Let Loose From The Noose: Graeme reviews Amazing #539.

I am completely ignoring everything Bri said in his last post, apart from the comment about Brave and The Bold, because it really is that enjoyable - I'll get to it later this week, but if you dig superheroes who don't frown or want to read an enjoyable Supergirl for a change, you should definitely pick it up. Right now, though, I'm going to do an Amy Whitehouse and get back to black. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539: The main problem with this book isn't actually really a problem with the book at all, but with all the expectation that's been created around the thing. For months now, we've been told "Spidey puts on his black costume! Yes! His black costume! You're probably wondering why, aren't you? Why he'd put on his black costume! Well, the answer's in Amazing Spider-Man #539! Read that and know why he's putting on his black costume!," creating this expectation that the issue would - at least in part - be devoted to some revelation as to why he'd return to the costume he's been avoiding for almost 20 years.

And then the explanation for why he puts on the costume gets taken care of in three panels at the end of the book:

"I put this here a long time ago. I got rid of it in the first place because I thought it sent the wrong message. Maybe I kept it because there might come a day when I'd WANT to send that message. That the rules don't apply anymore. That the gloves are off. That I can't stop, can't BE stopped, until I find the people responsible for shooting May."

So, basically, he puts it on because he's pissed and thinks that he looks more bad-ass wearing it. Plus, it's slimming. But that doesn't really work as a shocking reveal that has been hyped for months - it's what's more or less been expected by the audience. But that isn't necessarily bad writing; doesn't it just show that J. Michael Straczynski is writing the same character as the fans want to read? Maybe it's bad hype because it created anticipation that the comic itself was never really meant to handle, if that makes sense. And that anticipation, that "There is an important reason why there's a return to the black costume! And the return is so important itself that we'll brand all the Spider-Man books with a 'Back in Black' logo to make people aware of it!" is so cynically manufactured, considering that we're all intelligent readers who know that the real reason he's wearing the costume again is because of Spider-Man 3 in a couple of months.

The other thing is, of course, that the internal reason doesn't really make sense in the comic world. Sure, it's a fairly generic "The gloves are off. No more Mister Nice Guy. Say Hello to my leetle friend" piece to show that everything is different and more serious for our hero now, and that genericness and lack of attention just shows off how unimportant the change in outfit really is to the actual plot, but in terms of *ahem* Spider-Man continuity, wasn't the reason that he abandoned the costume not because "it sent the wrong message" but because Mary-Jane was attacked by Venom and the sight of the black costume traumatized her? And didn't he, you know, destroy the costume, and not just hide it away in case he got grumpy later? I'm not a Spider-Man continuity expert - Matthew Craig, where are you? - but I feel that there's definitely an emotional thread here that's being ignored.

Anyway, the comic itself is Okay. We've seen all of this before - "Peter Parker is pushed too far by attacks on those he loves" is Stock Spider-Man Plot #23, after all - and there's nothing to really distinguish this version from any of the others other than its own sense of importance (Aunt May has even died before, so her potential death doesn't have the dramatic weight it's probably supposed to). The choice of Kingpin as main villain continues to be odd in light of what happened a couple of months ago in Daredevil, necessitating "This story takes place before Daredevil #93" captions that are oddly nostalgic, and Ron Garney's art is pleasantly readable. It's fine, but instantly forgettable, which may not what Marvel was intending, really, but is better than a lot of the other big Marvel comics recently. Success through mediocrity - It's the new Rock'n'Roll, apparently.

I've Coined A New Term!

"Schrodinger's Cap" is a term explaining how Captain America can be alive in one Marvel title while dead in another title that comes out the same week.

I should have something more substantial later today but right now I've got a couple of different deadlines breathing down the back of my neck. Really, though, you should check out the comedy gold that is Hibb's post below. Just beautiful.

Slowly, I turned....

I'm utterly dead after today's day of work -- not only did I have to get through the new books, but the photocopy of the new PREVIEWS (the "blackline") appeared today, so I had to power through that, deciding on what to list and what not on our next sub form so I could get it to Graeme so G knows WHAT to discuss in the new ONOMATOPOEIA. Speaking of Graeme, since I know he's not likely to link-blog this one, but check out This thread on Millar World, where Millar evidentially decides Graeme is an internet stalker of some kind. I love this bit: "I think he's Scottish, though I've never actually met him, but the people who have say he's actually OK... until my name is mentioned. The very mention of my name has him, in their words, swivel-eyed with rage."

Yeah, man, I'll back that up -- SWIVEL-EYED WITH RAGE! Just mention Mark Millar in Graeme's presence and he turns beet-red. Thick black smoke starts pouring out of his ears and nose. His rage and anger is so great that he starts to make this peculiar humming/whistling noise, and if you don't interrupt him, the sound build until it actually makes him lift off the ground, and float around the room with rage. One eye twitches left, and the other one? Man, it just starts to spin in circles. First clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then it does this sort of backwards Zorro Z kind of thing, faster and faster until you think YOUR eyes are going to start doing it too if you keep looking at him. Milk will start to curdle around ol' McMillan if you say the "M-Word". Why, just saying "Mark" causes this anger-ray to radiate from the pits of G's soul, such that colors seem a little less bright, sounds a little more discordant. Banshees and Nessie alike flee in terror when Graeme is in his "Millar Rage".

How mad does he get? You really want to know? Man, Graeme gets SO mad that his hair actually starts to grow back in, JUST SO he can rip it out at the roots again, screaming "MILLAR THAT BASTARD, HE CAUSED ME TO LOSE MY HAIR!"

He's Lex Luthor to Mark Millar's Superboy. Yes.

I can't count the number of times I'm have to physically hold Graeme back (and it took me, Lester and Brill to wrestle him to the ground this one time!) when some one mentions his name. I can even recall this time we had to restrain him when we were discussing 300, and he wigged out: "No, Frank! We're talking about Frank Miller, man! PUT THE GUN DOWN!!!"

I'm even taking a chance with this post -- sometimes, just seeing The Infernal Name in print, I've been told he'll just put his hand through the monitor. He's gone through 20 this year alone.... and it's only March!

I live in daily fear. I really do. And thank god you've all been warned now -- DON'T SAY THAT NAME IN FRONT OF GRAEME MCMILLAN.

-B

PS: Seriously, it sounds like Millar and G have been in email contact, and have worked things out. Good. I think its pretty crazy insane that MM made that rant, and exhorted his readers to dig up every bad thing G ever said, in the first place.

Here's the thing though, and I'm just speaking for myself, if you don't want people to call you out on crazy batshit insane things you say on the internet, then, dunno, maybe you shouldn't say them. But when you say them EXPRESSLY TO CREATE CONTROVERSY, then maybe you shouldn't be too surprised when, uh, they create controversy. Or, if you prefer "controversy".

PPS: This is going to be a weird week because we don't have a Massive Book That Everyone Is Hounding Us For. Two weeks ago: CAPTAIN AMERICA #25. Last week: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1. This week...

...

...

Well, let's MAKE one, OK? Tomorrow morning, I want you to walk into your Friendly Local Comic Shop, and ask them for a copy of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2. I read my copy tonight on the bus ride home, and, I think I might have even liked #2 better than #1. There's a wonderful denseness to the narrative, lots and lots of things happen, and it's just lovely to look at. This is nothing less than a love letter to the DCU, and, it should probably be called MARK WAID'S DC UNIVERSE ADVENTURES. Maybe add an "ALL STAR" before that, even. This is quality superhero comics, with heart and soul, and exactly the right amount of FUN. There's not a single drop of blood in this comic, and yet there's plenty of punching and 'splodyKicks and action. This is everything that every book in the DCU should read like. And its EXCELLENT.

(I know I've oversold it now, but really, it's a barrel of fun)

OK, going away from computer now.

-B

PPPS: Slowly, I turned....

Too many books spoil the froth: Graeme whines.

So, I'm working on the New Comics part of the new Onomatopoeia (For those who don't live in San Francisco and/or have never been in the store to know what I'm talking about, Onomatopoeia is the free monthly Comix Experience newsletter thing; I do a bunch of blurbs about the new comics that can be preordered that month, Peter Wong does a column called Lost in Pictopia, and most importantly, Jeff Lester from this very parish does a column called Fanboy Rampage! - He came up with it first; I stole it without realizing it, because I am unoriginal and a pilferer - that is more often than not the funniest thing you'll read of a month. Really, it's a rather wonderful little newsletter thing and you should all check it out), and it strikes me how insanely that Marvel are throwing things out there. I mean, as of June, there are going to be five ongoing Avengers books. Five! There weren't even that many in the 1990s, weren't there? There are also nine regular Spider-Man books (Amazing, Sensational, Friendly Neighborhood, Ultimate, Loves Mary Jane, Marvel Adventures, Family, Spider-Girl and New Avengers, if you're wondering about my math), and if you're an X-Men completist, then things get even uglier, because June will see you picking up the following ongoing books: X-Men Uncanny X-Men New X-Men X-Factor Wolverine Wolverine: Origins Cable/Deadpool Exiles Excalibur X-Men: First Class Ultimate X-Men Black Panther (because Storm is now a regular cast member; she also rejoins the X-Men in June's Uncanny, according to the solicits and Ed Brubaker's comments at Wizard World LA that she's in the book for the foreseeable future) Fantastic Four (because Storm's now a regular cast member of this book, as well. She's the new Wolverine!) New Avengers (because Wolverine's a member)

And that's missing Astonishing, because - no surprise - Astonishing isn't shipping in June. I missed out the mini-series and guest-shots for the month, as well.

The moral of this story is either that it doesn't pay to be an X-Men completist in financial terms as well as spiritual ones, or that Marvel is literally out to flood the market with their product without really taking much notice of its audience. Maybe the most obvious example of this currently is the surprise hit of last year, Marvel Zombies, which had three separate books solicited for May (Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness and Black Panther, which is hitching itself to the bandwagon for a storyline). Way to run a sleeper hit into the ground, Marvel.

Sure, you could make similar noises about DC. To use DC's biggest franchise, a Batman completist would "only" be picking up eleven books in June, and that's not counting trades. But Marvel feels like a much worse offender - In June, DC are launching four new series, three of which are in their CMX line, but Marvel are launching more than ten, including three different "events" (Major Arcana; World War Hulk and Annihilation: Conquest. That's not even mentioning Endangered Species, the X-book back-up crossover that's really just a 17-part lead-in to another crossover event that's starting later this year).

I dunno; I'm not a retailer like Hibbs nor anything other than a generic loudmouth on the internet, and maybe there's an eager audience for all of these books, but it strikes me that when you get a four-issue miniseries about Daredevil's dad's boxing career, then just maybe Marvel is putting out too many books. Am I overreacting because I have to write about all of them, or does anyone else think that there's something horribly familiar and '90s-esque about the sheer volume of product these days?

A Little Late, A Little Early: Jeff Wraps Up His 3/14 Reviews.

This is where the funny would go, if I wasn't up and writing this before six in the god-damned a.m. TEEN TITANS #44: As long as we get an unfucked-up Batgirl out of this, they can totally get away with the "fortunately, I have the antidote in my utility belt right here" trick. Hell, Robin could use a syringe full of Magic Wishing Juice and I'd go for it. I'm surprised that Hibbs didn't like this as I thought it did a great job of giving each Titan their opposite number, which is very Silver Age. (I know he wasn't happy with all the torture, but that's, you know, Claremont's X-Men which was the inspiration for the Wolfman-Perez revival in the first place, right?) My only real problem with the book is that it always feels like it's been three months since I read the last issue--which speaks to either a bad publishing schedule or how little I really care about the title. But I'd give it a low Good, at least.

THUNDERBOLTS #112: That one page with Stan Lee just about made me laugh myself sick, which tempts me to bump the whole book up to Good, but why does it feel so formulaic after, what, three issues?

I don't quite agree with Hibbs, by the way: although Suicide Squad is a cult fan favorite, I don't get much of an impression anyone at Marvel is even aware of it. (Was Joe Quesada even in comics when Suicide Squad was being published? Was Ellis?) The presence of all their "A-list" supervillains (as opposed to the Squad's more expendable C-list makes me think they're taking their inspiration from elsewhere (although if it was pitched as "It's like Identity Disc, but written by Warren Ellis!" that'd be really sad). And I think maybe they are gonna be messing more with these characters (I think Venom will be around for a while but poor ol' Mac Gargan won't) than Hibbs might think.

And yet, after making such a spirited defense, I have to admit the whole enterprise feels like a car that's already running on vapors, coasting down a long hill at a pace steady enough to avoid all the stoplights, in the hopes there's a gas station down there in the valley somewhere.

WONDER WOMAN #5: What happened on that last page? The guy killed himself by exploding? His ex-wife killed him? Wonder Woman pulled a Maxwell Lord? And the rest of the issue seemed really weird to me: "Once I saw a woman flying, even though I myself cannot fly, I knew I could accomplish anything!" suggests to me that mainstream media in the DCU has more difficulty with powerful women than the media here. I may have been especially resistant to this issue because (a) not reading Newsarama, only Hibbs informing me in advance kept me from expecting the wrap-up of Heinberg's story; and (b) I kept imagining Dave Sim making fun of all the women in the issue but I thought this was cheaty Awful stuff. As Hibbs would say: Foo.

PICK OF THE WEEK: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1: less filling, but tastes great.

PICK OF THE WEAK: GHOST RIDER #9, or maybe JLA CLASSIFIED #36, depending on what you hold dear in your life and would thus account for which book you find more blasphemous.

TRADE PICK: Yeah, JAMES KOCHALKA'S AMERCIAN ELF v2. The garish color thing is rough--it's like reading a book printed on Fruit Stripe gum--and keeps you from reading for an extended period of time without your eyeballs literally throbbing, but so far the content is exceptional--touching, funny, insightful and deeply human. Although I was worried baby Eli might tone down the Kochenanigans, there still seems to be the right balance of profanity, drunken weeping, observational humor and child-like wonder to keep the reader delighted. Excellent stuff and worth hunting up, but find your sunglasses first.

Three for the road: Hibbs finishes 3/14

Weirdly unmotivated to do any work today -- I've been largely pretending I have a day off. BUt I said I would, so I will, and here's another couple of reviews from last week's books. Tomorrow, the new cycle starts again!! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: CYLON APOCALPYSE #1: More of a "retail intelligence" thing than anything else, but man am I getting frustrating by how DE is handling (or having to handle, your call) it's BSG books. Mixing new and old, putting multiple titles in one week, and not being clear as to what's what, really.

Here's the solicit copy for this series:

"DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT presents an all-new, Battlestar Galactica event featuring the DYNAMITE Debut of Javier Grillo-Marxuach (ya know, the guy behind such hit shows as Lost and Medium) as he unleashes the Cylon Apocalypse!

Dual revelations rock the rag-tag fleet as a routine Viper patrol puts them on the edge of a bizarre scene - Cylon Raiders attacking one of their own Basestars! As the Cylon Basestar crashes into an ocean-covered world, Adama and Starbuck discover a bizarre creature that appears to be a Cylon Centurion engulfed by diseased flesh. The Cylons are sick and the apocalypse has begun!

Grillo-Maruach is joined by Battlestar artist Carlos Rafael, along with colourist Carlos Lopez for this special comic book event! Featured covers artists include: the legendary Michael Golden, the modern master Pat Lee, colonial warrior Carlos Rafael and master of all things time and space Jim Starlin! Don’t miss it!"

Which "series" of BSG would you suppose this was from, based upon reading that? Especially given that "Classic" BSG is marketed as, well, "Classic Battlestar Galactica". ANd there's the convenient "all-new" in sentence #1.

Well, it's not the modern version, it's "classic". But, of course, I ordered it like a "modern" BSG comic (we're selling roughly quadruple the # of copies of "modern" versus "classic") Double-plus foo.

The comic itself? Ah, pretty deeply EH.

THUNDERBOLTS #112: I liked the first issue pretty OK, and I thought issue #2 was even stronger, but the third one here was really pretty weak. In theory (though never claimed, lets be fair) this is Marvel's version of SUICIDE SQUAD, but issue #3 makes me think, no, not at all one tiny bit -- the beauty of SS was that anything (cast, circumstance, etc.) could change issue by issue, if not page by page... but given the cast of characters here the "most interesting" ones (Goblin, Venom, Bullseye, Speedball) can't really change, since they have other roles they'll have to go off into sooner or later; and the ones that COULD change (say, Radioactive Man) probably won't, because they don't appear to have any interesting hooks in the first place. I suspect that by the end of the first year, pretty much everything will still be in the same place, while that was never true for SS, or, really, even the "old" THUNDERBOLTS. So: EH.

My PICK OF THE WEEK this week? Probably (flaws and all) BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1

PICK OF THE WEAK: Dunno, think I'm going to go with TEEN TITANS #44 since its mostly torture and magic potions.

My BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK is easily JAMES KOCHALKA'S AMERCIAN ELF v2. Here's a rare case where a smaller book actually helps -- this isn't something you can sit down and "read" in any case, from start to finish.... best you can really do is, dunno, 4-5 pages at once before you start to get overwhelmed. My big downside is the book being in color. I really don't think it adds a thing, and the color wasn't designed for print, or with any idea of how the pages would go together, and the result is just a big garish mess that deeply deeply hurts your eyes when you look at it. STILL< there's some really wonderfully touching and human observations in here, and is an absolute hoot and belongs in your funny book collection. Jeff Lester had THE BEST line about the printing, but hopefully he's saving that up for tomorrow or Wednesday or something, and I shant spoil it.

(though I want to)

What did you think?

-B

Arriving 3/21

Yeah, I took a few days off, but I'll have another review post here before the end of the day. In the meantime, here's what Comix Experience is meant to be recieving this week: 30 DAYS OF NIGHT SPREADING THE DISEASE #4 (OF 5) 52 WEEK #46 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #53 (A) AFTER THE CAPE #1 (OF 3) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539 ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #5 (OF 12) AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #50 (NOTE PRICE) ARCHIE & FRIENDS #108 ARCHIE DIGEST #233 ARMY @ LOVE #1 BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #4 BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ZAREK #3 BIRDS OF PREY #104 BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2 CABLE DEADPOOL #38 CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 CW CHECKMATE #12 CIVIL WAR BATTLE DAMAGE REPORT CLASSIC BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #5 COBB MAGAZINE CONAN #38 CONVENTION CONFESSIONAL #3 CRIMINAL MACABRE TWO RED EYES #4 (OF 4) DARKMAN VS ARMY OF DARKNESS #4 (OF 4) DEADMAN #8 DEATHBLOW #4 DETECTIVE COMICS #830 DINOWARS JURASSIC WAR OF THE WORLDS #4 (OF 4) DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES VOL 3 KURTH CVR A #1 (OF 12) EXILES #92 EXTERMINATORS #15 FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #10 GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 HUMAN ERROR PROCESSOR #6 (OF 8) GIRLS #23 HELLBLAZER #230 HERO BY NIGHT #1 (OF 4) ION #12 (OF 12) JOHN ROMITA JR 30TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #4 MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #6 (OF 12) MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #11 MINESHAFT #19 MS MARVEL #13 OMEGA MEN #6 (OF 6) ORSON SCOTT CARDS WYRMS #2 (OF 6) PUNISHER PRESENTS BARRACUDA MAX #2 (OF 5) RAMAYAN 3392 AD #7 RED MENACE #5 (OF 6) RUNAWAYS SAGA SADHU #6 SCOOBY DOO #118 SHADOWPACT #11 SHRUGGED #5 SIMPSONS COMICS #128 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #173 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #16 SPIRIT #4 SUPERGIRL #15 TESTAMENT #16 TMNT MOVIE PREQUEL 1 RAPHAEL TMNT MOVIE PREQUEL 2 MICHELANGELO TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT SOUNDWAVE ULTIMATE POWER #4 (OF 9) WALKING DEAD #36 WISDOM #4 (OF 6) WITCHBLADE SHADES OF GRAY #1 (OF 4) WONDER MAN #4 (OF 5) X-23 TARGET X #4 (OF 6) X-FACTOR #17 X-MEN #197 X-MEN FIRST CLASS #7 (OF 8) Y THE LAST MAN #55

Books / Mags / Stuff ANIMATION MAGAZINE APR 2007 #171 BUDDY DOES JERSEY GN CINEFEX #109 MAR 2007 COMICS BUYERS GUIDE JUNE 2007 #1629 COMPLETE JON SABLE FREELANCE VOL 6 TP DEADMAN VOL 1 DEADMAN WALKING TP DISNEY JR VOL 3 LION KING GN FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER TP FLASH FASTEST MAN ALIVE TP FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN VOL 2 MYSTERY DATE TP GLOOMCOOKIE VOL 5 FINAL CURTAIN TP GUNSMITH CATS OMNIBUS VOL 1 TP IT RHYMES WITH LUST TP JUXTAPOZ APR 2007 VOL 15 #4 KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE VOL 3 TP LEADING MAN VOL 1 TP NEW AVENGERS VOL 4 COLLECTIVE TP PHOENIX VOL 10 TP ROBIN WANTED TP SAVAGE DRAGON VOL 11 RESURRECTION TP SHADOWPACT THE PENTACLE PLOT TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS HAWKMAN VOL 1 TP SPIDER-MAN BIRTH OF VENOM TP SWALLOW BOOK THREE TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #152 WOLVERINE WEAPON X PREMIERE HC

What looks good to you?

-B

More on Monday (Or Is That: Moron Monday?): More Reviews of the 3/14 Books from Jeff.

NEW AVENGERS #28: Those missing pages from Civil War: The Initiative pay off here as the New Avengers try to get Cap's body and find themselves confronted by, uh, the Newer Avengers. Only problem is, Bendis wraps this as a flashback which he ends on a cliffhanger so he can go back to the present time and bring that to a cliffhanger which, to give Bendis the benefit of the doubt, I'll chalk up as experimentation instead of plain ol' bad storytelling. Like the other Bendis book this week, nice art saves it from being worse than Eh. PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #5: Ooooh, no. Would've been perfectly fine as, say, a follow-up to a big Punisher-centric multi-issue story arc, but on the heels of another issue where Frank barely appeared? This book feels to me like it's been mired in crossovers and spinning its wheels since the first issue, and unless the "Cap's mask" storyline brings Castle back to the forefront of the book, I could see readers leaving it in droves. Mind you, I actually liked the cop-who-wasn't-a-cop (and how it might provide some counterpoint to the upcoming "Cap-who-isn't-a-Cap" storyline) and found myself involved in his story, but I also found myself flipping through it impatiently, annoyed that I was having to play "Spot the Title Character" again. Eh.

SPIDER-MAN REIGN #4: The Sandman and daughter stuff, which came more-or-less out of left field worked surprisingly well, and gives me hope that after Andrews has moved on from this (decent selling, widely noticed) fiasco, there'll be place to develop all the promising stuff and put the overly-influential influences aside. I thought the rest of it was still relatively awful, though, but that's just playing out the hand that's been dealt. Let's call it a Eh wrap-up to an Awful miniseries.

SUPERMAN #660: A very nice, almost Astro-City approach to a Superman story. I don't necessarily care much for the Prankster, but there's a bunch of neat touches here that made this highly OK. If everyone could do done-in-one fill-in style stories as well as Busiek, DC would have a lot less annoyed fans on its hands. (And, it probably goes without saying, the rest of the non-event superhero market would be in a much better place.)

More On The Floor: Jeff Reviews a Few More 3/14 Books.

Hmmm. Keep thinking I had some interesting comic-related dream to tell you about, but I don't remember it now. I'm re-reading Rick Veitch's really staggering Rarebit Fiends collections, the first two volumes of which are pretty much a secret history of the comics market in the early '90s and I keep coming across all these deeply prescient bits (as so often seems to be the case with dream journals, particularly if you're almost hysterically suggestible and prone to magical thinking, as I am). My favorite bit so far is Veitch stumbling across a back room in a dilapidated house where the DC Editors are having a meeting. "We've come up with an idea that's going to save direct market," one of the editors says excitedly. "We call it 'The Death Of The Death Of Superman!'" Copyright 1995, and as relevant now as it was then, True Believer.

CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: Yeah, everything Graeme said, but also, between this and New Avengers #28 (and kinda Mighty Avengers #1), it's clear that Bendis is entering a new stage of formal experimentation in his storytelling. Unfortunately, his Pulp Fictiony twist in this issue sucked so hard, I'm worried we're in for a nasty streak of "Hey, what if you did the entire issue showing nothing but the characters' feet!" and "Wait a minute, I got it! All the panels are color coded and told out of sequence, so the only way the issue makes sense is if the readers cut up the entire book and pastes the color coded panels in sequence themselves! Fucking A!" As long as Alex Maleev is drawing it, it'll at least be Eh, no matter how bad the actual experiments turn out.

DAMNED #5: Uh...what? I seem to be having a bit of trouble with last page revelations this week (did anyone figure out what the hell that last page of Wonder Woman meant?) so it may just be me but that last page (that read like a set-up for the next mini) just didn't jibe with anything else I was following (unless that's Worm sister, done in by the deal Eddie cut?)

That one may-undo-all-my-ideas-about-the-story page aside, I thought this was pretty Good, with the conclusion relying on a twist outside the Miller's Crossing/Glass Key template. In fact, it makes me eager for a follow-up to see what the creative team can do without following somebody else's templates (presumably).

DETECTIVE COMICS #829: Blah-blah-blah and then stuff blows up. The art is pretty, however, and, to be fair, the idea of someone who can spray liquid plastic explosive would be pretty cool in a Die Hard 4 kind of way. But it's rare when the comic book 'splodey is half as interesting to look at as any but the lousiest explosion on film. And is it really my idea of an interesting Batman story? It really isn't. Pretty art bumps it up to Eh.

GHOST RIDER #9: So at one point, Lucifer (who has, uh, taken possession of Jack O'Lantern's corpse?) blows Ghost Rider's skull apart with a shotgun, to which Ghost Rider mystically reassambles his skull and keeps on fighting. Then, a few pages later, Ghost Rider is riding on his bike, gets pinned by the take-no-prisoners sherrif who points a bad-ass assault gun at GR's head. Does Way not know the first scene robs the second scene of any tension? How could he not know that?

I also wasn't thrilled by the scene where two kids are being chased down a road by a floating flaming pumpkin head and one of them decides to jump off a bridge into the water. If the flaming pumpkin head had been attached to a guy on a motorcycle, then I could follow that but--a floating flaming pumpkin head? (Now that I think about it, who'd fucking run from a floating flaming pumpkin head? What are you scared of? Getting pumpkin scent stuck in your clothes?)

Ugh. Even a few cool looking panels from the art team can't prevent this from getting a Crap rating. This book is astonishingly lousy.

GREEN ARROW #72: Guess Judd didn't get the "kinder, gentler OYL Batman" memo. And this issue gets a big ol' Eh because Mr. Winick has played "The Red Hood could've killed [character], but The Hood's goal was to screw with [character's] head all along" one too many times. Time to poop or get off the pot, Mr. Winick!

JLA CLASSIFIED #36: Dan Slott gets reduced to co-plotting credit and Dan Jurgens gets the writing and layout credit, and the book goes from Eh to Awful. Unbelievably fucking dull, compounded by a badly done plot twist--one of the Red Kings has fallen in love with Wonder Woman which allows for his undoing--that had no reason to come out of nowhere considering the total pagecount of this dragged-out story. On the plus side, the spinning of Gardner Fox in his grave will probably power Dan Jurgens' pencil sharpener for a while...so there's that, I guess.

MOON KNIGHT #8: Filled with scenes that start strong and then fizzle (I particularly like where Cap gives his "Civil War" speech and then goes, "Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to recruit you. In fact, you're the most compelling reason I've seen for forced registration yet! So keep your nose clean, or I'll--hey, is that the time? Sonuvabitch, I'm missing Fear Factor! See ya!") but, despite me knowing better, the twisted fucked-up superhero thing is still working for me (like, when MK hammers in those crescent moons with his truncheon, or the slaughtered corpse chanting "Kill him, kill him, kill him" while Cap is talking.) But, really, the shit going on here is way beyond Marvel Knights material. Move this title to Max, take it out of the regular MU, and get the writer into rehab for his cough syrup addiction so we can actually have something happen in this damn book. I'm giving it an OK even though, as I said, I should know better.

Lazy Sunday: Graeme finishes off this week's books.

So, Jeff complains (below) that this page is full of essays and that we can't skate by by just complaining that things suck anymore. The following is my attempt to prove him wrong, because sometimes I just want to phone it in. NEW AVENGERS #28: Maybe I'm just getting beaten down by the constant world of pain that is mainstream Marvel these days, but this was surprisingly enjoyable. Not so much for the main plot, which leaves me relatively cold, but instead the smaller moments - Luke Cage buying milk, the Dr. Strange scenes (especially the cloaking of the Sanctum Sanctorum, which I'm sure that I've misspelt), the Silver Samurai's choice of movie. Bendis is clearly enjoying himself on this book, and it's more apparent than it's been on his other series. Less immediately apparent is whether Lenil Yu is a suitable choice for the book, but I'm completely fascinated by his current style, which looks like early-Enigma-era Duncan Fegredo inking over Kevin Nowlan pencils (dig the pout on Wolverine as he sniffs at the end of the issue). A high Okay.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #5: While I get that Matt Fraction may love the Punisher, he still seems to be writing a book that works around the character as opposed to starring the character. This issue is a good example, with the Punisher himself only appearing in what essentially amounts to a cameo in a story about Bridges and a beat cop in New York City. It's interesting to see Marvel trail this book as featuring a Punisher who tries to replace Captain America, because there's something about this issue in particular that makes this an especially American book, focusing on one character's response to 9/11 and, amazingly enough, the Stamford disaster that started off Civil War. It's a tricky balancing act that works only because the superhero fallout from Stamford is ignored - Once you start pointing out that, in the Marvel Universe, 9/11 is apparently less important than the explosion of a small Connecticut city, you're in a bad place where a real tragedy is pushed into second place by a sales-grab, which leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth. Nonetheless, this series is continually better than I expect, especially when it zigs instead of zags in its focus as it does here. Okay.

SPIDER-MAN: REIGN #4: Yet another issue of DKR: WTF, and luckily, the last one. Too much of the intended emotional impact here comes out of nowhere (The kid is the Sandman's daughter? And has superpowers? Wait, what?), or rely on readings of the characters that are pretty specific and not necessarily what the original creators intended - So much of this series seems to rely on the idea that Peter felt that Mary-Jane pitied him instead of loved him for who he really was, which is an interesting take, but one that I'm not sure is really supported in the original stories. The ending is fascinating, however; success relying on the destruction of a tower is an interesting climax for a story that felt so affected by 9/11. Following from that, there seemed something anti-climactic about the series ending with Spider-Man up and about and protecting New York again. Sure, it fitted the Dark Knight model, but somehow works less well here. Eh, but sadly missing the thrill of radioactive spider-spunk.

SUPERMAN #660: Yes, I know that this is the second straight month of fill-ins on this title, but Kurt Busiek makes it work by following the Silver Age model of using Superman as incidental character in his own stories (also a trick that Busiek uses successfully in his Astro City books), and writing about the way Superman affects other people's lives. There's nothing earth-shattering about the story or art, but it's perfectly enjoyable and perfectly Good nonetheless - A sign of how strong the Superman books are these days, when even the fill-in issues are stronger than many other books on the market.

WONDER WOMAN #5: The infamous fill-in issue, replacing the long-awaited conclusion to Allen Heinberg's relaunch of the character. It's unspectacular but solidly Eh, being preachy yet confused in its political message (Was the moral of the story that violence is bad, but suicide is good as long as it's bad guys who do it?). I hadn't noticed, as Brian pointed out, that there's no explanation as to why this isn't the last part of the Heinberg arc anywhere in the book, because I am part of the Newsarama-readin' (and writin') clique, but he's right; it's something that someone at DC should've noticed before the book got sent out. Another continuation of the ongoing clusterfuck that is the relaunched Wonder Woman, then; it'll be interesting to see what happens to the book if/when Jodi Picoult gets the book on a regular schedule. Will we all lose interest without the car crash element?

PICK OF THE WEEK overall is probably, I dunno, Superman I guess. Is that a sign that it was a pretty weak week? PICK OF THE WEAK is Civil War: The Confession, which was just unnecessary - I was listening to one of Brian Bendis's Wordballoon podcasts the other day, and he was talking about the misconception in his eyes that Marvel has contempt for the their audience. He said that the opposite was true, and that everyone involved in the company is really trying their hardest on what they work on, because they're very conscious that people are paying money for things that have their names on them... If only that was obvious in the books themselves, you know? TRADE OF THE WEEK, I have no answer for - I didn't read any trades all week, and couldn't even tell you which trades actually came out this week. Instead, I'll recommend Live From New York, the oral history (written oral history?) of Saturday Night Live, that I just finished rereading this week. It's much better if you stop before the last couple of chapters, but the first half of the book, concentrating on the first decade of the show's history, is well-worth the price of admission.

Next week: Runaways Saga comes out, which is co-written by a friend. I'll try and be nice about it.

Three Up, Three Down: Jeff's First Few 'Views of 03/14 Books...

Back when I first started co-writing these with Hibbs (and although it feels like forever, was really only about five years ago), I would sit down with a pile of the books in alphabetical order, read each book, write a review immediately after finishing it, and then move onto the next. It took forever, and usually I'd have to break the work into two different readings or else I'd get incredible headaches, and I could pretty much only do reviews every other month because at the end of that session it'd take at least ten days before I could even begin to look at comics for fun. And although I was seeing Edi at the time, I was single, living on my own and so had countless empty hours to spend on comic reviews and crippling migraines. Over time, I got a method that worked pretty well--read a ton, write it a day or two later, fire and forget, and thank readers when they pointed out that I called the protagonist of Ex Machina Tony Millionaire for the entire paragraph.

So I'm understandably reluctant to go down that path again, even though while I was reading books at the store on Friday, I was thinking "Oh, shit! I'm never gonna remember anything about this book by Sunday! Hell, I won't remember anything about it by this afternoon! But I can't go back to the old method; it'll kill me!" But, obviously, I can't write intelligent, funny paragraphs about books every day if I can't remember a fucking thing about them, can I?

Hibbs had a sort of similar moment at the store yesterday, where he looked at me and said, "Yeah, the page is full of essays now. I can't just sit down and write, 'This story sucks! Blah-bloo-bloo-bloo!' It'd look stupid--actually, I should say it looks even more stupid--next to all those well thought out opinions n' shit!" So I know I'm not going through this alone--obviously, we all can't be sleek, sexy Graeme McMillanauts, exploring the heavenly proscenium arch of comics incisiveness--but it's gonna take some time before I feel like I've hit my stride under the reign of our self-imposed daily content overlords. After five years, I'm sure it's good for me to shake things up. On the other hand, I read 18 comics (and one trade yesterday) and I've gotta say something cogent over the next week about 'em? No wonder people started scanning old comics pages and posting them on the Internet!

Right, right, enough stalling. So, anyway:

52 WEEK #45: I hope the taste of "nah, I just don't buy it" washes out of my month quickly, because I couldn't tell which parts of this I wasn't buying because of last week's plot-hammery renunciation by Isis, and which parts of it, well, just weren't buyable. I spent an absurd amount of time grousing to Hibbs about whether Black Adam, like some deathly version of Santa Claus, could speed around an entire country and kill everyone. (Bri for his part mentioned Johnny Bates' destruction of London in Miracleman and then more or less left it at that, content to watch me sputter about like an idiot fanboy.) If it wasn't for Greg Rucka's incredibly satisfying interview at CBR this week--which restored a certain amount of faith and a tremendous amount of respect for everyone directly involved with this book--I'd be even more Eeyoreish about what the next seven weeks will bring than I am now. This issue was still pretty Eh, though.

BLADE #7: Either I'm gaining more appreciation for his work, or Chaykin seems to have shaken off a lot of his recent doldrums, working harder to make his art serve the story rather than vice-versa. Narratively, the book is constructed so the Blade scenes hurtle along and the flashbacks are left to carry any additional resonance and it's a nice way to pick up each issue and feel like shit is happening...but I wonder if anything really is happening other than big fights, lovely looking flashbacks, and strewn seeds that may or may not flower into sub-plots. On the one hand, as long as it's done well, what more do you need from a superhero comic? On the other, without some sort of narrative thrust tied to the character's actions (as opposed to reactions), I don't know if it'll ever break out of the high end of OK. Maybe it doesn't need to.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1: Tell you what. I'll give you my review and you can decide what caliber of Buffy fan I am.

If nothing else, this issue with its interior narration helped distinguish the comic book Buffy of Season 8 from the TV Buffy of Season 7 and that's a very good thing. Why? Because Sarah Michelle Gellar sucked ass on that season 7 of Buffy, that's why.

Admittedly, I thought there was an assload of problems with Seasons 7, not the least of which was Whedon's love of the "I am the boss and right or wrong you will do what I say because I am the boss" speech which he used too much in both Season 7 and in Firefly (and probably reflects the kind of frustrations he was having during that period trying to oversee three shows), but Sarah Michelle Gellar's inability to radiate anything other than "I really don't want to be here" killed Season 7 for me.

Don't get me wrong, SMG was a far better actress than they ever could have hoped for when the show came out, and she really nailed a lot of moments of vulnerability and heartbreak and humor and bravado over the seasons, but somewhere along the line she obviously wanted to get out and make the jump to movies and couldn't, and she stopped paying attention to her craft: in that last season, I could've watched any given scene and predicted "okay, she's gonna frown and cross her arms...now" with 95% accuracy.

So what I really enjoyed about this first issue was having a character that felt like Buffy but didn't have that air of Sarah Michelle Gellar-ness to it. The Buffy in this issue really felt like a leader (as opposed to the whiny, self-righteous Buffy of Season 7 who kept insisting that she was a leader), someone self-confident with a sense of humor but a tendency to fixate on the bad things. Because this issue gave me that, I'd give it a Good (despite Whedon's writing coming across as too self-pleased, despite the complaints Hibbs and Graeme had, despite the fact that this'll read a million times better in the trade than in singles) and I look forward to more. I really do.

Authoritative Action: Graeme continues the 3/14 reviews.

GRIFTER/MIDNIGHTER #1: I'm not sure that I've ever actually read a Chuck Dixon comic before. I guess that I must've; wasn't he all over DC and the Batbooks in particular in the mid-to-late '90s? I read the first Robin mini-series, and they were probably Chuck Dixon, right? Nothing that sticks in my mind, anyway, and nothing that I can think of since Chuck came to the fore as one of comics' foremost conservatives. Bearing his personal politics in mind - and read this for some idea of what his personal politics are - how do you think he deals with DC's highest profile gay character? Let's evesdrop on this conversation between Apollo, Midnighter's boyfriend, and another offpanel random cast member: "What was the function of this machine?"

"Best guess? Some sort of mindscrewing device, to use the technical term."

"Well, if that's the case, trust me - - Midnighter was on top."

Well, I'm sure that was just one particular...

"They took me because I was the weakest one of us. And my big-hearted lover comes to rescue me."

"It's not like that."

"You're damn right it's isn't. I'm not the convenient hostage here. I'm not the little wife. And you know that better than anyone."

Yes, it's true: Chuck Dixon can't write dialogue to save his life. Oh, and he wants us to know that Midnighter may be gay, but he's definitely masculine and in charge, so no-one think anything about the characters Dixon's willing to write, alright? It's an awkward moment, because you kind of get the idea that Dixon is trying, but that almost makes things worse - Again, like I said, I'm unfamiliar with Dixon's normal output, but somehow I doubt that he writes heterosexual characters talking about being tops or making sure that their lovers know which one is the dominant one in the relationship (He probably leaves that for Chris Claremont). That said, though, it's nowhere near the worst thing about this issue; that would probably be the fact that the story doesn't really make any sense, or perhaps the sudden and unexpected introduction of a killing-terrorists-in-the-Philippines plot that leads to the comic world's least suspenseful cliffhanger. Hibbs was right: there's something off in the pacing of this book, to the point where it's two-thirds a Midnighter book, and then BAM suddenly there's Grifter is what seems to be pages out of another comic altogether. Obviously, the two stories will interconnect at some point, but what makes the break all the more obvious in this first issue is that there's no attempt whatsoever to bridge the two stories for the reader. There's a lack of... care, maybe? or attention, perhaps? in the transition, as if Dixon was literally just hacking it out with no craft slurring Here's yer goddamn funnybook with yer gay guy, ya lousy bums, as he throws the script on the editor's table.

As if to underscore that, there's no introduction to the characters for readers unfamiliar with them. I've seen Grifter in a few comics before, but I had no idea that he could control people's minds before... At least, I think that's what he's doing - It's really not that clearly explained, nor is what's happening in all of the Authority scenes (What is Jenny doing, and how?)... Again, another new book that's being aimed entirely at the existing fans, when it could easily have been retooled to be more open for the new and relatively new like me.

Because, really, that's all I'm looking for: Comics made just for me. This Crap isn't quite what I'm looking for, not just yet.

Don't make get off my stool: Hibbs and 3/14 mark II

How weird is it that I skipped a day of daily blogging, and even *I* didn't notice it? (though, honestly, I'm clearly the weak link in this chaain insofar as something something GOD DAMN RIGHT goes) CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: I literally can't add anything to what Graeme said. That's probably the best single-book review I've ever read here on the CRITIC. There's not a word there I'd disagree with, though I might have said "due to the loveliness that is Maleev's art, this is right on the cusp between AWFUL and EH. Though, no, really, it's AWFUL"

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (Season 8) #1:I watched all 7 seasons of the TV show over the course of.... oh, nine months or so? I really admired it. And I've been tempted 3 or 4 times, to invest in the complete series (it will probably have to drop under $80 to get me to bite, however -- its not like I don't already have hundreds of hours of TV on disk that I'm unlikley to watch again until Ben is, dunno, 6 or 8 or something), but it's not like I'm an uber-fan or anything.

I really liked this first issue, however. It felt very comfortable and right.

If I have any complaints, they can be summed as three points:

1) It felt like just the opening 5 minutes before the credits. Which is fine in a lot of ways, but I'm afraid that BuffyFans that are New Comics Readers might be a *smidge* disapointed. I wonder about the structure of this, too -- not really sure how long Joss is on for (ICV2 says 6 issues, but this suprisingly in-depth TV Guide interview says 4 issues, with the "Season" running "25-30" issues.

I hope ICV2 is right, because it feels like 1/6th of a story, and not 1/4.

I'm also saddened by the concept this is only 25-30 issues. Let's say we're talking about 4 issue arcs, and it runs to #32 -- that's only 8 "episodes", compared to a normal, what, 22 in a "season" of TV? Of course, the reason that I am "saddened" is because what the Whedon-verse does BEST is the feint -- making you think the story is going one way, then suddenly jerking it back the other direction, and that's a bit harder to do with only 8 stories to play with.

On the other hand, that's maybe what we all think that we want -- just the "continuity" shows, with none of the filler. I'm not sure that's what we really and truly want, but 8 is a different structure than 22, and we'll see what we see.

2) Continuity is a scary beast, anyway. Like I knew that I knew who that was on the lst page, but it took Jeff on Friday doing the "Yes, don't you remember the (blank), then the (blank)?". Me, I'm all "duh, right, I know exactly who you're talking about", but I had to be reminded. For those of us who are weak in our Buffy-Fu, that last page wasn't so much of a "Whoa!" but a "Uh, WTF?".

3) Dude, that Xander joke totally didn't work. With the cut to that big shot of X, my very first thought was "Ha! He looks like Nick Fury!" then it took most of another page to get there. I had some sort of half-baked theory in the store about how this represents the difference between comics and the filmed image -- both are about "coverage", but there's no time to edit the comics page in the way you would a filmed image. On the comics page, the set-up needs to have a beat before the reveal for it to work. If this was filmed, the beat might work beacase there's a lag in real time between seeing an image, and taking it in, but in comics the opoosite is true -- the image reinforces the text.

Is that right? In the filmed presentation, text reinforces the image, in comics image reinforces the text? Did I just hit on something smart by accident?

Ultimately, I hope Whedon some day has the time to approach the comics page as a formal experiment. As "Hush" or "Once More, With Feeling" are experiments of Form with the structure of the broadcast TV show, I'd love to see what he could do with a comics page. Because I think it could be spectacular.

This isn't spectacular in that way, again it's the 5-ish minutes before the wolf-howl-and-guitar-riff -- but its absolutely "what would they do if they didn't have a budget to worry about", and it scores high for that.

I say VERY GOOD.

Right, and for the rare "retail perspective" on this, this is an unequivocal hit -- I don't think I ever sold more than 10 copies of any previous BVTS comic (though FRAY did much better), and preorders were pretty anemic (under 20% of my final order).

I initially ordered something like, dunno, 80% of CIVIL WAR #1, but I added on half of my intials when I saw how many casual requests there were for it. If I'd just had my intial in stock, I would have sold out today; at my projected rate I'll probably sell out within 3 days of the second printing arriving, which is pretty much perfect, right? I'll be ordering the second at, uh, maybe a third again of the first? I can already predict that DH will do a third printing. Place your bets now.

In fact, I tend to suspect if a quarter million copies were available on the market, at the time of demand, that's probably would have been what would have sold through. As it is now, I suspect they'll land at 160 or less, total. A great # for Dark Horse, to be sure, but this was a book that needed vision when setting the print run.

One other thing: the variant cover (1 in 4, more or less, though my count didn't end up exact, because it's not a line item on the invoice) was unwanted in these quarters -- I'd rather not have unannounced variants (nothing about them in the catalog or the order form) foisted upon me. Honest to god, if I get a choice in what appears on my racks, the rule is "one book, one cover". I hate speculating scumtards, and I'd rather not be put in a position where I'm asked to take thier money, when they're just trying to get over on someone else.

So, uh, yeah, wtf, I've been typing for more than an hour, and that's all I wrote? God, this is what I hate about "daily" blogging!

(whine whine whine, do I sound like the Comic Book Guy? I don't mean to!!!)

What did you think, huh?

-B

New TILTING up

http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting38.html I have to admit I'm fairly dumbstruck how many people in the thread that follows are talking about how great SUPERMAN #75 was. I guess it really IS true that whatever you read first when you're 13, is the greatest comic ever. Or something.

-B

"You suck, Captain America!" "Yeah? Your mom!': Graeme does the Confession.

CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: Right upfront, let's be honest here: This is Alex Maleev's book. His art here is well done, occasionally-beautiful work (especially in the Cap sequences; his figurework and facial expressions are wonderful, and slightly defeated, obviously, by Iron Man's armor), making the most out of what is essentially just another talking heads book. Like his recent New Avengers issue, this is a book that you look at and kind of wonder what he'd be like on something where his design tendencies were let loose and he wasn't stuck drawing people in longjohns. But the writing... Ehhh. Not so good.

I'm not even talking about the dialogue, which manages to reduce supposed-genius Tony Stark (who, again, boasts of his amazing ability to see into the future: "I saw the war. I knew it would happen. I've told you - - This is what I do. I'm an inventor. I can envision the future. I can see what the world will look like, and I can see what the world will need to make that future worth living for." Have I ever told you before that I work with people from Stanford Research Institute? I mention it here because, well, they really are futurists - They're looking at how culture and technology and society are going to evolve at least 15 - 20 years ahead, if not 50 - 100 - and the first thing they always admit is that no-one can predict the future for sure. You can come up with possibilities, and even the most likely possibility, but no futurist worth their salt - at least according to them, and they should know - would ever give definite proclamations about what will happen, because it's impossible to be 100% sure. Everytime I see Bendis give Tony Stark a speech where he explains what it means to be him, I always think of that. But I digress) to the role of excited fanboy:

"I met King Arthur. Me - - who based the entire theme of Iron Man on an archetype he perfected. I met King Arthur!!"

You really kind of want him to say "Dude!!!" at the end of that, don't you? Luckily, later in the same monologue, there's a line that's almost as bad: "I kept my cool, and so did he." Yes, Iron Man's still talking about King Arthur there. The dialogue throughout the book stays at that level, for the most part; readable for the wrong reasons, very out of character with the occasional awkward shoutout to continuity. The most amusing instance of that being Iron Man crying while talking about Civil War and saying "The good news is... through all of this... I never took a drink," which I'm convinced is the result of a bet being lost, as opposed to anyone thinking it worked as dramatic characterisation.

(Somewhere, Brian Michael Bendis has a large chart with all the characters he writes and a couple of lines to remind him of who they are. You just know that Iron Man's entry says "Can see the future or something. Likes a drink.")

The problem with this kind of dialogue is that it doesn't work for what this book wants to be: Some kind of intelligent, low key, wrapping up of the ideological debate behind Civil War. We don't get anywhere near that at any point in the issue, and the closest we do come is Captain America shouting at Iron Man from a jail cell that everything was his fault, with a final page that literally goes like this:

Iron Man: Well... You're a sore loser, Captain America.

Captain America: You bet.

...And that's the last line of the book, which is the epilogue to all of Civil War. There's the note to finish your massive crossover on, huh? A supposed ideological battle which has resulted in at least one death, summed up by the above exchange; the genius taunting someone for losing. It kind of stuns me with how tone-deaf it is. How are we supposed to think of Iron Man as anything other than a dick when he actually goes to the leader of the opposition and does the equivalent of "Nyah boo sucks to be you" in the aftermath of what was supposed to be this massive tragedy that tore families apart and killed lots of people...? (Or, for that matter, that Iron Man seems to think that this was the kind of thing where anyone actually wins in the first place.) It also, because of the fact that it's the end of the book, kills the earlier attempt in the same issue, to humanize Iron Man and place his actions in some kind of larger context. We literally go from crying Iron Man saying that he was trying his best and oh God it's so hard to Iron Man calling his opponent a sore loser and boasting that he'd won so obviously he was right.

This leads me to what my real problem with the writing was: The book is backwards. There're two strips in the book, an Iron Man-centric one where he "confesses" that war wasn't worth it to Captain America's corpse, followed by a Captain America-centric one where he shouts at Iron Man from his cell and asks him if the war was worth it, and they appear in that order. It doesn't make sense chronologically (because, obviously, the Cap story happens before he's dead and all) nor dramatically; with this placement of the stories, you get the dramatic highpoint of the book midway through (Iron Man admits that it's not worth it! And he's talking to a corpse!), followed by the rest of the book which makes the two characters look like whiny children, trailing off instead of providing an ending and undercutting the earlier scenes. Yes, it allows the book to close on the somber image of Cap in a jail cell, but even that image has been overshadowed by the earlier double-page spread of Cap on a slab, so... I don't get why the stories were written to appear like this, I guess (Considering both stories were written and drawn by the same team, I'm presuming that the placement was a creative choice as opposed to an editorial one).

As with Civil War: The Return, and Civil War: The Initiative, there's no real reason for this book to exist; there's nothing new revealed here, and what we do see was either unnecessary (the Cap strip), or could've been handled elsewhere (Iron Man's "It wasn't worth it" could have been done in any number of places: His own book, either of the Bendis-written Avengers books, the Fallen Son special that's supposed to be all about Iron Man dealing with Cap's death...). Worse, the book feels unnecessary even as you're reading it, yet another cash-in on the Civil War gravy train. Pretty Awful, then, although the art is nice.

Now THAT'S How You Build A Kite: Jeff's Final Reviews for 3/7 Books and a Confession...

Getting ready to go to CE and Thank God, because I could only scratch up another four reviews total from the remaining books of last week. Since I feel that's kinda paltry, I thought I'd relate a honest-to-God dream comic book related dream to you in the hopes you'll find it funny. In order for this story to be funny, I'm making a large assumption (unsupported by Google) which is that I'm not the only person who remembers those freebie kite-flying comics they used to pass out in school. You do remember those, right? In my case, they were distributed through Pacific Gas & Electric, but I assume they were printed nationally and then branded regionally. In them, you'd have cartoon characters, or TV characters like the Brady Bunch, show you how to make how a kite and learn helpful facts about electricity. (Oh, hey, look here for the whole story, and fuck Google Images for being 80% less helpful than Google at times like this. And God bless Scott Shaw!, but that probably goes without saying.)

Anyway, Wednesday night I wake up laughing from a dream in which I'm reading a kite safety comic book--starring the cast of THE SHIELD. I wish I could tell you my subconscious had taken full advantage of the rich comic potentinal in having a bunch of hardened, racist, murderous cops show you how to build a kite (with Vic Mackey undoubtedly taking two of the kite sticks and jamming them down a criminal's mouth until he confessed) but all I can remember is Michael Chilkis, in his black leather jacket, drawn in a very Gold Key style (so that he looked equally like, say, Brian Bendis) running over a grassy field with kite string in hand, and the speech balloon, "Now THAT'S how you build a kite!"

Like I said, I woke up laughing. Please don't tell my wife I told you.

Anyway, to wrap up the reviews of last week's books:

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #6: I thought the battle between the League and Amazo was very cool, although I would've liked it more if I hadn't taken us five full issues to get there. But the Red Tornado sections showed off Meltzer's weaknesses far more than his strengths--if nothing else, the idea that Reddy is a human being should mean that, you know, he reacts to his arm being ripped off like an actual human being and not a superhero. And, as always, I can't wrap my head around a magical system that allows Zatanna to undo a curse in two words but can't just give Red Tornado the ability to be an android and feel. OK, but if the rest of Meltzer's run is paced like this, it's gonna be a tough slog.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #1: Obviously, all of Bendis's team books should be double-sized--it allows him to get all the dialogue he wants in there and actually have cool stuff happen, to boot. But the real surprise for me was Frank Cho's art, which on those issues of Spider-Man felt incredibly stiff and forced but here looks lovely but still seems fluid. This was a Good issue, and I have to admit that surprised the hell out of me. But I think the regular sized next issue will be the true test of how well it's going to work.

NEWUNIVERSAL #4: I read somewhere that Ellis wasn't too happy about the extensive photo-references for the characters and I can't blame him: although the "Spock with a beard!" joke wouldn't have worked, it really didn't work with one of the alternate Starbrands being a dead ringer for Leonard Nimoy. There's other weird stuff going on here, too--I get the impression that Ellis is trying to make each issue a jumping-on issue with all the groundwork being summarized each time for anyone dropping by but it's not working: this is the second issue where the bulk of space is taken up by Something Mysterious Popping Up and Explaining Shit, and it's more or less the same shit that got explained last time, to boot. Pretty damn Eh, unfortunately.

SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #2: Every bit as delightful as both Graeme and Hibbs have claimed--My favorite part were the evil crocodile creatures who are so thrilled at the prospect of eating children, every possible success or failure must incorporate children eating into it. I'm glad C.C. Beck wasn't around to see this because he would've landed on it with both feet (his columns in The Comics Journal were so full of piss and vinegar they permanently altered my pH balance)--I think because his conception of Billy Batson was far less little kid-like than what we get here (Beck's Billy Batson is like Tintin who also has the frequently-stolen ability to become a superhero) but Smith's recreation tears away so much awful cruft, it really does transcend those types of complaints. Very Good work and absolutely worth your time.

See? Now THAT'S how you build a kite. Back tomorrow with more.

All Monkeys are French: Graeme starts his 3/14 reviews.

You can tell that Jeff and I both have day jobs by the fact that we both post on weekdays at the very start of the day (well, unless you're not on the West Coast of the Continental United States of America, in which case, I apologize). This is my way of saying, he's got an interesting essay about essays right below this post, so if you haven't read it, go and do so. Meantime, for those of you who thought I'd be reviewing Civil War: The Confession first this week, wait until tomorrow.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON EIGHT #1: As such a fan of the Buffy TV show that I kind of think that the seventh season was the second best (behind the third, which - come on - really was wonderful), to say that I was rather excited about the potential of this series is a slight understatement. Joss Whedon has more than proven his comics mettle with Astonishing X-Men (I missed his Fray series entirely, and have always meant to fix that one day), and Georges Jeanty has long been a strong storyteller who's somehow avoided his fanboy due, so it's not like there wasn't some pedigree there... And that pedigree kind of makes itself known here, but only kind of. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things in the issue, but sadly a story isn't really one of them. It all comes down to the pacing - We definitely get the start of a plot, but literally only the start, and as a result the issue is left being somewhat underwhelming; it's the equivalent of the first act of one of the television episodes. Which, you know, is great on one hand - There're funny lines and action and a mystery being set up - but on the other hand, it lacks the oomph we've come to expect from the first issue of a new series, and relies too much on the audience's knowledge of the Buffy TV show (The last page reveal literally means nothing to anyone who's never seen the TV show, which is a shame). You get the feeling that Whedon's maybe too comfortable here, and is literally doing this for the fans as opposed to anyone else; it's just that he's so good that even his apathetic work still has a shiny surface gleam.

It's Good enough to get me back for the second issue, but not enough that I want to rant and rave and tell everyone to buy it right now. But considering I'm a pretty big Buffy fanboy, that's not the greatest sign of things to come.

Was I the only one weirdly disappointed by this?

An Essay About Essays: Jeff Looks at Casanova #7 and Phonogram #5

Now that it's my turn on the wheel of "blog until you drop" here at SC, I probably can't get away with the whole "somebody someday should write an essay about so and so" that I just dump in the lines of one of the 3700 reviews we do every week--there's really no reason I can't take the time to actually take one of those ideas and expand upon it. So rather than getting Part II of my review of last week's books (and I'm starting to worry there may be a very paltry Part II if it ever does show since my memory of last week's books has faded radically), I thought I'd try something different and look at PHONOGRAM #5 through the reflecting prism of CASANOVA #7, and vice-versa. Casanova #7 came out a few weeks ago, the last issue in the first miniseries by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá about a reality-hopping super-spy dealing with hilariously complex family issues, and as I recall I left a placeholder in a blog entry in the hopes I'd get around to reviewing it. Phonogram #5, which came out just last week, is the next to last issue in the miniseries by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie about a music-based magician battling to keep his self intact as a group of other music-based magicians create a perversion of the Britpop movement to which he's tied. Phonogram utilizes a fatter version of Casanova's Image Slimline format, where the writer fills the page count in back with essays about the work in front; whereas Warren Ellis (who came up with the format) invented the idea I think out of money-saving necessity, Gillen piles on all the material on top of a full twenty-two pages of story & art.

Many of my earlier complaints about Casanova centered around these back page essays from Fraction; although very enjoyable reads, these essays threatened to overwhelm and overwrite the reader's impression of the issue he'd just read. By contrast, Gillen's essays have moved from explaining references the reader might not understand to explaining plot points the reader might have missed to, ultimately, being the point of the whole exercise--Phonogram's densely coded emotional autobiography, although terrifically illustrated by McKelvie, is far more obtuse and has far less drama to it than reading Gillen write about Britpop like a man possessed, alluding at several points about a very personal emotional event from which his ideas for Phonogram--and the bitter, arch protagonist at its center--sprang.

Now, here's where I reach the branching fork in my essay and tell you a little bit about the road I'm not going to go down. On that road, I talk about DVD commentaries, opening weekend box office numbers, Newsarama and these essays. I talk about how, for better or for worse, consumers of story-driven art today consume it in a very multivalent way, as both traditional spectators and informed contemporaries; and thus there are two fantasy experiences the audience goes through simultaneously, the fantasy experience of identifying with the protagonist and experiencing the story, and the fantasy experience of identifying with the creator of the story and experiencing the story's creation. And down this road somewhere I probably suggest that whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, it's something that isn't going back in the box anytime soon, but that eventually a more complex form of criticism is going to have to emerge, one which is going to be able to ascertain the extent to which a work succeeds or fails based on the dimension in which it's working. Because the DVD commentaries and the essays presented in both Casanova and Phonogram (among all sorts of other ways in which professionals interact with fans) are already working on how the fans receive the work, and is also in some weird way part of the work itself, but is either being excluded from the criticism of the work or else included with the criticism of the work incorrectly, leading to a lot of muss and fuss and bother and frustration on the part of everyone involved.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about, unfortunately, although I needed to say all that as justification for the stuff I am going to talk about, so you know where I'm coming from and hopefully can understand why, hopefully, what I'm going to say about the essay pages in both Casanova #7 and Phonogram #5 is worth talking about, and relates to more than just the essay pages of both works.

In the text pages of Casanova #7, Fraction talks quite movingly about his wife's pregnancy and miscarriage, and the ways in which both affected the work he did in Casanova and the way he perceived the work he did in Casanova.

For example, Fraction writes about suddenly quitting his regular job with the company he helped start:

Just like that, the whole I love my job theme that Cass fought throughover these seven issues took on a new context. I saw for the first time, what I really wrote about. Cass, me, the jobs and the identities we chose to identify ourselves with...I hadn't been writing about free-spirited Cass not wanting anybody to tell him what to do...I wrote about me. I dunno, maybe a shrink could nail that from 100 meters but it sure as shit blew my mind. 

Interestingly, to my eyes, the first issue of Casanova reads to me like that, but the series comes to be overshadowed by a completely different set of themes. In fact, Casanova spends most of the arc (Fraction uses the term "album" so I'll probably use that from here on out) caught between the demands of his controlling father and his vast government organization, the evil scientist who similarly has Cass under his thumb, and Cass's own complex desires to save his family. In short, I'd say that it's not I love my job so much as here's the life of a freelancer: telling people what they want to hear while I try to figure out how to get what I need out of the situation and also provide for me and mine.

Similarly, although Gillen writes extensively about Britpop in his back pages, it's interesting to me that The Afghan Whigs pop up repeatedly. It would be interesting to me, of course, because I'm one of those guys who played Gentlemen over and over and over, listening to it with gradations of awe and dread and shame and relief. (As Gillen perfectly puts it: "If you listen to Dulli's lyrics, it's like crossing the event horizon into the black hole of the male psyche.") The Whigs were not Britpop, unless there's some weird definition of the term that allows a band from Cincinnati to be included. Rather, Gillen keeps including them because it's central to understanding the psyche of his intensely male protagonist--the re-awakening of the Goddess that the protagonist fears is symbolic of the not-quite misogyny at the core of the protagonist--but it's a topic he can barely bring himself to address in all those thousands of words about The Manic Street Preachers and Oasis and Blur and Pulp (although I'm also a huge fan of Pulp's This Is Hardcore and can see how they fit into the protagonist's psyche as well). It's not fair to put all this on Gillen as I haven't seen his last issue yet (and, to be honest, my eyes glazed over at some of his earlier text pieces) but, like Fraction in Casanova, I wonder if Phonogram is really about what Gillen thinks it's about. Phonogram reads like it's supposed to be a dense, allusion packed meditation on the way pop culture, for better or for worse, matters, but it actually reads like a comic written by someone who would rather talk about anything other than what they're really there to talk about. (And although I can't quite get a grip on what that is, it has something to do with that event horizon of the male psyche and its relationship to pop culture--something beyond the stuff we find in Nick Hornsby's High Fidelity, where the pop fanatic uses his obsessions to hide from both responsibility, his fear of responsibility and his fear of his fear of responsibility. Phonogram has something even darker at its core and I can't quite get a handle on it.)

In the Savage Critic way of things, I'd give Phonogram an OK and put Casanova #7 on the high end of Good. But in this ultra-extended "how-the-hell-does Jog-do-it?" essay, what's more important is why both books aren't Great, even though I think they (and their creators) have the potential to be. They're both starting out, these guys, and it's easy and probably preferable to attribute a lot of it to just them learning the ropes, pacing problems, newbie blues, and there's a very good chance we won't see those problems as much or again as their careers go along. But there is also the chance--and that chance makes it worth putting all those words down, I think--that they might get tangled in the nets of their own essays, interviews, websites and commentaries, and let all their proclamations blind them from what's really going on in their work, and prevent them from taking those things and refining them. Because I do think the shit you can't bring yourself to talk about is precisely the shit that's most interesting in your art (and it's in your art precisely because it's so important to you and yet you can't bring yourself to talk about it). It'll continue to come up, of course, but whether or not it may or may not become fully realized and ferociously utilized--and every piece in an artist's work has to become fully realized and ferociously utilized if the work is to make itself indelible--is another matter altogether, a matter for which any number of essay pages, commentaries of blog entries may not be able to compensate.

Whew! Okay, now that's off my chest, let's see if I can remember anything all about GHOST RIDER: TRAIL OF TEARS #2...

Say it, don't spray it: Hibbs on 3/14 part 1

A couple of quick reviews is all I have for you today, leaving out "event" books until later: TEEN TITANS #44: No, sir, I did not like it. Lots of "Torture the Titans" scenes, without any real depth to them, and a big really badly paced and -stage battle around that. There's a bunch of hand waving and a magic potion to "explain" why Batgirl's been Out Of Character lately... and that's about that. THe next issue blurb says "The Wilson Family Reunion", as though that isn't the program that we JUST saw, and there's some painfully bad dialogue (esp the "contact" sequence -- that never was something that was SAID, it was a narrative caption device, sheesh!). It just made me wince all the way through, from start to finish. AWFUL.

WONDER WOMAN #5: On the one hand this was kind of a nice story about symbols and how abused women can use them to get help, but on the other, it really devolves into Wondy punching a horrifically cliched character. It's pretty much filler material. I'd've hope they would have abandoned the "Diana has to hunt Wondy" element, since it really just doesn't work, isn't compelling, and makes everyone involved look really really stupid. BUt I think what pisses me off the most is there's no mention, NOTHING about what happened to part 5 of the opening story, or anything related to that. Does DC now just assume that 100% of their audience reads Newsarama? They're wrong. This was very EH.

JLA CLASSIFIED #36: Wow, I don't think I could have come up with a shittier (and more confusing) ending if I had tried. AND, its double-szed to boot. CRAP.

BLADE #7: This is really becoming one seriously strange book, you know that? Blade's lost his hand, and he's fighting a uber-Vamp in a priest's outfit, and it flashes backwards and forwards, and (*boggles*) Howard Chaykin is still drawing it (but turning in what have started to become lovely examples of his work, at the same time), and there just isn't an audience for Blade, yet they still keep trying. I'd have liked it a lot more if it didn't seem like it was seriously cribbed from Buffy, with the uber-vamp, and the necklace that prevents you from staking one, and all. I can't recommend this book, at all, but it has its charms, and is growing on me little by little... let's call it barely OK.

ANT-MAN #6, MOON KNIGHT #8, MARTIAN MANHUNTER #8: All of these books have thoroughly unlikable protagonists, and I dislike all of them for it. EH, EH, and AWFUL, respectively.

GRIFTER & MIDNIGHTER #1: More like "half a Midnighter comics and half a Grifter comic" -- there didn't seem to be any readily apparent connective tissue between the two, and nothing here had be thinking "Wow, better come back for #2!". Unrelentingly EH.

CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #2: There's some Ennis-being-Ennis here, but I'm not feeling any affection for the lead. Which is what you really need when six shades of nasty shit is going on all around them. Still this is highly OK work anyway.

Right. More tomorrow (my heart wasn't in this tonight, can you tell...?)

-B

I'm not liking what I'm typing, throw it all away: Graeme thinks of the good times.

So, following on from my reviewamarathonarama last week, it's pretty fair to say that my brain was fried - I finished reading Plain Janes on Saturday evening, and suddenly became unable to stop reviewing everything in sight ("This sandwich is Good, but if it had had more onions, it might've made Very Good." That kind of thing always makes Kate happy, as you can guess). It also made me unable to enjoy anything, because my head was just constantly spinning arguments and potential negatives to be weighed about everything that I was reading... which meant that it was time for me to recharge my batteries and get a palate cleanser of a comic to read. Which, this time, was Scott Pilgrim.

Now, I know that there are people out there who don't dig the Pilgrim, but those are people who have no joy in their lives and have never stopped to smell the roses or danced their little hearts out to "PO Box 9847" (which is possibly my new favorite song, by the way; if I could sing or play a musical instrument, that would be the song that I'd cover all the time). Rereading them - again! - this time around, the sheer fucking JOY just shone out from each page, the dumb jokes and not so dumb ones, the emotional subtext becoming text in the third book (Am I the only one who really gets choked up by the Scott/Envy slow breakup flashbacks? I can't be the only sap out here, surely), watching Bryan Lee O'Malley becoming a more confident and stronger artist over the three books, the whole shebang.

There's something wonderfully COMICS about the series for me, in the same way that there is about Eddie Campbell's Alec, or Kirby's Fourth World or Eternals. It's the love and joy for the medium that's there on the page, the inventiveness on display, that completely wins me over and makes me feel as if anything is possible. But I'm not telling you any of this to convince you of how much I love Scott Pilgrim, but instead to ask those who are brave enough to comment: What are the comics that you completely and unconditionally love that always give you the indescribable thrill when you read them?

(Also, if you haven't read it yet, check out Jeff's movie reviews below. They're Excellent. Shit, there I go again.)