Brube in da house, and more of Hibbs' blabbing

It was a painfully slow day at the ol' CE today -- there were points I expected tumbleweeds to start rolling through. Thankfully, things were deeply enlivened when Evil Ed Brubaker did the surprise pop-in around 3 PM, which nicely helped us kill 3 hours, hooray!

Ed, once a long time ago, lived in San Francisco, and was a CE customer. Back in the days before he became a Corporate Sell-Out, Working For The Man, Ed used to come around and be a Little Black Rain Cloud, always moaning about how much the comics business sucked, and how he got no respect, and yadda yadda. Don't get me wrong, we loved it, because, yeah the comics business can and does suck, and Ed wasn't getting the respect he deserved, and yadda yadda. It's just that if I could cartoon at all, and you held a gun to my head and said "draw Ed Brubaker", I might draw a picture of Eeyore in a Porkpie Hat.

So I was a little surprised (happily so!!) to see Little Miss Sunshine Brubaker, all happy and smiling and filled with joy to all things comic-al. I guess having the nest selling single issue of the last year can do that to a feller, right?

Honestly, it couldn't have happened to a better guy, and we couldn't have possibly be happier for all of his success, and I like the fact that it's made him a Smiling Guy, because while I liked 'ol Dour Ed, I like the Happy Brube better, I think.

So, anyway, yay that!

I've decided that, no matter what he says now, I'm not going to remove Jeff from the "contributors" list. He doesn't actually ever have to post, but he'll always have the ability to, in case he changes his mind.

I'll make no secret of the fact that I think he's (easily!) the best of the three writers here (I'm the worst, pretty clearly), because he is actually edumicated about writin' and stuff. I just know if I like something or not... Jeff knows WHY.

Anyway, I hope he decides that posting a review of something occasionally doesn't violate this new focus. Even if it is only quarterly or something, I don't think he should let that particular set of muscles grow cold (unless he starts doing reviews for pay, in which case, yah forget about us!)

As for me, Jeff told me... uh three weeks ago now? You'll notice that's pretty much when MY volume of posts starting dropping, too. I mean, the Savage Critic as a blog, and as more than just my voice? That's all Jeff's fault, so having Jeff here was one of the things that kept me posting as often as I have -- trying to top him, and all.

(Look, there are worse motivations one can have)

So, I don't know much, but I do know that I won't be doing daily posting "any more" -- I'll shoot for thrice a week, though. Graeme says he enjoys posting daily, so, alright, he can be insane and keep that up (My problem is my boss is CONSTANTLY looking at my work...)

As for the future of the blog, really what I'd like to do is find 2-3 more people who share a similar style or sensibility and who know when to snark, and when not to, and get it so the Critic IS "multiple content daily", but NOT dependent on one person to make it so. I'd also really like it if we could figure out a way to monetize the Critic without selling out TOO badly (or triggering your epilepsy), but everything we've looked at so far seemed like it was too little money involved for the general intrusiveness of ads.

So, if you have any ideas, I'm always glad to hear them.

There's also a new TILTING AT WINDMILLS up on Newsarama. Follow that link to read me talk about late comics and weekly comics both. I think it turned out pretty OK for once!

Muh, one quick review before I go off and decide to have some "time off":

ULTIMATES 2 #13: Maybe, just maybe it is because there was most of a year between issues that this didn't connect to me at all, but I kinda doubt it.

The big problem is, of course, the protagonists are struggling against a faceless horde, and are rescued by another faceless horde, so there's nothing even remotely resembling human stakes through most of the proceedings (this is a common mistake of Millar's, of course)

Big widescreen action is fine enough, but it needs to have something human to anchor it against -- and I don't really care about any of these iterations of these characters enough to do so naturally. There could have been some interesting through line in here via "Sorry for thinking you were a mental patient, Thor", but that's never addressed here at all.

About the only thing I DID like was the Black Widow scene at the end.

And what about the art? I hope it's not me, because I found parts of it to be downright sketchy -- probably the biggest offender is that full page half-shot (? I thought a page was missing) of the explosion. Jinkies!

Most perplexing of all is the final scene. Why is this here? Did I forget some opening sequence from a year and a half back this is meant to link to? Even if there is, I can't see what possible resonance that scene could have to the events of this issue, or those leading up to it.

All in all, not worth the wait, and while it may tighten up in paperback, for this, as a single entertainment experience, I have to go with AWFUL.

What did YOU think?

-B

Alan Coil will be happy: Graeme likes something from 5/16.

Have I told you that I hated the movie Garden State? I really didn't want to; I like Zack Braff - well, I like Scrubs, at least - and I'm an indie kid who's all about the emotional sentimentality, so I felt as if I was the target market for it; I even like Simon and Garfunkel's soundtrack for The Graduate! But when I saw it, it was an awkward and uncomfortable movie that was emo in all the worst ways, the cinematic equivalent of putting on your sister's eyeliner and sitting in a corner telling yourself that no-one understands your pain, man. Even "The Only Living Boy In New York" can only help so much. The worst part of it for me, though, was that I couldn't buy into the central concept. My own mother had died not that long before I saw the movie, and so maybe everything was far too raw for me at that point, but I spent the entire movie annoyed at the way that the main character's mother's death was both hijacked as life-changing cathartic McGuffin and sidelined as not-as-important-as-Natalie-Portman-playing-kooky at the same time. I wanted to go into the movie and tell Braff that it's not like that, and then ask him to go back to being funny again.

Anyway.

LOCAL #9 is a death of a mother story that resonated with me to a ridiculous degree. It's not as if my relationship with my mother was anything like Megan's, nor even that I reacted in the same way to my mother's death that Megan does to her's. But nonetheless, there's an emotional honesty to the story here that's impossible to miss. Maybe it's in how quiet the issue is - even for this series, which is hardly slambang fireworks each issue - and the way that Ryan Kelly's artwork mirrors that silence with the space he gives to Megan throughout the issue (the page where she's travelling home, alone, crying on the train, is beautiful), or maybe it's in the way that the issue breaks from what's gone before and becomes much more reflective and full of memory; Megan becomes, in a way, less self-involved and stops hiding from her past and herself because she's forced by events to remember, for once in her life.

It's a skillful issue, the best of a series that has consistently been worthwhile. It works in two separate ways, the way that one-off issues always should but rarely do, both as a short story complete in and of itself, but also illuminating the series and the character as a whole. We get to understand Megan more this issue, not only because we find out about her childhood but because of how she reacts to current events (Which also shows how much she's changed; the Megan who kept changing her name as a way of staying distant and safe from the world in #5 would have taken the news very differently - Again, illuminating the series, like I said). Perhaps best of all, it's wonderfully messy; it doesn't seek to reveal all in its 20-odd pages, nor even to self-consciously set-up questions for future issues or the reader to answer. It just lets you look at people trying to do the best they can, even if they don't know what that is. There's no resolution or attempt at explanation or judgement, and it's all the better for it.

PICK OF THE WEEK - yes, I know, I've not talked about what else is out this week yet, but trust me here - and Very Good. Go and buy.

Jeff Gives Notice...

I've been putting this off for a couple of days now, hoping to at least piggy-back it on some genuine content, but things have been harried this month and if I don't do this now, I may not ever. My last day at Comix Experience is Friday, May 25th, and this month is going to be my last contribution to the store newsletter as well. My first column for the newsletter was issue #37--exactly a hundred issues ago--so that and the big signing last month seemed like perfect high notes to go out on. This also means I won't be contributing to this blog after the end of the month as well.

Now, comics bloggers retire in the same way that Marvel characters die--it seems more likely than not they'll be back just as you start to miss them--and I can't say for certain that won't be the case here; not only do I enjoy shooting my mouth off about comics, but the work of Graeme and Hibbs always inspires me. However, I have some other things I want to do, and it was getting harder and harder to find the time and energy to devote to them when I was either trying to stay on top of the tremendous amounts of work being done in this medium, or concretize my opinions about that work.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my posts, as well as contribute feedback. The rewards for being a critic aren't numerous, but learning that someone else has found a new favorite book or author thanks to a review I wrote--or simply found amusement in the wisecracks--is priceless.

If you get a chance to stop by the store this Friday or the next, and feel like saying "hi," please do so. I'm looking forward to ending my tenure as Comix Experience counterguy with as much fun, noise and chit-chat as I experienced for the vast majority of my run there.

There. That wasn't so hard, was it? So let's return you now to your regular run of savage criticism...

Better Late Than Whatever: Graeme blows the schedule.

Dear MUNI - It really shouldn't take that long to get from the Sunset to downtown first thing in the morning. Seriously, please sort your shit out so that I don't have to wait 20 minutes in the tunnel between stops again. Thank you.

Appropriately, on the day I'm spectacularly late for work, reviews of a couple of spectacularly late books.

ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #5:Hibbs is right - At this point, Frank Miller is clearly just taking the piss and trying to see how far he can push things. You know that as soon as you see the first page, which has Wonder Woman in a cleavage-displaying trenchcoat (and with an impossibly-thin waist - Jim Lee, I know you know human proportions better than that) saying her first line in the series: "Out of my way, sperm bank."

Yeah, exactly.

Of all the ridiculousness in this issue - which includes Miller literally lapsing into self-parody, giving Batman a caption that reads "I love being the goddamn BATMAN" - it's the treatment of Wonder Woman that really stands out. It's not so much the cliched, fetishized, man-hating narration ("Men always lie. About everything. Men always make a mess. Out of everything.") as it is the fact that her man-hating ways fall apart when Superman kisses her, which happens after she tells him "You bastard! You bastard. I hate your guts. I hate your guts. You make me sick. You make me sick."

Thanks for sharing your crazy fucked-up take on gender politics with us there, Frank.

All of that said, the issue - despite being eleven months late (Or is it ten months? I can't remember, was this meant to be bi-monthly, way back when?) - is entirely Eh. It's not even funny-bad, it's just boring. Miller's writing? Kind of messed up, but nothing that we haven't really seen from him before. Lee's art? Not as good as it used to be. The whole package? Not only not worth waiting a year for, but not even waiting until you get to the store for; this will be defended as a funny subversive take on the iconic characters by many, but I kind of wonder what's meant to be actually funny about it.

That said, ULTIMATES 2 #13 isn't much better. Sure, it's exactly the kind of thing that has worked for its fans for the past 25 issues across the last, what, five years or so, but that means that it has the same flaws, as well. Ultimates really works best as the self-conscious Image book - it's really all about the art, and better if you don't concentrate too much on the story. That's definitely the way to approach this final issue, which begins with Loki telling Captain America, "Do you honestly believe [Thor] could kill me with a hammer?" after Thor has, indeed, just slammed his hammer into Loki's head and failed to kill him. So it comes as no surprise when Thor ends up killing Loki with his hammer later in the book. Foreshadowing, you see? Just like a real writer! Okay, cheap shot, but the only thing that's really surprising about the writing of this finale is the lack of spectacle - we're shown extended sequences of an Asgardian army appearing to fight giant wolves, trolls and monsters (the bad guys get three pages worth of their appearing in DC, and the Asgardians two pages), but don't really get to see that battle; instead, we get a foldout showing the main characters in tightly rendered action poses with the epic fight as background. It's a really odd and unsatisfying choice, but what can you do? Everything else goes exactly as you expected (Complete with Millar's trademark dialogue. You know that he'd script any scene in exactly the same way at this point; even someone buying a loaf of bread would get five pages, including two pages where the customer hands over the money to the person behind the counter and you get a close-up of the customer smirking and saying "Keep the change sweetheart." Then there would be a couple of panels of him leaving the store, before you see the person behind the counter turn to her friend and, in a full page splash, say "Jeez. What an asshole."), and as such leaves you unsatisfied by its perfunctory nature. Eh, again, but those who loved it before will probably love it again.

Tomorrow - The best book of the week.

All-WHAT?! -- Hibbs continues 5/16

ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #5: Paul Levitz apparently thinks that DC's publication of THE BOYS could do some theoretical harm to their core superhero business, or taint the icons, or something. This makes me wonder what Paul made of THIS.

Since it is the ACTUAL icons.

The strangest thing is that, had Frank Miller been drawing this, I'd probably have found it amusing and satirical and maybe even a little funny. But with Jim Lee? Lee is THE mainstream superhero comic book artist, so it adds a layer of weight and Importance to it all that just absolutely demands it be taken Seriously, and, thus, renders any satire as stone-faced earnestness.

But, really, REALLY, Levitz cancelled THE BOYS and continues to publish this? Really?

AWFUL.

What did you think?

-B

And maybe we'll come back to Earth, who can tell?: Graeme follows in Bri's footsteps, again.

So I was all about to post a review of All-Star Batman, but then I read Bri's comments about COUNTDOWN #50 (the post below this one, SavCritic fans!), and I had to post about that instead*. It's odd - For the second week running, I'm Brian's bizarro twin; I thought that this issue was less offensive than the last, but I had pretty much the same reactions to it that Brian describes: How does Jimmy know who Jason Todd is? If everyone knows that Jason kills, why does Superman not try and do something about that instead of find Jason and then float around while Jimmy goes to interview him? For that matter, since when does Superman have so much time to kill that he helps Jimmy find his interview subjects and assist him in breaking and entering in order to do the interview? (Since when does Superman assist anyone with breaking and entering? Yadda yadda yadda...)

The problem with this series - Well, one of the problems, really - is that, two issues in, it's telling us nothing that we don't already know. The Joker's Daughter dies in issue 1, after saying that she's from another Earth, but we know that there are 51 other Earths already. In the second issue, the Joker tells us that he doesn't have a daughter, but why should that be a surprise? We were told just last issue that she was from another Earth... It's one thing to reveal these facts slowly to the characters, but the creators have to throw a bone to the readers to keep them happy as well, and there's nothing revelatory or even interesting in a good way about this second issue at all (Maybe if this series had come out prior to the end of 52, and we didn't know about the multimegaverse already, there would be some attempt at tension or mystery...?); it doesn't even have the fanboy outrage I got from the mess of the first issue that didn't introduce any of the characters properly.

Another of the problems, with this issue in particular, is the feeling that it's done by the non-star team. I have nothing against Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti or Jim Calafore - oh, alright, maybe Justin and I have a familial blood feud that has spanned generations, I admit it** - but their work on this issue seems competent at best; there's no excitement in the dialogue or the artwork, and overall it feels like a rushed fill-in already. Maybe this is intentional, in some way, down to the desire to keep a relatively homogenized "style" for the book despite the different creative teams each week (much in the same way that 52's art rarely shone), but it makes for very dull reading. Interestingly, Keith Giffen's name is missing from the credits for the second week running - Wasn't he meant to be doing layouts on this book?

Overall, it's a pretty depressing second week for the series; I'd hoped for a surprising second issue that made me more optimistic about the whole enterprise, or at least more interested. What I got instead was just pretty Eh.

(* - Also, I kind of like the weird metajoke about the All-Star Batman review being later than intended. I'm sorry.)

(** - This is not true. My family is small and has no feuds with anyone else, unless they've been keeping them secret from me.)

Yikes, count me out: Hibbs dabbles with 5/16

Just one real fast while it's fresh in my mind: COUNTDOWN #50: Forget everything I said last week, I really didn't like this one. At all. There's five scenes in here, and I'll leave the bookenders for last. There's a (very quick) Mary Marvel bit which is unobjectionable; there's a sequence with Batman and Karate Kid that doesn't (on the surface) appear to have anything directly to do with COUNTDOWN, and seems a bit more like an ad for the JLA/JSA crossover... unless that doesn't resolve in any significant fashion in which case, wtf; and there's a Rogue's sequence which is adequate, but a bit overlong for the information it needs to unfurl.

Then there's the Jimmy bookending stuff.

Uh... what?

Obvious question, first: Jimmy knows Batman's secret identity? And the entire history of his legacy? And that Jason impersonated Dick for a little while? Even if I accepted #1 & 2, how is #3 even possible? Kal that much of a blabbermouth?

But there's a writerly sin here, too, page 4, last caption, totally highlighted as the end of narration, boom end on "he's willing to kill". With this in mind, why the hell is Superman sending Jimmy in alone? For that matter, why isn't Superman apprehending him for his crimes? Hell, for THAT matter, why is Bruce sparring with Karate Kid a few pages later? His now rogue partner is involved with a meta-human death, and Bruce isn't man-on-the-scene? Really?

(this is actually why you probably don't WANT the Big Three in play in these things -- they're so overly competent, you have to write around them to get anything done)

But the bigger sin is in the end Jimmy scene, even more specifically on that last page. First off, the clumsy fake-cliffhanger of the last two panels (!) comes exactly out of nowhere, and has nothing to do with the rest of the scene, and since we can be relatively assured that Jimmy Olsen isn't going to die (at least this early in the game, and, frankly, probably ever), it's a wholly false cliffhanger. But even worse is that the whole thrust of the Joker scene concludes with information THE READER ALREADY KNOWS (well, or at least, and reader who actually knows who Duella Dent was in the first place... but they're the only ones who might possibly care, all 52 of us) (Heh)

Actually, back to the "cliffhanger" -- I just flashed that it made me think of DC CHALLENGE, a really horrible DC mini-series, where round-robin writers took turns trying to top themselves ("Bwah-ha-ha, how will [Adam or Sean, I don't recall who is next in rotation], get out of this?")

If it had just been the middle bits, I wouldn't have been enthusiastic, but, y'know, it was all OK, but those bookends just soured me on the whole deal. AWFUL.

Parenthetically, COUNTDOWN #51 had pretty poor first-week sales at CE; LAUNCHING at only 75% of 52 typical first-week sales. This concerns me especially, because I had thought the first issue at least would attract more eyes, and I ordered in the 133% range (the first three months are returnable, however... albeit costing us 29 cents a copy. I FOC'ed Week 47 (my first chance) right down to the minimum required for returnability (100% of 52), but I'm still going to be returning chunks. There's a mathematical point where eating the cost of returns isn't worth the tradeoff of not having to eat unsold product (call it like 4:1), but the problem is determining what the bottom is on this. If I look to COUNTDOWN #51 as analogous to 52 #1, in terms of ratios of preorders to rack sales, then project forward, COUNTDOWN will end up well below half of 52; the only question is will it "hit bottom"? By 52 #12, I pretty much had the right number, will history repeat itself here, or will I know by, say, #4 this time? (God, I hope so)

I felt liberated by the returnable experiment of 52 -- I ordered more copies than I thought I could sell, and it paid off handsomely. Here, I feel shackled by it -- in order to cover my bet, I can't bet below a minimum that I *know* is way way too high.

Wow, I typed way more than I wanted to. More... maybe Thursday? I still have to finish this @#$% TILTING, and we've got a visit to a prospective school for Ben tomorrow, too, which will swallow most of the afternoon, so, unless I feel itchy, maybe I should shoot for every other day (ha, again)

What did YOU think, anyway?

-B

PS: Bionic Woman trailer? Ugh.

Harvey Dent has it easy: Graeme gets Empowered.

It's almost fitting that reviewing EMPOWERED has left me completely conflicted and at war with myself, considering that the book itself did exactly the same thing. Is it an annoyingly self-conscious, have-its-cake-and-eat-it book, or an honest examination into fanservice that betrays a knowing hypocrisy? Is Adam Warren creating a heroine that undercuts the fetishism of superheroes, or coming up with something that's even more fetishistic than usual? Did I enjoy the book, or really really hate it?

Too many questions! Makes... Hulk's... head... hurt!

The thing is, Empowered may be the most purposefully self-loathing comic that I've read. Which, considering I've read Ivan Brunetti's work and am a massive fan of Evan Dorkin, is saying something. But there's an art to the way that both of those creators deal with their obsessive compulsive needs to point out and apologize for their own shortcomings, and also a self-awareness; they point out why they think they're shit in such a way that both apologizes for and undercuts the problematic material. Empowered, on the other hand, apologizes and then goes on to do it again. And again. And again... at which point, for me at least, it becomes a weirdly-distancing crutch and excuse for not even trying anymore.

There are a couple of things that Warren, through eponymous heroine Empowered, apologizes for throughout the book - Firstly, the short chapters that start the book, and secondly, the masturbatory-material origins of the characters and the book itself. Both are kind of frustrating to see, because they both speak to the idea that the creator was helpless to do anything about them, which is entirely untrue. If you feel the need to create new pages to apologize for the choppy nature of the chapters at the beginning of the book, why not either (a) leave those chapters out of the book altogether, especially as they don't really add much in terms of "continuity" or plot, or (b) spend the time you've spent creating those new apology pages to create other new pages that help put those short pieces into something resembling a more coherent longer form, you know? Or, if you feel the need to not only apologize for the bondage cheesecake nature of the book, but also point out to the readers that the book has its origin in being commissions for fans with "special interests", then why do the book in the first place? Why work on something that you don't want to stand behind without saying sorry before you're even done?

I can't help but feel as if the apologies aren't so much genuine apologies but attempts to head (deserved) criticism off at the pass, which may be what frustrates me so much about them. Well, that and the feeling that instead of just acknowledging the problems with the book, Warren had taken some steps towards, you know, fixing them. Well, that and the other that, and the fact that despite everything, the book is really rather readable.

This is where I get conflicted and hedge my bets: Empowered, for all of the above, is still pretty Good. A lot of the faults are overpowered by Warren's art, which was always good but has never looked better than it does here, reproduced from pencils only, and his writing, which doesn't transcend the porny origins of the work but at least has fun with them. His dialogue is smart and witty, and even though the characters are little more than well-illustrated stereotypes with barely a little tweak, you end up liking them nonetheless.

I was going to say "you end up pulling for them," but figured that maybe that wouldn't be the best phrase to use, considering.

It may not be a perfect book, it's definitely not a book for everyone, but it does what it does well. If only it could do so without distracting you by saying sorry every two seconds.

Arriving 5/16

The Apocalypse must be upon us -- both Ultimates 2 #13, and All-Star Batman & Robin #5 are shipping! Thank god, too, because that gave me my TILTING topic for this month, which I'm furiously writing right now...

2000 AD #1533 2000 AD #1534 30 DAYS OF NIGHT EBEN & STELLA #1 ACTION COMICS #849 AFTER THE CAPE #3 (OF 3) ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #5 (RES) AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #52 ARMY @ LOVE #3 BATMAN #665 BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #9 BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #78 BOOKS WITH PICTURES #4 BPRD GARDEN OF SOULS #3 (OF 5) CABLE DEADPOOL #40 CATWOMAN #67 CHECKMATE #14 CITY OF HEROES #19 CLIVE BARKERS GREAT & SECRET SHOW #12 (OF 12) CONAN #40 COUNTDOWN 50 DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN 2ND PTG VAR #2 (OF 7) DEATH JR VOL 2 #3 (OF 3) EX MACHINA #28 EXILES #94 FABLES #61 FALL OF CTHULHU MAVILLAIN CVR A #2 FALLEN SON DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA CAPTAIN AMERICA FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #12 FRANK FRAZETTAS DEATH DEALER #2 (OF 6) GARGOYLES #4 HERO BY NIGHT #3 (OF 4) HERO SQUARED ONGOING #6 HIGHLANDER #7 JUGHEAD #181 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #9 LEFT ON MISSION CVR A #1 (OF 5) LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #2 LOCAL #9 (OF 12) MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #13 MIGHTY AVENGERS #3 CWI MOON KNIGHT #10 OCCULT CRIMES TASKFORCE #4 (OF 4) ORSON SCOTT CARDS WYRMS #4 (OF 6) PAINKILLER JANE #1 RED SONJA #22 SCOOBY DOO #120 SE7EN PRIDE #5 (OF 7) SIDEKICK #5 (OF 5) SIMPSONS COMICS #130 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #175 STAR WARS REBELLION #6 SUPERGIRL #17 TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #20 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #109 ULTIMATE X-MEN #82 ULTIMATES 2 #13 UNCANNY X-MEN #486 WARREN ELLIS BLACK GAS 2 #2 WASTELAND #9 (NOTE PRICE) X-FACTOR #19 X-MEN FIRST CLASS SPECIAL XOMBIE SEELEY CVR A #2 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL VOL 1 TP ARF FORUM SC BASTARD SAMURAI VOL I TP NEW PTG BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE VOL 3 HC BATMAN CHRONICLES VOL 3 TP BATTLER BRITTON TP BLADE UNDEAD AGAIN TP CIVIL WAR WAR CRIMES TP CIVIL WAR X-MEN UNIVERSE TP COLLECTED HOOK JAW VOL 1 GN COMICS BUYERS GUIDE AUG 2007 #1631 HELLBLAZER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW TP MAGICIAN APPRENTICE VOL 1 HC MISERY LOVES COMEDY HC MOUSE GUARD VOL 1 FALL 1152 HC NARUTO VOL 14 TP PLAIN JANES RED PROPHET TALES OF ALVIN MAKER VOL 1 HC ROB ZOMBIE PRES HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO TP RUNAWAYS VOL 3 HC SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE FLASH VOL 1 TP SPIKE ASYLUM TP STAR WARS KNIGHTS O/T OLD REPUBLIC VOL 2 FLASHPOINT TP THINGS JUST GET AWAY FROM YOU HC TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #154 ULTIMATE X-MEN VOL 16 CABLE TP UP UP AND OY VEY SC ZOMBIES ECLIPSE OF THE UNDEAD TP

Wht looks good to you?

-B

Don't you know I could never leave your side, girl?: Graeme takes on a touchy (for him) subject.

I should probably start by telling you how much of a relief it is to be able to say that the new Boom! Studios book COVER GIRL #1 is Okay. It's co-written by Kevin Church (alongside Andrew Cosby, who does Eureka for the Sci-Fi Channel), you see, better known to the internetosphere as Beaucoup Kevin and a man I've received more than the occasional email from in the past, and that kind of thing just adds a whole new layer of discomfort to reviewing something. I was pretty much prepared, if I hadn't liked the book, to just pretend that it didn't exist or something as an avoidance tactic. You know the kind of thing - Kevin would email and ask if I'd enjoyed Cover Girl, and I'd respond and ask him if he was talking about America's Next Top Model or something, hoping to throw him off the scent (And talking of America's Next Top Model - It's going to be Renee at this point, right? Everytime they get to the judging and Nigel Barker says "Yes, she's beautiful, but not young enough," I feel as if it's really ridiculous faux-foreshadowing - fauxshadowing? - designed to try and trick people into thinking that she's about to be thrown off the show). Luckily, anyway, I don't have to.

And, sure, there's still some awkwardness that I can't be more enthusiastic about the book. In part, it's because I really wanted to like the book before I read it, because it's Kevin and I know how excited he is about it (A feeling - the wanting to like it, I mean - that I think has been shared across a lot of the comic blog world; I can't help but wonder if Boom! missed an opportunity by not doing more of an outreach thing to bloggers and playing up Kevin's involvement more), and that kind of goodwill really shapes how you read something in the first place. But, alas and alack, there're problems with the execution that stop me from wholehearted embracing the thing, mostly with the pacing - or, perhaps, the expectations given to the reader by the cover, and how that affects the way the pacing seems.

See, the book's called Cover Girl. And on the cover, there's a "girl" taking up half the page, with a gun and looking all sassy and big-chinned. So, it's not unreasonable to find yourself reading the book in expectation for her arrival, as you've kind of been given enough information to assume that the book's really about her. The problem with that is, she doesn't appear until the last page, and - unlike, say, Martin Sheen in the first episode of The West Wing - her presence isn't felt prior to that point, either. So you find yourself - or maybe it was just me - reading the issue somewhat frustratedly, waiting for her to appear or at least be mentioned, and treating everything else as filler or a slow, slow build. That's probably unfair; I think that the series is really supposed to be about Alex, the actor who is on almost every single page of the first issue, but because of the cover and the title, that's not what I thought I was reading when I started it, if that makes sense.

But to judge the book on what it is, rather than what it isn't: It's fun. Kevin's dialogue owes a lot to J.M. DeMatteis's Justice League stuff, I feel - There's a similar beat and surface comedy to it - and it's going for an "insider Hollywood" feel, which is always the source of some obvious humor. The art is a weird mix of really nice faces and awkward staging (If you could imagine Ariel Olivetti and Scott Kolins having an art baby, it'd probably be this artist) despite some muddy coloring, and there're enough unanswered questions to make me want to pick up the second issue to see what happens next. So, yeah; it's Okay, and worth checking out even if you don't know the co-writer.

Your Turn To Curtsy, My Turn To Critic: Most of Jeff's Reviews of 05/09 Books....

Someone spun the Savage Critic Wheel of Unwellness this week and it's still pointing at me--I've felt like ass on a stick for the last 72 hours and I'm not happy at about it at all. On the other hand, if I end up calling in sick on Monday, I can stay in and watch Mario Bava movies all day. So things could be much, much worse, I guess.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #540: This isn't over yet? Seeing as I've read, I dunno, maybe six to eight other Spidey books between last issue (shipped on 3/21?) and this one, the narrative drive seems significantly diminished here--if this had been a weekly event or something, maybe it'd be easier for me to still think that maybe May will die or maybe Peter will kill the Kingpin. But currently? Nah. Between that and the feeling that artist Ron Garney at his most evocative feels like John Romita, Jr. at his most tepid, and I'd call this Eh.

BLACK PANTHER #27: Books like this make me really miss Jack Kirby (hell, I'd settle for Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott at this point): although overused to the point of visual cliche and pushing characters' reactions into utter melodrama, Kirby's dynamism could nevertheless give stories like "The FF come home from a cosmic adventure; get attacked by giant cosmic bug" a much-needed vitality. As it is, this has absolutely no "oomph"--I felt like I was reading the storyboards to a dull French cartoon--until the last page which, to be honest, borrows all its oomph from elsewhere. It's a competent but very Eh little issue.

BLADE #9: Silly but more or less effective until the end when it's revealed, if I'm reading it rightly, is that the people Blade thinks are the bad guys are in fact the good guys. As twists goes, it's pretty uninteresting--not only is it pretty shopworn, but it's really hard to imagine Blade giving a damn: it might work in a book where the hero is a crusading do-gooder (like Superman) but the current incarnation of Blade seems driven more by vengeance and it just seems...limp. The rest of the book is fun, though, so I think it's in the OK park, overall.

COUNTDOWN #51: Ugh. I'm surprised by how much of this feels wrong, and not in a "Oh My God, you have perverted the laws of God and man," kind of way but in a "why are you going out with your pants on backwards and your underwear on your head?" kind of way. I mean, after all the coverage of 52 where nearly everyone everywhere praised JG Jones' astonishing cover work and singled it out as something that quickly solidified the book's identity on the stands, why would you kick off your next weekly series with a cover more appropriate to a "Justice League and Friends" coloring and rainy-day activity book? After widespread ackowledgement that the best parts of 52 were from the organic growth of the writers' interests, why would you have your first issue read like a bullet point memo from the desk of Dan Didio?

I mean, the book itself, based on the quality of the bland art and the clunky, exposition-heavy dialogue, is really just Eh, but that whiff of publisher hubris in the air--the idea that people are going to like what Dan Didio has in store for them because, dammit, he's Dan Didio and who cares about the cover artists and who cares about the A-list writers and who cares about all the lessons learned over the last year (except, oh, yeah, lose that real time thing)--is enough to make Graeme call it Crap (because it's even worse than he feared) and Brian call it a low Good (because it's much better than he feared) when it's really just Eh. If nothing else, I think that points to how much good will DC and Didio have burnt away post-Infinite Crisis and how much work everyone on this book has cut out for them. I was willing to give 52 between 10 to 12 issues to get things going; based on this issue, Countdown's got about 4 to 6. Hop to, guys.

GARTH ENNIS CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #3: This is the first issue I picked up and it was better than I was expecting--I guess maybe something more like Dicks, I guess--but between the near-wistfulness in Ennis' descriptions of Heaven and Jacen Burrows' suprisingly Dillonesque art, I thought this was the closest thing to Preacher I've read in a while--and not just Preacher as it tends to get remembered (twisted humor and over-the-top explicitness) but as I remember reading it (three amusing characters shooting the shit). A real pleasant surprise, although it might be a bitch to hunt up those back issues now. Highly Good.

GHOST RIDER #11: Dumb, dumb, dumb, but did have the benefit of having one sequence so over-the-top in its dumbosity (Ghost Rider rips out a guy's heart, causes it to burst into flames and then jams it back into the guy's chest) that the comic was, for one shining moment, enjoyable. Makes me wish they could figure out a way to set this on Awesome and Dumb rather than Awful and Dumb--this book is apparently selling no matter how terrible it is, so why not go for it?

GREEN ARROW #74: Yeah, whatever. I'm not really down with the marriage of Green Arrow and Black Canary so no matter how well it's done, it's essentially lipstick on a pig to me. But I would've preferred a bit less of the fiery couple checklist ("Arguing, then passionately kissing?" "Check." "Teh sex for hours and hours?" "Check." "The 'you make me want to be a better man' speech?" "Check.") and maybe a little more, I dunno, interesting stuff. Eh.

GRIFTER MIDNIGHTER #3: Reading this, I got the sense Dixon is auditioning to be part of the Wildstorm Cool Kids Club--"Hey, guys! I can write stories where nothing happens with a bit of smart-ass prickish narrative flair! See?"--but it reads like someone who--as Mark Twain said of his wife's swearing--"got the words right but don't know the tune." The art is pretty though, with a very lovely green miasmic color scheme going on, so I'd bump it up to Eh.

IMMORTAL IRON FIST #5: I am so in love with this book right now--any quibblage I've had in the past about action is gone now as this issue hurtles along from one neat scene to the next. And as in awe as I am at the skill with which Brubaker and Fraction have opened up the potential for the character, I think I'm even more astonished by David Aja's art which reminds me a lot, I think, of Gene Day on Master of Kung Fu but possessing none of Day's occasional stiffness (as I recall, it was only when characters stopped moving that Day's work suffered). There's still one or two things I think could be added to the mix, but I'm a lot more confident that they're coming. This book is Very Good stuff, although you might bump it down a grade if you have no former appreciation of the character and up a grade if you do. It's really a terrific, gorgeous-looking superhero book.

INDIA AUTHENTIC GANESHA #1: Another book that had me musing about Kirby, as this book is far too reverent and uninspired with regard to its source material to be at all interesting. Deepak Chopra's introduction has a little more juice to it since he's writing about the symbolism underlying Ganesha, but that's about all you're gonna get that has any vigor to it. Disappointingly Awful.

NOVA #2: Didn't bother with the first issue, but this issue was shockingly good. It's not just a post-Civil War comic that does a better job presenting Tony Stark as a complex figure than any other Marvel book out there, it's also a good Nova comic--featuring characters from the original series, concerns from previous incarnations that feel less like a continuity bog and more like the writers doing their research and crafting a fully-rounded character with some history. Admittedly, as a '70s Marvel nerd, my rating of Very Good is, like Iron Fist, rooted in absolute awe that characters I like are actually being handled with care by talented creators who know what they're doing, but I think the casual superhero reader would like this as well. Wow.

ULTIMATE POWER #5: If only this book had come out three or four years ago when I was still interested in either The Ultimates or Supreme Power...it could have totally turned me off to both ideas back then and save me some cash. Now, I just shake my head and wonder how either book is going to have any readers left in six months. Awful.

Take back your Marvel! Ay!: Graeme looks at the House of Ideas for 5/9.

There's this crazy song called "South America, Take It Away!" on the radio right now, by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters that is entirely distracting. The four of them are singing "Take back your samba! Ay! Your rhumba! Ay! Your conga! Ay-yi-yi!" and it's one of those things that makes you actually stop, listen to the song and think, people got away with writing things like that?

Anyway; the cat is beside me and dehydrated and sullen, but she's stopped throwing up for awhile, which is nice. Taking advantage of the break in vomit, let's talk Marvel books.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #540: Well, the art's nice, so that counts for something, right...? That's about the most positive thing I can say about this issue, because the writing is pretty horrendous; Peter Parker as revenge-driven badass who's willing to kill isn't something that you can sell easily to me, and J. Michael Straczynski does one of the worst possible jobs of selling it imaginable, especially when you factor in a Mary Jane who also, apparently, wants Peter to go and beat people up. Maybe twenty years ago, when grim and gritty superheroes were the in thing, this may have seemed more interesting, but right now? Eh.

ANNIHILATION SAGA: I read this because I didn't read the actual Annihilation series but read lots of positive reviews. Maybe, I figured, this recap would give me a taste of what I'd missed. If that's the case, then I missed a convoluted space opera with characters with ridiculous names (Paibok the Delinquent? Really?) that seems pretty uninvolving. I'm guessing that it was all in the execution, because this wasn't much beyond Eh in plot terms.

BLACK PANTHER #27: Unlike Hibbs, I've got no problems with this book becoming Fantastic Four II for the next few months, but I just wish that it could be a more coherent Fantastic Four II. This issue seems to have ADD, introducing plot elements without really exploring them (If the Negative Zone prison from Civil War is being overrun by hungry insects, shouldn't that be, you know, a big deal?) before switching to an entirely different - and, let's face it, kind of unnecessary - plot for the cliffhanger. It's as if Reginald Hudlin is trying out potential ideas in front of you, trying to see if he can come up with something he likes, and failing. Another Eh, I'm afraid; it's not bad, it's just not good, either. It's just there.

MARVEL ZOMBIES: DEAD DAYS: There's a point in this prequel to the surprise hit of last year when you can almost see Sean Philips decide to go with a simpler art style (It's page 6, if you're wondering - There's more detail and care in the work in the first few pages; maybe deadlines got tight?), and it seems to be an omen for the book itself. There's just no there there - If you've read the original miniseries, then you literally know everything that happens here - and not enough humor to make it a worthwhile recap, either. Kirkman seems another writer who seems to have fallen for the "Reed Richards - Scientific Douchebag" meme, as well... Hasn't anyone else read any of the same Fantastic Four comics as I have? Did I grow up in an alternate universe where this was better than yet another Eh?

NEW AVENGERS #30: Bri, Jeff and I were talking about Bendis in the store the other day, and we all agreed that even when Bendis's books aren't any good, that they're always interesting - He's one of those rare writers that keeps pushing himself, which is always worth paying attention to even if you don't care for the direction in which he's pushing himself. All of this comes from Brian's review of this book on Friday, where he says that Bendis has finally taught himself how to write a team book, and he's not wrong. Maybe more interestingly, he's taught himself how to write two team books - this and Mighty Avengers both do the same thing in different ways, and that's something that follows through into the Mighty team's appearance in here, which seems curiously the same but different from how they appear in their own book. Anyway, this issue is also another rare Marvel book that makes me think that (a) Civil War wasn't a complete waste of time (Bendis makes the underground aspect and chaos work here) and (b) there's more than just crazy last-minute plotting going on here. Very Good, even before I get to the return of Clint Barton...

NOVA #2: Also the other day, Hibbs gives me this book: "Have you read it? You should." Lester chimes in: "It manages to take the dick Tony Stark and the hero Tony Stark and find a middle ground." Given my weird and irrational dislike of post-Civil War Iron Man, that was enough to sell me on it, and you know what? He's right. Maybe it's the freshness that comes from the outsiders' perspective on the "new" Marvel Universe, maybe it's the mix of melodrama and dumb supervillainy, but this is way better than the first issue, and a pretty successful attempt to join Civil War and Annihilation together and make both of them matter. Who knew that this would actually be Good?

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #7: I don't know how many times I'm going to end up saying that this is better than it has any right to be before I accept that maybe it's just a Good book... but, again, this should be a mess; the Punisher deals with neo-Nazis trying to kill immigrants while also trying to steal back the legacy of Captain America from the Hate Monger. Sounds really, really bad, right? But somehow, Matt Fraction's mix of sincerity and humor pulls through and makes me ignore the entirely-distracting 3D-generated backgrounds in Ariel Olivetti's artwork. I keep expecting to read an issue and finally think, "That's it! I've had enough!" but it's not happened yet...

I have to agree with Bri's assertion that post-Civil War Marvel seems to have more direction and success (storywise) than post-Infinite Crisis DC, but I also wonder how much of that is still going to be the case in a few months...

Oh man, what a plan: Graeme reads some Dynamite books.

Another day of insecurity in the McMillan household started with the cat being sick again, much in the same manner as she was back the last time I told you all about my feline troubles, so we've more or less spent the last few hours anxiously checking in with her to see if she's given up with the hairball vomiting yet. Thank whatever deity you choose to believe in that there's always the escapism offered by comics, that's what I always say.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: CYLON APOCALYPSE #3: I don't get this series - or, for that matter, any series that's based on the original TV show instead of the new one. I mean, no matter how good it is or how true to the show (and this is both not that bad and pretty much how I remember the show, including characters with the dated 70s mustache), it just doesn't feel as if it's going to appeal to anyone other than the hardcore fans of the old TV show, which was never the most original or even that interesting thing in the first place. So, Okay if you like that kind of thing, I guess.

THE LONE RANGER #1 - 5: After I enjoyed the Free Comic Book Day preview, I ended up reading the first five issues of the revival of one of my dad's favorite fictional characters in one go, and two things came to mind. Firstly, it's Good stuff. Secondly, if I hadn't read them all at once, I'm not sure that I'd've had the patience to follow through the story - This is slow going stuff, but very satisfying in larger chunks; it's pretty much a drawn-out origin story, but an enjoyable one - Writer Brett Matthews shows off his Whedon-pedigree in the dialogue, and artist Sergio Cariello offers a classic line reminiscent of Kubert and Russ Heath - that's going to make the inevitable collection worth picking up even if you generally don't enjoy westerns, like me, even if you're not willing to hang around for the single issues.

RED SONJA: VACANT SHELL: Good Lord, but it's a Sonja comic that I actually dug. A lot of that is actually down to Paul Renaud's clear and confident artwork (with coloring by Renaud himself and Chris Chuckry) that's like Adam Hughes and Frank Cho mixed together, but even the nicest cheesecake art has to be in the service of a good story, so more credit is probably due to Rick Remender, who provides a pulpy and appropriately violent amount of monster-vanquishing and sword-swinging. It's entirely unlikely to change anyone's life, but it finally made me see that there's occasionally something to the whole redhead-in-a-metal-bikini-who-wants-to-fight-everyone thing, and that makes it a low Good in and of itself, unlike...

XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS #1: If I admit that I've never seen an episode of this show, not Hercules. Maybe that's why I don't get a lot out of this, nor understand the explanation of just why Xena is evil these days... For fans of Lucy Lawless, this is probably better than the Eh it is for me. For those who never saw the show? Best avoid, but it's pretty unlikely that you'd be picking it up in the first place in that case.

Tomorrow: Marvel books! Why did Brian Hibbs tell me to read Nova #2? The answer... may shock you! And probably an update on the cat, too, so as to spare the blushes and fear of you dear readers.

"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?