Hibbs wobbles into 5/23

It seems like I keep starting each week's set of reviews, but never quite finishing them lately? Gonna try (since it is such a small week) to get through virtually everything by this time next week... COUNTDOWN #49: 52 was always, always, without fail the first comic I read each week. And, three weeks in, its the same with COUNTDOWN. But, I'm reasonably confident that won't be the case a month from now -- I'm really not feeling it. (You know there's something wrong when Doug Wolk's chosen successor starts his second issue review with "Well, that wasn't very good at all, was it?")

I may need to go back and look at the start of 52 again, but it seems to me that by this point in 52, the individual character arcs were all well into play:

Will Ralph find Sue? Will Booster find respect? Will Renee find herself? Will the "space heroes" get home? Will Black Adam fall even farther? Will John Henry... hm, harder that one... make up with Natasha, I guess?

Everything else in 52 gets back to those points, even with all of the flash and dazzle, and, so, 52 was effectively a human story about human motivations.

And, yes, I know its absolutely unfair of me to keep comparing this with 52, but the book physically demands such comparisons.

In COUNTDOWN, here's what I think we have so far:

Will Jimmy get a story? Will the Monitors do [something barely understood by the audience]? Will Karate Kid... well, dunno, but let's go with "prevent the Great Disaster"? Will the Rogues...again, unclear yet again so far, but probably some sort of redemption/destruction split Will Mary find herself (/powers)?

Of these five threads, only the last two seem to have much of a human core around them. #2 & 3 are... well they seem like comic stories ABOUT comic stories, y'know? And Jimmy... he's meant to be the POV character, the "everyman" of the DCU, but ironically that's what renders him the least dramatic, really -- he's Jimmy Olson, Superman's Pal, and ain't nothing gonna happen to him. "Jimmy Must Die!" buttons notwithstanding. He's the safest character in this series, let alone the entire DC universe.

Maybe it will get better, who knows, but at this moment in time, I'm really only vaguely interested, and I don't see any immediate evidence that this is going to change. So: EH.

This issue also starts a backup of "History of the Multiverse", just like 52's "History of the DC Universe" (which really wasn't), and really everything you need to know is the first line: "The Timestream. A place unaffected by the flow of time..." Buh, wha?! AWFUL.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #26: I'm going to pretty much echo Graeme, all the way along -- this is effective, compelling work, and I liked it very much, especially its structure and use of 0ff-panel (esp. the Falcon's speech thing), but one thing bugged me: in the bar where Bucky confronts the redneck guy, the redneck guy calls him a "jackhole". Yet, both Falcon and Luke Cage use "$#!^". That really really bugged me. Other than that? VERY GOOD.

IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY #5: One of those "and that's why covers are important, kids!" moments -- I had skipped reading #2-4 of this mini, but the cover here made me said "Huh, give it a read" Glad I did -- pretty ripping cyber-sci-fi action that made me think than nothing less than a Warren Ellis comic. I was fairly lost on the stakes, etc, but I was still wonderfully engaged with the story as it transpired, which is exactly what a comic should do: VERY GOOD.

OK, that's enough for right now. More tomorrow, I hope...

What did YOU think?

-B

Bryan Lee O'Spidey!

At first, I really wanted to tease the hell out of this, and say stuff like "Wow, I've seen preview pages of Scott Pilgrim 4 and they go in a totally new direction" or "Hey, I just got the cover to the new Scott Pilgrim; check it out." But I felt like a tool every time I sat down to write it.

The fact is, I was having lunch with my friend John yesterday and we went to this Crown Books clearance center and John, having a three year old, was perusing the children's books section while we gabbed. He was the one who held this book up to me and made some sort of wisecrack about Spider-Man's changing status quo, and I went, "Oh my god! Bryan Lee O'Malley!"

I mean, it says Bryan O'Malley on the cover but it had to be him, right? I mean:

Obviously, it's him.

I wrote Bryan about it and he replied:

Yeah, it was one of the first things I did in comics, way back in 2001. Go ahead and run images if you want.

Christopher Butcher actually helped me colour it, which is why it's so pink. That was right before we moved in together.

Sadly, my poor photographic skills (and possible legal conflicts) prevent me from reproducing all seven pages of the book, but I will spoil the ending for you:

just because Spidey in his doctor's outfit looks a bit cooler than on the cover. Oh, and:

just because it chokes me up a little.

Sadly, there were only two copies at that Crown Books and the other one is going to one Benjamin Hibbs. But they did have copies of Spider-Man: Air Rescue Officers (with Spidey in a very cool outfit, holding a cute dog on the cover) and Spider-Man: Firefighters (outfit not that cool, but holding adorable kittens!) all written by the same author (Michi Fujimoto) but different illustrators (Charles Park and Robert DeJesus, respectively). Needless to say, they're all a pretty pleasant change of pace from Ultimates #13 and All-Star Batman & Robin.

Oh, if he is dead...: Graeme looks past the veil at the first 5/23 book.

It's completely irrational, I know, but I can't tell you how much that I almost wanted to hate CAPTAIN AMERICA #26. If nothing else, I wanted to at least start this review with some kind of joke about it having been so long since the last issue came out, I wish I could remember what had happened in it. None of this is in any way fair, because none of it actually has anything to do with the book itself; it's all everything else, all the surrounding noise, that had turned me against the possibilities that Ed Brubaker, Mike Perkins and Steve Epting had something good to offer.

By this point, you see, I've started to settle into a slight boredom with the death of Captain America. It's not that I'm not enjoying the Marvel books more these days than I was pre-Civil War, because I am (although I do kind of see the death of Cap as the real "break" between then and now, for some reason, not Civil War itself; maybe because the death of Captain America was an actual event for characters to respond to, as opposed to the end of Civil War the series, which was essentially "Hey! Our seven issues are up!"?), but more that the death feels as if it's been run into the ground by this point thanks to The Confession oneshot and the Fallen Son miniseries and all of the crazy media hoopla surrounding the story itself. I'm a child of the internet age, daddio, and if it isn't a news story that's broken in the last five minutes I'm gone, you dig? That said, I'm a fan of Brubaker's writing - His CRIMINAL #6 this week is just plain Excellent, tight and tense, pulling you into it without trying and barely giving me enough time to wonder whether it's he or Sean Philips who has the smoking women fetish - and felt sorry for him even as I was getting bored of reading characters talk about what Cap meant to them; Bendis and Loeb seemed to be writing scenes that felt as if they should've been Ed's, and I wondered what the actual Captain America book would read like, when it returned. Would its thunder have been stolen, or would it go somewhere else entirely?

The answers, respectively, are No and Kind of. Fittingly enough, the second part of "The Death of The Dream" shows you characters reacting to - to channel Jeph for a second - The death of Captain America, but Brubaker manages to show something beyond the handwringing sadness that we've seen so far. His characters show more genuine emotion and humanity because of the complexity of their responses, and by focusing on that, he manages to move the story (and the series) past Steve Rogers dying. It's an interesting and subtle difference from things like Fallen Son, I think; that series feels as if it's there to remind you, over and over again, that Marvel has done something daring by killing off their character, and as much of a guilty pleasure it may be, it never transcends the sense of "We are so awesome". This issue does so quickly and quietly, not focusing on the death itself but everything that comes after, making the death a story as opposed to an "event", if you can see the difference. More than of his other mainstream Marvel work, it also feels like one of Brubaker's "mature" books, like Criminal or Sleeper - More in a grey area morally and (again, fittingly) more hopeless. Even though I have no doubt that Captain America will live again - I don't even doubt that Brubaker himself has already put plans in motion to bring him back himself, from the scene with the corpse this issue - there's still no easy solution to any of the concerns of the characters in this issue, and it's that complexity that makes this a Very Good return for the book that manages to make me want to find out what happens next.

Dammit.

Spoilers! Graeme talks about last night's Heroes, plus some comics.

Well, at least they didn't kill Ando (What, you thought I was joking with that spoilers thing?).

That was actually one of the few things that I outright really liked about last night's Heroes finale - After last week's semi-cliffhanger of Ando setting out on his own to take care of Sylar once and for all, coming on the heels of all the talk of sacrifice and everything else, I was pretty convinced that Ando was a goner, setting Hiro on the road to being a true hero who has known loss, etc. etc. Almost everything else, however, seemed just slightly off, as if the writers knew where they wanted to go but just couldn't work out how to get there. It seemed rushed, as well; I wanted to see Nikki do more than just hit Sylar once and more of a fight between Peter and Sylar than just punching each other, but I remember looking at the TiVometer at the act break where Sylar appeared and thinking, "Wait, they have fifteen-odd minutes to finish this off?"

There was a moment, when Peter was having his travelling-in-time/flashback/epiphany moment, where I was terrified that the grand finale would be that Peter would heal the world with the Rainbow Power of Love, and it's something that I was even more convinced would happen when his radioactive glowing hands made him double over in slow motion - I could almost hear Elton John cracking his fingers in preparation of a special medeley of "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" and "Candle In The Wind" - so the fact that they didn't do that was nearly my favorite part of the whole show, even if the faux deaths of Peter and Nathan would carry more weight if they hadn't spent a couple of scenes earlier in the episode pointing out that Peter could theoretically regenerate from exploding anyway (And let's face it, Nathan probably just flew him up into the sky and dropped him before getting out of the way as he exploded). "No bodies = No death," as just one of last night's comic cliches goes.

(Alternatively, the other big cliche from the night - the villain who refuses to die - just pissed me off. Sylar's not that interesting, people who write Heroes.)

But, no, the best part of last night's finale for me was the ending. It was completely Quantum Leap, to the point where I really wanted the episode to close with Hiro running from the men on horseback, saying "Oh boy," but there was nonetheless something oddly optimistic and open about it, as opposed to the progressively-more-claustrophobic storytelling of the last few episodes. It actually felt like a new beginning, as well as a continuation of the existing mythos. And was that George Takei behind that mask...? Overall, it was a high Okay, and arguably low Good end for a show that I had no hopes for when I first saw it.

Shall we get to the comics I didn't get to review this week for one reason or another, before everything starts again tomorrow? Let's.

PAINKILLER JANE #1: I tried, I really did, to give this one a lengthy review of its own, but it kept defeating me whenever I tried to talk about it. I thought it was surprisingly Okay, a messy and more interesting take on the same character and, for that matter, style of storytelling as Jimmie Robinson's Bomb Queen, and I wanted to make some connection between the nerd fantasy figure of those two characters (Impossibly hot, socially awkward, bisexual women who hide their awkwardness under a selfconscious asskickin' and name-takin' persona and the cheesecake way in which they're illustrated - A fantasy for nerds not only for the "No-one understands me" thing, but also because they're the physically idealized woman and shown on panel as sexually active and therefore, "available") and Tank Girl, who I'm bizarrely convinced is one of the archetypes of this particular character cliche... but I could never quite get my thoughts together in any kind of coherent form. The comic itself is interesting enough, moreso when it seems to go slightly off the rails, as in the page of one panel character studies that ends up kickstarting the plot. If I can ever make sense of what I was trying to say about the fantasy female figure thing, I may come back to this one.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS SPECIAL: Fun, and with an amazing line-up of artists that fit with Jeff Parker's writing better than regular artist Roger Cruz. Get Nick Dragotta and Mike Allred on this book permanently, and you'd have something that both the kids and The Kids would have on their shopping list each and every month; their studied retro touch pushes the book out of the "upgraded Marvel Adventures" feel and into the same kind of updated pop joy of something like Allred's own Madman or Darwyn Cooke's Spirit. It's Good, and an odd reminder that the original X-Men concept really did work, in a way.

This week! Onomatopea writing may mean shorter reviews, Jeff's last day on Friday, and a three-day-weekend will hopefully give me the chance to finish Percy Gloom, Fantagraphics' Chris Ware-meets-Disney graphic novel that's so far been incredibly enjoyable...

I look up and smile, a picture of dissatisfaction: Graeme returns from the wilderness.

It's time to start the music! It's time to light the lights! It's time to get things started again after a weekend where Kate and I went camping with "hilarious" results (Read, wow, I'm not the biggest fan of that whole "sleeping bag in a tent" schtick). So, as sultry songstress P!nk once said, let's get this party started.

BATMAN #665: It's the real All-Star Batman, as Grant Morrison gives us a Batman that doesn't give up in his fight against injustice, a Robin that does stupid things like riding his motorbike into supervillains, along with romance! hookers with hearts of gold! and the promise of crazy science-fiction adventures yet to come! It's pretty much an antidote to Frank Miller's Divorce Therapy Batman Annual, and Goddamn, but it's a lot of fun. I'm sure that there are some grumpy frowning fans out there cursing the hint that all of the 1950s Sci-Fi weirdness is now not only in continuity, but also the basis of Morrison's entire run, but... Feh. This is really rather Good stuff.

EX MACHINA #28: Here's the thing - As much as I like to read this each and every issue, it's kind of depressing to realize that the book hasn't really changed or grown in the last twenty-seven issues. Which isn't to say that this particular issue isn't Good or anything (and it is), but it feels like, as a series, it's stalled and that's pretty much not a good sign. It should feel as if it's going somewhere, shouldn't it...?

FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA #3: The more I think about it, the more I kind of like this series. I mean, sure - It's full of stillborn dialogue (Yes, yet another character manages to work the title of the series into a conversation; this time it's Clint Barton: "I want to talk about Steve. The death of Captain America. And what the hell you're doing about it."), a plot that - by necessity - goes nowhere, and it completely screws with New Avengers continuity. But look past all of that, and you have a curiously old-school Marvel book (Say what you like about Loeb's work, but he does seem to understand what makes Marvel characters tick. Sure, he might not always be able to get it over to the reader, but still...) with some great artwork; John Romita Jr.'s work in this issue is particularly nice. A slightly guilty Okay, in that case.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #9: Brad Meltzer, please stop overwriting every single scene. Honestly, someone needs to tell him that not every scene in every book has to have the same kind of narration where someone not only explains what's going on but also the psychological reasons behind it. As much as this book has become solid I-grew-up-in-the-'70s continuity porn, it's the overdose of verbage that's killing it. Solidly Eh.

THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #3: Yeah, just a week or so after I was saying something about the way that Bendis's failures are at least interesting, he serves up this entirely Eh issue that doesn't offer anything other than Frank Cho's masturbatory horny Tigra scene. If it wasn't for that whole "lead time" thing, I would take that personally...

And, yes, I'm the one person who missed Brubaker when he was in town this weekend. Blame the camping and those results that are apparently "hilarious". Yet another reason to dislike those sleeping bags...

Arriving 5/23

Small week! A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #58 (A) AMERICAN VIRGIN #15 ARCHIE #575 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #179 BIRDS OF PREY #106 CAPTAIN AMERICA #26 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #33 COUNTDOWN 49 COVER GIRL #2 CRIMINAL #6 DEVI #11 DYNAMO 5 #3 ELEPHANTMEN #9 FALL OF CTHULHU MAVILLAIN CVR A #3 FANTASTIC FOUR #546 CWI FINAL GIRL #1 (OF 5) FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1 FUTURAMA COMICS #31 GODLAND #18 GUTSVILLE #1 (OF 6) HELLBLAZER #232 HEROES FOR HIRE #10 IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY #5 (OF 6) IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #8 LEFT ON MISSION #2 (OF 5) LOADED BIBLE 2 BLOOD OF CHRIST (ONE SHOT) MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #2 MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #1 MARVEL SPOTLIGHT FANTASTIC FOUR SILVER SURFER NEWUNIVERSAL #6 NINJA SCROLL #9 OUTER ORBIT #4 (OF 4) PVP #33 RED PROPHET TALES OF ALVIN MAKER #7 (OF 12) ROBIN #162 SATANS ##### BABY SHADOWPACT #13 SHE-HULK 2 #18 CWI SNAKEWOMAN SPECIAL COLLECTORS EDITION #0 SPIRIT #6 STAR TREK KLINGONS BLOOD WILL TELL #2 STAR WARS LEGACY #12 SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #30 SUPERMAN BATMAN #35 TESTAMENT #18 UNCLE SCROOGE #366 UNIQUE #3 (OF 3) WALK-IN #6 WARHAMMER 40K DAMNATION CRUSADE CVR A #4 WETWORKS #9 WISDOM #6 (OF 6) WONDER WOMAN #9 X-MEN #199

Books / Mags / Stuff ACTION HEROES ARCHIVES VOL 2 HC BACK ISSUE #22 BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD VOL 8 GN (OF 19) BLACK PANTHER CIVIL WAR TP CASANOVA VOL 1 LUXURIA HC CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #10 DR DOOM CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #9 CAPT AMERICA CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #38 SHE HULK CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAGAZINE #39 MYSTIQUE COYOTE VOL 5 TP CSI CASE FILES VOL 2 TP DOCTOR STRANGE OATH TP DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES VOL 2 DRAGONS OF WINTER NIGHT TP ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMICBOOK HEROES VOL 1 BATMAN TP FELL VOL 1 FERAL CITY TP HELLSTORM SON OF SATAN EQUINOX TP HOMELESS CHANNEL ILLO MAGAZINE #1(NOTE PRICE) INFINITE CRISIS SER 2 INNER CASE ASST (NET) IRON WOK JAN GN #24 KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER THE LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 7 TP MARVEL 1602 FANTASTICK FOUR TP MEGATOKYO VOL 5 OTHER SIDE TP PERCY GLOOM HC SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE VOL 3 MY SECRET LIFE DIGEST TP STREET FIGHTER ALPHA VOL 1 GN (OF 2) SUPERMAN BATMAN VS ALIENS PREDATORS TP

What looks good to you?

-B

Not Gone Yet: A Few Reviews from Jeff of 05/16 Books...

As Hibbs pointed out at the store yesterday, despite giving my notice, I'm not outta here yet. Speaking of yesterday, my thanks to special guest star Ed "The Happy Clown" Brubaker for stopping by. As Hibbs mentioned, it's great seeing The Brube in a good place--Christ knows he deserves it (and worked his ass off for it)--and taking the time to drop by on my next-to-last Friday and shoot the shit with us was really above and beyond. Thanks, Ed.

Thanks also to Mojo of the mighty Poor Mojo website for stopping by with Red Stripes. Some of you may have noticed that I recently added the Poor Mojo Newswire to the sidebar over there. I was reluctant to add a non-comics site (or rather a non-strictly-comics site) because that way leads to madness and ruin, but the Newswire has grown pretty indispensible to me over the last few months. They cull their news from a bunch of different sources, so while you'll get a story that hit Boing Boing, or something that Ellis noticed, or a link to a Wired story, you get it without a lot of the self-congratulation and self-promotion, and they also have a loving dash of lefty politics, local stories and excellent webcomics to boot. And they link here every now and again, which is always cool. But, yeah: Poor Mojo Newswire plus Google Reader=nine kinds of awesome.

I'll spare you further shout-outs (hi, Charlie!) but needless to say, thanks to everyone who dropped by and wished me well. Every once in a while I realize I'm not gonna be behind the counter every Friday seeing great people with regularity and I wonder what the hell I'm thinking.

Speaking of "What the hell were they thinking":

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #5: The first page made me laugh, I admit it, but the rest of it just seemed wildly off and I think it's the cognitive dissonance caused by Miller's words and actions being acted out by Jim Lee's illustrations. As I think I mentioned elsewhere on this site, at some point Miller made the transition from being a comic book artist to being a cartoonist, and there's stuff that I think would work for me--that whole JLA scene, for example--if it was drawn by Miller: it would read as expressive rather than insipid. It's a critical problem of tone for me, and ultimately I think this book won't work out for me in the long run for the same reason I wouldn't really care to read a Steve Ditko "Mr. A" story illustrated by John Buscema, or a Jules Feiffer script illustrated by Curt Swan, or a Charles Schulz strip illustrated by anybody, really, but Charles Schulz. I mean, sure, if you offered to show me those things I'd leap at the chance to read 'em, but I bet I'd be left pretty cold and non-plussed in the end, just like here. Eh, really, but once you factor in the delays and the cost and the politics, feel free to ratchet that down accordingly.

ARMY @ LOVE #3: This sheer denseness of this issue's plotting, combined with the military setting and broad farcical satire reminded me of Joseph Heller's Catch 22--although if you can imagine Joe Simon adapting it for Heavy Metal or something. It needs to expand its cast (which it's kinda/sorting doing already) and maybe not disappear down the hidey-hole of its own world-making but, other than that, it's a god-damned weird little book and I'm enjoying it a lot. Good stuff.

BATMAN #665: Morrison is quite audaciously (to use the high-falutin' literary language taught me by Ghostbusters) "crossing the streams" with his Batman--trying to mix Bane and pre-Silver Age Batman stories and Miller and Adams and Sprang and fuckin' everything--but I admire the ambition more than the result. I mean, this was the second best issue for me on G-Mo's run, and yet even still it seemed oddly unresonant--like a series of sketches rather than the completed work.

(Arghh. I just had an idea that I'm proving remarkably inept at conveying so lemme sketch it out to you behind the scenes and lemme know what you think: Morrison does a much better job writing Superman than Batman because Morrison is, like Superman, at heart a loving and dutiful son [as any article where Morrison talks about his Dad will attest] whereas Batman is not. In order for Morrison to "get" Batman, he has to reinvent Batman as the consummate Pop poseur--like Morrison himself--where both Batman and Bruce Wayne are, to some extent, artificially constructed personas created from equal parts utility and self-amusement. Therefore, the Batman Morrison writes in JLA is what I would think of as a more "real" Batman because that Batman is, in effect, "acting" in front of the JLA. Left to his own devices (or book title, I guess), Morrison's Batman isn't really that character--or always that character, at least--any more than Grant is really (or always) Mr. "Look At Me! I'm dressed up in drag and I just ate a pound of hashish!"

And yet to me, Batman is not the consummate Pop poseur, so the whole thing never quite works for me. I dunno; does that make sense?)

In any event, more fun to think about than to read. OK.

CABLE DEADPOOL #40: It sure seems like the subtext here is Fabian Nicieza beng annoyed by his plans for Cable being scuttled by editorial's desire to have Cable go back to being the brooding mutant all-powerful militaristic team leader over in X-Men. Certainly, all of Cable's narrative caption iterate a very specific kind of frustration for the situation he's trapped in (and that situation does happen to be a crossover with X-Men). On the other hand, maybe he's just writing it that way to fool overzealous readers like myself. In which case: well played, Mr. Nicieza, well played. Either OK or Eh, I can't decide.

COUNTDOWN 50: Hibbs and I were talking about this issue--which I think I liked even less than the first issue, amazingly--and I finally nailed the analogy, although I apologize for how old-school it is: Countdown is like Secret Wars II to 52's Secret War. In the same way, the success of Secret Wars changed Jim Shooter into hubristically believing he had the Midas touch and deciding to force a second miniseries on the entire Marvel Universe, Dan Didio seems to have fallen for the belief that it's his ideas and his knowledge of what makes a successful comic that made Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis and 52 a success.

Hibbs, who immediately got what I was saying before I even finished my sentence and went me one better: "Yeah, and 52 is just like Secret Wars because even though it wasn't very good, it was the first of its kind and well loved, and Secret Wars II was more of the same, only larger and worse, and everyone went on to pretend it never existed!"

Now, I'm not sure I'd go that far (yet) but I wasn't heartened by what I saw this week: a weirdly out-of-left-field JLA/JSA/LSH scene; too much set-up with the Rogues and a deeply unbelievable cliff-hanger (among other stuff). It's pretty dreary stuff, flat, and, in some places, deeply unbelievable. (My theory is that this is actually taking place on Earth "Everyone Knows Everything About Everyone Else.")

Or, as I call it: Earth-Eh.

EXILES #94: Wow, that was kinda grueling. Glad I'm not around for next issue's visit to the Planet of the Mary Sue Killers. Sub-Eh.

FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #12: Art's strong, script is strong, coloring is, I think, great (really vibrant and lends some of the art a real power to it): why couldn't we have gotten this from the first issue? I wasn't exactly down with some of the plot machinations (seriously, is there a mandate that at least 30% of DC's production be time-travel related?) but highly OK. Worth looking out for.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #9: I thought the art lacked oomph this issue. I mean, how can you have Timber Wolf having a dinosaur race with gorillas and have it look that uninteresting? Brad Meltzer's stuff needs all the help it can get (although I admit it, I could read about Speedy flirting with Hawkgirl for days, probably). Wayyyy tooooo slowwwwwwwwwww, and yet still OK, I thought.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #3: The instant I read the Tigra sequence I immediately imagined the late night call Bendis must've gotten beforehand: "Yeah, hey, Brian? Frank. Lissen man, I just read the script for issue #2 and this shit's great, really, but I'm not sure I'm gonna make it through the entire arc just spanking it to Lady Ultron. Could you maybe throw in Tigra or somebody to keep my 'interest' up, if you know what I'm talking about? Thanks, bro. Okay, talk to you later, bye." Good overall, though.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #109: A really smart, engaging read with a darkly ironic reason for Peter to keep being Spider-Man folded in. I liked this a lot. Very Good.

ULTIMATES 2 #13: 8 page gatefold or not, that was one astonishingly slack issue. (Number of pages in which there were 4 words or less per page? Seventeen. And the scenes with more dialogue weren't particularly good, either. And the panels where Captain America is standing around expressionless like a guy with Asperger's wearing a flag, or that full-page half-shockwave? What about the Cap/Jan relationship? Is Tony still dying? What about apologizing to Thor? And what's with that ending? If I was being generous to Millar, I'd say he was making some kind of larger point about the passing of America's golden age or something as World War II moves it into the day of the Military-Industrial Complex, but I'm not being generous to Millar: it reads like shit he put at the end of his outline five years ago and he can't remember why he put it there but he doesn't have time to come up with anything else.

It'll probably read all right in trades, I guess, but compared to those first six issues? And considering Stan and Jack did, what, the first 64 issues of the Fantastic Four in the same length of time? Underwhelmingly Eh.

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.