"I rolled a 8": Hibbs on the 5/9 Initiative

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #540: Well, technically, this one is "Back in Black". One of the things we've been complaining about the IC/52/COUNTDOWN books over at DC is "wait, when is this happening?", because it seems like even the people in charge have no bloody idea. And we see the same thing going on in the Marvel Universe between this storyline and the Initiative and even World War Hulk. It seem to ME that #539 and this issue (and presumably the rest of this arc) is taking place immediately after CIVIL WAR, and pretty much on the same day. It makes my head hurt to try and keep it all straight, honestly. Its even kind of harder because this is "Bad ass Spidey" -- he'll happily break your bones, or threaten to kill you, or whatever -- but meanwhile, NEW AVENGERS is showing "nervous joking Spidey". And while we're meant to be rooting for Peter, it seems to me that in the context of a post-CW Marvel, he's acting exactly like a vigilante, and it is hard to find a context in which this works right. If he IS a "most wanted" by SHIELD, and if SHIELD is the Bad Guys, then SHIELD *needs* to be stopping him to prove their point, so Peter prolly shouldn't be chatting on a CEL PHONE with MJ. Unless SHIELD are the Good Guys, in which case, you'd think they'd be using ever resource to HELP Peter -- if a police officer's mother got shot and put in a coma, the entire force would be out helping him right?

My Suspension of Disbelief roll gets fudged even further by staging a big part of the action in Grand Central Station, including a "kill the killer" sequence which, while just what Fisk would do, he wouldn't be doing it in the middle of Grand-Freakin-Central; he'd have had rigged the guy's gun or something to explode after doing the deed.

IN other words, things are happening not because they make logical story sense grounded in the previously laid out "rules" of the fictional universe in which they are set, but because they're what has to happen because that's what the plot outline SAYS must happen.

Which is pretty much the definition of "bad comics"

As a $3 unit of individual storytelling, this is adequate stuff, maybe even better than that; but as a part of the larger ongoing story, really, this is pretty AWFUL

BLACK PANTHER #27 CWI: If there's a single book in all of the post-CW stuff that is truly foundering for an identity, I'd call it this one. While I suppose having "FANTASTIC FOUR II" makes some marketing sense, it's not what I, as a consumer am interested in a book titled "BLACK PANTHER". As a FF comic, it reads reasonably fine -- despite the move to magic right before the end, you can't really ask for more reasonable action. There's even a few genuine laughs here (I particularly liked the "Oh, I'd have thought you'd have a plan for that." "We do: Sue" sequence), and the book ends in a potentially interesting place -- at the end of the MARVEL ZOMBIES mini-series and the attack upon Skrullos by the Galactus-Zombies. Which means it isn't just FFII, it is also EXILES II. None of that means I didn't like it -- I actually thought it was definitely no less than a high OK, possibly a low GOOD -- just that it is really really weird that this storyline is happening in "BLACK PANTHER"

NEW AVENGERS #30 CWI: Based on the last few issues of this, and the start of MIGHTY AVENGERS, it feels like Bendis has finally gotten the trick of writing a team book. The only thing that didn't work too well for me (other than general "when is everything happening, in relationship to 'Back in Black' and 'Fallen son'?", but it's less of a pain for me than in ASM for some weird reason) was the staging of the "Good Intention" spell and Jessica's reaction -- she's acting all funky and no one but the audience notices? Meh. But, yeah, I thought this was a solid read, the use of jumping around in the linear narrative is working well, and I enjoyed all of the banter and action. Can't ask more from a super-hero funny book, so GOOD.

NOVA #2: Almost forgot this one, since it doesn't have the "CWI" on the invoicing. There was something about this issue I really liked -- the coming to CW from the outside, or Stark's myopia, or Justice's regrets, or the possession scene, or the trigger-happiness at the end. Or maybe all of it, and how it was a pretty dense read too. I'm surprising myself here: GOOD.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #7 CWI: Heh. Yeah, that was cute. OK

THUNDERBOLTS #114 CWI: Working for me a lot better this issue; I really do like how the villains just can't seem to work together. If you're going to have 22-pages of pretty much nothing but battle, this is how I like to see it. OK.

Other than Spidey, nothing worse than an "OK" in the bunch; contrast that to what OYL looked like, or the state of most post-52 DC books -- its not a wonder than Marvel is kicking DC around the playground these days.

What did YOU think?

-B

Stealth mode: Graeme realizes that he really, really likes Fracbaker.

I really don't think that I've gushed enough about THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST yet; the fifth issue came out this week and, as with the earlier four, made a quiet but substantial leap towards my heart. There's something (appropriately?) stealthy about this book, and the way that its blend of epic story, action set-pieces and comedy redefines the character and your (well, my) expectations about him that were set by his appearances in Power Man and Iron Fist growing up - although that part of his history isn't ignored, by any means, and Luke Cage's appearances in the series are highlights without being overwhelming. The writing in this book manages to play to both Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction's strengths, but the voice is so consistent, and so consistently not-Brubaker and not-Fraction, that it doesn't necessarily feel like a book written by two people; instead, you get this third writer, whom I'll call Med Fracbaker, who can apparently not only do it all, but do it all with a smile on his face (This fifth issue is full of moments that are just funny, which isn't something that I really would've expected from an Iron Fist book). Luckily, they're matched with an artist who can also pretty much do it all - David Aja's art has moved from a near-Michael Lark realism in the first few issues to something simpler, yet kind of more effective, by this point, but he's also getting more playful and interesting with his layouts; the last couple of issues have each included a page that takes advantage of the particular properties that only comics can offer (The staircase scene in #4 was really, really good. Simple, but effective; this issue's repeated panels with one panel of flashback is another comic-specific trick, rhythmically, but again it works without being showy). Even outside of that playfulness, though, Aja manages to convince you of what he's drawing whether it be two friends eating take-out or crazy martial arts fighting onboard a moving train, which isn't as common as it should be, and definitely more welcome because of that.

Iron Fist is, pretty much, the superhero book for people who don't like superheroes right now. It's not just that it's done skillfully, but that the "it" that's done skillfully is pretty ambitious in scale. It's an adventure book that takes place across multiple time periods (The majority of the flashbacks at the start of the series seemed like world-building, but as we get closer to the conclusion of this first arc, they're becoming more and more important to the core story), mixing genres and the mysterious with the mundane, and doing it all with a sense of humor and its own ridiculousness, without being ashamed or apologetic for that ridiculousness. The fifth issue continues the work that's been done in the previous four, but manages to make this middle chapter satisfying in its own right (Again, not as common as it should be); it's Very Good, and a reminder that the series really is, quietly, one of the best things Marvel's putting out there these days.

We hate it when our friends become successful: Graeme looks at a movie tie-in, cries.

SPIDER-MAN AND THE FANTASTIC FOUR #2: Here's the thing - I really, really like Jeff Parker's writing, and I really like Mike Wieringo's artwork but, for the second issue in a row, this product of their holy union falls surprisingly flat. The art is a strange indicator of my feelings about the rest of the book; the first page gives you something that both looks like Wieringo and not like Wieringo at the same time. It's the fault of the inking, I think... Wade Von Grawbadger's line is maybe too thin for Wieringo's work, taking away the solidity and weight of his pencils and - in the third panel, and elsewhere throughout the book - offering up weirdly distorted versions of the otherwise consistent faces Wieringo provides. It's not that it's bad, in any kind of scale, but it's... off, somehow.

The writing suffers from a similar problem. Jeff Parker has these characters down, and the dialogue between characters has just the right tone of comedy, but somehow the story still ends up as curiously uninvolving. What is it? The abstract nature of the threat that seems at odds with the otherwise old-school feel for the book (When Johnny Storm comments, "Man, I'd kill for some Galactus about now," it's hard not to agree with him)? Maybe - The relatively action-free, benign threat feels too light and inconsequential for a four-issue series, the kind of plot that would've been dealt with in one issue back in the old days (or even today, in a Marvel Adventures book)... and that's before we get to the contrivances that mean that the main characters aren't affected by the plague that seems to affect everyone else in the book, even other superheroes, further undermining the weakness of the plot.

It's a shame; I want this book to be successful. I want this book to work, and to have a million fans who read it and think "Hey, that whole Civil War thing, not so great compared with fun books"... But it's just not there yet. It's Okay, but given the people involved, I really wanted it to be much better.

It started slowly and I thought it was my heart, but then I realized: Graeme watches the Countdown start.

And this is where Brian and I disagree again.

COUNTDOWN #51: If you're wondering just how long it took DC's next weekly miniseries to become annoying, the answer is three pages. Sure, I was slightly irritated by the cover, which swallows 52's logo (As dumb as it may sound, that really doesn't sit well with me; 52, due to the cutout logo, news scroll along the bottom of the page, and JG Jones' amazing covers, had a very particular visual identity for their covers. By essentially reusing the logo for this series, it feels like a bastardization of that identity, especially without the scroll and the fact that there won't be any cover auteur to try to give this series its own cover look. It reinforces the half-assed, cash-in feel that this series already had to fight against), but it took me until Darkseid appeared and said the following line that I got really pissed:

"I see the time fast approaching when existence itself shall be recreated, and Darkseid shall be its architect."

Surprisingly, it's not Darkseid's use of the third person when talking about himself that annoys me - that's actually kind of charming - but instead the idea that all of existence is about to be recreated. Didn't we just go through that, last week, at the end of 52? And if we didn't, then we definitely went through it the year before that, at the end of Infinite Crisis. Add that to the cover blurb "So begins the end!" and I wanted to give up already. DC, I am a complete fanboy for your superhero universe, so it pains me to say this but still: Stop with the fucking reboots already. As soon as they become an annual process, they're meaningless - not only do they stop being epic stories in their own right, but they completely invalidate any attempt at dramatic tension in every single story that you publish; it doesn't matter what happens to anyone or anything if you know that "existence itself shall be recreated" before you celebrate another birthday, and even the threat of that doesn't have any real weight whatsoever coming exactly a week after the last time that it happened.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the rest of the issue is, for me, the worst tendencies of recent DC, but moreso - It's full of continuity porn and characters that appear without introduction and act without explanation. A character gets killed, and I have no idea who she is, how she got there, and why I should really care... As a first issue, it's pretty much a failure, because no-one unfamiliar with the characters could really follow just what's going on, and more worryingly, nothing that's happening is interesting enough to intrigue those unfamiliar into sticking around to find out. There's the occasional line of nice dialogue, and the art by Jesus Saiz is solid enough, but it's a mess in terms of giving the reader enough to feel substantial or worthwhile, somewhat surprisingly; In that we know that Jimmy Olsen is supposed to play a large part in the series, why not start the year with him, a character that almost everyone in the world who's heard of Superman knows, instead of Duella, Jason Todd and various mentions of the multiverse? Paul Dini's a smart guy, so I really don't get why this book doesn't put its best or at least most recognizable foot forward, instead of this Crap effort.

It's way too early to say that this series is going to be a failure - 52 also started pretty roughly, I seem to remember, and the second issue of that series was definitely more successful than the first - but after reading Countdown's opener, I am suddenly very worried that this really is going to uphold the standards of World War III, rather than 52. I'll pick up the next issue - Hell, I'm a fanboy, I'll probably pick up all of the series and hate myself for it - but I'm certainly not that hopeful about it...

Is there a natural "Countdown" joke for the title? Hibbs starts 5/9 off.

52 was special in a way because it was the "first of its kind" -- I think a pretty significant percentage of the comics buying population "bought into the experiment"' that is to say, once you reached, say, Week 12 or so, you decided whether you were "in for the year" or not. That's pretty much what my sales charts say -- there's peaks and valleys (and some absolutely unexplainable dips, but wait for those until I have all 13 weeks I'm capturing on 52, before I present the data, probably in a Tilting), but the through-line of week-to-week sales is really remarkably strong. I really really thought we'd lose half of the readership between #12 and #30, and that simply didn't happen.

I think I made the comparison here, earlier, between 52 and COUNTDOWN, and LOST and HEROES -- HEROES upped the ante for what a long-form drama (on Network TV, because, of course, THE SOPRANOS, or THE WIRE, or even, really, THE SHIELD and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA showed what the promise actually was) could be. That's pretty much the expectation of the audience, that each thing will be better and stronger that what proceeded it.

LOST really needed to step up its game (and, yeah, it pretty much has with the last few episodes -- I'd personally put the turning point back at the Tales From The Crypt one), but who knows if, because of the downtime, the audience it once had will come back?

So, I've thought, since the moment they announced this book, that COUNTDOWN needed to launch really really strong, in order to overcome the innate suspicion of the audience.

And yeah "#51" is a pretty good first issue.

There's action, there's mystery, there's a lot of universe building, and I like a fair amount of the initial characters, and/or underlying continuity enough to be happy.

I had problems, though, of course. First, I thought it was pretty left-field to have Duela Dent and Jason Todd be the main players in this first issue, particularly with the whole casual "I may be from a neighboring earth, but..." comment. I was ready to chalk that up to "well, yeah, she's claimed 20 different identities since her first appearance" (and there's never really been any real resolution to who she really IS, for the 428 of us who actually CARE), but then there was the whole Monitors-with-guns thing (which is, really, stranger than strange.... I already want them to go away!), and they cack her, and, WTF, THERE'S STILL NO CLARITY ON WHO SHE EVEN WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I mean, doubleyou-tee-eff, to the extreme.

The Mary Marvel scenes were nice, but, huh? when was she in a coma? Did I skip over some stray line in 52 Week 50? She was in that, right? I don't remember her getting hurt that bad?

Dramatically, I'm not sure if the plot works. The Countdown is to the Great Disaster, and only Ray Palmer can stop it. Well, OK. So he will. Certainly, we're not going to end up with a post-Great Disaster DCU. Who would want to read that? So, there's not a lot of underlying tension to this.

And my big worry is, like 52, they don't actually have fifty-two comic books worth of story for this. Again, to go back to the (wrong-headed) Television analogy, I don't think that BATTLESTAR GALACTICA or LOST actually has 22 episodes worth of "story" any given "year" -- 12-16 episodes seems like the much smarter way to go. 52 maybe had twice that range of actually interesting-within-themselves issue. And the other third was "filler".

I won't pay $3 for plate-spinning (not that I pay full retail, but you know what I mean), so I'm not willing to embrace COUNTDOWN the way I embraced 52 -- I decided I was ON the ride real early. COUNTDOWN I will be taking week-by-week.

And based on week 1, I'll be getting week 2. A tentative (and low) GOOD.

-B

Time Enough At Last: Late Reviews from Latey McLaterson...

This shows you how behind I am. I actually wrote my original opener: "So much time and so little to do!

Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."

three days before Graeme wrote his similar opening, and now of course it'd just looks foolish if I tried to use it.

A lot has been going on, however, some of which I should be able to fill you in on by the end of this week, but while the wolves have stopped clawing at my door:

52 WEEK #52: Despite having so much stuff that typically drives me crazy (time travel! expositionitis! arbitrary plot turns!) I ended up enjoying this very much. In fact, it ended up making me wanting to sit down with all 52 issues and read it all in a go--which I assure you is something I never even conceived of in the previous 51 weeks. I also dmired the elegance of having actions moving backward in time run right to left while the play of time runs left to right (like that double-page spread of Supernova chasing Skeets) which is such a natural use of the comics form it seems completely intuitive reading it. I don't know, maybe I've been won over by all the ass-kissy interviews over on Newsarama, but it really does feel like a big old goofy valentine to the DCU and a triumph of professionalism. (So all the weirder that Dan Didio's DC Nation page thanks everybody BUT the creative team, right? Plus the special thanks to Kristan Morrison, which you just know has gotta be one helluva juicy story, and it gives you an idea of that while DC can do this sort of thing--make a weekly comic and a huge sprawling year-long story--it may not be able to do it without talent, editorial and production ending up at loggerheads or something.)

So, yeah, I'd go with a Good for the whole experience, I guess? It was fun.

ALIEN PIG FARM #1: First issue promises this book to be Dukes of Hazzard Meets Alien which sounds just so crazy it might work. But after getting burned by City of Others #2 (among the more stupid acts of fiscal optimism in my comic buying history), I'm even less down with Steve Niles' patented brand of lazy-ass horror fiction than before. I'll give this issue an OK (it's certainly the best comic co-plotted by a B list celebrity I've read in the last year) but fully expect this to be the zenith of the series.

ALL NEW ATOM #11: Maybe if we'd seen Ryan carrying the torch for wassername since issue #1 this storyline would've worked, but...uh, nope. Just didn't work at all for me. Eh.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #21: Plenty of people whose opinion I trust (Paul O'Brien, Hibbs) are pretty underwhelmed but I could put this stuff on stale crackers for a whole year and still consider myself Lord of the Feast. (Yeah, I dunno--I'm channeling bad faux-Shakespeare through my fillings or something.) Pretty pictures! Clever words! Grown-up Kitty Pryde a million times sexier than that hideous "Coyote Ugly" thing Claremont was going for! If you liked early X-Men (and I mean, Claremont and Cockrum early) where half the pleasure is the trip, you'll think it Very Good. Obviously, I did.

AVENGERS INITIATIVE #2: Slott's either working the "I'm going to make you come to admire characters you hate" or the "I'm going to make you come to hate characters you've come to admire" angle and it's telling that I still can't tell which one. Sadly, it's not because he's being super-subtle or anything; I just think the whole thing is a badly staged mess. The take on the military here is both too cynical and too optimistic simultaneously to really work--you gotta buy that the higher-ups would try and cover up a death in training, for example, and unless a recruit died being tortured in a hazing incident gone wrong or something, I don't think that would happen. It's interesting that American comics have this ongoing interest in the military and I can't think of a single writer who is able to convey any interest or experience with the military whatsoever (apart from, of course, Garth Ennis).

As is the case with most comics, all of that would probably be forgiven if the art was kick-ass, but there's a very lame double-page spread of "all out war!" that's just six people climbing on top of three jets that shows how overwhelmed or disinterested the artist is. As you can tell, I found the whole thing deeply, deeply Sub-Eh.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #3: The art felt rushed here, which really puts the kibosh on the "unlimited budget" thing comics brag about from time to time (there's an enormous undead quadrille taking place and we don't get to see it once?) and the script had at least one big gimme that could've worked a little better. But really my biggest complaint is the story is wrapping up next issue and it feels like it's just revving up. Good stuff, but not quite as good as last issue.

CITY OF OTHERS #2: Last issue, I was caught by the "narrative voice" and the "dream-like nature" of the narrative so I signed up for the book, figuring I should reward Steve Niles for trying something a little different and man was that a HUGE mistake. This issue cranks up the retarded hack factor by about a billion, as it's revealed that the last of a race of vampires are fighting an army of zombies built by a mad scientist named (God help us) Chunx and only mannequin/protagonist Bludowski can turn the tides. The whole thing is similar to Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's visit of classic horror archetypes in Swamp Thing--and by "similar," I mean "a sad, pathetic farce compared to." My only hope is that Mr. Wrightson is getting enough cash from this to build a solid gold statue of himself. Awful, awful stuff.

DETECTIVE COMICS #832: I was three steps ahead of this thanks to the shout-out to film classic The Third Man, but how can you not love The Terrible Trio? I had some quibblage but it was pretty OK, overall.

GREEN LANTERN #19: I was flipping through that Wizard Commentaries book on Friday, and reading Geoff Johns', Ethan Van Sciver's and (I think) Pete Tomasi's commentary on the making of Green Lantern: Rebirth was pretty telling. It went something like:

JOHNS: It used to drive me crazy that they kept having Hal travel cross-country to find himself. The first time was fine, but then they kept having him do it over and over and it made no sense to me. Hal Jordan knows who he is: he's a bad-ass.

SCIVER: Totally. Part of why I was so excited to work with Geoff on this project is that we were bringing back Hal Jordan, bad-ass.

TOMASI: In fact, when Geoff first turned in this scene, we had a long talk about whether Hal seemed enough of a bad-ass, and Geoff went back and tweaked a line or two so that Hal was two times badder, and at least three times assier, than before. And it turns out that was just what the scene needed.

And that probably explains this whole issue where Hal Jordan, bad-ass, must save his old girlfriend while not giving into the Cosmic Vagina Trap of his new girlfriend. (Now that I think about it, if this book had just had that classic Neal Adam cover of Green Arrow dramatically hollering, "Green Lantern, NO!!!! If you put your penis in Star Sapphire's vagina, the EARTH is DOOMED!!!" it'd be awesome.)

Nice art, though. And that Sinestro Corps back-up was great. So, OK.

INCREDIBLE HULK #106: I keep forgetting that World War Hulk is its own mini, so I was surprised and bummed that instead of "Hulk Smash!" we got "I Was A Teenage Tao," part 1. Pretty decent as far as set-ups go, but can we get to the smashing, please? OK.

MARVEL ZOMBIES ARMY OF DARKNESS #3: Nice little resolution of the cliffhanger, and thanks to the amusing cameos (Hey, Nextwave!) I ended up reading it with an amused grin on my face pretty much all the way through. Considering I find reading a comic book recreation of a Bruce Campbell character as innately beside-the-point as listening to a Playmate of the Month read an audiobook, that's quite an achievement. Highly OK if you're a Marvel nerd.

MIDNIGHTER #7: A very cool idea and truly awful execution make this an interesting misfire of a book, as Brian K. Vaughan tries to tell a Midnighter story backwards in order to show...what? Even if you can buy the change in Midnighter's powers (from being able to see every move in a fight and pick the best possible outcome for himself to being able to do that, apparently, all the time), it really doesn't seem to have any point other than an initially amusing splash page. (Maybe it's a veiled critique of how formulaic Midnighter stories are?) If you read the story from back to front (forwards in time) it's not even really a story as much an extended opening scene. To make matters worse, it seems like BKV only had the time or inclination to think about how to make the first and last three pages resonate as pieces to be read either forwards or backwards and the rest seems just tossed out there with maybe half an effort made for some resonance, if that (characters at the top of a page saying, "that's disgusting!" are reacting to a comment by Midnighter when read in one direction and, uh, something disgusting in the other direction).

Nice art by Darick Robertson and maybe BKV couldn't have pulled it off if he had really put his back into it, but man, was it disappointing to seem him not even try--this may be the most dashed-off lazily ambitious piece of hackwork I've seen from a major comics talent since the last time I read a Steranko story. Awful.

PUNISHER #47: The story of the discarded mob wife who's back for revenge would make a perfectly fine crime story even without our man with the skull chest--and that's just the kind of thing this book needs to make it a Very Good read. I'm enjoying this arc a lot.

Damn, I had just a few more reviews but they're never going to get finished the way work is dogpiling on me. I'll try to wrap this up tomorrow.

We can't take our eyes off your t-shirt and ties combination: Graeme finishes up last week's books just in time.

So many comics, and really, so little time. With Countdown launching tomorrow, I feel I should try and get at least some of the biggies from last week out the way today, so bear with me if I rush through some...

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #2: Wow, it's like this book was written to piss my little liberal self off. Not only do we get George W. Bush as Real American Hero ("I'm not going anywhere. I made a promise to the American people... that during this time a' war, they'd be safe at home. So the last thing I'm gonna so... is cut'n'run from mine."), but we also get more Hydra as super-terrorists, just like last issue, and a repeat of the talking point that pissed me off when it appeared in Iron Man: "For years we've called men like Hank super heroes, 'cause they have powers the rest of us don't. But today, serving as part of our proud military... he and his fellow Initiative members are now takin' on the role of real heroes!" This advertisement of our military also contains a character demanding that another character should be "Fighting for your country! Holding the line! No matter what the cost!", and the whole thing leaves a really weird taste in my mouth. If it wasn't for the fact that the book, politics aside, is a dull and uninvolving mess, I'd feel more conflicted about calling it Crap. As it is, though, I kind of wonder how I would've felt about it had I been more of a Fox News viewer.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: SEASON EIGHT #3: And back to the whole "You've really got to know your show to get the big last page reveal" thing from #1, which even gets some commentary on the letters page - A shame, because up until then, I'd been really enjoying the showdown between the newly-returned Willow and Amy. Sure, the last page reveal is very similar to an act-out on the show, but still - Bah. Good, though.

HELLBOY: DARKNESS CALLS #1: Just another example of Mike Mignola's debt to Michael Jackson's seminal "Thriller," this is the series where Duncan Fegredo takes over the art chores on the man with the big red right hand, and... well... it looks better for it. Don't get me wrong; I like Mignola's boldness, sense of design and use of blacks, but Fegredo manages to take all of that and fold it into something that works better as narrative - add that to Dave Stewart's colors and you have a beautiful book in service of a somewhat frustrating first chapter; Mignola's writing has a wonderful shaggy dog quality to it at best, but this feels more scattered than usual. Good, but I wish it had a stronger story for the art to support.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #106: Or, World War Hulk, part 1. And as much as I didn't want to like this, it's actually pretty Good. Most of that falls on the shoulders of new cast member Mastermind Excello, teenager and seventh-smartest-person-alive, who is pretty personable for a walking McGuffin who goes around to let people know just what happened to take the Hulk offplanet. He's also one of the best things about WORLD WAR HULK PROLOGUE: WORLDBREAKER - the main feature is a pretty boring recap of just why the Hulk should hate the people who pushed him off the planet, but the two back-ups (a reprint of Mastermind's first appearance, and a Mini-Marvels recap of Planet Hulk) are almost worth the price of admission by themselves; if the majority of the book had been that good, then this would've been more than a high Okay.

THE SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1: It had to happen. In the middle of unmasking and Aunt May being shot and "Back In Black" and everything else that Marvel have been doing to poor Peter Parker over the last few years, it was only a matter of time before they did the unexpected and gave us a really surprisingly good Spider-Man story that actually reads as if it's the same characters that you grew up reading. Credit Matt Fraction, who manages to make the current Spider-set-up work in a way that no-one else working with the character has managed, and immediately makes you wish that he was doing this on a regular basis - He writes a story that isn't about changing the status quo or how Spider-Man beats up the latest generic bad guy, but a story about what Spider-Man's meant to be about: family and responsibility. That he also makes you not only believe in the "controversial" (to, um, someone...?) marriage to Mary-Jane but root for it seems like an equally impressive task until you realize that he does it just by making MJ seem like a person in her own right as opposed to a robot who has two tasks (Being fanboy masturbatory material and saying "Oh, Peter..." when Spider-Man is upset). The only letdown for the book is Salvador Larocca's art, which (when he's not doing an admittedly very good job of aping John Romita Sr.) is dead on the page, despite a nice coloring job by Paco Roca. Released just in time for a movie that some of y'all might've heard of, this is Very Good and easily the best Spider-Man comic that Marvel have done in a long, long time.

SHAZAM!: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #3: It's the bizarro twin of Avengers: Initiative, as Dr. Sivana appears all-but-wearing an "I represent the Bush regime" t-shirt and saying things like "What's this, little girl? The alien creatures are really giant robots?All the more reason to keep them around a while longer. Robots are just machines - - tools for powerful men. Tools of war. And war... is profitable." The unsubtle contemporary political dig feels out of place in the otherwise timeless, child-friendly story, and kind of overbalances this penultimate issue. Yes, it's still Very Good, but less than before, if that makes sense.

SUPERMAN #662: Ahhh, Kurt Busiek - You manage to follow up Arion's prophecy of doom with an issue of Superman actually, you know, thinking about shit and it's still really pretty damn Good. It's a weirdly fun breather issue, and not just because Zatanna makes an appearance and seems to be post-Seven Soldiers for once; you get a nice idea of who Superman is in how he deals with this kind of pressure, and it's not the passive do-gooder of myth. I'm still wondering where the story is going overall, and I could've done without the appearance of Chris from Action, but, Kurt yet again proves why he's the best writer for the Man of Steel not called Morrison in a lonnnnnng time.

SUPERNATURAL ORIGINS #1: I don't watch the TV show - known in this household as "Look! It's Dean from Gilmore Girls trying to look mean!" - so this first issue left me confused and cold, especially with writing that isn't particularly tuned into the comic form yet (The psychic scene would've worked a lot better on TV, where the narration wouldn't have been so superfluous, for example). Eh, but who knows what a Supernatural fan would've thought?

Surprise PICK OF THE WEEK? Sensational Spider-Man Annual - Fraction is pretty much on fire these days, I think, so expect him to completely flame out and start writing some Avengers/Alpha Flight/X-Men Ultimate crossover within the next year or so. PICK OF THE WEAK is Supernatural Origins, because, really, Jared Padalecki's pout doesn't reproduce well on the comic page. What did everyone else read this week, anyway?

Arriving 5/9/07

Just to clear out a tab I've had open for days, there's a brand new Spinal Tap film (with Marty DeBergi, and everything!) to promote their "Live Earth" appearance. Hit the link, and scroll down to where it says "video: watch...." Its about 15 minutes long, and is good for all those who like to Tap! Here is what is shipping this week:

AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #8 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #540 ANNIHILATION SAGA BATMAN STRIKES #33 BATTLE POPE #14 (NOTE PRICE) BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #151 BLACK PANTHER #27 CWI BLADE #9 BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #125 BOMB QUEEN III #3 (OF 4) CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #13 COUNTDOWN #51 COVER GIRL #1 DESPERADOES BUFFALO DREAMS #4 (OF 4) DEVILS PANTIES #11 DMZ #19 GAMEKEEPER MUKESH SINGH COVER #2 GARTH ENNIS CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #3 (OF 6) GEN 13 #8 GHOST RIDER #11 GREEN ARROW #74 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #12 GRIFTER MIDNIGHTER #3 (OF 6) GRIMM FAIRY TALES #14 (RES) HACK SLASH SERIES SEELEY CVR A #1 HULK AND POWER PACK #3 (OF 4) IMMORTAL IRON FIST #5 INDIA AUTHENTIC GANESHA #1 INVINCIBLE #41 JACK OF FABLES #10 JLA CLASSIFIED #38 KILLER #4 (OF 10) LOST BOOKS OF EVE #2 MAD MAGAZINE #478 MADAME MIRAGE FIRST LOOK MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #24 MARVEL ZOMBIES DEAD DAYS MYSTERY IN SPACE #8 (OF 8) NEW AVENGERS #30 CWI NEW X-MEN #38 NIGHTWING #132 NOVA #2 CWI OKKO CYCLE OF WATER #3 (OF 4) OUTSIDERS #47 PHONOGRAM #6 (OF 6) PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #7 CWI PVP #32 RED SONJA VACANT SHELL ONE SHOT REX LIBRIS #8 SALVADOR #1 (OF 5) SAMURAI HEAVEN & EARTH VOL 2 #4 (OF 5) SANCTUARY #3 (OF 6) SCARLET CASCADE FEARBOOK SP ED SECRET #4 (OF 4) SECRET HISTORY BOOK TWO SOLLITARIA #1 SPIDER-MAN FANTASTIC FOUR #2 (OF 4) STAR WARS DARK TIMES #3 (OF 5) STAR WARS LEGACY #11 STORMWATCH PHD #7 STRONGARM #3 (OF 5) TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #8 (OF 8) THUNDERBOLTS #114 CWI TWO GUNS CVR A #2 (OF 4) ULTIMATE POWER #5 (OF 9) VERONICA #180 WOLVERINE ORIGINS #14 Y THE LAST MAN #56 (RES)

Books / Mags / Stuff ALTER EGO #68 CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE BOOK 2 TP CIVIL WAR PETER PARKER SPIDER-MAN TP COMPLETE DICK TRACY VOL 2 HC COURAGEOUS PRINCESS TP CRIMINAL VOL 1 COWARD TP ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 6 TP ETERNALS BY NEIL GAIMAN HC VAR ED GOTHIC SPORTS VOL 1 GN (OF 3) GREEN LANTERN CORPS VOL 1 TO BE A LANTERN TP HEAVY METAL JULY 2007 #111 JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #48 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN VOL 6 BLACK COSTUME DIGEST TP PARASYTE VOL 1 GN (OF 8) ROUGH STUFF #1 NEW PTG SIMON BISLEY ILLUSTRATION FROM THE BIBLE TP NEW PTG SKETCH MAGAZINE #32 SPARROW KENT WILLIAMS HC SPIDER-MAN AND POWER PACK BIG CITY SUPER HEROES DIGEST TP TOYFARE HARRY POTTER FANTASTIC FOUR TOYS CVR #119 WRITE NOW #15 Y THE LAST MAN VOL 9 MOTHERLAND TP ZOMBIES VOL 1 TP FEAST (O/A)

What looks good to you?

-B

Free Comic Book Day 2007: Rockin'!

We've participated in every Free Comic Book Day held so far, because its just a DAMN FINE idea. "The first taste is free" and all that. Typically, we're pretty mellow about promoting it, preferring the national press to do the heavy lifting. This year was no exception -- zero advertising, no in-store promotion to our regulars, no press releases, heck I don't even put the FCBD window cling up until the week before, and even that's up on the high part of our windows which probably makes it harder to spot.

All of that lack of effort, and yet there were still definitely periods during the day where we had so many people in the store it was difficult to move around without bumping someone's ass.

Lots of kids, too. Lots and lots of kids. Many many many kids. Maybe more kids in 8 hours than we get in a whole month combined. So that rocked.

We were doing OK on FCBD stock until about 3 pm or so -- then we started running out of titles. We started with 35 or so different books, and ended the day with perhaps eight left available.

We don't set limits on what people can take -- we have a "don't be greedy" rule, or "take what you want to eat, eat everything that you take", or perhaps, "don't just take something because it is free"

90%+ of people adhered to this rule without even being told. Even the "leeches" (and most every retailer can tell you about leeches who only come in for whatever is "free", and are, y'know, rude about it) pretty much adhered to the Rule. Which was nice.

90%+ of attendees bought something (counting "a family" as "attendee"), and we had an EXCELLENT sales day. Not a record (that still lies with the Neil Gaiman signing for SEASON OF MISTS HC -- hard to beat selling a $25 hardcover to each and every person who walks through your door, really), but in the top five of all time, and beating last year's FCBD by around 20%.

All in all, a great day, a great event, and we made a WHOLE lot of people really very very happy.

-B

New York New York, it's a wonderful town...

...The plane home was delayed, so I'm wearin' a frown. No, wait, that's not how it goes. Even though the plane home was delayed (but on the plus side, JetBlue! So there were purple crisps and television to keep me occupied).

Anyway; back from the Big Apple, where it was apparently less warm than San Francisco but there were friends and pizza in Brooklyn and the MoMA. There was also very little sleeping, and what little sleeping there was was filled with dreams where I met Jack Kirby, and he was really upset because he'd just won an award from, I think, the collected comic store retailers of America. He wasn't upset because of the award itself, but what it was given for - He'd won it in recognition of the amazing branding work he'd done on Boba Fett for Star Wars and Lucasfilm. As weird as it seems, one of the clearest moments from the dream was him standing in front of me, ranting that he hadn't even worked on Boba Fett, and who would want to give out an award for something as soulless as branding when there was much more creative work to be done.

It's possible my subconscious was trying to tell me something, but then got confused trying to push through the comic-culture-lined walls of my brain. Anyway, more reviews when I get a chance - Either this evening or tomorrow morning (or maybe both) - because a lot of things came out this past Wednesday...

You get what you pay for: Graeme on more FCBD books.

Aaaand we're back with more Free Comic Book Day Comic Books That Are Free. If you're going to be wandering into a store this Saturday looking for some priceless (in the sense of it not having a price because it's, you know, free) swag, then I have to admit - You might want to avoid all of the superhero books I talked about yesterday and think about these books, instead. Or, at least, the entry from our Canadian friends in the North:

COMICS FESTIVAL!: Easily the book to pick up, even if you avoid everything else from the day. Just the line-up of talent involved, from Bryan Lee O'Malley, Hope Larson, and Darwyn Cooke all the way to Ryan North's awesome and worthy of festivals on its own Dinosaur Comics!, is pretty impressive, but no-one involved phones it in here. Highlights for me include Kean Soo's Jellaby, just cute enough to melt your heart without making you feel manipulated, and O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim spin-off The Wonderful World of Kim Pine, which will make you hungry for more Pilgrim later this year. It's Excellent in its quality and eclectic nature, and the perfect book to give someone who doesn't know much about comics but is willing to learn.

HUNTER'S MOON/SALVADOR: From the sublime to the... well, the not sublime, let's put it like that. A lazy, lazy effort, sad to say - With the exception of the one page hype piece at the start of this book, this pretty much feels as if someone's just put the two books together by accident - the excerpts shown stop without warning, and don't offer any tension or even reason to read any further. Disappointingly Crap; the books and the publisher deserve better, I think.

TRANSFORMERS: OFFICIAL MOVIE PREQUEL #1: There's one thing I don't get about publishers releasing previously released comics almost entirely as they appeared before for FCBD - DC are by far the worst at this, with both of their books more or less just reprints of things that fans have spent money on in the last year - but I have to admit that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this reprint/repurpose of the first issue of IDW's movie tie-in. Once I got past the whole "That isn't what Megatron looks like! And he turns into a gun!" thing, this proved surprisingly Good; maybe not enough to make me want to pick up the rest of the series, but enough to make me want to see the movie.

UNSEEN PEANUTS: Surprisingly weighty, at least compared with some of the other Free Comic Book Day offerings, this mix of rare (and in some cases, never-before-reprinted) Peanuts strips - along with commentary on why they're so rare - feels like one of the better bargains of the day. Charles Schulz's genius is pretty much one of those things that everyone takes for granted these days, and for good reason, which is just one more reason why this collection of his misfires is Very Good.

VIRGIN COMICS SPECIAL: Pretty much a sampler without that much time, attention or care spent on it, this just collects a few pages from the first issues of four of Virgin's series - Ramayan 3392 AD, The Sadhu, Walk-In and Devi. None of them are much to my taste, so Eh; I found more interest in the text material repeatedly calling Nic Cage's upcoming title "Enigma" when the cover they show calls it "Voodoo Child".

COMICS 101, WIZARD: HOW TO DRAW and IMPACT UNIVERSITY #3: This year's "learn to be a comic creator" books almost work well together. Comics 101, a compilation of essays from creators of TwoMorrows' magazines like Draw, Alter Ego and Rough Stuff, is a slightly schizophrenic book, mixing "how to" basics with a brief history of the medium in America, but it's a hefty and Okay read. In comparison, Wizard's magazine is frothy and all about the spectacle, but just Eh in terms of content - it's not incredibly helpful, but has unintended humor like Joe Quesada announcing that covers should reflect the stories inside. Maybe he should tell the rest of Marvel Comics that... Impact's Okay anthology moves between surface finish and dry basics, with writing that follows the two extremes, but arguably works best as a bridge between the two earlier titles. Not that I think that they planned it that way, mind you...

As I said yesterday, I didn't even get the chance to read everything - Somehow I missed out on Dark Horse's preview of The Umbrella Academy (by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and Casanova's Gabriel Ba), the First Second preview for The Black Diamond Detective Agency (Eddie Campbell's new book) and Tokyopop's Choose Your Weapon, to name just a few. There's a complete list of books available here, but why not just go into your local store and pick up whatever catches your eye?

Me, I'm not going to follow my own advice, but that's because I'm not going to be in a comics store this weekend - Kate and I are heading out east for a whirlwind tour of friends, culture and pizza-that-is-apparently-very-good (And when I say "whirlwind," I mean "less than 48 hours"). Expect more from me on Monday, when I will be very tired indeed.

All this, and World War, too? Hibbs Hulks Out

INCREDIBLE HULK #106, WAR WAR HULK: PROLOGUE: These are of a set, so let's look at them like such. I'll cop to the fact that, in my little secret fanboy heart, this is the crossover this year that I'm most looking forward to. Why? Because it seems pretty "pure" to me: They made Hulk mad, now Hulk SMASH! Pretty hard to screw that up, and its a nice clean line.

The PROLOGUE is more or less "here's what got us here", but does a pretty good job of not feeling like a clip show. Nothing is recycled, just recapped. Its a pretty effective presentation of the basic information, and I wasn't bored while reading it (especially since I read all of the issues its discussing already). It also reprints the obscuro first appearance of Amadeus Cho from that issue of (second series) AMAZING FANTASY so no one has to sweat collector’s prices (if, indeed, they were). But the real winner of the issue is the "mini-Marvels" bit, which is a complete piss-take on the whole story. That alone is *almost* worth the entry price by itself.

In HULK #106 the last of the pre-arrival bits fall into play -- Jen is depowered (though, gah, way to trash SHE-HULK before it ships [and, huh, still not shipping by 5/9 either, it looks like, based on the East Coast shipping lists]), Amadeus Cho puts himself into play, Ol' Doc Sampson shows himself to be as big of a dick as Reed, et al. Its all reasonably well written, and I loved the art as well, so hooray.

One thing that bothered me is the Continued Dickafication of the Heroes-in-Authority -- Reed's rationale is weak, at best, and you'd think the World's Smartest Guy (who is off-planet in FF, isn't he? Maybe it's a clone-robot!) could come up with something better, Len Sampson also comes off very very badly -- you'd think a licensed mental health professional might have a greater sense of ethics, wouldn't you?

I suppose one can argue "Civil War" either way -- I don't much *buy* the pro-side arguments, but its clear that something similar initially happened in the US post 9/11 -- but in WWH, I really can't see this as anything but "the illuminati is ABSOLUTELY wrong". They kidnapped him, they exiled him, and they left him a giant-planet destroying bomb of a ship as their bonus prize. They killed his wife and unborn child. They MADE the monster what he is.

So, yeah, I'm rooting for ol' Jade Jaws.

The problem is they're pretty unlikely to let him kill Tony or Reed -- though I suspect Black Bolt or Dr. Strange might be possible -- nor can he really "win" in a "war", so it is a little hard to see how this can have a satisfying resolution, in the weeks before it really starts.

I'll probably surprise everyone by having a shockingly low standard here, and I'll give these both a GOOD.

What did YOU think?

I Wanna Be Free: Graeme looks at some FCBD books ahead of this weekend...

For those who haven't been paying attention to the calendar, this upcoming Saturday is Free Comic Book Day - that 24-hour period when publishers try to convince you to pay money for their wares in the future by employing the popular drug-pusher credo of the "first one," if you will, being "free". There're a ridiculous amount of books coming out this year; enough for me to spend today and tomorrow looking through what's going to be awaiting you for zero dollars this weekend, and even then I haven't seen everything that's going to be available. Let's do the superhero ones first, shall we?

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: This is the strangest of the books released; It's incredibly old-school, with Dan Slott using a traditional Spider-Man plot (I want to be there for Aunt May - but my life as Spider-Man gets in the way!) and even using thought balloons, but with a pretty massive unexplained character appearance - You'll know it when you see it - that begs for follow-up elsewhere. If the rumors are true, and Slott is soon to take over Amazing, then is this a flash-forward to Spider-Man, post "One More Day" (which gets trailed at the back of the book, and is such a buzzkill as to harsh my mellow from the Slott/Phil Jiminez strip; when did Quesada's art get so ugly?), and does that mean that we're heading to some kind of reset button about to be pushed...? Good, if confusing...

THE ASTONISHING WOLF-MAN #1: Everything about Robert Kirkman's new series, from the title down to the slick-but-dull writing screams minor 1970s Marvel... Shame that the artwork, doesn't follow suit - It somehow manages to be stylized and yet unstylish at the same time (Think a blockier, less refined, Cory Walker). There's nothing about this Okay first issue that makes me want to actually pay money for the second issue, but it's fine enough. The previews at the back, for Top Cow's First Born event and the new-look Spawn, aren't particularly enticing, either...

LIBERTY COMICS #0: Heroic Publishing deserves praise for standing up to Marvel's attempt to use their Champions trademark, but not so much praise for this anthology spotlighting their pretty-generic female Captain America in pretty-generic Captain America-lite WWII stories. All of the stories trade on a weirdly idealized version of what WWII must've been like, right down to the bizarre "Japanese Internment Camps aren't that bad really" feature. Eh.

MARVEL ADVENTURES: IRON MAN/HULK: Marvel's kid-offering for the day hypes up their two upcoming launches, Iron Man and Hulk. Neither strip comes up to the level of something like Jeff Parker's Adventures work, although Fred Van Lente's Iron Man comes close (Pepper Potts in particular is a lot of fun) - Sad to say, though, the highlight of this Okay book is probably the non-headlining third strip, a new Franklin Richards short.

NEXUS: As much as I love the character and this strip, this greatest-hits compilation is a missed opportunity to introduce fans who are unfamiliar with Nexus to the whole shebang, focusing instead on scenes that the creators' favorite scenes shown mostly out of context. I'm still looking forward to the return of the series, but this Okay book could've, should've, been better.

You'll notice that I didn't mention either of DC's attempts, JLA #0 and The Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #1. One of the reasons why is that both of them are reprints - the Legion book, a tie-in to the cartoon as opposed to the Waid/Kitson team, actually only came out last month - and another is, well, I didn't read the FCBD editions. But nonetheless, JLA is a fair enough sample of what the regular DC Universe books are like these days (Okay enough continuity porn), and the Legion book seems on par with the TV show, neither of which are particularly more than Okay to me.

Tomorrow: The indie books, including the one that you should go out of your way to pick up.

52 Weeks Later: Hibbs on What Was Wrought

52 WEEK 52: So, I have to admit I am a little torn. The final issue of 52 is kind of two different things, really. There's the full-length (or there about) "multiverse, multiverse, who-has-the-multiverse" story, which seems almost tangential, and largely irrelevant to the narrative through-line of 52; then there's the Epilogue-to-the-series bits where everyone (who didn't get one last week) gets their happy ending. The latter mostly makes me happy -- especially the Ralph sequence, which is pretty much exactly what I asked for weeks ago (yay, me!) -- but also goes far in underlining some of the narrative problems of the series: situation A, B and C are all resolved while skipping over some of the "how", and while more or less ignoring certain amounts of story logic. (For example, the whole "prophecy" bit -- when you're "playing fair", prophecy should, in fact, "come true", but with a twist that no one expects because they read the prophecy incorrectly. Like a Wish spell in Dungeons & Dragons, y'know? "I wish for 1 million experience points" "OK, your character ages 60 years, mark off 6 points each of Str and Con, and 4 points of Dex")

As a story, I think history will probably judge 52 to be a failure - a very noble and far-reaching failure, to be sure, but a failure none-the-less. Plenty of stuff is left unexplained, or dashed off explanations that don't really make a lot of sense; there's an enormous bloat in the 2nd act where wheels are spinning on mostly really dull stuff (every single thing that happened with Steel, for example, could probably have been contained in a single 22 page story); and, it appears to me looking at things from the outside that the intent and the scope of the story changed from week 1 to week 52 -- shouldn't have there been more meaning in the "people were changed coming back from space at the end of Infinite Crisis"? Which, instead, more or less got tossed under the rug.

However, that's kind of alright, really, given the experimental nature of 52 -- something I don't think any of us really thought was going to work at or, nor, in fact, come out like clockwork the way it did. And it very much raises the stakes on COUNTDOWN, because I strongly suspect the audience isn't going to put up with the annoying tics that 52 had on Project #2. Overall, I very much doubt that 52, the series, deserves much better than a Savage Critic "OK"... and it was actually probably closer to an "EH", but you have to admire both the audacious nature of the idea, as while of the crazy efforts of everyone involved, both on the business side (as exemplified by Didio's column this week), as well as the creative side (who.... uh. Aren't even mentioned in passing?)

As for the specific content of the main bits Week 52, I was reasonably charmed. But, again, I'm not sure how I feel. I *think* when people say things "we want that back", what they actually mean is "we want it back to what it was pre-Crisis -- JLA on e-1, JSA on e-2, Shazam family on e-S, Freedom Fighters on e-X" and so forth, where there was demarcation between the "earths", and where each one was relatively self-consistent.

What I'm less sure of is the value of "Earth-1 is 'smooshed Earth' where everything stays jammed together; but then we also have an e-10 (10=X, get it?!?!) where the JLA heroes are controlled by the nazi party and the Freedom Fighters battle them"

How do I put this? That set up is good for a story, maybe two. BUt it's not really sustainable in terms of audience interest over the next umpty decades. Why? Because the audience wants to read about the "real" version of a character. The Freedom Fighters on e-10 can't be much more than a McGuffin (or a way to introduce Ubermensch and Fraulein Vundabar) because the "real" FF lives on e-1.

[I also want to say that just because the audience or a reader wants a concept back in play, that doesn't necessarily mean it has commercial success written on it. For a decade or more I thought one of the stupidest mistakes DC made was eliminating the Green Lantern Corps -- what a brilliant tool for generating ideas and stories! But that doesn't mean I want to read a monthly GREEN LANTERN CORPS comic book, running parallel to GREEN LANTERN itself]

Obviously, at this point, it's probably not even possible to "unsmoosh" Earth, even if that what people REALLY wanted, but this does feel like a way to keep 52 plot devices, rather than actually bring back the multiverse in any meaningful way -- especially because there are only AND SPECIFICALLY 52 parallel worlds, rather than an infinite number of them.

Anyway, despite all of that nitpickery, as a single issue I really rather enjoyed the romp, and the spirit on display, and anyone jumped off during the series, or, really, cares about the DCU at all would do well to pick up this issue -- I thought it was a solidly GOOD comic, though I might be a little more rose-colored than I should be.

What did YOU think?

-B

(49 plus) 3 is the magic number: Graeme gets to the end of things.

52 WEEK 52: And so, it's over. I found myself bizarrely excited about this issue, ahead of time - Not because it's the end of the series and thank God, but because it's the end of the series and I'm all fired up and excited to see how and if they wrap it up. I've been rereading the series in chunks over the last few nights, and was surprised by how well it holds together, despite the continual and ever-present mad rush on behalf of the creators to keep all of the balls in the air at once. I'm already in the nostalgic break-up mourning period about 52; the book was never perfect, I think to myself now (Hell, sometimes it wasn't even good, when taken in individual issue servings), but that was half the fun - The creators were present throughout the whole series, in their missteps (Ralph Dibny going insane in week thirteen, which wasn't only never followed up on, but pretty much ignored as soon as he appeared next, for example) and their biases and familiar tics (Greg Rucka taking Montoya through the end of a storyline that started, what, way back in his Detective run; Grant Morrison's humanism from his Animal Man run influencing whoever decided to give Buddy another happy ending) and even at the very worst, the whole thing sang of the wonderful joy and uncertainty of creation.

That feeling comes through strongly in this final issue. Like the conclusion of other plots, it's practically a full issue following one plot thread, and like the conclusion of other plots, it's somewhat unsatisfying, with plot beats coming from nowhere and not being explored fully. But - and maybe this is because I know that I'm really going to miss this series - it's one of the more enjoyable issues that we've seen in the series for a long time. By the time we hit the conclusion of the main plot (and, yes, a lot of the smaller threads and hints from the beginning of the series go unanswered, but that's fine; it's almost more fun that not everything gets tied up nicely), the promise of a kindler, gentler DC Universe has almost been fulfilled - For all the characters that died, we have a conclusion that gives happy endings to almost all of its main players (Vic Sage aside); the epilogue to the Dibny story alone is enough to make you want Mark Waid to write a sequel almost immediately, and that's not touching on Booster's story, the miraculous-but-welcome end to Montoya's journey (Yes, she should have died but when it comes down to it, I don't care), or Steel's pretty-much-reboot. Even Black Adam lives to rip-people's-arms-off another day.

When it comes down to it, the end of the main story isn't new - It's exceptionally similar to the end of Waid's The Kingdom, from, what, ten years ago or so? - but it's fun and offers both a reset and the offer of new possibilities. Whether or not those possibilities ever get followed up on is unlikely (Hello, cynic!), but there's something wonderfully optimistic and entirely welcome about such a massive Big Two event having an ending that doesn't involve someone's tragic sacrifice or wholescale death. This issue may be Good, but the series as a whole is an uneven, unusual, and unexpected Very Good novelty.

Countdown won't be the same, of course. But maybe it can be its own version of good, who knows?

Slow and steady wins... nothing: Graeme wraps it up for 4/25.

So I would've posted this yesterday, but I forgot. That's what I get for writing these things up ahead of time. Something else I get is that Hibbs more or less wrote the same thing as my first two comments - yes, I really wrote this that far ahead for some reason - but I figured why not post it anyway?

(And now Jeff's posted his reviews saying the same thing as well. Goddammit.)

First off, JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #5, the second part of the current JLA/JSA crossover. Taken on its own merits, it's perfectly Okay; the story moves along incredibly slowly - Seriously, we're two issues into this so far, and I'm not really sure that the plot has moved along that much at all - but the art is nice enough, and at least there's an attempt at expositionary dialogue to give readers unfamiliar with all of the characters a reason to care about what's going on. Except, as Hibbs pointed out, that expositionary dialogue is kind of a problem. I mean, just the idea that Superman used to belong to the pre-Crisis Legion of Super-Heroes is kind of a continuity fuck in and of itself these days, considering that they aren't the Legion that currently has its own book or anything, but when he then says "Then the first Crisis hit and I never saw them again," there's this moment of the story stopping dead and fans thinking, Wait, what?

On the one hand, sure. It's a metatextual comment on the post-Crisis changes that essentially, slowly, fucked the Legion up, as well as on the Byrne reboot Superman, and in that sense, huzzah! But on the other hand, there had to be a Legion around for Superman to meet after the first Crisis, in order for what we generally assume to be the vague DC continuity fans understood to still be the case to work - Cosmic Boy was around to take part in the Legends crossover, and as Hibbs and others pointed out earlier this week, there was a team of stranded-in-time Legionnaires in the present during the Final Night crossover. And doesn't newly-important-again Booster Gold's origin involve some Legion trickery? It's not that continuity around the Legion wasn't already dicey, but having characters explicitly point this out in stories just underscores how mallable and uncertain continuity is for DC, post-Infinite Crisis; something that wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that their comics consistently refer to themselves over and over again. The strangest thing is, they do it to themselves. There's no reason other than fanboyishness for the pre-Crisis Legion to be used here instead of the threeboot version of the characters, but in order to satisfy that fanboy neediness, the creators needlessly confuse everything. Remember that whole "Where are the editors?" thing?

SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #29 has a similar issue with continuity, in that - as Hibbs said last Wednesday (This really is the post of "Like Hibbs said...", isn't it?) - it kind of gives away a reveal for 52 #52 tomorrow (Only kind of, however; this week's 52 also gives the same thing away, when Morrow says "52 worlds... 52 Morrows...And it all comes down to me..." Legion is just more explicit about it, is all) and reveals that this entire plot that's been running in one form or another for the last year is the result of a 52 plot that we still haven't had explained to us properly yet. Fine, congratulations to the creators for tying the book into current DC continuity, but why did you tie a book set 1000 years in the future to current DC continuity especially when current DC continuity seems to want to deal with a 30-year-old version of your characters?

(I know the answer, and so do you: Sales. But still. It's incredibly frustrating to see this book that has the perfect excuse to be complete in and of itself suddenly become another chapter in the ongoing saga of continuity porn.)

That said, that's the least of this issue's problems. With the disappearance of the book's regular creative team two issues earlier than their announced departure (The book is by Tony Bedard and Kevin Sharpe, who have been announced as the creators taking over temporarily in the wake of Mark Waid and Barry Kitson both taking off for pastures new) and the fact that the end of the issue pretty much sees the main characters where they were at the start of the issue, this feels as if it's a last minute fill-in rather than the legitimate next chapter of the story. But that doesn't appear to be the case, because this issue we also get the motivation for the bad guys and the escape of characters who've appeared as captives for the last few issues... So it's not exactly filler, but it's not entirely essential either; it just feels like an afterthought, a tired attempt to get an issue out and make it barely worthwhile... which, considering that Waid and Kitson had managed to make the book feel like it was regaining momentum and building to a big finish, is somehow all the more offensive in its weakness. Crap, sadly, and unless next issue is somehow jawdroppingly wonderful, enough to pretty much kill interest in the storyline completely dead.

Depressing, ain't it?

Meanwhile, in the non-continuity-bashing parts of the reviewosphere:

ACTION COMICS #848: We're completely in the midst of Action's fill-in period, particularly now that the end of Geoff Johns and Richard Donner's first story-arc has now been booted over to next year's Action Comics Annual - Regular scheduling is due to resume somewhere around #855, I think? - and this issue is respectable enough, but falls into the trap of trying to do something "important" with the character... In this case, having him confront a character apparently powered by the religious faith of others. Which is an interesting idea, but there's something unconvincing about the execution that I can't quite put my finger on. Okay, but fairly traditionally fill-in-ish.

DAREDEVIL #96: The other day, Jeff and I agreed that this issue of DD was, despite being well-written and well-drawn and otherwise technically Good, a really bizarrely bland reading experience. Maybe it's because it's a book that's so reliable that it's weirdly dull...? I think that may be the worst compliment ever given to a book, but still...

FANTASTIC FOUR #545: There's a lot to enjoy in this book, as much as the portrayal of Black Panther as Marvel's Batman (or Kurt Busiek; whichever one wins more often in your eyes) can get old very quickly - although watching him take the "most strategically sound" route around the Galactus problem was funny, even if it's probably only part one of a dodge. Dwayne McDuffie keeps with the lighter tone of Peter David in his heyday, and the mix of comedy and adventure feels appropriate for the series... Also appreciated is the fact that Reed and Sue are still part of the book, even as they're not part of the team; it really reinforces the "family" aspect of the FF. There're rumors that McDuffie and artist Paul Pelletier are only the temporary creators on this book, filling in until a more high profile team takes over in September, and I'm hoping desperately that that's not the case - this is a Very Good take, and I'd like to see it continue for awhile.

WONDER WOMAN #8: This third chapter of Jodi Picoult's run on the book feels like a first chapter of something else - Amazons Attack, say - instead of any continuation of the previous two chapters. Part of that is down to Terry and Rachel Dodson returning to the art chores, but it's more down to the fact that the AA plot comes in and more or less overruns everything else. It makes what's already a weirdly out-of-balance book even worse, especially with dialogue like "If you want to hit me, which I'd understand, know that I'm not really here. Whoa - - Deep." At this point, not much of a surprise that this is another issue of the failed relaunch, but still, this is Crap, sadly.

PICK OF THE WEEK is a bit of a cheat, because it's also TRADE OF THE WEEK: The Salon, which is very, very worth your time and money. PICK OF THE WEAK is probably Wonder Woman, which just keeps on disappointing, depressingly. Coming up later this week: 52 finishes! Free Comic Book Day arrives, bringing with it a great book from Canada! And I go to New York for the weekend! Can you dig it?

Inviting Brain Damage: More Reviews from Jeff of 4/25 Books.

In the last 36 hours, I've watched Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, the Ong-Bak-esque Born To Fight, and Clerks 2. It's like I'm trying to give myself brain damage or something. In reverse order, Clerks 2 is mostly Eh (I laughed a few times, but how watchable the movie is depends on the size of your Rosario Dawson crush); Born To Fight is unrateable (oh my god, some of the stunts are truly insane, and I applaud these guys for trying to bring Gymkata into the new millennium, but it's a very grim little propaganda flick at heart) and The Holy Mountain is Excellent, with spots of its vivid imagery still floating in front of my eyes a day and a half later. While on the funnybook front:

DAREDEVIL #96: Lark's art is gorgeous, and Brubaker has done a great job twisting the standard Gladiator story on its head as Matt tries to figure out what to do considering his belief in Melvin Potter's guilt. The problem is that I really, really don't care about Melvin Potter/Gladiator. The quality of the work here is Good, but the subject is Eh, so let's go with OK. Maybe next issue will knock me on my ass.

FANTASTIC FOUR #545: Kinda torn about this because even though the character dialogue was tremendously satisfying (particularly between Ben and Johnny), there was a lot of stuff I couldn't buy. The FF put on bracelets that allow them to survive in space. Okay, fine. Then Ben goes out into the soundless void of space and yells at The Silver Surfer, who then replies. Wait, what? The Black Panther stealthily hops onto the Surfer's board and rides it in to attack. Okay, fine (and pretty cool). But then he grabs the Silver Surfer in an armlock that renders the Surfer incapable of escaping. Wait, double-what? Bri and G. had no problems with this whatsoever, so I guess I'm just the "Buh-but space is soundless and the Silver Surfer's can channel the Power Cosmic through his entire body" nerd. Well, this nerd says Eh.

HEROES FOR HIRE #9: Oh, Jack Kirby, how you've made a hypocrite out of me. If Jack saw a sequence from a movie or a TV show that he thought would work on the comics page, he wouldn't hesitate to lift it and I love that about his work. On the other hand, that Zeb Wells brings the Heroes For Hire team to the Savage Land just so he can rip off the bug section from the Jackson remake of King Kong annoys the living crap out of me. That the artist can't figure out a way to give any of the scenes a sense of space or movement only exacerbates that annoyance. Sub-Eh dross, sadly.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #5: I'm not sure there's anything I can add to Hibbs' review. This was a Good issue with decent art and some fun characterization, and the LSH shrine in the Fortress sums up nearly everything wrong with DC right now. Putting aside the gossipy side of me that wonders if the reason Mark Waid was mysteriously absent from Supergirl & LSH this week is because that scene seems to shit on 28 issues of hard work on his part (more, if you count his involvement with other Legion reboots), that scene underscores how much DC relies on selling my own childhood back to me to make its cash. Actually, considering what a good (albeit depressing) definition of superhero comics today that is, let me try and tighten that up somewhat: the scene with the LSH shrine underscores how much DC relies on having kidnapped its own history and ransoming it back to us. Hibbs argues in his review about how DC needs to make clear "what IS continuity, and what isn't" but obviously that's the last thing DC is gonna do at this point, because there's no surprise, no delight, to just saying "okay, yeah, it's all back in now unless you hear otherwise." To extend my earlier metaphor, why would you pay the ransom if you know the kidnappers are just gonna release your kid anyway?

Maybe I'm utterly wrong and 52 #52 will lay things out so we'll be able to look at this scene from a story point of view and have it make sense. But the easiest way to have it make sense is this: when a chunk of your readership is people who've been reading these things weekly for decades, the simplest way to really surprise 'em is to give them the things they think they can't have. And giving us a sudden spread of the Legion and having Superman talk about meeting them when he was just a boy is, in the face of Supergirl and the LSH and the Siegel family winning co-ownership of the Superboy copyright, something I sure as hell didn't think we'd have again. It is, let's face it, a neat fucking trick. But like all tricks, it relies on making sure the people on whom the trick is pulled knowing less than the people pulling the trick.

Back On The Beat: Jeff's Opening Salvo for the 4/25 Books...

Has not posting in a week-plus left me chops a little rusty? I think so. Last month, Graeme mentioned how daily reviewing turned his brain into a non-stop reviewer-and-rater of everything that happened to him. And while I also had that, I currently find myself swinging toward the other pole--where almost nothing kicks the reviewing portion of my brain into action. I watched four movies last Sunday, for example, ranging from Duck, You Sucker! to The Black Gestapo and the closest I got to critical analysis was "nice explosions" (for Duck, You Sucker!) and "that was probably the best climactic battle between good and evil to ever take place on somebody's patio" (for The Black Gestapo). So if my reviews this week run to the "hey, these staples do an awesome job of holding the book together, don't they?" side of things, be patient.

52 WEEK #51: Why did it take the end of The Mystery In Space storyline to remind me how much I liked these characters? While I'm griping, trading in a sneering caterpillar that wears glasses and a radio for a gloating, gigantic butterfly beastie is a bit like exchanging a stringless cello for a permanently out-of-tune saxophone. Unless you end up with a supervillain with arms (for fist-shaking and building punching) and legs (for junk-kicking and face-stomping), your upgrade is just as unlikely to be ignored as before. OK, I guess.

Oh, and if they put out a special of all J.G. Jones' covers for 52 on nice paper and a maybe a few essays or something? I'd totally buy that.

ACTION COMICS #848: If this had been a story about Superman dealing with a superhero who doesn't share the Big S's attitudes about non-interference in developing nations, that'd be one thing (and a pretty good idea for a story, I think). But by making the superhero be both religious and faith-powered, the waters are muddied considerably and maybe unnecessarily; all those flashbacks of Clark Kent in church certainly helps with the page count, but the link seems to imply that only rationalist-based individuals should be trusted to decide the fates of others (tell it to the French Revolution, Mr. Nicieza). I'm Eh about it, and hopefully next issue will prove all my various knee-jerk reactions to be simply that.

AMAZONS ATTACK #1: Graeme and Hibbs both had problems with this book, but laid those problems at editorial and gave the creative team a pass. Although I've liked Pfeifer's work in the past, and think Pete Woods' art is damn fine, I'm not so generous. I thought all that stuff with Abraham Lincoln was obfuscatory bullshit that did nothing but killed time and cluttered the issue (at one point, Queen Hippolyta charges into the Lincoln Monument saying something like "Let us show them what we think of their 'Great Emancipator'" and I asked Hibbs, "So the Amazons are attacking because they're angry at African-Americans?" Similarly, on the first page where the dad tells his son about Lincoln, and his son goes "Cool, and then what happened to him?" which no kid ever says after lectures about famous people made into statues because the kid knows if Lincoln had gone on to invent Pac-Man and found Metallica, that would have benn mentioned.) I know Pfeifer is going for an "Independence Day" summer blockbuster feel to things (and he's fortunate to have an artist like Woods who can give the big splodey as well as smaller moments), but it's such a dumb choice it seems lazy.

On the one hand, Pfeifer and Woods deserve better. On the other, let's face it: slumming is slumming. Awful.

BLUE BEETLE #14: Steps a bit into too-cutesy territory maybe, and I'm not sure that I can buy a concept where everyone in the JLA believes Jaime but somehow it's still just him matching wits against aliens posing as friendly vistors. But it's also an issue that advances the plot, is a satisfying read on its own, and has some of the better-written characters you'll find in a superhero book today. Compared to its previous issues, I'd say lowish Good, but good nonetheless.

CONNOR HAWKE DRAGONS BLOOD #6: An enjoyable big finish which, unless I missed something, opens the door for Connor to manifest superpowers in the future. The six people who care about Connor Hawke (two of whom are Chuck Dixon) must be thrilled. I'm not quite one of those six, but I'm getting closer all the time, particularly when competently done OK miniseries like this come along and make an argument for it.

CROSSING MIDNIGHT #6: Fixes (at least for this issue) the one problem I had with the book up until now--the characters' relative helplessness in the face of so much mystical badassery. Considering the last three issues have been varying degrees of awesome, I can only hope that (a) the awesome continues; and (b) it picks up in sales enough to survive. If you ever wanted Miyazaki and Clive Barker to collaborate, you should check this book out. Very Good.

Arriving 5/2

...and here's the other part of what I did this afternoon... Another big week, it seems like:

100 BULLETS #83 2000 AD #1531 2000 AD #1532 52 WEEK #52 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #57 (A) ALIEN PIG FARM #1 (OF 4) ALL NEW ATOM #11 ALL NEW OFF HB MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z UPDATE #2 AMERICAN VIRGIN #14 ARCHIE & FRIENDS #109 ARCHIE DIGEST #234 ASHLEY WOODS D AIRAIN AVENTURE #2 ASTONISHING X-MEN #21 AVENGERS INITIATIVE #2 CWI BATTLESTAR GALACTICA CYLON APOCALYPSE #3 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #3 CHECKMATE #13 CHUCKY PHOTO CVR B #1 (OF 5) CITY OF OTHERS #2 (OF 4) DANGER GIRL BODY SHOTS #2 (OF 4) DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #4 (OF 7) DARK XENA #1 DARKNESS LEVEL 3 BRASE CVR A DEADMAN #9 DETECTIVE COMICS #832 DOMINION #1 EXTERMINATORS #17 FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #20 GHOST RIDER TRAIL OF TEARS #4 (OF 6) GIANT SIZED RED SONJA #1 GREEN LANTERN #19 GRIMM FAIRY TALES RETURN TO WONDERLAND #0 HAWKGIRL #63 HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS #1 (OF 6) HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY #17 (A) INCREDIBLE HULK #106 IRON MAN #17 CWI JONAH HEX #19 JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #257 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #33 LONERS #2 (OF 6) LOONEY TUNES #150 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #27 MARVEL ILLUSTRATED LAST OF THE MOHICANS #1 (OF 6) MARVEL ZOMBIES ARMY OF DARKNESS #3 (OF 5) MIDNIGHTER #7 MS MARVEL #15 CWI NASCAR HEROES #1 OMEGA FLIGHT #2 CWI (OF 5) PHANTOM #16 PUNISHER #47 RAISE THE DEAD #2 RUNAWAYS #26 SCALPED #5 SCARFACE SCARRED FOR LIFE #5 SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1 SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #3 (OF 4) SPAWN #167 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #18 STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #16 STRANGE GIRL #16 STRANGERS IN PARADISE #89 SUPERMAN #662 SUPERNATURAL ORIGINS #1 TEEN TITANS #46 THUNDERBOLTS PRESENTS ZEMO BORN BETTER #4 (OF 4) TRANSFORMERS ESCALATION #6 TRIPPER MOVIE ADAPTATION ONE SHOT (RES) ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #41 WARD O/T STATE #1 (OF 3) WARHAMMER 40K CVR A #3 WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #6 WITCHBLADE SARA BEARER CVR A #105 WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA #3 WONDER MAN #5 (OF 5) WORLD WAR HULK PROLOGUE WORLD BREAKER X ISLE #5 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff 52 ACTION FIGURES MASTER CASE ASST (NET) ALL NEW ATOM VOL 1 MY LIFE IN MINIATURE TP CIVIL WAR CAPTAIN AMERICA TP CIVIL WAR WOLVERINE TP CIVIL WAR YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS TP CLARENCE PRINCIPLE GN CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #36 SUB MARINER CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #8 GREEN GOBLIN CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #34 RED SKULL CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #35 GAMBIT CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #37 LOKI CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #5 MAGNETO CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #6 BLADE COMPLETE OMAHA THE CAT DANCER VOL 6 TP (A) FANTASTIC FOUR VISIONARIES WALTER SIMONSON VOL 1 TP FIRST IN SPACE GN FLOOD 3RD EDITION TP GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOL 1 TP IN DUBLIN CITY GN KORGI VOL 1 TP LEES TOY REVIEW MAY 2007 #175 LOVE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE OMNIBUS VOL 2 TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS WAR THAT TIME FORGOT VOL 1 TP STAR TREK COMICS CLASSICS VOL 5 CONVERGENCE TP STAR WARS LEGACY VOL 1 BROKEN TP WALKING DEAD SORROWFUL LIFE VOL 6 WALKING DEAD VOL 2 HC WIZARD EXTRA VOL 1 DIRECTORS COMMENTARIES SC

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Why I suck (part #48765 in a series)

Had some knocking-the-wind-out news on Friday, but mostly I had forgotten it was order form/sub form weekend. I should have comics related content posts on MOnday and Tuesday... Meanwhile, here's the Top 20 of what Comix Experience ordered for June shipping (no specific numbers this time)...

1. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #4 2. ALL STAR SUPERMAN #8 3. COUNTDOWN #47 (I fell for the returnability offer here) COUNTDOWN #46 COUNTDOWN #45 COUNTDOWN #44 7. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #10 DARK TOWN GUNSLINGER BORN #5 9. JUSTICE #12 (Both covers combined) 10. NEW AVENGERS #31 (taking Marvel on it's word...) 11. HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS #3 FLASH FASTEST MAN ALIVE #13 (also returnability offer) BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4 14. BATMAN #667 15. RUNAWAYS #27 MIGHTY AVENGERS #4 BOYS #7 (Shame that DC let a top 20 book go away) 18. X-MEN FINCH GATEFOLD VARIANT #200 X-MEN ENDANGERED SPECIES ONE-SHOT WORLD WAR HULK #1

And here's the Top 20 by the I-think-more-important dollars

1. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #4 2. ALL STAR SUPERMAN #8 3. DARK TOWN GUNSLINGER BORN #5 4. JUSTICE #12 (Both covers combined) 5. SHAZAM MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #4 6. COUNTDOWN #47 COUNTDOWN #46 COUNTDOWN #45 COUNTDOWN #44 10. EC ARCHIVES TALES FROM THE CRYPT VOL 2 HC 11. JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 2 HC 12. ULTIMATES 2 VOL 2 GRAND THEFT AMERICA TP 13. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #10 14. FRENCH KISS #20 (A) 15. NEW AVENGERS #31 16. WILL EISNERS SPIRIT ARCHIVES V22 HC 17. GRENDEL ART OF MATT WAGNERS GRENDEL HC 18. X-MEN FINCH GATEFOLD VARIANT #200 X-MEN ENDANGERED SPECIES ONE-SHOT WORLD WAR HULK #1

Dunno if any of that's interesting to anyone...

-B