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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

Blame Hibbs.

Circus daze and 8/16 by Hibbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, how about some of them thar comical books?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEADMAN #1: AWFUL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did YOU think?

-B

Arriving 8/23

I'm getting pretty sick of this feast or famine shit -- 3 weeks of very few comics, followed by the insane deluge. 52 WEEK #16 ACTION PHILOSOPHERS THE PEOPLES CHOICE ARCHIE & FRIENDS #103 ARCHIE DIGEST #228 ASTONISHING X-MEN #16 BART SIMPSON COMICS #31 BATMAN #656 BATMAN AND THE MAD MONK #1 (OF 6) BATTLE POPE COLOR #10 BIRDS OF PREY #97 BLUE BEETLE #6 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #24 CLAW THE UNCONQUERED #3 DAREDEVIL #88 DARKNESS WOLVERINE DEADWORLD #5 DMZ #10 ELEPHANTMEN #2 EMO BOY #8 ETERNALS #3 (OF 6) EXILES #85 EZRA EVOKED EMOTIONS #1 (OF 3) FEAR AGENT #7 FELL #6 FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #3 GRENUORD #3 (OF 6) GRUNTS #1 (OF 3) HAWKGIRL #55 HEROES FOR HIRE #1 CW JACK OF FABLES #2 JSA CLASSIFIED #16 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1 KADE SUN OF PERDITION #1 (OF 4) KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #117 LAST CHRISTMAS #3 (OF 5) MARVEL MILESTONES CLAREMONT JIM LEE X-MEN & STARJAMMERS PT 1 NEW AVENGERS #23 CW NIGHTMARES AND FAIRY TALES #17 PAINKILLER JANE #3 PORTENT #4 (OF 4) RED SONJA #13 REX LIBRIS #5 SADHU #2 SHADOWHAWK ONE SHOT #1 SOULFIRE CHAOS REIGN #1 SPAWN #159 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #9 SUPER BAD JAMES DYNOMITE #3 SUPERGIRL #9 SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #21 SUPERMARKET #4 (OF 4) SWAMP THING #29 TRANSFORMERS GENERATIONS (IDW) #6 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #99 ULTIMATES ANNUAL #2 UNCLE SCROOGE #357 WALKING DEAD #30 WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #672 WARLORD #7 WOLVERINE #45 CW WOMEN OF MARVEL POSTER BOOK WONDER WOMAN #2 XENA #2 ZOMBIES #3

Books / Mags / Stuff ABSOLUTE DARK KNIGHT HC BATMAN AND THE MONSTER MEN TP BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD VOL5 GN (OF 19) CHILDREN OF GRAVE TP COMICS BUYERS GUIDE NOV 2006 #1622 DEATH NOTE VOL 7 TP FALLEN ANGEL IDW VOL 1 TP FANTASTIC FOUR RESURRECTION OF NICHOLAS SCRATCH TP GIANT ROBOT #43 HELLBLAZER STATIONS OF THE CROSS TP JUXTAPOZ SEPT 2006 VOL 14 #9 METAL GEAR SOLID SONS OF LIBERTY VOL 1 TP MIDDLEMAN VOL 2 TP PROMETHEA BOOK FIVE TP SENTRY REBORN TP STAR WARS CLONE WARS ADVENTURES VOL 6 TP TEEN TITANS GO VOL 5 ON THE MOVE TP WALT & SKEEZIX VOL 2 HC WARREN ELLIS STRANGE KILLINGSNECROMANCER TP WINSOR MCCAY VOL 8 EARLY WORKS TP

One other note: LOST GIRLS is NOT out on the Wset Coast this week. Even if you see it on the national shipping charts, it didn't arrive on this side of the country.

And, I understand that the midwest and East Coast were allocated to 1/3 of thier copies. Balance (supposedly) next week

What looks good to you?

-B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What else has everyone else been reading?

Last Time 'Round the Corner: My Final Garage Sale Update

Okay. Last update. I'm kinda tired and brain-dead--running a comic book store on a slow day is infinitely more tiring than running one on a busy day. Not sure what law of thermodynamics is covered by that, but it's true.

Tomorrow from 9 to 4 is the garage sale and this is my very last chance to hector you about it. It's on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights. For those travelling by Bart/Muni, get your butts to 24th Ave. and then take any Mission bus down to Cortland Avenue (the delightful Zante Pizza is on one corner of Cortland and Mission and the even-more-delightful Spicy Bite is on the opposite corner). From there, you can either walk up the hill and over (about a ten to fifteen minute walk, depending), or you can catch a 24 Divisadero bus to take you up Cortland to where all the activity will be. It's a Hillwide Sale day to benefit the Bernal Heights Senior Center and I've heard there's 110 registered sites all over Bernal Hill--even if you're not interested in my stuff, there'll be something across the Hill for everyone.

I should be right across from the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. You can find a Google map of that location here.

The pricing is more or less straightforward. All comic books are a quarter, unless you buy 20 or more, and then they go down to twenty cents a pop. All VHS movies, Hong Kong or otherwise, are a quarter. DVDs (with very few exceptions, one of my favorite Seijun Suzuki films among them) are six dollars apiece, but if you buy 7 it's $35 and if you buy 10 it's $40. The PS2 games range between $7 to $10 and are in faboo condition. Action figures are $4 each or 3 for $10. (And yeah, hauling all that stuff from my place is gonna be FUN.)

So, you know. Stop by. Say "Hi." Some of my favorite people in the world have already said they're stopping by so it should be a great time. Hope you can join us, but have a great weekend either way!

Third Time's The Charm: Jeff's Garage Sale Update.

Stupid Picasa. I wrote two different versions of this post and both of 'em disappeared into the ether. So now you get the super-short version. Dammit.

I was a huge Hong Kong movie junkie back in the '90s and I'd be loathe to tell you what I spent on all of these movies back in the day. But I'm not watching them and they're slowly fading (and have faded) and do nobody any good sitting in a storage space. So they're going to be at the garage sale too--a quarter a piece. I can't exactly guarantee that they'll play or be watchable or anything but I think a lot of 'em will be, and a quarter isn't exactly a lot of money to gamble, not when you could end up with a full copy of Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon in your hands.

You know what else you can get for a quarter?

I was looking through all my Kirby books and realized I'd picked up a some dupes back when I was buying the books in lots. So they're in there along with all the other assorted craziness. Hopefully this will entice more of you to make the trek out to the Cortland Avenue on Saturday. A copy of Millionaire's Express and a Kirby Kamandi for fifty cents total? Back in 1995, my head would've imploded at such a concept...

Tomorrow: an update on some books, times and prices, location and bus info. See you then!

Not exactly the Hat Trick: Hibbs on late comics

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

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

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

Look, man, this is fucked up.

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

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

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

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

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

So, it is fucked up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASSHAT OF THE WEEK: goes to Marvel Comics.

What do you think?

-B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arriving 8/16

100 BULLETS #752000 AD #1496 2000 AD #1497 52 WEEK #15 AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS VOL 2 #5 ANGEL SPOTLIGHT CONNOR ONE SHOT ANT #8 BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #168 BOYS #1 CASANOVA #3 CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #25 CATWOMAN #58 CHECKMATE #5 CIVIL WAR X-MEN #2 (OF 4) CLAWS #1 (OF 3) CLIVE BARKERS GREAT & SECRET SHOW #5 (OF 12) CONAN #31 DEADMAN #1 DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #343 GHOST RIDER #2 GIRLS #16 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #3 HELLBLAZER #223 HUNTER KILLER #6 ION #5 (OF 12) IRON MAN #11 JOE LANSDALES DRIVE IN VOL 2 #2 (OF 4) JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #124 MAD MAGAZINE #469 MANHUNTER #25 MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #4 MARVEL WESTERNS STRANGE WESTERNS STARRING BLACK RIDER MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #292 NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE #7 NIGHTWING #123 PAPER MUSEUM VOL 3 PHONOGRAM #1 POISON ELVES DOMINION #5 PRINCESS NATASHA #3 (OF 4) REAR ENTRY #13 (A) RETRO ROCKET #3 (OF 4) REX MUNDI DH ED #1 ROBIN #153 ROKKIN #2 RUNAWAYS #19 SAVAGE BROTHERS #1 (OF 3) SCOOBY DOO #111 SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #29 SHADOWHAWK #14 SHADOWPACT #4 SIMPSONS COMICS #121 STREET FIGHTER LEGENDS SAKURALEE CVR B #1 (OF 4) SUPER TABOO XXX #3 (A) TESTAMENT #9 THUNDERBOLTS #105 CW TRANSFORMERS EVOLUTIONS HEARTS OF STEEL #2 TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD #17 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #32 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #2 WASTELAND #2

Books / Mags / Stuff 2000 AD EXTREME ED #17 ADVENTURES IN OZ DLX S&N HC ADVENTURES IN OZ TP ALTER EGO #61 ANIMATION MAGAZINE SEPT 2006 #164 ASIAN CULT CINEMA #51 BEST OF CURSE O/T SPAWN TP BEST OF DRAW MAGAZINE VOL 2 TP BESTED BY DEVIL ART BOOK BLVD SKETCHBOOK SC BUILDING OPPOSITE GN COMPLETE OMAHA THE CAT DANCERVOL 4 TP (A) DECIMATION SON OF M TP DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL 1 TP DUNGEON TWILIGHT VOL 2 GN ESSENTIAL LUKE CAGE POWER MANVOL 2 TP FAMILY GUY VOL 2 GN (OF 3) FORGOTTEN REALMS DARK ELF TRILOGY VOL 3 SOJOURN TP GIANT ROBOT #43 GOLGO 13 VOL 4 GN GROUNDED TP HARD STORY HC IDENTITY CRISIS TP IMAGINARIES VOL 1 LOST & FOUND TP IRON MAN INEVITABLE TP JORDI BERNETS THE BEST OF CLARA HC JUSTICE SOCIETY VOL 1 TP LEES TOY REVIEW AUG 2006 #166 LITTLE EGO NEW PRINTING GN (A) LUCKY LUKE BILLY THE KID TP NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 4 TP PASSIONELLA AND OTHER STORIESHC PLASTIC MAN ARCHIVES VOL 8 HC PSYCHO TP QUEEN MARGOT VOL 1 AGE OF INNOCENCE GN ROBIN DAYS OF FIRE AND MADNESS SFX #146 SPARROW ASHLEY WOOD HC SPIDER-WOMAN ORIGIN PREMIERE HC STAR TREK MANGA GN TIJUANA BIBLES VOL 7 TP (A) TRANSFORMERS BEAST WARS GATHERING TP

What looks good to you?

-B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What were the rest of you reading, anyway?

The Hat Trick: Hibbs & 8/2

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

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

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

And I was kinda enjoying the first 11 story pages…

Feh, just feh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

....home.

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

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

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

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

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

What did you think?

-B

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

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

As for the funny books:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Et vous?

Arriving 8/9

52 WEEK #14A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #39 (A) ANGEL SCRIPTBOOK #6 ANNIHILATION #1 (OF 6) ANNIHILATION THE NOVA CORP FILES BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #209 BATMAN STRIKES #24 BEDLAM ONE SHOT BETTY & VERONICA #220 BEYOND #2 (OF 6) BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #116 BUCKAROO BANZAI #2 (OF 3) CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #4 CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #5 (OF 10) CONAN & THE SONGS OF THE DEAD #2 (OF 5) DEVI #2 ELRIC MAKING OF A SORCERER #4(OF 4) EMISSARY #3 ESCAPISTS #2 (OF 6) FABLES #52 FANTASTIC FOUR FIRST FAMILY #6 (OF 6) FATHOM #10 FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MAN #28 GREEN ARROW #65 INCREDIBLE HULK #97 JSA CLASSIFIED #15 JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #13 MAN CALLED KEV #2 (OF 5) MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1 (OF 8) MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #15 MEN OF MYSTERY #59 METAL GEAR SOLID SONS OF LIBERTY #7 MS MARVEL #6 CW NEGATIVE BURN #3 NEW X-MEN #29 NEXT #2 (OF 6) PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #105 SCARLET TRACES THE GREAT GAME #2 (OF 4) SECRET SIX #3 (OF 6) SHE-HULK 2 #10 SHRUGGED #2 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #165 SPIDER-MAN FAMILY FEATURING AMAZING FRIENDS SPIKE VS DRACULA #5 (OF 5) SQUADRON SUPREME #6 SULLENGRAY #4 (OF 4) SUPERMAN #655 TASK FORCE ONE #2 TRANSFORMERS STORMBRINGER #2 (OF 4) ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2 ULTIMATE X-MEN #73 VERONICA #173 WOLVERINE ORIGINS #5

Books / Mags / Stuff AMANO TALE OF GENJI HC ILLUSTRATED NOVEL AUTHORITY LOBO HOLIDAY HELL TP CINEFANTASTIQUE JULY AUG 06 VOL 38 #4 DRAWN & QUARTERLY SHOWCASE VOL 4 TP FIREFLY OFF COMPANION INTO THE BLACK TP FRENCH KISS #16 (A) FRENCH KISS #17 (A) GIRL GENIUS VOL 2 TP GIRL GENIUS VOL 5 TP GOOSEBUMPS GRAPHIX VOL 1 CREEPY CREATURES SC GREEN ARROW HEADING INTO THE LIGHT TP GREEN LANTERN SERIES 2 INNER CASE ASST HEAVY METAL SEPTEMBER 2006 KICKBACK HC KITCHEN SINK MAGAZINE #14 LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 5 TP LITTLE LULU VOL 11 APRIL FOOLS TP LITTLE MAN TP NEW PTG LOUIS RIEL A COMIC STRIP BIOGRAPHY TP MARVEL ADVENTURES FF VOL 3 WORLDS GREATEST DIGEST TP MARVEL ZOMBIES HC PENNY ARCADE VOL 2 LEGENDS MAGIC SWORD TP RECESS PIECES HC REVELATIONS TP SPIDER-GIRL PRESENTS AVENGERSNEXT VOL 1 DIGEST TP TOYFARE BLACK COSTUME SPIDERMAN CVR #110 ULTIMATE GALACTUS BOOK 3 EXTINCTION TP WILL EISNERS SPIRIT ARCHIVES VOL 19 HC WOMEN OF MARVEL TP X-FACTOR THE LONGEST NIGHT PREMIERE HC X-STATIX PRESENTS DEAD GIRL TP

What looks good to you? Anything?

-B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what is everyone else reading these days?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like now:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

....home now.

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

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

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

More.... soon.

What did you think?

-B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arriving 8/2

Order form day, swamped. k thx bye. 2000 AD #1494 2000 AD #1495 52 WEEK #13 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #38 (A) AGENTS OF ATLAS #1 (OF 6) ALL NEW ATOM #2 ARCHIE #568 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #172 ARTESIA BESIEGED #2 (OF 6) BATTLER BRITTON #2 (OF 5) BETTY #158 BOMB QUEEN VS BLACKLIGHT ONE SHOT BPRD UNIVERSAL MACHINE #5 (OF5) CREEPER #1 (OF 6) DAVE JOHNSON FC SKETCHBOOK 2006 DETECTIVE COMICS #822 DEVILS PANTIES #3 DOLL & CREATURE #4 (OF 4) DRACULA VS KING ARTHUR #4 (OF4) DRAGONPRO #1 DUMMYS GUIDE TO DANGER #1 (OF4) DUSTY STAR #1 EMISSARY #2 EX MACHINA #22 EXTERMINATORS #8 FALLEN ANGEL IDW #7 FANTASTIC FOUR #539 CW FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #11 HEAD #15 (A) INVINCIBLE #34 JONAH HEX #10 JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #247 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #24 LEADING MAN #2 (OF 5) LOONEY TUNES #141 MANIFEST ETERNITY #3 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #18 MARVEL MILESTONES MILLIE THE MODEL & PATSY WALKER MARVEL TEAM-UP #23 MOON KNIGHT #4 MOUSE GUARD #4 (OF 6) NEW AVENGERS #22 CW NEW EXCALIBUR #10 NOBLE CAUSES #22 OMAC #2 (OF 8) ORIGINAL ADVENTURES OF CHOLLYAND FLYTRAP #2 (OF 2) OUTSIDERS #39 OZ WONDERLAND CHRONICLES NOTOCVR B #1 (OF 4) POWER OF 6 TWISTED APPLES PART 1 PUNISHER #36 SPRINGHEELED JACK NEW PTG #1 (OF 3) STARGATE ATLANTIS WRAITHFALL #1 (OF 3) ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #98 UNCANNY X-MEN #477 USAGI YOJIMBO #95 WORMWOOD GENTLEMAN CORPSE #1 Y THE LAST MAN #48

Books / Mags / Stuff ABSOLUTE KINGDOM COME EDITIONHC AFTERLIFE VOL 1 GN (OF 3) BATMAN SON OF THE DEMON NEW PTG BORIS VALLEJO JULIE BELL FANTASY 2007 WALL CALENDAR CAVALCADE OF BOYS COMPLETE COLLECTION TP CONCRETE VOL 6 STRANGER ARMORTP EXTERMINATORS BUG BROTHERS TP FAMOUS MONSTER MOVIE ART OF BASIL GOGOS SC NEW PTG FINDER TP VOL 8 FIVE CRAZY WOMEN FORTEAN TIMES #212 FRAGILE PROPHET GN I AM GOING TO BE SMALL GN I CANT STOP LOVING YOU VOL 1 GN (A) JUXTAPOZ AUG 2006 VOL 14 #8 KAFKA TP LOUCHE & INSALUBRIOUS ESCAPADES OF ART DECCO TP MORE THAN SPARROWS GN NAT TURNER VOL 1 TP NBX STORYBOOK HC ( NEW PTG) NEW X-MEN CHILDHOODS END VOL 2 TP OUT OF PICTURE TP PEACH GIRL SAES STORY VOL 1 GN (OF 2) PHANTOM LAW OF THE JUNGLE GN RETURN TO LABYRINTH VOL 1 GN (OF 3) SHORT STROKES VOL 2 GN (A) SKIBBER BEE BYE HC SOMETHING FISHY THIS WAY COMES TP SPIDER-MAN 2007 WALL CALENDAR SPIDER-MAN VISIONARIES KURT BUSIEK VOL 1 TP STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL 18 LOVE & LIES TP SUPERMAN 2007 WALL CALENDAR TOUGH LOVE HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL GN

What looks good to you?

-B

Arriving 7/26

Is it just me, or is the idea of a Robert Kirkman scripted, Todd McFarlane drawn comic (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=77952) pretty much a guaranteed recipe for the latest comic book ever? 52 WEEK #12 ACTION COMICS #841 ALL NEW OFF HANDBOOK MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z #7 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #534 CW AMERICAN WAY #6 (OF 8) ANGEL SCRIPTBOOK #5 ANGEL SPOTLIGHT DOYLE ONE SHOT ANNIHILATION RONAN #4 (OF 4) ARMY OF DARKNESS #9 ASTRO CITY SAMARITAN SPECIAL AUTUMN #5 AVENGERS & POWER PACK ASSEMBLE #4 (OF 4) BATMAN #655 BATTLE POPE COLOR #9 (RES) BIG BANG PRESENTS #1 PROTOPLASMAN BIRDS OF PREY #96 BLACK PANTHER #18 CW BLACK PLAGUE ONE SHOT BLUE BEETLE #5 CAPTAIN AMERICA #20 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #23 CASTLE WAITING VOL II #1 CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #4 (OF 10) CIVIL WAR YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS #1 (OF 4) CORPORATE NINJA #3 CRISIS AFTERMATH THE SPECTRE #3 (OF 3) DAREDEVIL #87 EXILES #84 FEAR AGENT #6 (RES) FUTURAMA COMICS #26 FUZZ & PLUCK IN SPLITSVILLE #4 (OF 5) GODLAND #12 HAWKGIRL #54 HIGHLANDER #0 HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY #16 (A) JACK OF FABLES #1 JEREMIAH HARM #4 JLA CLASSIFIED #25 JSA CLASSIFIED #14 JUGHEAD #175 LOVELESS #9 MARVEL SPOTLIGHT ROBERT KIRKMAN GREG LAND MEAT CAKE #15 NEIL GAIMANS NEVERWHERE #8 (OF 9) NEW AVENGERS #22 CW NIGHTWING #122 POWERS #19 PS238 #17 RED SONJA #12 REVVED #1 ROAD TO HELL #1 (OF 3) ROCKETO #10 SAVAGE DRAGON #0 SECOND WAVE WAR O/T WORLDS #5 SHARK-MAN #1 SHE DRAGON #1 SIDEKICK #2 (OF 5) SPAWN #158 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #8 SPIKE VS DRACULA #4 (OF 5) SPUNKY KNIGHT XXX #7 (OF 7) (A) STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #7 STORM #6 (OF 6) STRANGERS IN PARADISE #83 SUPERGIRL #8 (RES) TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #13 TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #39 TEEN TITANS GO #33 TOUPYDOOPS #3 TRANSFORMERS GENERATIONS (IDW) #5 WARLORD #6 WOLVERINE #44 CW XENA #1 X-MEN #189

Books / Mags / Stuff 30 DAYS OF NIGHT THREE TALES TP AFTERWORKS VOL 2 GN ALPHABETICAL BALLAD OF CARNALITY A BLAB STORYBOOK HC BLUESMAN VOL 3 GN BROWNSVILLE TP BUMPERBOY & LOUD LOUD MOUNTAIN GN BUT I LIKE IT HC CAPT HARDON GN (A) CAPTAIN AMERICA RED MENACE VOL 1 TP CHEWING GUM IN CHURCH A YIKESCOLLECTION SC CLASH VOL 1 TP DEAR JOHN ALEX TOTH DOODLEBOOK TP FANTASTIC FOUR BOOKS OF DOOM PREMIERE HC FRUITS BASKET VOL 14 GN (OF 19) HALO GRAPHIC NOVEL HC HELLBLAZER ALL HIS ENGINES SC LITTLE LIT DARK AND SILLY NIGHT HC (O/A) LOVE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE OMNIBUS VOL 1 TP LUCIFER VOL 10 MORNINGSTAR TP MUSEUM OF TERROR VOL 1 TP NANCY DREW VOL 6 MR CHEETERS IS MISSING GN NEW EXCALIBUR VOL 1 DEFENDERSOF THE REALM TP PATHFINDER TP POLLY & PIRATES VOL 1 TP PREVIEWS VOL XVI #8 R CRUMBS JAZZ GREATS T/C BOX ROUGH STUFF #1 SPIKE TP STAR WARS CLONE WARS VOL 9 TP TEEN TITANS VOL 5 LIFE AND DEATH TP TEENS AT PLAY LIKE MOTHER LIKE DAUGHTER GN (A) TESTAMENT AKEDAH TP UNCLE SCROOGE #356 WALT DISNEY TREASURES VOL 1 75 YEARS OF DISNEY COMICS TP WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #671 WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE SPIDER-MAN EXPOSED CIVIL WAR CVR #179 WONDER WOMAN MISSIONS END TP

One note: NEW AVENGERS #22 appears to have been allocated ~50% to any retailer serviced out of Diamond-LA. It's probably going to be VERY HARD to find this on your store's shelves if you're west of the Rockies. However, I fully expect the balance of the allocation to arrive next week, so don't be a dumb-ass and try to buy all of the copies at your LCS or something, thinking it is "rare" or some shit. It isn't any different than the HAL GN arriving on the west this week when it was out in the rest of the country last week...

So.... what looks good to you?

-B

Morph could kick Gumby's ass anyday: Graeme complains about the 7/19 books.

Is it just me, or was San Diego completely devoid of any surprising announcements from either Marvel or DC? I mean, when the most interesting news story is Oni putting out a comic based on Stephen Colbert’s Lady Nocturne 9: A Tek Janssen Adventure, then that says something about the state of the Big Two, right? If you want something else to be said about the Big Two, then you had to look no further than this week’s releases: Civil War! Batwoman’s first appearance in 52! Justice League of America #0! It’s all ground-breaking originality this week!

*Ahem*

52 WEEK ELEVEN: Why did it take me this long to realize that Greg Rucka – who I would lay money wrote the majority of this issue, centering as it does around the Renee Montoya/Batwoman plot, although there’s a scene in here that’s very very close to a scene in Geoff Johns’ first arc in the current Green Lantern title, so maybe he had some say in there as well – is the new Chris Claremont? I mean, okay, so everyone and their sister knew that Rucka shares Claremont’s fetish for the take-no-shit strong female character type, but when the main Intergang bad guys here turn out to be half-forgotten characters from Rucka’s Detective Comics run years ago (much in the same way that Rucka’s OMAC Project series was centered around a character and unresolved plot from his Detective run, giving said characters superpowers and a new ongoing series of her own), then it all becomes very clear; he shares Claremont’s self-referentialism as well. Of course! That said, this is pretty much Eh. Batwoman’s appearance isn’t too annoying (although it would’ve been nice if she’d had a personality while in the outfit and Joe Bennett could’ve turned down the posturing when she appeared without the outfit), and there’s some forward motion on both the Montoya and Cult of Conner plots. The best part of the issue may be the last four pages, however – not that the History of The DC Universe all of a sudden becomes good or anything, just that it finishes its run with this issue.

CIVIL WAR #3: I give up. By the time I finished this issue, I have no idea what Civil War is really about anymore, because all this mini seems to do is set up plots for other series to follow up on. It’s not about the destruction of Stamford, because that becomes more and more of a McGuffin (and set-up for the Wolverine crossover issues) with each page; no-one seems to care about dealing with rebuilding the town, or discussing how the tragedy has even really affected anyone outside of “Well, they passed a law because it’s so appalling”. It’s not about the Superhero Registration Act, either, because that too has become a McGuffin, a reason for the characters to fight and little else; any discussion of the pros or cons of such an act was either made off-panel or in crossover books, and the Act passed in the middle of the last issue. It’s not about Spider-Man unmasking, despite the amount of space dedicated to that happening last issue, because that’s hardly referenced this issue – any follow-up happens, of course, in the Spider-Man books. Instead, it’s about… Well, I really don’t know. Super-heroes fighting, I guess? The more I read of this series, the more it feels like it’s been plotted by a twelve-year old. You can almost imagine a kid making the story up (“And then there’s this big disaster and Iron Man wants everyone to, like, sign up to be superhero policemen or something and Captain America says NO! and they fight and Captain America has this thing that switches Iron Man’s armor off, but then Spider-Man beats up Captain America while Iron Man gets his armor working and then THOR COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD AND WINS BY HITTING EVERYONE WITH LIGHTNING! Cool! And get this – Tony Stark used to fuck Emma Frost!”) because everything happens without consequence or context here – characters act out of character to service a plot that’s centered around “the big event” of the issue, as opposed to anything else. There seems to be less and less actual story each issue, just action set pieces that don’t have any dramatic punch because, we know by now, nothing will get followed up on in this book. Crossovers, maybe, but this series? This is where you see the “highlights,” edited in such a way to be meaningless. I know that some people will turn up and again accuse me of anti-Marvel bias, but, really; this was Crap.

CIVIL WAR: X-MEN #1: And this was… Okay, I guess. It’s entirely unnecessary, and I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with Civil War at this point, because it seems more like a continuation of the House of M/Decimation/198 plot than anything to do with this year’s big crossover, even with an Iron Man guest-shot and throwaway lines of dialogue talking about the Superhero Registration Act. Unless there’s some stunning revelation within the next four issues where we discover a real connection to whatever Civil War ends up being about, then this is probably another example of Marvel using mini-series to tell stories that could, and probably should, be told in one of the three ongoing X-Men series. Yannick Paquette’s Kevin-Nowlan-lite art is always nice to look at, though.

THE FLASH: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #2: I skipped issue 1 of this revamp, but I’ll tell you this: The title is the best thing about this book. There’s a scene in the middle of the book that perfectly encapsulates what’s wrong with the whole thing: Supporting character Valerie Perez gets a telephone call. The first panel has her saying “How did you get this number?!” The second goes for a closer look (with the legs of her glasses disappearing, for some reason), with her continuing to talk: “No, I told you never to call me again, anywhere…” and then the third panel has her gritting her teeth and anger lines coming off her face, as she finishes with “…I don’t care if you are my father!!!” Yes, three exclamation points. Any comic with foreshadowing that obvious, with dialogue that bad, is not a good comic, my friends. It’s not the worst comic ever made, just clumsy and kind of amateurish. Crap may be the word, in fact, but I’m surprised that I got through that review without fanboyishly complaining about DC getting rid of Wally West without realizing the unique position he had within the DC Universe (The only sidekick to have grown up, assumed his mentor’s mantle and be accepted by the mentor’s peers, more or less) and instead replacing him with a generic conflicted-but-fated-to-be-great-if-only-he’d-accept-his-destiny eponymous lead.

Oh, wait.

Damn.

JACK KIRBY’S GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS #1: Think that “Galactic Bounty Hunters” is a surprisingly un-Kirby-like name? Well, one of the two text pieces at the back of this first issue about the creation of the book lets loose the fact that they were originally called “the Wonder Warriors,” which is much closer to what you’d expect (it’s also as good a name as Galactic Bounty Hunters, and fits the story better, which kind of makes you wonder why it was changed). Shock of the week: This isn’t as bad as I’d expected. In fact, there are parts where the dialogue (for the most part, atrocious) achieves some kind of comedic zen badness – when the monster is captured at the start of the book, one of the main characters warns another: “Careful, Tyr… She bites!” “And I have rabies!” the monster replies – and the art isn’t as slavishly Kirby-esque as, say, the art in Godland (In fact, it’s similar to what Ron Frenz inked by Karl Kesel – who inks part of this book – would look like)… It’s all just very dated, which is (sadly) to be expected, probably. It’s worth an Eh, at the very least, and if this were twenty years ago, I’d probably be eating it up with a spoon.

GUMBY #1: I met Art Clokey in San Diego, kind of. He was there, behind the table at a booth, looking more than a little bewildered by everything that was going on, while someone – possibly Mel Smith, who edited this book – tried to explain Gumby to me. We didn’t have Gumby when I was a kid, you see, we had Morph, so when someone jumps out and says “Hey, you wanna meet Art Clokey, creator of Gumby?” to me, my first response is pretty much “Who…?” All of which gave a strange context to reading this first issue of new Gumby adventures, because I couldn’t shake Matt Maxwell’s explanation that, even though Clokey was straight, there always seemed to be an LSD influence to the character that I was just experiencing for the first time.

That said, this was a surprisingly Good book. Yes, there are the weird parts about criminal clowns and lines about children should be locked in cages, but there was something sweet about Gumby’s awkwardness around his new girl friend that came from somewhere much more innocent and touching. I’m not convinced that I would ever need to experience Gumby again, mind you, but still…

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #0: I don’t know if I should admit my impure love for Bravo’s camp classic “Project Runway” in public or not, but picking up this to read with its cover line “Who’s In?” while Heidi Klum is onscreen telling the Runway competitors that fashion is a business that you can never tell who’s in and who’s out provided a special pop-culture crossover moment that the rest of this book failed to reach no matter how hard it tried. Ignoring the fact that it kind of ruins Wonder Woman’s “Who will Wonder Woman be?” plot – Diana, and in a slightly revised costume that makes its first appearance here, for those who care – Brad Meltzer just tries too hard to convince us that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are all pals again despite their past differences. We’ve all read Infinite Crisis, Brad, and they all seemed pretty chummy at the end of that series, thanks. The flashbacks and –forwards are cute, with art of varying degrees of greatness (Eric Wight, you win again), but… there’s no point to the book at all. No forward motion that we didn’t already know about, and the looks back are too short to really provide any new insight. We don’t even really get a feel for what the new series is going to be like, because there’s no real story here. All I can tell you is that it looks like Meltzer will continue to use his narration that makes Jeph Loeb look concise, and new series artist Ed Benes really really likes the 1990s Image artists. So, um, huzzah? Eh.

THE SADHU: I never read any Crossgen books, but this is exactly how I imagined them to be – Generic dialogue filling a slow story with hints of mythology, illustrated by non-descript artists whose work is made to look a lot better thanks to some pretty good coloring work. As with most things this week, Eh.

PICK OF THE WEEK turned out, practically by process of elimination, to be Gumby. Who would’ve suspected that? To be fair, my real pick of the week is also my TRADE OF THE WEEK, and it’s something that has been out for awhile but only just picked up by me in San Diego after meeting the author: Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards, by Jim Ottaviani and “Big Time Attic” (Really artists Zander and Kevin Cannon, as well as Shad Petosky). If you can imagine a graphic novel about the real life battle between two scientists fighting over the discovery of dinosaur bones in the late 1800s Wild West (and slightly less Wild East), written in a style that crosses Matt Fraction’s recent Five Fists of Science with history nerd goddess Sarah Vowell that guest-stars PT Barnum, Buffalo Bill Cody and President Ulysses S. Grant and not get excited about it, then you’re a stronger man than me (Here's Bri reviewing it when it came out, last year). PICK OF THE WEAK, meanwhile, is Civil War, because even though Flash was probably a worse comic overall, Civil War is more of a wasted opportunity…

What did the rest of you buy this week?

Lifestyles of the Sick and Craptacular: Jeff's Takes on 7/12/06 Books....

Finally, I am sick. Months after Hibbs and the GMc became deathly ill and recovered, I was struck--on my last four days of vacation--with an ultra-phlegmatic cold that makes me incapable of concentrating on anything but recently rented video games (which, now that I think of it, I was supposed to return last night. Crap.) as opposed to comic books and movies and a writing deadline for the next newsletter. Yes, pity me, boo hoo and all that. It does suck, though, when you return to work and a coworker cheerfully asks you, "Hey, welcome back! How was your time off?" But, before you can answer, you all but yank the tendons out of your neck turning away so you can release a wrenching set of coughs followed by a wheeze that sounds like half-death rattle, half-squeak toy. Good times, my friend. Good times. But enough about me. What about the remarkably healthy comic book industry?

52 WEEK #10: It gives me pause that this has one of the best scenes in the series so far--Clark Kent getting that scoop, old-school style--and it's about a character who's more or less not a character in the book. 52, it seems, suffers from a surfeit of ambition, in more or less the same way that a four-year old does when given two or three too many glasses of Kool-Aid: there's a lot of pointing and shouting and jumping, and one certainly gets the feeling something pretty damn cool is trying to be conveyed, but it's too diffuse to really care about. Rather than convincing me the DCU is one big place, 52 has convinced me of almost the opposite: the DCU is actually a very small place, where whatever Booster Gold is whining about this week is far more important than how people in devastated cities are trying to rebuild their lives...and that's kind of sad. OK, I guess, but I'm a little worried by how many storylines are up in the air 20% of the way through.

AMERICAN VIRGIN #5: This book is notoriously good at making me hate it just as I'm beginning to like it, and vice-versa. At the core of it is, I think, Seagle's essential, um, "fratboyishness" when it comes to sex and religion--respectful to the subjects' faces, but essentially mocking and disdainful at the core of things: how else are we to regard a scene where the hero, overcome in a confusion of religious and sexual longing, tries to fuck a closed casket? Is it anything other than the creator's acknowledgment that he can't take the protagonist's plight too seriously? (Twin Peaks fans, by the way, may remember a similar casket scene, which ended up casting a rather chilling insight on the grieving character when later facts came out.) If American Virgin was written by someone truly mesmerized by sex and religion--and say what you will about Alejandro Jodorowsky but Santa Sangre conveys more in any given 45 seconds about those subjects than American Virgin has in five issues--then I'd be down with it. Similarly, someone with a healthy skepticism, if not blatant disgust, at religious and sexual longings (like, I dunno, Philip Roth?), I'd be down with that, too. But American Virgin can't really decide on the tone it wants and so settles for a very Eddie Haskellish, "Why, yes, Mrs. Cleaver. The desire to know God is a truly wonderful thing. I've frequently said the same thing to Anthony myself." As the notorious comic book critic Revelations 3 put it, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth." Sub-Eh.

ANNIHILATION SILVER SURFER #4: Seemed like a whole lot of work for the end result (Silver Surfer's walking the streets again for Galactus the Pimp? Makes for a pleasing arc for the character, I think) but at least it wasn't the big-ol' suckout of Annihilation Super Skrull. OK, but you should keep in mind I can't remember any details from issue #3 at all, so it might be either better or worse than that.

ANNIHILATION SUPER SKRULL #4: Like I said, big ol' suckout. I know the creative team was trying to be clever with their "Aha! You thought the supporting cast you didn't care about would die so that the title character you don't care about would live, didn't you?" maneuver but it's six of one, half-dozen of the other. So the supporting characters we don't care about are never seen again, and the title character we don't care about will show up in eighteen months, probably without any acknowledgment this mini ever happened. Big whoop. Awful.

CIVIL WAR DIRECTORS CUT #1: Flipped through this just to see the big ol' DD spoiler everyone's been talking about, but I ended up being caught by a chunk of Millar's earlier draft where the inciting incident to the event is the death of Happy Hogan. In Millar's script, Hogan's next to last line in this lifetime is:

[Witty banter]

to which Pepper Potts responds something like:

[Laughter, probably something about Tony Stark]

This has both amused me, and unsettled me, for close to a week now. Do you know how many conversations in the Marvel universe run right along the lines of: [Witty banter] [laughter, probably something about [name-drop important Marvel character here]]? Fucking all of them, that's how many. I can't tell what creeps me out more, that Millar is so obviously aware of it, or that he's so obviously aware of it and still can't be bothered to put it in his early drafts because that's how unimportant it is to his "this is my face when I'm fucking Marvel continuity in the ass" mega-event. Sorry, Speedball; better you than Happy. OK for the painful insight.

CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #3: I admit it: I read this just to see what piece of verse or concept of national pride Jenkins will screw up in his back-up strip. (Between these and Jurgen's History of the DCU over in 52, we're kind of in a Golden Age of amazingly shitty back-up strips, aren't we?) It was something about some guy who fought in the (first? real?) Civil War and whose last thought before dying was Captain America holding his shield high in the air where it's not protecting anything except Captain America's big ol' forearm. I can't wait for the other seven issues to see how American history gets hilariously trivialized, I really can't. Awful.

ESCAPISTS #1: Liked this when I was paying too much for those damn Escapist anthologies, and I like it here for a buck. Like Jog, I loved Chris Ware's "I Guess," but unlike Jog, I very much enjoyed that story's narrative trick being briefly revisited here. Jog, in fact, condemns this issue as being too cute by half but let's face it, Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is also too cute by half (or more, depending on how you feel about The Escapist saving Salvador Dali from drowning at a cocktail party) so I think it's quite a good pairing. As long as we don't have to wait another eight months for the next issue, I'm hopeful. Very Good, even if I had to pay regular comic book prices but for a dollar? Go get it, is what I'm saying.

GHOST RIDER #1: I didn't like the preceding mini, so it's not particularly surprising I wouldn't like this, right? But I didn't like the Ennis mini because he obviously thought GR was a crap character: here, it's the inept execution. The Ghost Rider has to stay in Hell because he wasn't honest with a shady character he just met? If nothing else, Hell must be filled with women who go to bars and people who answer telemarketer calls at dinner time. Pretty art, though. Eh.

GREEN ARROW #64: I'll be honest, I was gonna cap on this. It has this two page intro to a character we never see again--a dude who owns a movie theater who's been showing the same movie for six months to packed houses but is trying to smuggle the popcorn and oil back into this cordoned off neighborhood when he stumbles across the fight--that's obviously meant as no more than your averrage "average bystander/local color" hook straight out of a '70s Marvel comic, but which I found tremendously interesting, moreso than anything that Green Arrow and his buddy Grout were going to do for the rest of the book. So this review was gonna point that out, that writers should either avoid making their local color more interesting than the main plot of the book, or else realize what that says about their main plot--but thinking back on it, I seem to recall Scott McDaniel did a great job giving the "heroes surrounded by junkie zombies" scenario an intense claustrophobic feel--like something from classic John Carpenter. So the capping is called off. McDaniel's work, which I normally find scratchy and rushed, saves the day, and this was actually pretty OK.

GREEN LANTERN #12: Such is the rough magic of Geoff Johns: he can actually take three concepts I pretty much loathe--that annoying Cyborg guy, the manhunters, and Hal Jordan, as written by Geoff Johns--and draw connections between the three of them that actually intrigue me. That the Cyborg, also in his way a test pilot like Hal Jordan, ends up being the new head of the Manhunters (who are similarly a dark mirror to the Green Lantern Corps) is one of those nifty ways of playing with continuity that's one of the true joys for an old-school comic nerd like me. I'll go Good, even though if someone other than Van Sciver was drawing those Manhunter Transformer robot thingies, I'd realize it was only just okay.

MAN CALLED KEV #1: I skipped the last Kev story (or maybe two) because although I liked the character, he didn't work well with The Authority. So, although I've seen critics I trust suggesting the Kev stories have already been played out, I wouldn't know, frankly, and so quite enjoyed this: it was the first bit of Ennis in a while that really reminded me of his lovely work on Hitman, where you're laughing at lowbrow humor on one page and actually touched when a character dies on the next. So if you're semi-clueless like me: Good.

MS MARVEL #5: Wow. This isn't cancelled yet? So dull Frank Springer should be drawing it. Awful.

NEXT #1: DC really specializes at the pretty-looking crash-and-burn, for which this can serve as Exhibit A. Tad Williams, from what I can tell, has written fifty-two kajillion fantasy books (the titles of at least two of which, The Dragonbone Chair and Tailchaser's Song made me laugh like Beavis and/or Butthead for five minutes), at least two of which are trilogies, and seems to assume, like any good fantasy writer, that a truly interesting set-up is worth explaining, and over-explaining, until the reader finally understands how truly interesing this set-up is. Also, like any good fantasy writer, Williams has a sense of humor a little too high on the whimsy side of things for my taste so the captions read as if written by someone over-exposed to the lethal radioactive elements Douglas Adamsium and Monty Pythonite-230. What I'm saying? Is that I thought this was pretty Eh but I realize it's not written for me, it's written for the two dudes in the Firefly dusters I'm gonna be stuck behind for 45 minutes at Worldcon two years from now while waiting in line to see the Wonder Woman trailer, and one of those dudes is gonna say that Tad William's Next was underappreciated, and the other dude is gonna emphatically agree and then they'll both talk about how awesome The Dragonbone Chair was. And who am I to disagree?

PINK SNIPER GN: We got this in and I was bummed it wasn't some insane "Spice Girls Meets Golgo 13" Killer Princesses type title, but regular creepy ol' pr0n? According to the solicit info, "Med school student Niibia is abducted by the sexiest and horniest goddess of the school, Haruana! Pink Sniper is filled with half-animal people, flying sci-fi vehicles, loose women, and Haruana’s giant breasts!" Which begs at least two questions: (1) how many goddesses does any given med school have? and (2) Does any of that sound cooler than a "Hello Kitty" sniper rifle?

ROKKIN #1: A terrible book but an awesome title. A barbarian called Rokkin? My only hope is that he teams up with the thief, Poppin, a mage, Free-Sty-Lin, and together they can successfully loot the mysterious treasure of Beeattt Street. Seriously, though, this suffers from some very lame approach to the narrative and a real deficit of imagination, but the art is occasionally striking and odd--if you can imagine someone trying to make the Ralph Bashki film Wizards look more like the work of J. Scott Campbell, you'll kind of get an idea of the influences--but given a choice in generic barbarian hijinks, I'll take the uglier but more accomplished Claw. Awful, I'm afraid.

SHAOLIN COWBOY #6: The art wasn't at its usual "Sweet Jesus!" level, because everything seemed a little too dark. (The printing process maybe?) But the book had at least two mind-blowing moments--the Cowboy fleeing a pack of attacking sharks by leaping from body to body, and that amazing cross-section panel of the shark (and the head inside the shark's mouth)--and a genuine laugh or two. Not up to its usual standards of making my hair stand on end, but Very Good nonetheless.

SUPERMAN #654: How long until well-done Superman stories get dull? Hey, I'm just glad we've got the chance to worry about it! (We've had far too long to ponder the answer to the "how long until poorly done Superman stories get dull" question.) Like Graeme, I really liked this. Unlike Graeme, I don't have many compelling reasons as to why--if forced, I'd say that by putting the tension on how Clark's gonna keep his job rather than how Superman's gonna save the day is a very, very smart choice and very well handled. Very Good.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #31: You know, when Millar's not trying to fuck somebody or other in the ass, he can actually tell a neat little story. I liked the turns in this one, even if they were told with a remarkable lack of nuance. ("Reed... why was Doom...crying?") Land's art tends to sucks the action from a scene, however, and when he's in a rush, as here, you don't get any of that lovely "wow, it's like the most awesome van art ever!" feeling from it. It's just ugly and inert. Let's call the whole thing OK.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #97: Bagley's art (or maybe the finishing inks) also seemed rushed here--I assume he's trying to get through drawing his entire run on USM before he drops dead from exhaustion--but don't take my word for it: I didn't even notice this was the part one of the "Ultimate Clone" saga until I finished the book. (Yeah, that'll instill some confidence in my reviews....) Kind of a bummer because I thought Ultimate Scorpion was actually pretty cool before the reveal. Only three issues until the bug-eating? That's coming up quick. Good.

WALKING DEAD #29: Kinda surprised Kirkman chose to milk the misery for another issue, as I thought the big bloody finish to this arc would've started by now, but whatevs. What I found interesting were the number of people in the store who objected to the rape scene as being "too much" despite the fact that it was entirely off-panel. I thought it did an excellent job of being repellent without exploitative, and would only object to it if it turns out to have been done for little more than padding out the issue's page count. Good.

WASTELAND #1: I think the artist dropped the ball here if you ask me--I know it's a challenge to draw dozens of people dressed in rags in a desert near a shantytown and make it visually compelling--but the answer to such a challenge is not a bunch of cheap shortcuts. If nothing else, the reader really could have felt the loss of that tiny little town at the end of the story if more work had been put into it. And don't even get me started on the fights, most of which looked two folded pairs of curtains blowing about in a wind. By contrast, the scripting was very competent and did a good job putting all the pieces and hooks in place, but it seemed dutiful, rather than inspired--more like ultra-competent work-for-hire than the long-brewing personal project Johnston says it is on the text page. The page-to-price ratio is incredibly generous, so let's say call the book OK, but it's gonna take more than this--a lot more--for the book to catch on. I hope it finds what it needs.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Reprint or not, Escapists #1 is a Very Good comic at a great price. Too-dark printing or not, Shaolin Cowboy #6 continues to make a compelling argument that Geoff Darrow be crowned King Crazypants of Comic Book Town and soon.

PICK OF THE WEAK: Almost too many choices, huh? I'll go with Rokkin just so you can imagine me yelling that in a stoner voice while playing air guitar: Rokkin!

TRADE PICK: Dunno--I'd say Buddha Vol. 2 SC but that's just guesswork on my part. But that second Showcase of silver-age Superman stories has been blowing my mind for several weeks. If you haven't checked that out yet...

MANGA FIX: I don't know how many copies of the first volume of Dragon Head Hibbs sold, but it apparently it wasn't enough for him to bother with Volume 2. Lemme get back to you on this one.

NEXT WEEK: San Diego! I'm not going! Are you?