perfect idea land, for example -- but wtf was up with Superman pretty casually murdering another character? I hate shit like that, it doesn't make me long for the next issue so we can see what kind of dream hoax or imaginary story it might have been -- it makes me think, "How could you possibly be so irresponsible as to show Superman murder someone, regardless of the context?" So continues my love/hate relationship with SUPERMAN/BATMAN. A very splitting-the-difference OK.

That's it, sick of writing. Not many books, but much longer entries this time.

Obviously, my PICK OF THE WEEK is ZATANNA #2. I'm going to skip the WEAK this week because I didn't bother to write it up. Maybe you could try and guess?

As for BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK, I have 2 entries for you -- MIRRORMASK ILLUSTRATED SCRIPT HC, which is Neil Gaiman's script, and Dave McKean's storyboards, for their, I-hope-it-will-be-released film. I haven't read the guts of the book yet, so I can't say whether or not it is any good, but I really liked the introductions, and the 2 outroductions, and the book looks well worth it.

I can also strongly recommend Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's WE 3 TP -- what an astonishingly good story, even if it is 25% more expensive than the serialization (!!). It's also selling like a MONSTER -- without one single doubt our largest dollar SKU of June, even with 24 days to go in the month.

So that's it, what did YOU think?

-B

Groggy Morning Breakdown: A Few Reviews from 6/1 Comics.

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Guh. I'd planned to wait one more week before diving back into the funnybook game but since Hibbs is apparently an even lazier bastard than me, lemme eke out just a review or two.... AQUAMAN #31: I flipped through this pretty fast, but I get the sense the writer wrote it slightly faster. We get flashbacks to Aquagirl getting her ass beat by the serial killer and then disappearing (thus creating whatever actual tension the issue has) and then at the end of the comic she just pops up, safe and unharmed. Why and how? Oh, because the issue's over? Oh, okay. Awful.

EMO BOY #1: Wrong cover if you ask me, because it suggests we should take Emo Boy and his emoness somewhat compassionately, something the cartoonist has no interest in doing whatsoever. I guess if you really, really hate yourself some emo, you'll like this, but I usually like my "ha ha ha, everyone sucks" humor to either have more compassion or more obvious talent, which is why I find, say, Clowes' takedowns to be brilliant, and this to be merely Eh.

EXILES #65: Clever, but there better be a clever "similar but different" change-up in the next issue or this book'll have no reason to exist. Hibbs and I spent an absurdly long amount of time as to whether "lost and get home" series (Lost In Space, Quantum Leap, Sliders, etc.) really work for longer than three years before everyone loses interest. He says yes, I say hell, no. Either way, though, these guys may have clevered themselves out of a job unless they have a dynamite follow-up. OK.

HOUSE OF M #1: Bendis' most accomplished big hero spectacular to date, which is mighty faint praise, I know. It's more or less a very accomplished issue of Secret Wars II (all the superheroes get together to debate whether an unstable person with reality-changing powers should be iced) with a last page twisteroo that made me yawn. But Xavier and Magneto at least sound like themselves and not like David Mamet, and the art is pretty so what the hell? A very high OK, I guess.

INCREDIBLE HULK #82: A fill-in issue with really pretty art. Nothing more, nothing less and on its own terms, Good.

SEVEN SOLDIERS ZATANNA #2: I'm more or less underwhelmed--although this wasn't terrible or anything. Art's good; dialogue is witty; and I guess it's kind of clever that there's an Emily The Strange analog running around, but there's some crucial way I'm not connecting with the material I can't quite figure out--I guess I kinda can't figure out what Zatanna's whole deal is here. A lowish Good because it's still pretty good compared to what's out there this week but I have me some reservations, yessir.

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #5: Yes, yes, dinosaurs, boobies, "Holy Buckets," got it. If I was ten years old, or it turned out Frank Cho was, maybe I'd be thrilled. On the other hand, if I was ten, I'd probably still be wondering why this was seven issues instead of two. My disgruntlement inclines me toward Awful.

STRANGE #6: Well, at least Clea turned out to be from another dimension after all. So I guess there's that but the rest of it stank pretty heavily. As long as all involved pretend to forget it ever happened, I'm willing to let it off with an Awful.

SUPER FUCKERS #1: If this had been $2.95, no problem: it's a cute little spin on The Legion of Superheroes, if they had really acted like teenagers. But seven-fuckin'-bucks? I can't wrap my head around why this book has to cost that much. The price tag makes it Awful.

SUPERMAN BATMAN #20: Loeb's bizarro dialogue really hurt my head, but Batzarro was really fuckin' hilarious regardless. But the real problem was the rest of the book--it seems to be working up to a critique of the Ultimates approach to grim and gritty rebootings of classic superheroes, a position Loeb would be better suited to criticize if he hadn't just had an arc where Superman strangled Wonder Woman with her golden lasso and other creepy shit. On the other hand, Loeb is such a lunatic when it comes to plotting, who can really say where this'll end up? A very high OK just for Batzarro alone.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE #1: Like this week's Nightmare book, a much better representation of the films than the previous Friday the 13th one-shot, although this suffers from being tied to the recent remake and its cast of thousands approach. Burrows' art is also surprisingly perfunctory in a lot of places, although his gore is as nasty-looking as ever. OK.

WALKING DEAD #19: The book I liked the best this week although I also have some quibblage about it. (Those zombies from Block A sure arrived at one hell of a convenient time, didn't they?) Still, let's call it a Good and hope the pacing evens out a little--I feel like Kirkman is driven to produce bigger and bigger shocks each issue and that may end up missing some good character beats. But somewhere between Good and Very Good.

PICK OF THE WEEK: King Crabbypants liked Walking Dead #19, but what the hell do I know? I spent most of this weekend reading Sgt. Frog, Vol. 2.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Shanna The She-Devil #5 and Strange #6 are so much less than the sum of their parts, I'll give it to both of them.

TRADE PICK: WE3, no question. Don't know why the higher price point than Seaguy (yes, yes, nice paperstock and all, but...why?) but so darn lovely I guess I don't care. The one to get.

Shipping 6/8

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Not all that exciting of a week, really. Should be back in a few hours with at least some reviews, so check back....

-B

A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #14 ACTION COMICS #828 ACTION PHILOSOPHERS ALL SEX SPECIAL AGE OF BRONZE #20 ARMY OF DARKNESS SHOP TIL YOUDROP DEAD #3 BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #3 (OF 6) BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #192 BATMAN STRIKES #10 BETE NOIRE #1 (OF 4) BETTY & VERONICA #209 BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #157 BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #102 BREACH #6 CITY OF HEROES #2 DUTCH TREAT FABLES #38 FATHOM #1 FLAK RIOT #1 FUTURAMA COMICS #20 GOTHAM CENTRAL #32 GRAVITY #1 (OF 5) GREEN ARROW #51 HOAX #2 HOLMES PERIPHERY FLIP BOOK JLA #115 JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #113 JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE #12 (OF 12) LAST HERO STANDING #2 (OF 5) LEX LUTHOR MAN OF STEEL #4 (OF 5) LITTLE STAR #3 MAJESTIC #6 MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #15 MARVEL NEMESIS IMPERFECTS #2 (OF 6) MARY JANE HOMECOMING #4 (OF 4) NEW THUNDERBOLTS #9 NEW WARRIORS #1 (OF 6) NIGHTWING #109 NODWICK #28 PULSE #9 PUNISHER #22 RANN THANAGAR WAR #2 (OF 6) SEX WARRIOR ISANE XXX #5 SHONEN JUMP JULY 2005 VOL 3 #7 STARDUST KID #1 (OF 5) STRANGE GIRL #1 STRAY BULLETS #38 STUDENTS OF THE UNUSUAL #5 TEMPORARY THE REAL ME PART 2 #3 TENTH DARKK DAWN ONE SHOT TOM STRONG #33 TOP COW TRIPLE PLAY TOXIN #3 (OF 6) ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #19 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #78 X-DISTRICT X #14 X-MEN #171 X-MEN THE END HEROES AND MARTYRS #4 (OF 6)

AGE OF BRONZE VOL 2 SACRIFICETP ALTER EGO #49 CLIVE BARKERS THIEF OF ALWAYSVOL 3 TP EARTHBOY JACOBOUS GN EDUCATION OF A COMIC ARTIST TP FANTASTIC FOUR VISIONARIES GEORGE PEREZ VOL 1 TP FRENCH KISS #13 GRAY AREA VOL 1 ALL OF THIS CAN BE YOURS TP ICE HAVEN GN LEES TOY REVIEW JUNE 2005 #152 LIFES A BITCH TP MAD XL #34 MARVEL 1602 TP MODERN ARF GN MONSTER COLLECTION VOL 2 NEGATIVE BURN WINTER 2005 PHANTOM JACK COLL ED TP SCI FI ENTERTAINMENT AUG05 SILENT HILL THE GRINNING MAN SIZZLE #26 TOYFARE FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIE TOYS CVR #96 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 1HC ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 3N-ZONE TP UNAUTHORIZED PUFFED MOVIE ADAPTATION TP

Comics arriving 6/1

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Don't forget: no comics tomorrow! Memorial Day and all that -- if you go to the store, you'll be disapointed! COMICS ARE THURSDAY. Bit hungover today -- Garth Ennis (and his loverly wife, Ruth) were in town, so we did the Toronado's pilgramage. A splendid time was had by all. I've got a really cute picture of Garth and Ben that I need to get off the camera, and I'll see if we can get it up here at some point soon.

Anyway, here's your list of stuff arriving on Thursday:

2000 AD #1437 2000 AD #1438 AMAZING FANTASY #9 AQUAMAN #31 ATOMIKA #3 BATMAN VILLAINS SECRET FILES 2005 BEOWULF #2 BETTY #147 BLOOD OF THE DEMON #4 BURGLAR BILL #3 (OF 6) CAL MCDONALD SUPERNATURAL FREAK MACHINE #3 (OF 5) CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #17 CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #6 (OF6) DETECTIVE COMICS #807 DRACULA VS KING ARTHUR #1 (OF4) ECHOES OF THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN EMO BOY #1 EXILES #65 FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #5 (OF 6) FATHOM PRELUDE #1 FIRESTORM #14 GAMBIT #11 GIRL + GIRL #3 (OF 3) HOUSE OF M #1 (OF 8) HUMAN RACE #3 (OF 7) IMAGINARIES CVR A MILLER #2 (OF 4) INCREDIBLE HULK #82 INTIMATES #8 INVINCIBLE #23 JSA #74 JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #2 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #10 LAST HERO STANDING #1 (OF 5) LETHAL INSTINCT #1 LOONEY TUNES #127 MANGA CALIENTE #5 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #4 MARVEL TEAM-UP #9 MATADOR #2 (OF 6) METAL GEAR SOLID #9 MORA #3 NEXT EXIT #4 NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET SP WRAPAROUND CVR #1 NOBLE CAUSES #10 NOT QUITE DEAD #5 ORORO BEFORE THE STORM #1 (OF4) PACT #2 (OF 4) PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #94 PHANTOM #6 SEVEN SOLDIERS ZATANNA #2 (OF4) SHADOWHAWK #2 SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #5 (OF 7) SHI JU NEN #4 (Of 4) SMALL GODS #9 SON OF VULCAN #1 (OF 6) SPAWN #146 SPIDER-GIRL #87 STRANGE #6 (OF 6) SUPER FUCKERS #1 SUPERMAN #218 SUPERMAN BATMAN #20 SWAMP THING #16 TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE SP WRAPAROUND CVR #1 TRIGGER #6 TWILIGHT EXPERIMENT #5 (OF 6) UNCANNY X-MEN #460 VILLAINS UNITED #2 (OF 6) WALKING DEAD #19 X-FORCE SHATTERSTAR #4 (OF 4) X-MEN UNLIMITED #9 Y THE LAST MAN #34 ZACHERLEYS MIDNITE TERRORS #3 ZED #6

Books / Mags / Stuff BATMAN ARCHIVES VOL 6 HC BATMAN WAR GAMES ACT TWO TP BLACK BEAUTY GN BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL VOL 14 LAST BLOOD TP BLUE MONDAY VOL 4 PAINTED MOON TP BOLLAND STRIPS TP BRAN MAK MORN THE LAST KING TP COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE #121 DOCTEUR MYSTERE VOL 2 THE WAROF THE WORLDS HC DUE GN FANTASTIC FOUR CLOBBERIN TIMEDIGEST TP FORTEAN TIMES #197 FRANKENSTEIN PUFFIN GN HULK GRAY TP I WAS SOMEONE DEAD NOVELLA JUXTAPOZ JULY AUG 2005 VOL 13 #8 MAXIMORTAL TP NEW PTG MIRRORMASK ILLUSTRATED SCRIPT HC MYSTERIES OF THE RED MOON VOL1 NEAL ADAMS SAVAGE SKETCHBOOK NEW TEEN TITANS WHO IS DONNA TROY TP PAUL MOVES OUT HC PC GAMER MAGAZINE JULY 05 W/DVD PILGRIM & SON FESTIVAL RITUALTP REALITY SHOW GN RED BADGE OF COURAGE GN RUROUNI KENSHIN VOL 15 TP SMOKE #1 (OF 3) TERMINATOR 2 ENDOSKELETON 18-IN AF TIJUANA BIBLES VOL 6 TP TREASURY VICTORIAN MURDER VOL7 MURDER ABRAHAM LINCOLN HC UNEXPURGATED TALE OF LORDIE JONES GN WALT DISNEYS VACATION PARADE #2 WE 3 TP XXXHOLIC VOL 5 GN

A handful of reviews of 5/25 books

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Even less time than normal this week -- have to get the order form done, and the next month’s sub set up, plus it's a holiday weekend, and the store has been rocking. Jeff's out of town, so this is all the Critic you get this week. I'm barely halfway through this week's books, but I was writing as I was reading, and if I don;t post this now, I don't know when I would. We're pretty purely mainstream stuff this week as a result

Evidently, I was also extra-cranky this week...

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #640: I very much liked the formal experiment (the top 2/3rds was completely told in pictures -- from a scrapbook, or a magazine, or a broadcast -- if you didn't notice), and the story was very well crafted, but that big reveal seems pretty preposterous to me. OK

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #520: Probably this should be called "The Avenging Spider-Man", since it's all-Avengers, all the time. As an issue of Spider-Man, I didn't care for it, but as an issue of Avengers it entertained me more than the recent stuff, so I can go with OK, I guess.

BATMAN #640: Effective art, and the Red Hood sequences were clever enough, but, man, that Superman/Batman scene was pretty damn pointless, wasn't it? A mild OK from me.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #6: Perfectly strong issue, I guess (though the last page undercut the Big Reveal -- sorta like how the season ender of LOST undercut itself by not ending one commercial earlier), though it seems to me that it would be difficult for it to be The Actual Bucky. He'd be in his 70s or 80s now then, right? Brube's point of B's death being a retcon is stictly true, but he's going to have to work really hard to make this new story make more "sense" then the 30 years of "Dead means dead" we've grown up with. I, personally, do rather hope this is a feint. A strong OK.

DAY OF VENGEANCE #2: None of these characters are remotely in what I'd consider to be "in character", and much of this don't make no sense (magic in the DCU seldom does), and yet it was breezy enough with fun dialogue and nice art, that I'll go with OK.

DC SPECIAL THE RETURN OF DONNA TROY #1: Um... what? How was Donna brought back? Just a quick "I was resurrected" in the middle of the data dump with no explanation? Then page after page of "Who's he?" and "I don't care" fighting and blah blah blah. I never liked the "New Titans" idea in the first place. This is clunky stuff, and hardly what I'd want to present as my first impression to DC. Since it is the "collector's item" first appearance of the new DC logo, and all. Garcia Lopez and Perez's art (both of whom I love individually) really doesn't gel very well here -- GL was always about the fluidity of line for me, and Perez about the obsessive doodling, together it "hardens" GLs line to me and looks blocky and too heavy. Or something, I don't have the vocabulary to properly discuss art. This is one of the places where the usual critic scale fails me -- it's worse than "EH", but "AWFUL" seems to harsh.

FANTASTIC FOUR #527: well-written, pretty to look at, and some solid ideas. Won't win an Eisner, but it's a GOOD issue of FF. The copy machine joke died, though -- Nick just had said only 2 copies were allowed.

FLASH #222: Still suffering a bit from the Too Many Characters and Too Many Plans syndrome, and the Let's Space out the Reveal on Boomerang's Mom Some More annoyed the piss out of me, but good solid action comic here, alright. a strong OK.

GIRLS #1: I thought ULTRA was keen from the first issue -- this grabbed me much less, what with the "get me wet" and "squeeze my melons" and the other "we're aiming lower than we might" stuff. While it's hard to judge from one issue, my first instinct is "Sophomore Slump". Looks pretty, though. OK.

GREEN LANTERN #1: I hate to say it -- I mean, I REALLY hate to say it because there's not a bigger Hal fan than me -- but this was pretty dull. Crafted well enough, but I would have expected a much bigger opening and scope. Coast City really seems weird and creepy, too, and I can't imagine anyone living there -- that could actually be a clever little running backstory, but it doesn't feel like one that fits in a GL comic. Plus, whatever happened to "Haven", the crashed alien ship/city thing? There was a quick line in REBIRTH that they vanished, but you'd think that space-savvy Hal would make that a top priority. Well, sure, it was never a good idea to begin with (do you remember the initial press, about how this would be a major facet of the DCU and lots of writers were planning on touching upon it, and yadda?), but it seems like a pretty major thing to just leave hanging. Anyway, glad to see Hal back, but I don't really care about pilots and piloting very much. Sadly, a very low OK.

INCREDIBLE HULK #81: Meh: was it real or not? I mean, he "rides off" at the end -- but if it was all a nightmare, as it were, then where the hell is he riding TO? And the coda was really unnecessary. Nice cover, though. OK

JLA #114: Buh? Look when you start changing costumes and all that it, then set it in a pitched space battle, it becomes pretty damn confusing who is who and doing what and how. Plus, I think I can speak for everyone who is me and say "No, we don't want them to TEAM UP, sheesh!" The Construct angle was clunkily resolved, and I really really didn't buy any of the last page of League speechifying about why the let the CSA get away. Having said all that, I think I'd be interested in reading a Busiek CSA book that stayed 100% in the evil universe -- he throws out lots of cute little bits throughout the issue and arc. Still, this individual comic was pretty incoherent, so: AWFUL.

MACHINE TEEN #1: Slow slow slow; especially since the Big Reveal is sorta spoiled by the TITLE of the book. What surprised me was the art -- it simply doesn't look polished enough for a Marvel title, does it. A great big whopping EH from me.

NEW X-MEN HELLIONS #1: really horrendously long way to go to get that set-up together. And it feels kinda awkward and clunky at that. There's really no reason this shouldn't have just be an arc in the regular title rather than its own mini-series, or, in fact, even had to be a "Hellions" story. A big fat OK.

OMAC PROJECT #2: I liked the first couple of pages, though was frustrated when they cut away because the rest has to happen in another comic book. Don't really care much about the Machiavellian goings on in Checkmate, so most of the rest of the issue was wasted on me. I'll go with OK, though I basically Don't Care.

OUTSIDERS #24: Man, you'd think they'd put a cover blurb on this that says "INSIDERS 2 of 4!" or something so that all of the people who don't religiously follow comic news sites and buy both titles would know they're walking in the middle of a crossover. I feel sorry for the poor shmuck who just reads OUTSIDERS and not TITANS who reads #23 then reads this. "Wait, what now?" Then the rest just devolves into a dumb fight scene, and you're left wondering, "Why didn't she just kill them all, ESPECIALLY after announcing that she had an advantage they didn't -- they had no idea who she was or what she could do" "This has all been part of a plan" is fine, I guess, if the plan is any good. This is not. AWFUL.

RUNAWAYS #4: Kind of a wasted issue -- extraordinarily little happens in the first half, while the second half is yet another "let's walk through the possibilities". The last page fills me with a smidge of hope, though I will gently observe that DD already has/had an heir, so it feels like treading back over ground we've seen before.

SLEEPER SEASON TWO #12: satisfying wrap-up, yes. Successfully went both ways and ate some cake, too. I can give this a VERY GOOD.

ULTIMATE IRON MAN #2: Again, not any Iron Man I've ever read before, but, judging on it's own merits this is solid enough comics. Big quibble in the "tape dissolves, but he can still wear shoes" thing, but, whatever, I'll go with a muted and mild GOOD.

ULTIMATES 2 #6: Nice idea of using "The Defenders" as they did -- that worked really well, I thought. Wish the last page had been a smidge more specific: NO ONE would say "We crippled a nation this morning", they'd say, "We crippled France", or whatever. Other than that, a solid VERY GOOD.

PICK OF THE WEEK: SLEEPER v2 #12

PICK OF THE WEAK: From what I've read so far, OUTSIDERS #24.

BOOK / TP oF THE WEEK: either GOTHAM CENTRAL HALF A LIFE TP, TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD VOL 2THIS ONE GOES TO 11 TP, or WRATH OF THE SPECTRE TP -- all three are great books

Shipping 5/25

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MASSIVE god-damn week. 100 BULLETS #61 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #13 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #640 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #520 ARCHIE #557 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #161 ARMOR X #3 BARBAROSSA AND THE LOST CORSAIRS #2 BATGIRL #64 BATMAN #640 BILLY THE KIDS OLD TIME ODDITIES #2 (OF 4) CAPTAIN AMERICA #6 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #9 CATWOMAN #43 CITY OF TOMORROW #2 (OF 6) COMMON FOE #1 (OF 4) DAY OF VENGEANCE #2 (OF 6) DC SPECIAL THE RETURN OF DONNA TROY #1 (OF 4) DESPERADO PRIMER DOOM PATROL #12 EXCALIBUR #14 EXPATRIATE #2 FANTASTIC FOUR #527 FLASH #222 GI JOE #43 GI JOE MASTER & APPRENTICE VOL II UDON CVR A #4 GIRLS #1 GOLDEN PLATES #2 (OF 12) GREEN LANTERN #1 GRIMOIRE #3 HELLBLAZER #208 HUNGER #1 INCREDIBLE HULK #81 JADE FIRE #1 JLA #114 KARNEY #2 (OF 4) LEGEND #4 (OF 4) LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #6 LOSERS #24 MACHINE TEEN #1 (OF 5) MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #0 NEW WEST #2 NEW X-MEN HELLIONS #1 (OF 4) NIGHTJAR #4 (Of 4) OMAC PROJECT #2 (OF 6) OTHERWORLD #3 (OF 12) OUTSIDERS #24 POWER PACK #3 (OF 4) ROGUE #11 RUNAWAYS #4 SECRET WAR FROM FILES OF NICKFURY SEVENTH SHRINE #2 (OF 2) SLEEPER SEASON TWO #12 (OF 12) SPELLBINDERS #3 (OF 6) STORMBREAKER SAGA OF BETA RAYBILL #5 (OF 6) TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #32 TEEN TITANS GO #19 ULTIMATE IRON MAN #2 (OF 5) ULTIMATES 2 #6 UNCLE SCROOGE #342 WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #657 WOLVERINE SOULTAKER #4 (OF 5) X-23 #6 (OF 6) X-MEN #170 YEAR ONE BATMAN SCARECROW #1 (OF 2) ZORRO #1

Books / Mags / Stuff ALIEN LEGION FOOTSLOGGERS TP AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VOL 9 SKINDEEP TP BATMAN BROKEN CITY TP COMICS JOURNAL #268 DEAD AT 17 VOL 3 REVOLUTION TP DEEP SLEEPER TP DIFFERENT UGLINESS DIFFERENT MADNESS TP EMMA FROST VOL 3 BLOOM DIGESTTP ESSENTIAL THOR VOL 2 TP FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 6 RISING STORM TP FIRST APPEARANCE SERIES 3 INNER CASE ASST GALS VOL 2 GOTHAM CENTRAL HALF A LIFE TP JIMMY CORRIGAN POPULAR ED VINYL FIG KING OF WOLVES TP MEGAMANGA VOL 21 SUPER TABOO EXTREME TP MEGAMANGA VOL 22 SEX WARRIOR ISANE TP NIGHTCRAWLER DEVIL INSIDE TP NIGHTWING ON THE RAZORS EDGE TP PUNCH AND JUDY TP R. CRUMB HANDBOOK HC W/ CD RAVENOUS GN SCREAM QUEEN GN THE BALLAD OF SLEEPING BEAUTYTP TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD VOL 2THIS ONE GOES TO 11 TP VAMPIRE HUNTER D VOL 1 NOVEL SC WINSOR MCCAY VOL 5 EARLY WORKS WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE FANTASTIC 4 PHOTO CVR #165 WRATH OF THE SPECTRE TP

Jeff's Reviews on 5/18 Books

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Oh, that Hibbs. He manages to coax more responses out of you guys than we've ever gotten, knocks a couple reviews out of the park, than tells me he probably won't post until Monday at the earliest because of some crazy shit like, "It's going to be a beautiful weekend and we have plans on both days to take Ben somewhere new. Just post something whenever you can, and I'll follow up. Maybe." Gee, thanks, Mr. Sinatra. I'll be more than happy to warm up the crowd for a few hours until you feel like coming on stage... Oh, and somehow this wasn't supposed to be umpteen million words of blabbity-blab. It just ended up that way.

BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #2: I liked everything up until the patented "Scarecrow gives Batman a hallucinatory freak-out scene" and even that was crafted in such a way (once Bruce figures out the Scarecrow's responsible, he has to figure out if that means Scarecrow is actually in the batcave with him and Silver) as to add some secondary suspense. If I have anything close to a major complaint, it's that "Hush" has turned every Batman arc into The Love Boat. Look, it's The Joker and Two-Face! And Scarecrow and Penguin! And Tom Bosley and Bea Arthur! I can understand it with this team since they're doing the equivalent of a greatest hits tour, but it's really undercut by having it happen in every other Batman book, all the time, and for a few years now. OK.

BIRDS OF PREY #82: I didn't really see much point to the repetition of those captions about Ted Grant's boxing career other than the second time through I realized how well written they were. Things like that and some of the bits throughout (I liked the litte factoid about fighting on sand) and some super-nice art make me wanna give this a Good, but I really have to qualify it: there's still some kinks in the pacing (Barbara's scenes felt tacked on; a story about breaking up a drug ring is becoming a story about Diana and Ted's fight to not compromise their ethics--which is laudable (and arguably more dramatic)--but also points out what a poor match they were for the assignment in the first place) that keep me from being genuinely enthusiastic about it. A wishy-washy Good vote from me, I guess.

BLACK PANTHER #4: The best of the issues by far and Hudlin has a genuinely interesting idea here (the nationality of the invading villains reflect the countries that colonized and plundered Africa, giving the story an almost allegorical resonance and tension) but the execution is still lacking--like many other filmmakers who've come to comics, he seems reluctant to edit anything out or tighten anything up--and none of it is half as interesting or thought-provoking as his response on a letter page to an accusation of racial bias. Taken in tandem though, I'd give this a very high OK.

CABLE DEADPOOL #15: I felt a few self-conscious twinges when Rob L'Heureux mentioned this book specifically as an example of crap in our comments section because, against all odds, Fabian Nicieza has made this book I enjoy reading simply by showing a degree of intelligence and craft that I wouldn't expect from the material. It's a pretty trashy pleasure and I do my best to qualify it as such, but for what it sets out to do, it does it well. There. With that shiningly qualified defense of Cable Deadpool put forward, let me say this issue didn't work for me at all (cue the guy going "wah-wahhhh" on the trombone). Deadpool wasn't particularly funny, the fight scenes weren't particularly interesting, and oh sweet Jebus, that recent Age of Apocalypse thingy makes me never want to see that setting again. It's an Eh issue, but I'll still see where it's at next ish.

CHEMISTRY ONE-SHOT: Steve Peters has a fine drawing line, a weakness for magical thinking, and a tendency to overanalyze things to within an inch of their life. This one-shot, drawn at the rate of a panel a day, starts as a stream of consciousness adventure that becomes an allegorical analysis of a relationship's failings and it alternately charmed and alienated me. It's charming because the facile line art is strikingly detailed and clean, and Peters seems like a sweet guy capable of injecting humor and insight into his narrative. It's alienating because, like a religious zealot or a guy whacked out on drugs or someone with mild Asperger's, he takes something relatively obvious and, incapable of seeing it, keeps insisting it's something complex and oblique. Chemistry looks at a rebound relationship that didn't work out and examines every possible reason it didn't work out (bad karma, self-sabotage, premonitions of emotional dishonesty) except the most obvious one--the girl was looking for a light, fun fling and Steve couldn't bring the light and fun. Although it can take a certain amount of time for something like that to sink in (and such a problem is certainly a fertile ground for great art), Chemistry made me anxious and depressed, in the same way being trapped in a conversation with the zealot, the stoner or the Asperger's person can, as the obsessiveness of its approach goes on to yield no greater insight. Chemistry actually gets an OK from me because I kept reading it, and there were parts of it I found greatly enjoyable. If you like work that honestly communicates how someone else's mind works, you'll like Chemistry. If you like thinking about why a piece of art works and why it doesn't, you'll like Chemistry (particularly if you've read Geoffrey Brown's stuff which covers very similar ground in utterly dissimilar ways). But if you're the type of person who wants to help people fix their problems, or even see them solve their problems themselves, caveat emptor in a very big way.

DAREDEVIL #73: Changes up what seemed like the rules of the arc and that's likely a good thing, but I'm going to miss the modular done-in-one approach. Made it very easy to review. Now, I have to give this a high OK because where it goes from here will tell whether this issue worked at all or not. Maleev's art is fucking rad, though: this issue's art really knocked me out.

DESOLATION JONES #1: Yeah, came out last week, but I just wanted to say that double-page spread where Jones gouges that guy's eye out should go in The Double-Page Spread Hall of Fame. I'm just in awe of it--it gave me that same giddy nauseous brain-slap I got when Sonny Chiba breaks that guy's skull in x-ray during The Streetfighter, and may well work as both brilliant impressionistic storytelling and wicked pop art meta-commentary. No matter how you slice it (and I think Jones is actually an evolution, not a retread, of the classic Ellis character), that spread alone is worth your dollars. Very Good.

EX MACHINA #11: You know when you're in a plane and it loses altitude and your ears pop? Kinda how I felt this issue as Vaughan really changes up his pacing, drops any B story (after ten issues of scrupulously working the A-B story format), and focuses all of his scenes on Tony's drive to close down New York's fortune tellers. On the one hand, the story shot ahead like a rocket and it felt like a shitload happened. On the other hand, none of it really connected with me emotionally which made it even harder for me to buy the premise. Throw in some outrageously bad body language in the opening scenes (it looks like the police commissioner is communicating to Tony strictly through the medium of interpretative dance) and you've got your first Eh issue of this book. Considering how little I liked the wrap-up of the last arc, I hope that's not an indicator of things to come. Fingers are officially crossed.

EXILES #64: Boy, I really miss Mike McKone's art on this book: that guy can really sell a scene, you know? The plot and the writing are fine--in fact, it's pretty good despite some quibblage--but the art has kept everything at the same pitch for the last three arcs: it's the Exiles versus unstoppable bad guy Hyperion, who seems just like unstoppable bad guy Armageddon, who seems just like unstoppable bad guy Sasquatch god. There's always a danger of things flattening out when the storytellers keep going over the top again and again, but I think the art has really abetted that here. I feel like I'm right at the moment I get with a decent pop song on a radio--where the repetition drives me from really liking it to never wanting to hear it again. Call that a very manic OK.

FRIDAY THE 13TH #1: I think this tongue-in-cheek one-shot really misunderstands the nature of the Friday the 13th films which mercilessly exploit teens' fascination and disgust with bodies and their functions--the body's desire to have sex; its ability to break, crack and spurt, all viewed and tested by a brutal, unthinking puritan (by which I mean not only Jason, but also the mindset of a pre-teen child which still lingers in the thinking of a teenger). So, cleaving a body in half with a machete so the insides can be examined like a medical dummy (as happens on page 2): On target. Jason hitting people so hard their heads come out their asses: Very deeply off-target (really, it sounds so much better than it is). Throw in two oblivious teens having sex in a way that parodies all those other oblivious teens having sex and you have a Friday the 13th one-shot perfect for people who really don't like Friday the 13th movies. I say Awful, but I could well be so high on my artsy-fartsy crackpot theories I'm completely off-base.

GOON #12: Mmmm. Goon. The last two issues have really used the coloring to take things to a whole 'nother level, haven't they? And that boxing match with the robot was just a thing of sheer and simple beauty. The story, by its nature, feels a bit redundant but all the little touches more than make up for it. Very Good.

GREEN LANTERN SECRET FILES 2005: That lead story was a little too crafted (the third time someone said "You've never flown with me," I double-checked the credits to see if it'd been based on a Harry Chapin song or something) but undeniably gorgeous-looking, and I thought Cooke switching his typical Toth-based style to a Kane-influenced style in that middle section was clever and audacious. The second story read like a pile of script outtakes from Rebirth and seemed like the sort of thing you'd show people coming on to acid to guarantee that they'd have a really shitty trip. Considering I hardly like Secret Files issues (and I guess really hate people coming on to acid), that all adds up to Good, believe it or not.

HAWKMAN #40: My hope is there's some very clever bait-and-switch going on with the funeral thing, but either way, I just didn't like this issue very much. It's just--I dunno. It reads like a deliberate mimicing of Geoff Johns' patented Classic Character Dogpile, but it lacks Johns' ability to indicate what makes each character in the dogpile unique. The art's darn pretty, but barely rates an Eh.

HERCULES #2: Okay, so much for all the good will I granted Frank Tieri last issue. He's got a good idea he has no interest in actually executing: He's only got three issues left and Hercules hasn't started any of his twelve labors yet! Are we going to get five pages per labor? Perhaps part of the problem is that Tieri is writing this as a comedy, and he and I have two very different ideas about how comedy should work--I think it should be funny, and he doesn't. Awful.

JANES WORLD #19: Pleasant enough soap opera, and the humor runs the gamut from witty to overdone (I really liked the sports bra joke before it was run straight into the ground). But it feels like Braddock is still learning her craft--very solid cartooning chops, but the writing frequently clunks, and an inability to speed up the storytelling leads to a really high pagecount. Said count may explain the $5.95 price tag but that just seems way too high a price for a book this emotionally slight (at least in a comic book store; it may sell just fine on the racks of a GLBT bookstore). Pricing and other problems drops it to Eh for me, but this was actually a very pleasant little read.

LIVEWIRES #4: This book is drenched in clever touches but I think it's not enough for me: a scene like the discussion of the emotion hack should feel like a clever bit of tantalization, but I read it annoyed that it didn't actually reveal anything. I really like Adam Warren's work a lot but somehow this all went wrong somewhere (I guess that really wheel-spinning second issue) and I'm just not with the program. Eh.

MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #14: Starts with a really lousy scene--Spidey flips out because Wolverine cuts him, to the point he actually passes out from blood loss, but at no point do the artist or the colorist feel any urge to put, oh, you know, blood, anywhere in the scene--and pretty much goes downhill from there. Initial amusement over the Clark Kent analogue shoving Peter Parker into a supply closet turned to utter incredulity as the analogue apparently convinces Peter to pray(!) so he can conveniently heal him with his Sentryvision or something. My hope is Hibbs gets some really pointy sticks installed in the store so I can just stab myself in the head with them instead of reading the next issue. It would be much less painful. Awful.

PLASTIC MAN #16: Spins its wheels and vamps, even by the standard set by previous issues: I get the sense Baker has fun thinking of some of this stuff, and takes almost no pleasure drawing it--the tip-off being how the quality of art shifts so dramatically upward whenever he's drawing a female character. As a kid's book, Good, as my book that I'm paying $2.99 for: Eh.

ROBIN #138: Some really interesting art here with fight scenes where the panel borders disappear entirely (a pretty neat trick). But I just couldn't get through the book to save my life. Look, I don't have the faintest god-damn opinion on how a Robin book should read or look, but every page of this oozed wrongness. Either I'm a cranky opinionated bastard (guilty) or this book has seriously got to get its shit together. Or both. Awful.

SEVEN SOLDIERS GUARDIAN #2: If you liked last issue mainly because of the pirate stuff, you'll like this issue even more. If you liked last issue because of the superhero stuff, you'll like this issue at least a little less (Guardian maybe does more than jumps from one subway car to the next, but I don't remember it). The pirate subway stuff is so much fun (and is that an oblique connection to Klarion The Witch Boy on one page?), I gotta go with Very Good.

SIMPSONS COMICS #106: What should have been a solid gold idea--crossing The Simpsons with those old musical parodies you used to see in Mad Magazine--falls astonishingly flat, mainly because the songs are set to tunes like "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover." I'm not sure if the editors insisted that the songs be stuff little kids would recognize or what, but it and the weird "we can't be authentic anymore because we're putting it all out on stage" angle just did not work for me at all. Disappointingly Eh.

SPIDER-MAN HUMAN TORCH #4: Well-crafted and if the intention was to create an issue as visually boring as the books from the era in which it was set, mission accomplished. OK, but nothing to write home about.

STRANGE EGGS #1: Starts off with a lot of charm and snap, then suffers a real case of the Shared Universe Anthology Blues--a significant chunk of the cartoonists seem to not care about (or completely loathe) the given constraints and just do what they want. Kind of a shame the whole project ended up as corporate roadkill, but pretty understandable. Eh.

SUPERMAN #217: The first half made no sense but I kind of liked it anyway (Lois had been wiped into the negative zone for the better part of a year, then when she returns, Superman disappears for seven weeks? Ms. Lane, you should file for divorce now: your husband HATES you.) I really hated the second half and realized the first half only existed to give the second half some impact, so I now hate the first half, too. A low Eh, because it's still an improvement over "For Tomorrow."

TEEN TITANS #24: Effective but I'm pretty shocked Winick let Johns use that last page reveal--it really, really belongs in The Outsiders. I also worry that Judd and Geoff will reinforce each other's worst impulses on this upcoming crossover, but I hope I'm wrong. Good.

UNCANNY X-MEN #459: Jesus. Here's a storyline with a intelligent superpowered dinosaurs, the Savage Land, a third faction of supervillains, and it still wraps up in the dullest way possible. And what kind of dinosaur decides to wipe out the rest of the Earth with a new ice age when some judicious overheating would render the rest of the world ready for its culture's repopulation? I'm almost glad Alan Davis is leaving the book: this way I won't feel his skills are being squandered when Nightcrawler and X-23 face off against the Sh'iar Empire in a brutal Pictionary showdown. Sumptious looking but Awful.

WOLVERINE #28: I have no idea what Mark Millar was trying to accomplish with this issue. In fact, I don't think he had any idea either. Is he trying to show he's not homophobic by having Evil Northstar and his team of zombie ninjas run around killing rednecks and gaybashers? What kind of evil master plan does Hydra have going when there's an explanation like: "Well, SHIELD's in ruins and the superheroes are in a panic, so we thought we'd have some fun killing off rednecks?" My mind is still reeling from it. Throw in a really dumb Sentinel sequence (presumably after Romita refused to accept any more pages from Millar that read like: "Pgs. 14-21: Wolverine kills everyone in sight. Really let yourself go on this one, J!") and you've got full-on Eh or lower.

YOUNG AVENGERS #4: As (almost) always, the time travel stuff makes not a lick of sense (and frankly, wouldn't it be cooler if Kang had set the whole thing in motion because he wants his younger self to be an Avenger and thus give his older self insider knowledge that could help beat the team?) But I liked all the other stuff a lot. There's a good balance of revealing bits and pieces about the various members and continuing to add characters to the team. So even without the sense-licking, I'm calling this Good.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Pretty easy. Either Goon #12 or Guardian #2. I'll go with Guardian #2, just because.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Hercules #2 because I was dumb enough to give Frank Tieri the benefit of the doubt last issue. That'll learn me.

TRADE OF THE WEEK: God damn Marvel's greedy eyes: you cannot tell me there was any reason Giant-Size Marvel needed to be twenty-four fucking ninety-nine. This could have been a great breezy read filled with lots of fun stories, a real snapshot of the age. Instead, it's an overpriced vial of Marvel Zombie crack cocaine, and I barely escaped buying it and letting myself be robbed. (Secondary eye-damning goes to DC for making the cover of their Teen Titans trade look like the animated series in the hopes some kids will actually pick it up and be scarred by the Beast Boy vivisection story.) The trade I went home with is Vol. 3 of Walking Dead, so I guess that's my pick.

 

So there you have it. Don't leave me hanging: what'd you think?

"Why are you always so negative?"

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Got a comment in the Talk Back of last week’s reviews that I thought might be bigger consideration than just responding there were no one would see it. A “Brian” (no last name) wrote: "Whew! Thanks for telling me what stinks, guys! Now I know I don't need to come into your shop and spend any money!”

Which, while fabulous in its snarkiness, actually does bring up something I get a lot: “Why are you so negative all of the time?”

So, let’s go over some of the reasons you’ll find negative reviews here.

First, and foremost, I usually hear it from people who say some variant of “You’re a retailer, your job is to sell.” But, here’s the thing: I don’t see my job as being that specifically limited – my job is to sell, sure, but I see that over the long run, not the short run.

It is like with Variant Covers: some retailers adore the things because “It is like getting a free $100 bill!” Which, of course, it is. But I believe that in the long run taking that $100 can cost you THOUSANDS of dollars in sales as we drive people away from the entire hobby.

In exactly the same way, my job isn’t “just to sell” – it’s to sell QUALITY MATERIAL. If I can discourage someone from buying a shitty-ass comic, then it is at least marginally more likely they’ll buy something good; something that puts the burning need to buy MORE comics within their heart.

What you have to understand is that there’s a fine line here that I constantly try to be smart about. What you see in cold hard type isn’t the same thing you’d necessarily hear on the sales floor – I try very hard to remain positive in the store because a customer there may or may not be interested in my opinion. However, if you’re here, on this website, you CLEARLY WANT my opinion.

On the sales floor, I won’t offer my opinion UNLESS it is solicited, and even then, I tend to try and remain neutral in my phrasing (“It isn’t really my kind of book,” that sort of thing)

There seems to be a supposition that what is said here has direct influence upon the sales floor. After 16 years of selling comics for a living, and more than a decade of internet reviewing, I think I can laugh pretty hard at any connection.

Some of the worst reviewed comics here are the tip-toppest sellers in the store. Look at something like Bendis’ AVENGERS: I absolutely think it is pure crap on a stick, but it has steadily been our #1, 2, or 3 Marvel seller each and every month it has been released.

Understand: most (60-90%) periodical comics are sold by the end of the first weekend. It is incredibly rare that Jeff or I get reviews up in time to influence periodical buying.

Further, every effort I’ve ever made to study it shows that negative reviews simply do not impact even upon our long-term sales of periodical comics. People buy what they want, and reviews have only the most minor of impacts upon those choices.

Ultimately, post-Wednesday reviews have almost no impact upon initial sales – at best, they can be addative to the NEXT time you go into a store. But if you’ve already decided to not buy NEW AVENGERS, I’m not going to make you buy it less.

Another key factor for me, at least, is that negative reviews illuminate the interests of the reviewer AT LEAST as much as positive reviews. If you like all of the books that I hate, then you’re going to approach my positive reviews differently than you would otherwise.

Personally, I HATE reviewers that only give positive reviews – this seems intellectually dishonest to me, and “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” is really only helpful if you’re trying to catch flies.

What I think is that by being HONEST about my opinions, even if it COULD cost me a sale, means that you’re going to value my recommendations all that more. You know I’m not trying to sell you a bill of goods, or whatever happens to be “hot” or whatever.

Further, judging from my email (though seldom the “Talk Backs”), comics professionals generally “appreciate” a negative review more than positive ones. Quite often I’ll get the “Yeah, it’s flawed, and here’s the behind-the-scenes bit you didn’t know”. Joe Casey, not withstanding. Kurt, Sean, Ed, Warren, etc. all of you read my reviews on a semi-regular basis, maybe you could post in the Talk Back if there’s any value to you in here?

Now, if the criticism is that we (well, mostly I) don’t do a good enough job OF explaining WHY I don’t like something, that one is probably valid. I like to think I bat at least .400 though.

Finally, and the point that really trumps any other one: Jeff and I post largely for ourselves. We make no money from this website. There are no banner ads, this is not a profit-making affair (quite the opposite, in fact). I post on MY time (barring the weird odd occasion like this one where I use the AlphaSmart from the counter), time away from playing video games or hanging out with the family or whatever. We don’t get paid for this, barring an incredibly rare PayPal donation or something, so what I’m hoping for is that I’ll make someone (usually Jeff) laugh.

That’s much easier to do in a negative review than a positive one. When was the last time you laughed when I said for the 86th time “USAGI YOJIMBO is an excellent comic that everyone should be buying”? Yeah, exactly.

This is the internet; people LIKE rants. We get thousands of hits, and are usually featured at or near the top of many “blog rolls” every week because of that. It seems to me we must be doing SOMEthing right.

I’m certainly willing to have a rational conversation about the pros and the cons of the approach we take here – please feel free to use the Talk Back to tell me I’m right or wrong, and I listen to all of it. Though I listen far more to people who sign their full name to their opinions…

What do you think?

-B

EDIT after I wrote that: there's a message that follows "Brian"'s, from "Rob L'Heureux" which I thought should also be put on the front page. Here's the whole thing:

" I usually agree with your reviews and pick up your recommendations that I haven't read and sometimes drop titles if I agree with your criticism. But occasionally I think you just miss the mark, the latest two examples being the ASTONISHING X-MEN and FABLES. The art on both titles is exceptional, well above the current standard and using the medium to advantage ( especially FABLES ), and I always enjoy the storytelling. A book like ASTONISHING, where everything seems to have been done with the characters and the writer has to handle these ‘moneymakers’ so gingerly, I mean, this is a monthly serial but the writer still finds fresh material and presents it in an entertaining fashion.

These books haven’t changed my life but I really think a serious critic ( and retailer ) would encourage this level of work. Readers should be encouraged to support these titles, creators should be encouraged to strive for this level of storytelling ( or better ), and publishers should be encouraged to promote and produce more in kind. All of which would help the comic industry.

Sometimes you seem to hold some titles / creators to a higher standard and I hate you. "

I'm curious as to what other people think, though I will note that I gave ASTONISHING an "OK" and FABLES a "GOOD" (!) Am I TOO harsh?

-B