All Systems Intact, the Red and the Black: Douglas Looks at DC Universe Zero

Yeah, this one's spoilery. Not that everything hasn't been spoiled elsewhere, but I'm still putting this under the cut. Not a review, really, but annotations; if you want a rating, I thought it was Excellent as a teaser and value-for-money--I want to read what happens next--and n/a as a story.

Pg. 1: It's somehow fitting that, on the first page of a multi-title arc that will apparently draw on Jack Kirby's multi-title arc very heavily (and by the way, Jeff, that's a fantastic post right there), we get a tribute to one of his signature artistic techniques, the extreme long shot. This page seems to have been a last-second rewrite: in the version included in the New York Comic-Con program, the caption was "I am... everything." The present version's better by far. Note also that the captions start with a black background, and that the red creeps in from the right as the story progresses.

Also worth reading: George Pérez's comments on why this page and pg. 3 are "the simplest pages I've ever drawn."

Pg. 3: The first mention of red this issue--the infamous "red skies" of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which were sometimes about the only sign of tie-ins in other titles.

Pg. 5: It wouldn't be a Geoff Johns comic without dismemberment, but at least this character's meant to be one-handed--and "hands" are going to be a running theme in this comic, so take note. ("We could use a hand out here" appears on this page, too.) Tyr's name is the first direct reference to a god this issue, specifically Týr, the god of fistfights and single combat, a concept with which superhero comics of the era now ending are too familiar. This particular version of Tyr first appeared here, created by Cary Bates and the late Dave Cockrum.

Superman is wearing his Legion flight ring on his middle finger, oddly (it's on his ring finger here, as are the Legionnaires with visible rings on the next page. And can anyone identify the woman with Brainiac 5 and the White Witch?

Pg. 7: This appears to be the inked version of the preview image from a few months ago. I'm happy to see Night Girl (in the lower right-hand corner) again, although the peekaboo cut-outs on her costume's owl are sort of creepy. Also, note the building halfway down the right side: it's the 31st century HQ of the Daily Planet! And people say newspapers are doomed!

Pg. 8: A callback to the opening scene of The Killing Joke, of course, because Morrison can't stop slaying/honoring Highfather Moore. And here we go with red and black again... the version of the Joker follows on from this scarier version, rather than the one we've been seeing in Salvation Run.

Pg. 9: In The Killing Joke, the fake Joker of the opening scene seemed to be playing some solitaire variation of Klondike; here, the real one is just dealing cards. (In panel 4, he's doing a fancy shuffle--for a second I thought he was building a house of cards.) The Black Glove has been making mostly-offstage appearances in Batman, and this possibly extremely spoilery link goes to a very convincing theory by David at Funnybook Babylon on who the Opposite-of-White Glove is.

Pg. 10: Harlequin pattern on the card echoed not just by the floor but by the layout and color scheme of the page: nice! (And both the color-scheme trick and the splatter of blood on the card can't help but recall Watchmen...)

The "dead man's hand" is two aces, two eights and something else (here, cleverly, the wild card), supposedly the hand Wild Bill Hickcock was holding when it was shot. (The aces and eights are usually all black, but this fits the symbolic scheme of the scene and the issue better.) The term also recalls the Hand of Glory from The Invisibles; the hand missing a finger echoes the assailant from the most recent issue of Batman, and also suggests the name of Batman mastermind Bill Finger!

Pg. 12: I would like to congratulate myself on predicting the name of the Red Volcano almost two years ago. (Anyone want to predict who the water-elemental equivalent of R.V., the Red Tornado and the Red Inferno is going to be?)

Professor Ivo, of course, is the creator of Amazo. Doctor Poison first appeared here, although the one we're dealing with is most likely her grandchild, who first appeared here. I have no idea who that is in the Darfur scene; any thoughts?

Remember, kids, eating people is wrong!

Pg. 14: Anybody happen to know if the caption here references something Hal ever told Barry on-panel? In any case, Black Hand first appeared here, and continues the blackness/hands/Black Glove series. Hal, as the Spectre, burned Black Hand's right hand off here--it would appear that the right handprint is the one burned into the victim's chest, but he's able to reconstruct his hand by draining people's life force.

Is the "federal penitentiary" Salvation Run?

Pp. 15-16: The rainbow Lantern Corps were established in Green Lantern #25. In Roy G. Bivolo order, their motivating forces are rage, greed, fear (is that a Monitor?), will, hope, compassion, and love. And would that be a white lantern in the last panel? Or a black lantern? Apparently the ring in the Blackest Night previews is a Black Hand ring.

Pp. 17-18: Would someone who read Countdown maybe take a stab at what's going on here? Like, did Crispus shave?

Pg. 19: As far as I can tell, there's no DCU character named Carr D'Angelo, but there is a real-world person who produced The Hot Chick. Which was an awful movie, but I think the Spectre's response is a little extreme. Also: "I am somebody!" And I guess, from that ad, that it is "Revelations" with an S. Too bad.

Pg. 20: More of the 2-D/3-D play that Morrison's Seven Soldiers made so much of, especially Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle. The reddish and blackish planets in the first panel might be Apokolips and New Genesis, although it looks like there's more of a nature/tech dichotomy than a good/evil dichotomy going on there. And the falling character: would that be The Human Flame? Looks a little like The Ray, actually.

Pg. 21: "A runner poised on the line": yes, that runner. Doesn't this scene remind you of the Hood gathering all the bad guys in New Avengers a few months ago? Libra first appeared here, and at the end of that story, he became, in the words of some long-ago issue of E-Man, "several with the universe"--in other words, the position the narrator of this issue claims to be in at the beginning. It's not clear from that JLA issue what color Libra's eyes are--there's only one panel in which his eyes are visible, and they're colorless--but here they're definitely blue. As in the same color as the Flash's eyes in that Final Crisis poster. Anybody want to identify which copy of the Crime Bible this is?

Pg. 23: "Believe in him, that's all he asks!" Not only is this very much like the "he loves you" business going on in Secret Invasion, it explicitly echoes the "believe in her" refrain chanted by Lady Styx's followers. And Lady Styx, of course, makes the dead rise...

Then, of course, we have the matter of the hand clutching something that looks like Kirby-dot energy--the culmination of this issue's hand imagery. I've written about the giant-hand-in-space motif before, but the short version is that it seems to be the closest thing DC has to a creation-story icon; maybe it's present here to signify the beginning of the Fifth World, or the end of the Fourth, or maybe there's something else going on.

This, I believe, is the first time in many years--maybe even post-Crisis?--that the Secret Society of Super-Villains has been referred to by its full name, rather than simply as the "Secret Society." (Incidentally, the third page of 52 #1 referred to a rampage by the "Monster Society"; in the trade paperback, that's been corrected to "Secret Society.") It's weird to see them calling it that; as the final chapter title of "The Lightning Saga" put it, "the villain is the hero in his own story."

"And this is me": is Barry Libra? And doesn't one usually see the lightning before hearing the thunder?

Pg. 24: Lightning plus red sky plus enormously oversized moon equals Flash costume. I assume "Twisters" is where the Society's meeting; Morrison has mentioned that this is where Final Crisis proper begins, an instant after this scene. (Is the club's name a hint at something involving the Red Tornado?)

As for Barry Allen's return--well, I don't really understand why that's an alert-the-media! big deal, since it's got what Wikipedia's perfect phrase calls "primarily in-universe" significance. I'm not exactly excited at the prospect of having him back and starring in a monthly Flashcomic, just because I like stories that have ended to stay ended: it makes me more invested in the ones that haven't ended yet. But Johns had Barry popping in from the future in Flash #200 and telling Wally West that that was the first of three times they'd see each other; the second was in #224, and the third hasn't happened yet. (I don't think the cameo via the Speed Force in Infinite Crisis #4 counts. Barry's end-of-career timeline is mostly detailed here.) "The Lightning Saga" teased Barry's return very heavily; I'm sure there are going to be plenty of callbacks to that story in the months to come.

The Suppleness of Shame: Jeff Looks at Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 4

The fourth and final volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus suggests the editorial staff at DC are either far ballsier, craftier, or more ignorant of the material than I thought: although printing four titles in the order of their publication (instead of grouping them by title) did a superb job of initially highlighting Kirby's protean imagination, reading the first 250 pages of the fourth volume is like watching the weakening death throes of a formerly-powerful animal: it's awesome in a truly depressing way. The schema had been problematic before Volume Four: the arrangement strips the first seven issues of Forever People--basically one sprawling epic on its own--of any momentum, putting seventy pages of material between one cliffhanger and another. But considering the second volume, where this frustrated the most, also showcased a creator working at arguably the highest and final peak of his long career, the frustration was easier to dismiss. And although the problem disappears entirely in the final volume--both the Forever People and New Gods end in the first seventy-eight pages, leaving the final six issues of Mister Miracle to run consecutively--a far worse one takes its place: I would rank those final six issues of Mister Miracle as among some of the worst things Kirby's done.

Now, a statement like that requires a buttload of caveats--not only is there a ton of Kirby material I haven't read, but I'd rank the worst Kirby material as far above the worst material other writers and artists have produced in the field. Indeed, taken on their own, the issues reprinted consecutively in this Omnibus have a ton of charm. One of the pleasures of late-period Kirby is recognizing the familiar formulas while still being surprised by whatever crazy-ass shit the man decides to throw in there--it's a lot like watching a great blues guitarist tackle a classic piece. So, for example, I initially was delighted by Mister Miracle #14 where Mister Miracle and Oberon go walking in the woods and randomly encounter a crazed Satanic cult. It follows a standard pulp plot of "high-tech crooks posing as supernatural forces to scare off trespassers" but Kirby cranks the whole thing up past 11: Satan gets mentioned as often as three times a page in the first half of the book, the cultists wear impressively grotesque masks, and until Mister Miracle does his patented next-to-last page reveal of his face (and a panel or two of P.R. man Ted Brown smoking a pipe), the most normal looking person in the book is Oberon the dwarf. The whole thing is a bit like someone had tricked Fellini into directing an episode of Scooby-Doo.

Unfortunately, just three issues later, Mister Miracle, Big Barda, and protege-in-tow Shilo Norman check into a mysterious hotel after their car breaks down and what follows hits most of the same beats as issue #14. Considering that issue comes on the heels of a story where Jack uses the infamous "it was all a dream--or was it?" cliche, the middle stretch of Omnibus Vol. 4 reads like a talented but inattentive creator running out the clock. And even before then, I'll admit Kirby had already turned Mister Miracle into pretty rote stuff, despite tossing in first Big Barda and then the rest of the Female Furies as a supporting cast. Every issue opens up with Mister Miracle performing a trick while everyone around him freaks out, and nearly every fight scene features a moment focusing on on a villain performing a can't-miss killing move on M.M. only to then look around in dismay when the smoke has cleared and there's no body to be seen. (And later issues have variations on the same panel where Scott Free removes his mask at the end and we see the circuitry he's built into it--it actually looks more like Scott has sneezed up pieces of a mother board to me). In my long-ago review of Vol. 1, I'd suggested that Mister Miracle represented a dream image of Kirby himself as creator and freelancer--"a man raised in the violent war-state of Darkseid's brutal society who is not himself violent or brutal and who supports himself and enlightens others by freeing himself again and again" is the way I put in my review. If so, perhaps it's not wrong to see in those final issues a frustration on Kirby's part with the Mister Miracle concept as the cancellation of his other Fourth World books revealed that self-image for the dream it was: in each issue Mister Miracle's victory feels a little more hollow and far-fetched ("I suppose you that you have a gimmick that opened a slit in its hull!" is one of the more detailed explanations given for a deathtrap escape, to which Mister Miracle helpfully clarifies, "That's how I escaped!") until in the last issue he doesn't really win at all. The last issue of Mister Miracle--and what Kirby must've thought was to be the last issue of the Fourth World Saga--ends with Darkseid summing up (the issue and perhaps the entire saga), "It had deep sentiment--yet little joy. But--life at best is bittersweet!" All things considered, it's actually a pretty cheery take on things from a man helpless to stop his epic vision from being cut short. And if that had been the end of things, the end of the Omnibus, this review would go on to chastise DC for cynically choosing the publication format they did, for frontloading the great stuff at the beginning and sticking the bad stuff at the end and keeping readers from having a real choice as to what material they could buy.

But, of course, that wasn't the end for the Fourth World Saga. In 1984 and '85, Kirby was given the chance to come back and create an ending in the form of The Hunger Dogs, an original graphic novel, along a forty-seven page prelude titled "Even Gods Must Die!" that bridged the original stories and the graphic novels. We get apologies for the material both in the front with Paul Levitz's intro ("[F]or if the Hunger Dogs is neither the ending Jack originally hoped to do nor crafted with the same sure hand as had a decade earlier, it is still noble to try[.]") and Mark Evanier's afterword ("Jack gave it his all. Jack gave everything he did his all but he really put his heart and soul into this one, and ordinarily it would have been more than enough...but with all the problems, especially the short page count, it wasn't enough," as well as "Finally, The Hunger Dogs was published. I wish I could tell you that it was everything Kirby fans had been expecting by way of a Fourth World conclusion, but it really wasn't that. For one thing, the Fourth World wasn't concluding. For another, Jack still didn't have the thousand or so more pages it might have taken for him to build his story to the kind of climax he'd imagined.") It's safe to say the current take on this final work is not favorable.

And that's a shame. Because I found those final hundred-plus pages to be absolutely brilliant, some of the most stunning stuff Kirby's ever done. I've had The Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 4 for maybe three weeks now, and every night for the first two I'd read those last 100-plus pages again and again.

It's probably because I didn't follow Kirby after he left Marvel in the late '70s, but "Even Gods Must Die!" shocks me in its departure from earlier Kirby work: It's brasher, bolder, nearly a caricature of itself, but Kirby reframes action in ways I hadn't seen in his work since the '40s and '50s: circular inset panels, arrhythmic action scenes with arrows, confrontations where the panel borders run diagonally, making the tension of the scene literally explicit. Months ago, when reading Tezuka's Buddha, I found myself in awe of Tezuka's willingness to experiment with a page so late in his career and wondered if doing so made him a better artist than Kirby. Here, if only for a few pages, is Kirby breaking his patterns, moving finally from the blues to jazz.

Even better, the change suits the story: the circular panels reinforce the circularity of the story as Orion finally brings the battle to Darkseid, and father and son battle as a prophecy has foretold. The characters themselves are encased in circular panels, at many points appearing trapped, just as they're stuck in the cyclical nature of myth. This is something Kirby nicely underlines in his writing--in the early chapters of the New Gods, Darkseid is likened to a tiger, but in "Even Gods Must Die," that same comparison is made about Orion. If Mister Miracle was Kirby as he imagined himself to be in the '70s, the Orion of the Omnibus' final pages is the man Kirby finally realized himself to be: a man incapable of giving up, powered by a terrifying, inexhaustible anger, an anger that allows him to claw his way to the truth.

What really killed me was the scene in which Darkseid, after watching the behavior of the revivified men he's gained the power to resurrect, says to a lackey, "They don't fully return...do they?" If you think about it, that's a tremendously ballsy thing for an author to put in a story he's finishing after a decade-long absence. Kirby is speaking to the audience through Darkseid and openly telling them: "You know what? This doesn't work." In that regard, what seems like every other faux-Stan Lee title you've ever read, "Even Gods Must Die!" is in fact an apt summation of the story's point: Things are supposed to end. For most of us, that's a hard-earned truth. For a superhero comic, that's heresy.

Like "Even Gods Must Die!", The Hunger Dogs is a victory stolen from the jaws of defeat and loss, and the irony is this victory is accomplished by open acknowledging defeat and loss. In The Hunger Dogs, Darkseid sees his coming obsolescence in the face of The Micro-Mark, the digitized destroyer that is the brutal male successor to the kindly Mother Box. In a staggering page, Darkseid listens to the Micro-Mark's inventor crow about the passing of Himon and wordlessly realizes that his own time has also passed. "His day is over, great Darkseid!" the collaborator boasts. "Regard him as a pitiful, harmless object! This is Micro-Mark's hour! There's no need for intrigue or great strivings--the cosmos lies open to button-pushing babes!"

(Oh, and by the way? Holy. Fucking. Shit. It's one thing for writers, artists, photographers, and musicians these days to complain about the digital age having opened doors in their fields at the cost of lowered standards. It's another thing entirely to do it in nineteen-eighty-fucking-five. Fans of the prescient will also appreciate how both Darkseid and Lightray use suicide bombers to take out their enemies, the planet-destroying dirty bombs planted surreptitiously on New Genesis, and how Highfather turns such a terrorist attack back in on itself.)

I was raving to Graeme about all this the other day and he put it best: The Hunger Dogs is the work of an old man, possessing an old man's wisdom and an old man's sorrow. (I don't want to give away the identity of the Micro-Mark's creator, but I will say it's pretty easy to see past the origin presented and infer disgust on Kirby's part at the way the baby boomers--his beloved New Gods--grew up and sold out.) And while Kirby may have dreamed of an epic finish to his epic saga (the conclusion he sketches out here has to settle for evoking Moses leading his people out of Egypt), I found the climax to The Hunger Dogs more satisfying, truer to life: some things change, and many things don't. Although we're told Darkseid takes control of Apokolips again, our last glimpse of him is a figure made lonely and small by distance and time: even through the anger, the scorn, and the violence, Kirby evinces pity for the most horrible of his characters.

It's a good lesson to take from the Fourth World Omnibus, for although these four volumes are a tremendous achievement and will occupy a prized place on my bookshelf, it's meaningful they sit below Buddha, the three thousand page epic Tezuka created at roughly the same time in the manner the artist wanted, at the pace he preferred (collected in hardcover in America, it should be pointed out, before The Omnibus). It achieves very little to focus only on the shame of such a thing. And yet, to look at the whole of Kirby's achievement and see only the wonder, and not the warning, would only compound the shamefulness further: the compromises presented in the final volume of The Fourth World Omnibus mirror the compromises a reader must suffer in seeing such Excellent work simultaneously transcend, and fall victim to, the paucity of its era.

Abhay Continues to Read Blue Beetle; Episode II

This is part two of an irregular multiple part series of essays looking at the first 25 issues of the BLUE BEETLE comic book series, recently published by DC Comics. Part One-- a statement of intentions and a look at the first issue of the series-- can be found HERE. This installment will look at BLUE BEETLE issues #2-6.

I.

The first full storyline of the comic is about Blue Beetle's confrontation with his first set of antagonists. Blue Beetle's "secret identity" is a Mexican-American teenager. So... the first challenge he has to face? A street gang. Named the Posse.

Race is a motherfucker. It’s a tough issue to deal with in any capacity, and I appreciate that the writers are on a tightrope—put in the street gang and you get the “oh, why must we see the street gang” crowd; leave out the street gang and you get the “why’d you white-wash the Mexican-American hero”; have him get a B in Spanish and you get Cheech & Chong fans excited but everyone else gets confused. That damned-if-you- do bind is a reason I think other creators might want to shy away from writing those characters—but also a reason they shouldn’t.

The Posse, though? The same name as the Jamaican bad guys from the Steven Segal epic, MARKED FOR DEATH?

Unfortunately, unlike MARKED FOR DEATH’s Posse, BLUE BEETLE’s Posse are neither Jamaican nor super wicked awesome-est street gang ever; they kind of suck. Luckily, they aren’t featured in the comic very much beyond this arc.

Per the classic shonen fight-comic formula, as the arc progresses, Blue Beetle ultimately teams up with the Posse (who in these issues suddenly include his best friend) to face off against a greater threat—the lady crime boss, La Dama! (Who he will later team up with to face the greater threat of so-and-so, and so-on, as the formula dictates). So although the Posse are the bad guys of issue #2, by issue #6, they’ve become the good guys.

Which… is kind of weird. Because fun-fact about the Posse:

They’re engaged in narco-trafficking.

About 400 tons of cocaine enter into the United States every year. That’s not counting the tons of heroin, meth, etc. So… you know, statistically speaking, if Blue Beetle’s friend ever looked in the back of a truck, chances are he’d discover a big mountain of ye’ old yayo. But on the bright-side, maybe it’s sex slaves—- 15 year old child-brides for our professional ballplayers, if that’s the sort of thing that makes you feel better. Or guns intended for child-soldiers. Or a dirty bomb.

Statistically, though—come on, read between the lines: he’s engaged in narco-trafficking.

The first issue has the main character not caring if one of his friends being physically if not sexually abused by her father— now in issue #5, we have the main character not caring that his best friend is engaged in narco-trafficking. Thank god the space aliens show up in a few issues and change the trajectory of this comic—otherwise, it was really just a matter of time before Blue Beetle’s dad would’ve had a couple baby skulls mounted on his cock, and Blue Beetle would be holding pom poms and cheering him on, and that’d be the cover. “This issue, Blue Beetle’s polygamous first cousin makes a flesh necklace from the ears of his many Vietnamese war-brides, while Blue Beetle eats a delicious French Apple pie.”

There will be readers who’ll insist that the trucks might be carrying pixie dust or robot apes, since this is the DCU and the DCU is built on top of a frothy cake of whimsy and bullshit. Their argument would go: “because the DCU is built on top of a frothy cake of whimsy and bullshit, we can suspend our disbelief and believe it’s possible that a street gang involved in illegal smuggling operating out of EL PASO, TEXAS, is smuggling something that is illegal but does not offend our sense of right and wrong the way smuggling drugs, guns or people might.”

Fine, fine, eat your cake. But the comic still has a street gang in it. And is specifically stating that they financially support themselves by operating in an extra-legal way. And those characters are the positive characters. The negative characters? La Dama’s big crime in the arc is taking a baby away from… a street gang whose engaged in operating in illegal behavior.

Uh, that exists outside the DCU: it’s called Child Protective Services.

II.

La Dama is taking super-powered children from out of the barrio or away from the street gangs, and is keeping them in a safe, structured environment in which they’re provided with an education. The arc ends on a bizarre note where the characters who had been “kidnapped” are urged by the head of a street gang to return to the barrios. They’re urged to abandon the safety of Child Protective Services and to return to the bosom of the societal institutions provided by extra-legal street gangs.

You don’t need white institutions to protect you because now the Mexican-Americans have their own superhero! Gangs ahoy! At least Blue Beetle looks embarrassed by all this, I guess, but it’s hard to tell if that’s the character reacting to the speech, or the artist reacting to the writing.

I think we can all agree at least that La Dama is in the wrong for having been engaged in kidnapping children from their parents in order to raise an army of magical Latinos in the hopes of someday conquering the world. But the rest? Well, at the risk of repeating myself: race is a motherfucker. Sometimes things sound different ways to different people. The arc was perfectly fine to most people who read it. Perhaps most people read the “safety versus freedom” aspects as a commentary on the civil rights situation in this country following this country’s botched response to 9/11. And not the way I read it which is, you know: “minorities should avoid the social support or interference of white institutions in favor of their own institutions—no matter how criminal or decrepit or involved in the narco-trafficking business-- even if it means their friends get beaten by their dads.”

I’m sure fans could angrily argue that the bad guys can’t be a metaphor for white institutions because La Dama is a minority character herself, but—- well, I wouldn’t find that a very convincing argument, and they would, and there’s the impasse. But say a fan argues that “La Dama is the bad guy and she’s a minority, so everything you just said is wrong.” Here’s the thing I don’t get then: Blue Beetle only defeats this threat by exposing La Dama’s wrongdoing to … a higher authority, specifically a cameo from The Phantom Stranger:

So even if you set aside everything else, in the first arc, the minority heroes haven’t really changed anything, but have only created the conditions necessary for a magical White Guy to step in and rescue the minorities from themselves. The arc says a Magical White Guy is the necessary solution to keep the evil minorities and the good minorities in a proper bargaining relationship. If bad minorities act out, the good super-minorities rat them out to the Magical White Man. Uhm, yeah: no.

But look, we all have our different perspectives, and hey, that plus refracted light is what makes us a rainbow.

III.

The 2nd issue continued to have a “future storyline” taking place after the previously published Infinite Crisis miniseries, along with a “past storyline” taking place before or contemporaneously with said miniseries.

At the end of issue 2, the series adds in the "twist" that the "future" storyline (and the rest of the series) takes place exactly one year after the crucial events of the "past" storyline. Why? Because it's DC and that means... EDITORIAL FIAT! Yay!

At or about the publication of the second issue of BLUE BEETLE, DC's latest EDITORIAL FIAT! du jour was "all of our books take place one year later than the last moments of INFINITE CRISIS." So, BLUE BEETLE, like the rest of the DC line (I guess…?), jammed in a “one year later” subplot.

One Year Later? Really? Even if it's a new book, launching a new character, that doesn't need any added confusion? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if it damages the compact between a reader and a book that a comic is a window into another world with its own people and geography and rules, by reminding us of the bizarre, haphazard creative forces that go into that world's creation? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if it damages the relationship between a reader and a creative team by reminding the reader that the creative team includes a bunch of fucking editors? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if Kyle Mclachlan reached into a kangaroo pouch and pulled out a severed ear, and the kangaroo punched him in the skull, and the ear was on fire, and the kangaroo was on fire, and our loins were on fire, and the whole world was on fire? DRUGS!

Earmuffs, Blue Beetle! Earmuffs!

IV.

The arc isn’t very meaningful long-term. I don’t know if that matters. The Posse plays hardly any role in the rest of the series— red herring.

Blue Beetle’s goal is to meet one particular member of the Posse so she can explain his powers to him. She never does or explains anything of any value, and is never seen again— red herring.

The arc sets up an archnemesis for Blue Beetle, La Dama, who doesn’t really ever do anything I remember being especially evil for the rest of the series— red herring.

The arc sets up a third nemesis for Blue Beetle, a magician henchman for La Dama who never really ends up mattering very much— red herring.

The entire arc is about magic in the DC Universe, and Blue Beetle learning about magic, and coping with magic. The rest of the comic is a space opera sci-fi adventure— red herring.

The most interesting bit is the series sets up a dilemma: should Blue Beetle save his friend from her evil Aunt and save himself the hassle of having his secret identity exposed, or should he allow her to be raised by a crime-lord for his own convenience?

Guess which option he chooses. Also: who ultimately resolves the moral dilemma? Not Blue Beetle— it’s resolved for him by external events. So, I’d personally categorize that under “herring, red.”

V.

Something this arc got me thinking about is Blue Beetle’s relationship with his power.

The Marvel characters-- the nature of power is split for a Marvel character. You either achieve your powers (e.g. Tony Stark builds his Iron Man suit) or you’re victimized by them (e.g. whoops: Hulk). Power in a Marvel comic is not something to be merely enjoyed ala a DC character like The Flash or Superman— there’s more to it than that.

Captain America? Victim: a man out of time. Iron Fist? Achievement: learned kung-fu. Spider-man? Both: achievement-- built his webshooters, but also victimized by how his powers force him to be responsible. The X-Men? Victims. Daredevil? Uh: handi-capable. The Fantastic Four? Both victims and achievement-based heroes! And so on. The Marvel characters … there’s a certain fission element built into their DNA. Their relationships with power defines a lot about how or why those characters work.

The big DC characters are not as interesting in that respect. Sure, there’s Batman (both victim and achievement), but more of them were just sort-of handed their powers. Green Lantern is literally just handed a power ring—end of story.

How about our boy? How about Mr. Beetle? In the first issue, he learned that he had superpowers, and after that—he just goes off and uses them.

In this arc, he’s never really victimized by his powers— he’s more than happy to use them willy-nilly. No, he’s victimized by the unhappy situation of being a part of the DCU. He’s victimized because he was taken away from his family for a year due to the One Year Later stunt event-— that has nothing to do with his powers. He’s victimized by DC editors, which… get in line.

He certainly didn’t achieve his powers-- a magical rock crawled up his ass. He was sodomized with superpowers— wee. The only achievement was on the part of his sphincter.

Anytime I watch a James Bond movie, I want to know how to play Baccarat (it's an absolutely retarded card game). James Bond is all about achievement. James Bond fans want to dress like Bond dresses; smell like he smells.

Who’d want to smell like the Blue Beetle? Or his sphincter?

Not me, sister.

Not me.

Week 103: One More Year Later

It's almost a year after 52 ended--as of this Wednesday and DCU Zero, the next cycle of DCU stuff is about to begin, and I'm a lot more curious about that than I was about virtually anything in the Countdown era. (The line in this week's DC Nation column about how Countdown's goals "met with various levels of success" is a delicate way of putting it.) But before that starts, I thought I'd take one more look at the afterlife of the series I spent a year writing about.

52 opened up a bunch of possibilities, opportunities and resources for the DCU setting, and the last year has not been kind to many of them. Here's what's happened with each of 52's main characters and plot threads:

ADAM STRANGE, STARFIRE, ANIMAL MAN: The outer-space plot of 52 didn't quite build up the force it was supposed to--where it seems to have been going at first was that they not only had to make it home but save the world from Lady Styx when they got there, which didn't happen. And the point of throwing these three characters together was that they didn't really belong together, or have much in common except for being different kinds of exiles longing for return. (The one who got to go back was Animal Man, which functioned dramatically as the end of Buddy's story: he's integrated himself with his understanding of what's beyond the fourth wall.) So putting them back together for Countdown to Adventure was a horrible idea: they are not a team, and have no dramatic reason to continue to work together, and there was no new angle to make it worth bringing them back right now.

BATWOMAN: Wasn't she supposed to be the Sensational Character Find of 2006? There actually may have been some demand to do something more with her--like explaining what her deal is--but after a year and only one appearance (in Crime Bible) that bothered to actually do anything with her, I suspect the urgency is gone. As of New York Comic-Con, there don't seem to be any announced plans to do anything with her (although she did show up in that Adam Hughes promo piece recently). Then again, if that Rucka/Williams project with her ever happens, I'm there.

BLACK ADAM: Look, the whole point of the end of 52's Black Adam arc was that it was final--that his pride had destroyed him and that he'd spend his remaining days wandering like Cain, searching for his magic word. It also meant that when he inevitably reappeared, eight or fifteen years down the line, it would have this massive return-of-the-repressed impact. And then he showed up again... THREE WEEKS LATER. Thereby undercutting all the dramatic force of his story, and making it totally exhausting every time he's appeared since. Also, the resolution of the "lost magic word" thing in the Black Adam miniseries was as stupid as it could possibly have been.

BOOSTER GOLD: The first few issues took off from the tone of the Booster sequences in 52, it's a clever idea, and I've enjoyed most of it so far. There's no denying it's an exercise in mining the past, but it gets away with it because "mining the past" is its premise.

RALPH AND SUE DIBNY, DEAD DETECTIVES: On the other hand, Batman and the Outsiders? In 2008? It's like turning on the TV and all you get is The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas, except that all the characters are dead now and it's stories about their ghosts running moonshine and making business deals. Next up: the Arak, Son of Thunder revival, yes?

RENEE MONTOYA/THE QUESTION/THE CRIME CULT: I love the character, I'll read anything Rucka writes with her, and I really enjoyed the first couple of issues of 52 Aftermath: Crime Bible: The Five Books, Excuse Me, Lessons of Blood: What, Were We Supposed To Mention Our Character's Name Somewhere in the Title? It's probably as close as I'm going to get as that "superhero comic about introspection and self-discovery" I imagined a year ago. But if you're going to end a miniseries on a cliffhanger, maybe it's a good idea to indicate where that cliffhanger's going to be resolved. (Final Crisis: Revelation, right, but that wasn't clear at the time.) (More title confusion, actually: is it Revelation or Revelations? Can I vote for the proper, singular, John-the-Divine version, especially since Wildstorm already used the plural a couple of months back?)

STEEL: The most awkward thread of 52--his plot never went anywhere all that interesting, and the "metagene" business was so unclear that it all ended up shoved back into its box by the end of the series. Peter Milligan's Infinity Inc. is kind of a clever idea (superheroes as metaphors for various kinds of psychological disorders and mental illness), even if he tends to bang his thematic drumbeats a little too obviously, but trying to hang it onto the 52 peg has probably hurt more than helped.

OOLONG ISLAND/THE FOUR HORSEMEN: Well, I couldn't have imagined that there was any more story to be told on this front--but Giffen and Olliffe managed to evoke the tone of 52. The Four Horsemen miniseries was unnecessary and vestigial, but at least it wasn't parasitic.

THE MULTIVERSE STUFF: The idea that there are parallel realities that sometimes intersect is one of the coolest concepts in DC continuity; I was glad to see it return. It would have been nice to have it floating around as an occasional story resource, not to have the 52 worlds pinned down and summarily zipped through the way we've seen them in the past year.

There are also still a ton of dangling plot threads left over from 52. I maintain a dim flicker of hope that the Waverider/Time Commander/Clock Queen business will eventually be wrapped up in Booster Gold, and that the Intergang/Gotham City/Apokolips stuff will get at least a nod in the course of the impending Kirby-legacy barrage of Final Crisis, but I'm still wondering what the business with Adam Strange and Alan Scott's eyes was, for instance. Also, um, Super-Chief.

What I miss most about 52, though, is its tone--the sense that anything could happen from week to week, that all the plotlines were hurtling somewhere far from where they started, that cool new creations and resonant echoes of history could turn up on any page, that the DCU was becoming a deeper and richer and more interesting place every week. It made me want to know what happened next. 52 gave us Oolong Island, Batwoman, the Crime Bible, Everyman, Lady Styx, the Four Horsemen, Rip Hunter's chalkboard, the Great Ten, Supernova, the Cult of Connor, St. Camillus, Sobek, Osiris... and then, when it ended, its inventive energy mostly dissipated. I'm really hoping that the Final Crisis cycle, and Trinity running in parallel, will build for the future at least as much as they evoke the past.

Arriving 4/30/08

In good news, on Round 2 of the SF public school lottery, Ben got into the A#1 school we wanted him to get into, so there's happy happy happy dancing all around.

In the mediocre news, its yet another small teeny week of comics.

Considering this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, can I declare THE ENTIRE COMICS INDUSTRY as the ASSHAT OF THE WEEK? It really woulda been a smarter idea to have a rich and full week of comics this week, given that we'll have thousands of civilians pouring into DM stores, right? *sigh*

2000 AD #1581 2000 AD #1582 ACTION COMICS #864 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #557 ARCHIE #584 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #188 AVENGERS INITIATIVE #12 BIG AMOEBA ONE SHOT BLACK SUMMER #6 WRAP CVR BLUE BEETLE #26 BUDDHA STORY OF ENLIGHTENMENT #2 CALIBER #1 STANLEY LAU CLOSEUP CVR B CALIBER #1 STANLEY LAU FULL BODY CVR A CALIBER #1 WILKINS CVR C CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #44 CRAWL SPACE XXXOMBIES #4 DAREDEVIL BLOOD OF THE TARANTULA DC UNIVERSE ZERO DEVI #19 (RES) ELEPHANTMEN WAR TOYS #3 (OF 3) EX MACHINA #36 GIANT SIZE AVENGERS INVADERS #1 GLAMOURPUSS #1 COMICS ED GLAMOURPUSS #1 FASHION ED GON VOL 04 GREEN LANTERN #30 GRIMM FAIRY TALES PIPER #2 (OF 4) HELEN KILLER #1 (OF 4) HERCULES #1 ADMIRA CVR B HERCULES #1 STERANKO CVR A HUNTER #2 IMMORTAL IRON FIST #14 JACK OF FABLES #22 JSA CLASSIFIED #37 LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #41 LOCAL #11 (OF 12) (RES) MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #12 MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #8 MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MOBY DICK #3 (OF 6) NEW AVENGERS #40 SI NEW BATTLESTAR GALACTICA SEASON ZERO #7 NEW WARRIORS #11 ORDER #10 PROOF #7 SNAKEWOMAN CURSE OF THE 68 #3 (OF 4) STAR TREK YEAR FOUR ENTERPRISE EXPERIMENT #1 STAR WARS REBELLION #13 SMALL VICTORIES PART 3 (OF 4) TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #28 TEEN TITANS #58 TEEN TITANS GO #54 TEEN TITANS YEAR ONE #4 (OF 6) THOR AGES OF THUNDER ULTIMATE HUMAN #4 (OF 4) ULTIMATE X-MEN #93 UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #8 (OF 8) USAGI YOJIMBO #111 WILDGUARD INSIDER #1 (OF 3) WONDERLAND #6 X-MEN LEGACY #210 DWS YOUNGBLOOD #3

Books / Mags / Stuff ADAM STRANGE ARCHIVES HC VOL 03 ALTER EGO #77 BACK ISSUE #28 BLACK PANTHER TP LITTLE GREEN MEN BPRD TP VOL 08 KILLING GROUND BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER OMNIBUS TP VOL 04 COMPLETE DICK TRACY HC VOL 04 COMPLETE GREEN LAMA FEATURING ART OF MAC RABOY HC DANGEROUS INK MAGAZINE #3 DELAYED REPLAYS GN FACTS I/T CASE O/T DEPARTURE OF MISS FINCH HC (RES) FANTASTIC FOUR TP BEGINNING OF THE END FRANK FRAZETTAS DEATH DEALER DELUXE HC JUXTAPOZ VOL 15 #5 MAY 2008 KABUKI REFLECTIONS #10 KIRBY FIVE OH 50 YEARS OF KING OF COMICS TP (RES) MYSTERY IN SPACE TP VOL 02 ORDINARY VICTORIES GN (O/A) REMEMBRANCE THINGS PAST PT 3 TP VOL 01 SWANN IN LOVE SFX #169 SHOWCASE CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN TP VOL 02 SUPERMAN BATMAN HC VOL 06 TORMENT TALES O/T FEAR AGENT TP THOR BY J MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI PREM HC VOL 01 WIZARD MAGAZINE #200 PLATINUM MARVEL JAM CVR X-MEN HC MESSIAH COMPLEX

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Count this!

Haven't done a proper comic book "review" in a really long time, and despite being swamped with getting ONOMATOPOEIA done this week, and having to make a serious dent in the new order form, I thought I'd jump back in here for a minute.

I'm reasonably sure that better writers than myself will tackle the complexities and joys that were COUNTDOWN (I'm especially waiting for Chris Eckert's deconstruction -- Downcounting, when he wrote it, was WONDERFUL), but in the meantime you can deal with my bleating.

DC has had a pretty bad last two years. Their editorial vision has been, in my humble opinion, horrifically broken, and, more importantly, completely and utterly out of touch of the interests of the audience. What successes they've had have seemed to this observer to either be completely accidental (SINESTRO CORPS) or actively worked against (the end of 52, and the multiverse, etc)

I've been selling comics in my own store for nineteen years now, and we've always been a "DC store" -- selling more DC comics than Marvel comics. This makes us a rare and unique creature in comics retailing, as far as I can tell from speaking with my brethren and reading the sales charts.

And right now in 2008, we're selling more Marvel comic books than DC. If it weren't for DC's superlative backlist program, and the strength of Vertigo titles in that format like Y and FABLES and DMZ, it would be a total and complete rout.

Marvel, to be sure, has been on a strong run with the of-the-Zeitgeist CIVIL WAR, but it is clear to me watching our sales figures and listening to my customers that an equal measure of this switch has been DC completely and utterly bobbling the ball.

The first real signs, for me, was "One Year Later", which was about as unmanaged and poorly fitting of an idea as anything I can think of. Virtually every DCU book took a sharp downwards spike in the wake of OYL, as the readership didn't understand what was going on in the books they followed, and given no real incentive to pick up new ones.

That could have been managed had it not been for COUNTDOWN, "the spine of the DC Universe" -- a spine that virtually no one enjoyed, and that had what seemed to be a billion-jillion awful tie ins and crossovers and "spin outs" all predicated on branding and ideas that no one (not even, it seems) the creators were especially enthused by.

COUNTDOWN finishes this week with COUNTDOWN #1. The original plan was that COUNTDOWN would finish with a #0, but that #0 has been repositioned as "DC UNIVERSE #0", leading to the silliness of "1 and counting" in this week's COUNTDOWN, when it isn't any such thing...

DC's previous weekly, 52, wasn't amazing through all points, but it least it had narrative character arcs that actually lead to somewhere meaningful for most of the involved characters -- virtually each character went through some form of character growth during the series and ended up in a different place and head-space than they were at the beginning.

Not so with COUNTDOWN. Let's look at it:

HOLLY & HARLEY: I guess they're girfriends now (? Was that what we were supposed to get from the end?), which really seems out of character for Holly at least -- why isn't she looking for Selina? I guess technically this is a change, though a very hamfisted and out of character one.

MARY MARVEL: Started off evil, ended up evil, didn't learn a thing. Heck, Black Adam showed more character growth in COUNTDOWN, and he was on, what, 4 pages?

PIED PIPER & TRICKSTER: Well one is dead, while the other magically isn't. PP decides to "be on the side of the angels" -- but he already was until the editorially-mandated death of Bart Allen.

JASON TODD: Still a psychotic fuckhole, didn't even keep the "Red Robin" costume. Sheesh.

The "CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN" (that is, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and Ray Palmer) are all left not even an inch different than they started (Ray is mopey, though), and given a new "mission" that will last about as long as Donna stayed a Darkstar, if that long. Said mission barely makes sense anyway -- any one Monitor has been pretty clearly shown to be stronger than any 10 superheroes combined, what on earth could these three (and that bug-girl from the Olsen storyline) (?!?!?! WTF is she doing there?) possibly hope to do anything against the monitors? And, anyway, even if they COULD (which they can't), just exactly how are they going to transverse the multiverse in order to do so, without that Monitor helping them constantly? Wha?

JIMMY OLSEN: Started a schlub, ended a schlub, didn't even get his story. As the "everyman" of the story, he fought gods (*rolls eyes*

JACK KIRBY: Pretty much shat upon. The Fourth World is annihilated, to no real good end, the final prophecy is rewritten to serve a lousy story. OMAC is reborn with the mohawk, but in a way and method completely the opposite of what Kirby did, and not for what sounds like any good story reason. Kamandi also seemingly re/unwritten.

And all this for $152.49 -- 51 times $2.99.

At the end of the day, COUNTDOWN was an complete mess, going nowhere, doing nothing, and not even doing it well. Utter CRAP.

In a lot of ways, DC's future really depends upon FINAL CRISIS -- it's got to be REALLY good in order to draw people back to the DCU. And while Grant Morrison and JG Jones would sound like the people up for the job, if anyone is, the rumor columns are suggesting that it isn't going to ship on time (and the buzz around the freelancers is that project is already compromised)

I don't have a ton of faith in TRINITY at this point either -- our preorders for 52 while it was running were around 35-40 buyers; preorders on COUNTDOWN dropped down to about 14 bodies. Currently TRINITY is sitting at NINE people signed up for it, despite a pretty a-list creative team on it.

Plot should flow from character; characterization should not be dictated by plot. DC *has* to learn this and learn this very quickly if they don't want to lose more market share and customer interest.

What did YOU think?

-B

Arriving 4/23/2008

Here's what we're getting this week... I'm going to go ahead and assume that next week is going to be a ball-breaker, then...

1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS ADVENTURES OF SINBAD #0
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #79 (A)
ARMY OF DARKNESS XENA WHY NOT #2 (OF 4)
BART SIMPSON COMICS #41
BATMAN #675
BETTY & VERONICA #235
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #160
BIRDS OF PREY #117
CHECKMATE #25
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 1
DARKNESS VS EVA #2 (OF 4)
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #8 (OF 8)
DYNAMO 5 #12
FABLES #72
FALL OF CTHULHU #11 CVR A
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #26
GODLAND #22
HACK SLASH SERIES #11 SEELEY CVR A
HULK #3
HULK VS HERCULES WHEN TITANS COLLIDE
INDIA AUTHENTIC #12 ANDHAKA
INJURY COMICS #2
JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES #1 (OF 4) WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #20
MAC BOLAN THE EXECUTIONER DEVILS TOOLS #1 (OF 5)
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #35
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED PICTURE DORIAN GRAY #5 (OF 6)
MICE TEMPLAR #4
MIGHTY AVENGERS #12 SI
MS MARVEL #26 SII
NEOZOIC #4
NEW EXILES #5
NORTHLANDERS #5
NUMBER OF THE BEAST #2 (OF 6)
POWER PACK DAY ONE #2 (OF 4)
RETURN O/T GREMLINS #2 (OF 3) (RES)
SADHU WHEEL OF DESTINY #1 (OF 5)
SCOOBY DOO #131
SECRET HISTORY THE AUTHORITY HAWKSMOOR #2 (OF 6)
SHADOWPACT #24
SHEENA TRAIL O/T MAPINGUARI STONE CVR A ONE SHOT
SHE-HULK 2 #28
SONIC X #32
SPAWN #177
SPAWN GODSLAYER #8
SPIRIT #16
ST TNG INTELLIGENCE GATHERING #4 (OF 5)
STAR TREK NEW FRONTIER #2
STAR WARS DARK TIMES #10
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF OLD REPUBLIC #27 VECTOR PART 3
STAR WARS LEGACY #22
SUPER FRIENDS #2
SUPERMAN BATMAN #47
SUPERNATURAL RISING SON #1 (OF 6)
TALES FROM WONDERLAND QUEEN OF HEARTS #1
THOR #8
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #53
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #121
UNCANNY X-MEN #497 DWS
WITCHBLADE #117 SEJIC CVR A
WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS #2
WORMWOOD CALAMARI RISING #4
X-FORCE #3 DWS
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #11
YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS #4 (OF 6)

Books / Mags / Stuff
AVENGERS TP KREE SKRULL WAR NEW PTG
BATMAN CHRONICLES TP VOL 05
BIZARRE NEW WORLD POPULATION EXPLOSION GN
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED DELUXE TP VOL 02 TALES BROTHERS GRIMM
COMPLETE TERRY AND THE PIRATES HC VOL 03 1939-1940
DAREDEVIL TP VOL 02 HELL TO PAY
DEAD AT 17 TP COMPENDIUM ED
DEADPOOL CLASSIC TP VOL 1
DEADPOOL VS MARVEL UNIVERSE TP
FEMME FATALES VOL 17 #2
FUNERAL OF THE HEART TP
INVINCIBLE SUMMER AN ANTHOLOGY TP #2
JONAH HEX TP VOL 04 ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
JSA HC VOL 02 THY KINGDOM COME PART 1
KLASSIC KOMICS KLUB HC
LIVING WITH THE DEAD TP
MAKING STUFF AND DOING THINGS
METRONOME HC
MODERN MASTERS SC VOL 16 MIKE ALLRED
PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #5
QUEEN & COUNTRY DEFINITIVE EDITION TP VOL 02
ROUGH STUFF #8
SIMPSONS COMICS TP DOLLARS TO DONUTS
VIDEO WATCHDOG #138
WARHAMMER 40K BLOOD & THUNDER TP
WELCOME TO THE DAHL HOUSE TP
X-MEN TP EMPEROR VULCAN
X-O MANOWAR BIRTH HC

We also received, from B&T, DORORO by Tezuka and SLOWPOKE: ONE NATION, OH MY GOD!

What looks good to YOU?

-B

This Place Is Killing Me: Graeme reviews 4/16

Was it just me, or were this week’s comics kind of… bad? Not even enjoyably so, just very run of the mill and lacking in joy. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m reading the wrong comics (And somewhere, Alan David Doane cheers in agreement), but still. Where are the smiles, people? Where is the awesome?

Be warned: I spoil Captain Marvel’s big reveal under the jump, and the end of Countdown #2. Don’t come complaining to me when you find out what happens to Darkseid.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #12: With the news that Mark Waid’s leaving the book with #16, I kind of despair about the lack of success of such a straight-ahead, basic fun superhero book as this. Sure, it might be missing alien invasions or evil gods winning and crushing humanity’s spirit, but surely there’s got to be something to say about good old fashioned superhero action…? Maybe not; this issue, while still Good, lacks the lightness and ease of earlier issues, feeling more like a rush to hit plot points than a coherent story in its own right. Yes, it’s still old school, but in the sense of an average Justice League of America issue that Tom Katers would make fun of instead of the updated Silver Age-y quality of previous issues in the series.

CAPTAIN MARVEL #5: Huh. I can’t help but feel that the reveal that Captain Marvel is just a Skrull sleeper who ends up going rogue is going to piss as many fans off as it will please others. It feels like a “Having cake and eating it” ploy – You get to have the character back without undoing the death, and all by doing a variation on the clone idea. Beyond stringing along Mar’Vell fans, I can’t see the point of this series in retrospect; pulling the bait and switch right at the end may set up Secret Invasion, but it feels as if a lot of the earlier work was invalidated as a result. Eh.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #2: Well, now we’re getting somewhere. It’s just that the “somewhere” is so clearly not going to stick (Ignoring that Darkseid is the main bad guy of a series starting next month, this is, what, the fourth time that he’s died?), and the journey took so long that very few people even really care anymore. Scott Kolins’ art gets appropriately Kirby-esque in scale despite the rushed feel to the inks, and would’ve been the high point of the issue if not for Ryan Sook’s artwork on the two page secret origin of Darkseid at the end of the book. Someone get him on a New Gods series immediately, please. Eh.

DC/WILDSTORM: DREAMWAR #1: Someone needs to tell Keith Giffen that it’s one thing to start a story with a lot of confusion, but you need some kind of grounding and explanation for readers to buy into it. While I get that the DCU characters are appearing in the Wildstorm world without explanation, there’s not really any introduction to the Wildstorm characters or status quo for me to grab onto to understand why I should be bothered… Instead, it’s so clichéd with the “Heroes clash!” scenes that it kind of reads like a parody of a superhero crossover. I’d say that this Crap comic was a wasted opportunity, but I’m not really convinced that there was that much opportunity here to begin with.

IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM #1: Talking of old school (Admittedly, that would’ve worked better if I’d put this after the Brave and Bold review), this is a curious throwback of a book, but an enjoyable enough one if you wished that it was still the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. I’m not enough of a fan of Micheline, Layton, Ron Lim or Iron Man for it to be more than Okay to me, but somewhere out there, fanboys are probably very, very happy about this series.

X-MEN: DIVIDED WE STAND #1: From a business standpoint, this book makes perfect sense – It’s a grab for shelf-space, capitalizing on the revitalized X-Books and buzz that “Messiah Complex” generated. On every other level, though, it’s just confusing; stories that are too short to have any real impact, mired in continuity that makes them confusing for people who haven’t been following the entire franchise for years, and acting as poor showcases for the talents involved (Compare Jamie McKelvie’s wonderful Suburban Glamour to his work here, even with the Matt Fraction script, and you’ll see what I mean). It reads like lots of filler stories all grouped together just to clear out someone’s drawer; Crap, then.

This week: Countdown finishes, and my fingers are genuinely crossed for some kind of climax that makes me re-evaluate the entire series… I won't get it, but there's some value in hoping, nonetheless.

WHY DO NERDY THINGS WORK? ABHAY REREADS BLUE BEETLE, EPISODE I

This is the first part of an irregular, multipart series on issues #1 to #25 of the Blue Beetle series published by DC Comics. The John Rogers "era" of BLUE BEETLE ended recently with issue #25. Keith Giffen had left his position as co-writer of the recently launched book more than a year earlier. Artist Rafael Albuquerque is staying with the book, apparently-- he'd replaced Cully Hamner, the artist who'd launched the series before moving on to some bigger, better deal, if I can accidentally quote the 1984 USA Up All Night shit-fest, HARDBODIES.

The overarching origin story that Rogers-Giffen started in issue #1 and drove the first two years of the book also concluded in #25. I hadn't picked up the book until recently. It seems like the book generated a bit of an internet cult for itself-- the DCU's "Best Book You're Not Reading" book. I guess that attracted my attention.

So, I gathered together the first 25 issues the other night, start reading it and blah blah blah: I wasn't that into it. I kept reading for the art; inertia. But then, something changed: issue 22 kicked in-- and the story the creators had plainly wanted to tell the entire time drops.

It's a beaut. The last arc is a goddamn beaut. There's some big-ass, audience-pleasing, fan-service, stomp-Tokyo shit in that arc. It's Return of Barry Allen; it's Rock of Ages; as I believe The Game put it once, "I'm BIG, I'm Cube, I'm Nas, I'm 'Pac, this ain't shit but a warnin' til my album drop." It's not my song, and I'm not a fan of The Game, but the quote seemed apropos.

I'm going to start with some background which I'll mark out, in case anyone who reads this site somehow isn't aware of why the BLUE BEETLE comic exists to begin with. Pretty skippable for most of you, I figure.

BACKGROUND:

The last Blue Beetle character, the second character to bear the name, was a creation of Spiderman co-creator Steve Ditko. He was featured in Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMattheis's light-hearted, character comedy JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL alongside other not-fan-favorites like Fire (aka Green Flame), a deranged violent Green Lantern named Guy Gardner, and most notably, Booster Gold-- Gold and the earlier Blue Beetle formed a comedic duo for the DCU. Following that series, Blue Beetle also had a recurring role in the BIRDS OF PREY series.

Then, in this last decade, DC comics were competing poorly with competitor Marvel Comics-- Marvel had better creators and better characters. DC opted to compete by jolting their readership with a series of short-term "shocks" tied into a series of "must-read-to-understand-the-universe", editor-written crossovers. One of those shocks was having Blue Beetle-- remembered by many to be a comedic character-- having his brains splattered against a wall, as a signal that the DC "universe" would no longer be light-hearted or comedic, but would be... brain-splattery, instead. To assuage the fanbase that this was somehow "meaningful", they arranged for a brand-new Blue Beetle character to be a pivotal character to the concluding crossover in a suite of crossovers (which suite of crossovers preceded the subsequent suite of crossovers, or.. something).

DC's strategy worked for a little while until (a) Marvel followed suit with a series of crossovers that were enormously better, (b) DC seemingly over-invested in a strategy involving weekly comics, (c) the appeal of all this wore off with fans to some nebulous extent, and (d) the overall economy went fucking pear-shaped -- gas costs me $4 goddamn dollars a goddamn gallon, are you fucking kidding me, $4 goddamn dollars a goddamn gallon, goddamn. As of recent reports, DC may be back to where they were before they started all this nonsense, lame second fiddle to a creatively and commercially dominant Marvel Comics (at least by the highly limited and weird standards by which these sort of comics are judged).

END OF BACKGROUND

So, then-- consider the likely goals of the creators at the outset of the series:

(1) Tell a single two-year meta-story that was comprised of smaller story arcs (what TV fans might call the "Buffy" model); (2) launch a new superhero character in a marketplace hostile to new superhero characters; (3) launch an ethnic character to an audience that never supports minority characters; (4) tie into the shitty, oppressive meta-story of the "DC Universe"; (5) remain independent enough of the shitty, oppressive meta-story of the “DC Universe" to convey the book’s own meta-story in a comprehensible way; (6) service a meta-arc while satisfying the demands of monthly fans-- e.g. having a superhero fight every issue; (7) tell a superhero origin story as well as telling a teen coming-of-age story; (8) juggle a superhero cast-- heroes, villains, mentors, etc.-- with a sizable supporting cast for the teen coming-of-age story; (9) place the brand new Blue Beetle character into some kind of larger context visa vi earlier iterations of the Blue Beetle brand name, without angering fans of previous iterations by suggesting those earlier versions were somehow less than the new version, while still allowing said fans to see the new characters as being a worthy inheritor of the brand name;and (10) present an all-ages book that's friendly to new fans looking for a new character to latch onto but also friendly to DCU otaku.

SPOILER WARNING: they fail.

Sales of the new BLUE BEETLE series are in the fucking toilet; BLUE BEETLE chocolate kisses the toilet once a month. Initial orders for issue #22 of BLUE BEETLE were at 15,256 copies (NOTE: the significance of initial orders are a subject of a debate that I completely don't care about). Despite a dedicated internet fan-cult, and two artists producing work superior to most of what the DCU publishes, the series is one of the lowest selling books in the DCU.

The first 25 issues constitute not only a single entire story, but possibly a window into a number of different goals, successes, failures, so... My plan is to re-read the entire series, and see if I can think of anything interesting-ish to say.

Questions to consider: Why have fans rejected this series? What went wrong? Or if nothing went wrong, was there something that had to go "right" that didn't happen? What goes into the crafting and selling of a new superhero character? What goes wrong with new superheros, that so dramatically few catch on with fans? And most of all, why did the ending work? All of these reviews of nerdy shit that gets written week after week-- what do I read for an explanation of why nerdy things work?

Why does the ending work if the beginning so, so didn't? Because it sure doesn't start well...

BLUE BEETLE ISSUE #1:

Je-sus.

This inaugural issue juggles two time-lines: a fight between Blue Beetle and the Guy Gardner Green Lantern in the "present", and a lengthy origin sequence set in the "past", setting up how the character received his powers, as well as the character's "secret identity" and supporting cast.

It's a strange place to have to start a new series, where one of the biggest moments in a new superhero comic has been taken away from the creative team. The big "Hello, Blue Beetle; meet the rest of the DCU" moment already happened, and it happened in a different comic. Or if you think about it, the creators were to some extent forced into the dual time-line structure-- an entire issue set prior to the events of the earlier-published crossover comic would have forced them to find a way to play "catchup" with the time-line of the other 900 books DC contemporaneously publishes. The dual time-line's inelegant, and robs the issue of any suspense or momentum, but it's probably preferable to whatever they would have otherwise had to do to keep current with the rest of the publishing line. Especially because DC was about to launch another stunt where such-and-such month was ONE YEAR LATER month, where all the books advanced a year-- something that comes up and causes some pointless havoc in later issues.

But look at that awful scene...

The rest of the scene is a comedy scene, establishing the new Blue Beetle's two best friends, a wisecracking young lady and a wisecracking pudgy friend. Also, Blue Beetle? Wisecracking. Everyone in the Blue Beetle comic sounds like they'd rather be in a Joss Whedon screenplay. For example: wisecracking! But betwixt all the wisecracking, in the midst of the wisecrack, the scene lurches into the following panel...

As the punchline to a comedy scene.

Jesus Crap, look at it. No matter where you are in a room, its eyes... its eyes just follow you. You know, you watch a Joss Whedon thing and you can at least say to yourself, "No one talks like that in real life, but I wish they did. While sitting on my face." But... I don't think you can say that here. I'm personally kind of glad that in real life, people don't make snappy wisecracks about the ritualistic child abuse that they suffer. I like a good snappy wisecrack; I'm pro-wisecrack; I'm just anti-ritualistic-child-abuse. That's what makes me a better person than you.

It's "laying pipe" according to Mr. Rogers's blog-- which is apparently a writer's expression meaning "writing and delivering the onerous dialogue which provids backstory and the plot facts needed to support the weight of the funny (or interesting). Exposition, kids, and it ain't fun." The fact the young lady's dad hits her is very-slightly meaningful to the series later (right this second, I don't even remember the dad ever being seen on-panel).

But: I would rather read a metal pipe. There's good reading on pipes. Hell, I would rather fuck a metal pipe, than... Well, I'd rather a fuck a metal pipe in general. Say goodbye to apologizing for premature ejaculation, and say hello to metal pipes. I have a teddy bear-- that's what it says on its t-shirt. That's why people say "pipe down" when they want you to be quiet-- that expression came from pipe fetishists like me. Because you don't talk dirty when you're fucking a metal pipe. That'd just be weird. "Oh, you're so cylindrical"-- that'd just be creepy. Fuck a pipe in silence. I have a teddy bear-- that's what it says to me when it's not telling me to impress Jodie Foster. Anyways...

Everything about these three panels is wrong.

First, it turns a comedy scene into an afterschool special.

Second, we've known the main character for all of two pages at this point, and the first thing they're telling us about him is that he doesn't care if his friend is getting physically abused by her father. "Oh, your dad savagely beats you? Does he molest you too? That's nice. Well, I'm going to just stand over here and pop my collar and quote The Game lyrics to the sidewalk." Let's read about that guy every month. Look at him-- "my father beats me"-- and he's rolling his eyes!

"You're talking about the physical abuse again? YAWN." Oh, we could explain it to ourselves-- they don't trust child services, say, so they don't report his abuse despite her obvious pleas for help-- but nothing that supports our explanation ever makes it to the page from what I remember.

Third, it doesn't work on a "does this make sense that character X would say Y" level of -- what, does she want him to punch her, too? Why? Can't she just have her dad double-down on the child abuse, if she's aiming to get punched...? If she wants to get punched, couldn't she just hide his whiskey or sass him during Leno's monologue or...? Or how about a scene where she teaches the other kid how not to leave bruises on any areas where school administrators might see them? How about that?

Fourth, while I love Cully Hamner's art and have since Green Lantern: Mosaic, and his work on this comic is as strong as ever, he doesn't really quite land the "dust the debris off" hand-move in that last panel of the sequence-- "Oh your dad beats you. Let me play my imaginary turntables. Air DJ competitions are in a week at the Civic Center, the week after Motocross."

It took no small amount of effort to keep reading this series.

What's interesting about the moment to me, though, is how it immediately positions the character as being morally compromised. Whatever explanation you can come up with in your head as to why he's not doing anything to help his friend is ultimately a compromise. I think maybe comic fans don't enjoy Figures of Compromise. For most of their history, superhero characters are these power fantasies about not having to compromise-- the X-Men fight for a dream; you can't compromise on a dream. Spiderman-- "great responsibility" and compromise, to some extent, seem incompatible to me. Compromise-- most of the recent events which have gotten fans the most upset have been compromises. Iron Man compromises and he's considered a villain to comic fans. Spiderman compromises that one time, and fans freak the fuck out.

Or not just comic fans, but people in general-- consider the Great Heroes of Western Civilization. Not a lot of compromise gets celebrated.

Winston Churchill: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

Or Mike Tyson: "I'll fuck you till you love me."

The issue then concludes with, inter alia, this bit. The second panel, assuaging the otaku that Blue Beetle connects to some greater whole, is a reference to the character's introduction in the earlier crossover. Just an incomprehensible chunk jammed into the second-to-last panel without any explanation provided to any potential new readers, even a "See Issue ___" editorial caption since those are out-of-fashion. You know: probably not the best choice, that.

What's interesting to me about this scene is... you know, the great superheros, you can kind of boil down the appeal of that character to one word. Spiderman: perseverance, say. Hulk: anger. Captain America: patriotism. Thor: mythology. Iron Man: technology. Tinky-Winky: gayness. That's what those characters are fundamentally about.

What is this new Blue Beetle character about? Fundamentally about?

After the first issue, could a reader answer that question?

It's not about BEETLES. The above panels perhaps suggests its about alienation, but the rest of the comic doesn't support that idea-- the Blue Beetle character has friends and a family that he loves. He's hardly alienated.

I suppose... The 25 issues as a whole are a coming of age story-- like any coming of age story, it's about a young boy becoming a man, and entering the larger, cooler, scarier, world of adulthood. Same as Star Wars or whatever. Hell, the first issue even ends with him on a cliff looking out into that world-- it's not subtle. But that's...

First, I don't really think that's effectively communicated in the first issue. It's jammed into a few panels in the last page of the first issue. Second, it's a limited story-- at the end of 25 issues, that story is done. It's not enough to hang a series on, or at least-- I think it's got a time limit on it. Third, it answers the question for the series, perhaps, but not for the character. When Thor fights Iron Man, that's mythology and technology clashing regardless of which book it's happening in. How much does that matter? It's hard to say. Fourth, well ... I don't know. "Blue Beetle is about liminality." Thanks, college boy. You know? It's not obvious on its face, the way the appeal of other superhero characters often is (e.g., Doctor Strange, you just need to hear his name and the appeal is apparent).

So: not an auspicious beginning no, but it does get better...

NYCC: The Dream

One of the big downsides of being sick is that you sleep a lot, but you're not really sleeping WELL -- tossing and turning all night long, waking up in pain, and the latest one, now that the antibiotics have started to work, the pain in the tonsils has switched to a sinus drip in the back of the throat, so that sleeping at night is sort of like being slowly waterboarded in your sleep. Joy.

But, last night I finally had like 6 solid hours of REM sleep, and what do you know I dream about a comics convention.

Actually, it was more like New York City itself had been turned INTO a giant comics convention, because my dream took place nowhere near the Javitts.

The first bit I remember (because I think it had been going on for a while before then) is that Peter David and I were coming back from some sort of CBLDF event (I was on the Board of the CBLDF for about 2 years, a while back), and we were meant to go to something in (of all places) Connecticut, so Peter went to go get his car, while I waited in the nearby park (I think it was Tompkins Square Park). While I'm there I'm hailed by Bryan Talbot, who, for some reason, is walking around with Piers Morgan, and a 12-year old boy with a british accent and mohawk wearing a name tag saying "Phillip Tan" (?!?!!?). I hang out with them for a few minutes before I realized that I've totally lost wherever Peter is supposed to meet me.

A car pulls up with several of my customers in it (including Shelton Yee, who used to own a comics shop in SF many years ago), and they offer to drive me around the park to look for PAD. Of course they take the wrong turn, and just as they pull away we get stuck in horrible midtown traffic (yes, we've shifted that far in dream logic) because there's an Iron Man float coming down the street to promote the movie.

In the rear view window, I see a distant PAD waving frantically, so I hope out into traffic, and dodging cars (including the Speed Racer cars, and a procession of vehicles from the new Indy movie), make it across the street, where I am now in Washington Square Park, except that it has these long ramps added around the edges, with another "level" of park added. This additional level is Escher-like.

I'm trying to puzzle out how to navigate this when The Joker runs past, gassing people in the park. Batman then comes running, and kicks the shit out of him in front of me. Blood and teeth everywhere. I then see Dave Sim (circa 1989), Jeff Smith (current), and Rob Liefeld (!!) (circa Gap Commercial) and ask them if this is a promotion for the film, and Dave tells me, kind of archly, that no, Batman is real and has been running around New York for weeks, where have I been?

"Well, I'm trying to get to Connecticut," I say. Oh, that's where we're going, the three of them say in chorus, in the same voice, and then Tzipora walks in the door of the room where I'm sleeping and I wake up and there's no more.

At least my throat has stopped hurting.

I'm now going to go back to sleep, because my NYCC sounds more fun than the real one!

-B

Tonsillitis

Tuesday, while I was in the middle of pulling the comics, I started to get chills, then fever, then chills again, and I was feeling very logy.

When I got home Tuesday night, I passed out for nearly 24 hours.

On Wednesday, the searing throat pain began, and the only reason I didn't sleep continuously for the next 24 hours was that pain.

Thursday I finally went to a doctor -- Tonsillitis is the verdict and anti-biotics should knock it back fairly soon, but if you wonder why I've been completely silent here (and only writing Priority One emails), its because I feel like someone stuck a rusty dagger in my mouth, and really all I want to do is sleep.

Regular blogging will probably resume... Monday? Doc says I should be over the worst by then...

-B

Arriving 4/16/2008

Small week for tax time!

100 BULLETS #90
2000 AD #1579
2000 AD #1580
76 #3 (OF 8)
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST #6 (OF 6)
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #118
ARCHIE DIGEST #243
ARMY OF DARKNESS #8 LONG ROAD HOME
ATOMIC ROCKET GROUP 66 #1
AVENGERS CLASSIC #11
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #11
BAD PLANET #5 (OF 12)
BADGER SAVES THE WORLD #5 (OF 5)
BAT LASH #5 (OF 6)
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #6
BATMAN STRIKES #44
BOY WHO MADE SILENCE #2
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #12
CAPTAIN ACTION #0 GULACY CVR
CAPTAIN AMERICA #37
CAPTAIN MARVEL #5 (OF 5) SII
CATWOMAN #78
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 2
CTHULHU TALES #1 CVR B
DAMNED PRODIGAL SONS #1 (OF 3)
DARKNESS #3 KEOWN CVR A
DC WILDSTORM DREAMWAR #1 (OF 6)
DEADWORLD FROZEN OVER #2 (OF 4)
DMZ #30
DOCTOR WHO #3
FEAR AGENT #20 HATCHET JOB (PT 4 OF 5)
FLASH #239
GHOST RIDER #22
GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #7 (OF 9)
GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #6 (OF 8)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #26
HELLBLAZER #243
HERO BY NIGHT ONGOING #3
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #116
INFINITE HORIZON #3 (OF 6)
IRON MAN #28
IRON MAN LEGACY OF DOOM #1 (OF 4)
JENNA JAMESONS SHADOW HUNTER #2 LINSNER CVR
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #270
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #138
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #13
LIVING CORPSE #3
LONE RANGER #11
MAD MAGAZINE #489
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #23
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED ILIAD #5 (OF 8)
NECESSARY EVIL #5
PERHAPANAUTS #1
PIGEONS FROM HELL #1
POWERS ANNUAL 2008
PROGRAMME #10 (OF 12)
RED SONJA #32
REX MUNDI DH ED #11
ROBIN #173
SALVATION RUN #6 (OF 7)
SHOJO BEAT MAY 08
SIMPSONS COMICS #141
STAR TREK YEAR FOUR ENTERPRISE EXPERIMENT #1
SUICIDE SQUAD RAISE THE FLAG #8 (OF 8)
SUPERMAN #675 (NOTE PRICE)
SWORD #7
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #2 (OF 12)
UNCLE SCROOGE #374
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #689
WAR IS HELL FIRST FLIGHT PHANTOM EAGLE MAX #2 (OF 5)
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #24
WONDERLOST #2
WORLD OF WARCRAFT #6
WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH WARBOUND #5 (OF 5)
WORLDS OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS #1 SEELEY CVR A
X-FACTOR #30 DWS
X-MEN DIVIDED WE STAND #1 (OF 2) DWS

Books / Mags / Stuff
AMORY WARS TP 01 SECOND STAGE TURBINE BLADE
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA TP VOL 02 SEJIC PX CVR
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE #1642 JUN 2008
DRIFTING CLASSROOM TP VOL 11
FAKER TP
GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE HC
HELLBOY LIBRARY ED HC VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION & WAKE THE
HOWARD THE DUCK TP MEDIA DUCKLING
HUNTERS MOON TP
LARGO WINCH GN VOL 01 THE HEIR
LORNA BLACK TOWERS SC
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS TP VOL 05 DIGEST
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER TP VOL 14
NIXONS PALS GN
NOBLE CAUSES ARCHIVES TP VOL 01
PATH GN COMX ED
PS238 TP VOL 05 EXTRATERRESTRIAL CREDIT
RED SONJA TRAVELS TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS LEGION OF SUPER HEROES TP VOL 02
STRANGE GIRL TP VOL 04 GOLDEN LIGHTS
STUPID COMICS PHOENIX ED GN
TOYFARE #130 INDIANA JONES CVR
UN-MEN TP VOL 01 GET YOUR FREAK ON
WARHAMMER TP FORGE OF WAR

What looks good to you?

-B

Diana Goes Digital #5: You Spin Me Right Round

Sorry for the hold-up, but I've been locked in a cosmic battle between good and evil for the past few weeks (I'll let you guys decide which side I was on). No quarter was asked, none was given, and mark my words, I will get Vista off my computer. If I made it through Rob Liefeld's heyday without having my eyes poked out by Cable's pointy feet, I can beat my husband's fascination with transparent windows... Anyway, I thought we'd take a look at spin-offs today. It's hardly a foreign concept in the biz: every X-MEN eventually begets a NEW MUTANTS (though, like Pringles and Lolcats, it rarely stops with just one). When they're done properly, spin-offs are a welcome extension/continuation of a great story - of course, that concept is problematized in a mainstream where most stories never actually end (case in point: you have to wonder what would've happened if NEW MUTANTS had supplanted X-MEN rather than supplimented it).

But webcomics can be - and often are - finite, which leaves the door open for the question Peter Milligan put best in ENIGMA: "And then what?" Aeire's QUEEN OF WANDS was an early favorite of mine; I discovered it during its second crossover with SOMETHING POSITIVE in 2004. It was an easy jump to make; QUEEN OF WANDS had a similar tone in its heavily-cynical approach to geek culture, and if Aeire wasn't as vicious as R.K. Milholland, the guest appearances by Charles Darwin and the Grammar Nazi still amused. QUEEN OF WANDS also had a much smaller cast, allowing Aeire to create a consistent focus on her protagonist, Kestrel, and the people around her.

My memories of QUEEN OF WANDS are mostly GOOD: the art was eccentric, but enjoyable, with marked improvement over the years. And if Aeire had an occasional tendency to overdo the flashbacks within flashbacks and the melodrama, she balanced it out with plenty of light-hearted moments. But what I remember most about QUEEN OF WANDS is the way it ended - in a medium where stories can just stop cold when the writer loses interest, it was a real treat to see Kestrel's journey of maturation and self-discovery come to a kind of natural conclusion. And the day after QUEEN OF WANDS ended, Kestrel appeared in SOMETHING POSITIVE, where she became a recurring character in typical Milholland fashion. And that's a sort of spin-off there, because Kestrel's story goes on after the last panel of QUEEN OF WANDS, even if she's now in the hands of another writer.

Two years later (an eternity in net-time), Aeire teamed up with Chris Daily to produce PUNCH AN' PIE, a QUEEN OF WANDS spin-off featuring the hyperactive, childlike Angela in the lead role. It's a very different webcomic, not just artistically but also in terms of the story, and to be totally honest, it hasn't quite clicked for me. I realize that rehashing QUEEN OF WANDS would've been completely derivative, but at the same time, PUNCH AN' PIE takes a long, long time to start "moving" (as opposed to that oh-so-fitting first page of QUEEN OF WANDS, which pretty much sets the tone for the entire series), and six months in, I just wasn't feeling the same kind of energy that had made QUEEN OF WANDS so enjoyable. That's not to say it doesn't have its moments, but... well, part of the problem might be that I never really liked Angela to begin with, and that's crucial when it comes to spin-offs: it's the same reason why, despite my deep appreciation of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, its sister show ANGEL never held my interest for more than a few episodes at a time - I wasn't fond of Angel (to say the least), so the prospect of an Angel-centric series had me about as thrilled as a diabetic trapped in Willy Wonka's factory. And that's likely why PUNCH AN' PIE just didn't rate beyond OKAY for me.

Having sung the praises of Shaenon Garrity's NARBONIC, it should come as no surprise that I'm recommending LI'L MELL AND SERGIO, a spin-off featuring the irrepressible Mell Kelly in first grade, with brainy nerd Sergio replacing Dave Davenport in the "straight man" role. I don't know why it surprised me to see how perfectly Garrity captured the essence of Mell's character - she did create her, after all - but it's as funny and unpredictable as its parent series. Unlike the QUEEN OF WANDS/PUNCH AN' PIE schism, LI'L MELL AND SERGIO does feel like an extension of NARBONIC in some capacity, and it's especially fitting that Mell is the star, given how perfectly the story of Helen and Dave ended.

Let's move on to the works of K. Sandra Fuhr, an interesting case study in how the malleable nature of webcomics can work to one's advantage. Fuhr's first comic was UTOPIA, a sci-fi comedy which featured, among other characters, a trio of vampires: Mikhael, Harley and Tybalt. They were eventually spun off into their own series, THIS IS HOME, by all accounts the biggest maelstrom of teen angst, rape, murder and melodrama since Laurell K. Hamilton. And when that didn't work, Fuhr took her lead characters, stripped away the pseudo-Gothic trappings, and BOY MEETS BOY was born.

Then she deleted UTOPIA and THIS IS HOME. Poof, not a trace of it left anywhere online. And believe me, I've looked.

The reason I find this so interesting is because you don't have that kind of total dissolution in mainstream comics: even the most massive reboot I know of, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, was never able to completely excise everything that had come before it. That pre-history may not have been in continuity anymore, but it still existed, people still talked about it and - most importantly - they could still access pre-Crisis material on a regular basis. Eventually, DC had no choice but to acknowledge pre-Crisis history again. But with webcomics, you push a button, and as far as the average reader is concerned, the comic never existed. Fuhr was essentially able to retcon her own bibliography. And if traits belonging to earlier versions of the characters bled through... well, how would you know?

Getting back to the actual comics for a bit: BOY MEETS BOY is pretty much your textbook yaoi manga, with an added dose of pop culture that, unfortunately, has become a touch dated by now. The premise can pretty much be summed up in a single page. Still, it's cute enough that I appreciate it on its own terms: for example, you have the gag and its requisite counter-gag, various breakings of the fourth wall and so on. GOOD stuff, all the moreso for being unpredictable with its storylines: you may think you know where the story's headed, but there's usually a twist just around the corner.

A year into the series, Fuhr imported Fox and Collin, formerly of UTOPIA, into the story. Introduced as college misfits and nemeses to Harley and Mikhael, they ended up becoming rather dominant characters, to the point where entire storylines revolved around them. I don't think it came as any surprise to Fuhr's readers that when BOY MEETS BOY ended, Fox and Collin were spun off into their own series, FRIENDLY HOSTILITY, which kicked off with a storyline that fleshed out the wacky Maharassa clan.

I should note that both Fuhr's writing and her artwork undergo a massive evolution as time goes on: if BOY MEETS BOY has some awkward aspects and the art can generously be described as rough and inconsistent, FRIENDLY HOSTILITY hits the ground running with smoother artwork, stronger dialogue, and less of a reliance on the histrionics native to the yaoi genre. In fact, I'd argue that FRIENDLY HOSTILITY leaves yaoi and its conventions behind altogether: it's much more realistic (the occasional demonic cameo aside), more in the vein of a romantic comedy than the out-and-out chaos of its predecessor. It's only right that FRIENDLY HOSTILITY be graded VERY GOOD, in recognition of the author's vast improvement over a relatively short amount of time.

And finally, technical notes:

* QUEEN OF WANDS ran from July of 2002 to February of 2005, followed by a "rerun" of the series from March of 2005 to November of 2006 with commentary by Aeire. Full color. The series archive has a "Storyline" option but it only goes up to 2004; you're on your own after that.

* PUNCH AN' PIE is ongoing, in black and white. The series started at the end of February 2007, and updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Unfortunately, the archives are woefully out-of-date, making navigation a real challenge.

* LI'L MELL AND SERGIO is ongoing, in black and white. Girlamatic used to charge subscription fees to read the series, but it's now free of charge. It updates on a weekly basis, featuring multiple artists.

* BOY MEETS BOY ran from September 2000 to January 2004, in black and white. The very last page featured Fox and Collin inviting the readers to check out FRIENDLY HOSTILITY...

* ... which is ongoing, in black and white; the "Problematic" storyline began concurrently with the end of BOY MEETS BOY, while the series proper started in August of 2004.

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Nineteen

Enough of the creator shelves for a while, how about we move on to "Art instruction and comics careers"

Here's one where I AM going to go with the "obvious" pick. There are some terrific books on "how to draw" or even "how to approach a comics page" -- Burne Hogarth's DYNAMIC... (ANATOMY, WRINKLES & DRAPERY, FIGURE DRAWING, etc etc) series, Will Eisner's COMICS & SEQUENTIAL ART or GRAPHIC STORYTELLING, and so on, but there's one book that I think that each and every comics reader in the world, whether or not they have the SLIGHTEST interest in ever drawing a single comic ever, really should have on their bookshelf:

UNDERSTANDING COMICS by Scott McCloud.

McCloud's book is just as great for the casual comics reader as it is for any creator, laying out a tremendous amount of practical theory about comics layout, storytelling, nomenclature, style, and so on.

I don't know if I agree with each and every theory that McCloud posits (and, really, I'm not even sure that Scott agrees with it all any longer), but there's enough "Oh fuck, I never thought of it THAT way" in there that will probably blow your mind.

What's great about UNDERSTANDING COMICS is that it IS comics, and it is eminently readable AS a comic as well.

Regardless of this feature, I'd place UNDERSTANDING COMICS as one of the MUST HAVE books in your collection! Go go buy it now!

-B

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Eighteen

And today's "Creator shelf" is Grant Morrison.

(I don't know if this image link thing will work -- first time I've tried it, but I'm linking from our own site, so I'm guessing it will?)

(That was a Thanksgiving window display we did several years ago. The art is by Christopher Hsiang)

But, actually, like most of the previous "creator shelf" entries, I won't go with the obvious choice of DOOM PATROL (or ANIMAL MAN or THE INVISIBLES)(though if FLEX MENTALLO was in print, that would probably be the one...) for multi-volume series or THE FILTH or WE3 for single-volume picks, though each and every one of those is really excellent comics work!

No, trying to stay on the "obscure" side, I'll side with THE MYSTERY PLAY, his graphic novel with Jon J. Muth.

A lot of complaints get levied against Morrison for being "obscure", and, really, I get that too sometimes. Many is a time I read one of his books and I don't QUITE get what's going on, or what he's trying to say or whatever -- but I find THE MYSTERY PLAY (ironically) to be quite straight-forward and readable by nearly anyone.

It all starts with when an actor playing God in a small town play is murdered, and the detective investigating has a set of secrets of his own...

Saying anything more probably spoils the whole thing, but I found it eminently readable and clear, even though it has several different levels it is working on.

The art by Muth is absolutely lovely (though what of his isn't?), and keeps the book absolutely grounded.

Want a GN you can pick up, read in an hour, and walk away thinking about for days? Here ya' go, pal, THE MYSTERY PLAY.

-B

Conformity 4/9: Jog obeyed every law in the course of obtaining this comic

Criminal Vol. 2 #2:

Things are coming together pretty nicely. And if that sounds like I'm treating this issue as more of a chapter in a continuing serial than another standalone tale of crime, rest assured that I'm only putting it in the context of its strengths.

Sure, you can take this particular book as a one-off thing - there's a beginning, middle and end, and whatnot. The plot concerns Teeg Lawless, #1 Dad, and his thrilling adventures in the city after getting back from Vietnam in '72. He can barely look at his wife, the drink has sent his mind flickering, he's deep in debt to some bad characters, and the big score he's counting on is bound to turn out bad - he's the sort of guy this happens to. But the story isn't titled "A Wolf Among Wolves" for nothing, and Teeg just might be able to pull through with his special mix of disarming forthrightness and killing the hell out of lots of people.

It's fine that way. A haunted, dangerous man comes back to town, and proves to be more dangerous than haunted. Sean Phillips & (colorist) Val Staples make it look hard and ruined as filthy, well-trodden concrete, as usual. Ed Brubaker can (presumably) set down how Teeg's blackouts work in script form, but it's inspired visuals that combine, say, the passage of time via panel width with judicious use of black to convey Teeg's mental state. I like how panel #3 below continues the blackout for a bit into the alley where Our Hero and his pal are stumbling, only for them to hit another small wall of nothing.

The arrangements can even seem sort of musical, keeping beat between waking life and vivid memory, the latter marked with brighter, more indelibly violent color. Indelible for Teeg, I mean.

But that's not quite how I read this issue, and not why I think it's VERY GOOD; if Brubaker shows only one thing in Criminal, it's that isolation is a hopeless illusion.

Obviously, this issue overlaps with last issue; if you've been reading the backmatter, you know that the first three books in this second pamphlet-format 'volume' will center around the same crucial, bloody rip-off. And Brubaker gets some impact from the conceit - not only are certain plot points from issue #1 clarified, but series crime lord Sebastian Hyde is seen in selective enough a light that he seems to truly embody the image he desired to create for himself prior. There's connections between the the two issues, like similar images of each story's protagonist laying beaten on the ground at their change-of-path low point, as well as some amusing contrasts, like a character seen wielding a club in issue #1 getting thrashed with that same weapon in issue #2. Simple.

But the real impact comes from taking the whole Criminal enterprise as what it's acting like: a decades-spanning saga of ad hoc families, and fathers passing pain down onto their sons. You'll get what Teeg means when he says that he'll learn to hate his children from this issue alone, but I think it'll only register as effective when taken with the earlier Lawless storyline, starring the grown Tracy Lawless in the present day. Only then can you appreciate the irony of both series' similar endings, or the telling nature of subtler bits - watch how Teeg bides his time by knocking off gas stations with both his partner and the young Tracy. The partner doesn't come to a good end.

And neither does any son in this series. Tracy, Sebastian and Leo (from the Coward storyline) all eventually become their fathers in some awful way, even if they try to escape. It's been said that 'family' is the core theme of Brubaker's body of work, and it's maybe getting its richest airing here, albeit in a damned, noir manner. I find it striking that only Gnarly -- star of issue #1 and force behind the 'neutral' Undertow -- is able to escape this type of growth (thanks, grievous bodily injury!), and that Brubaker has paired him with a daughter in poor lil' Angie. Maybe she'll turn out better?

I don't know if we'll find out, but I expect further variations on this theme will cohere as we go further into the hard world of these bitter little tales, growing more concentrated in their sourness by the issue; I'm grateful. This book shares a war preoccupation with Marvel's other top crime series, The Punisher MAX, but Brubaker's noir fascination fittingly sees a broken and cruel society for soldiers to come home to. And what's more social than family?

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Seventeen

Continuing the creator racks, we're on Frank Miller.

Again, there's some stupidly obvious choices here: SIN CITY, BATMAN: YEAR ONE, DAREDEVIL (though much of it is OOP), DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, but I'm going to go with a slightly less obvious one here:

HARDBOILED

Created with Geof Darrow in 1992, HARDBOILED is a masterpiece of over-the-top detail and carnage. Really the star here is Darrow, with more detail-per-square-inch than any five other comics combined. There are pages here you can stare at for five minutes each, pulling out details.

There's a level of outrageous here that I'd never seen before in a comic before this -- where crazy background details do more for world-building than anything previous. And there's a crazy level of kinetic cartoon violence going on.

I wouldn't say the story is particularly DEEP, but any comic that works out as ROBOCOP-meets-WHERE'S-WALDO is AOK in my book!

-B

Why I sometimes think about going to a high point with a sniper rifle....

THis is like pissing in the wind -- after all, it is WIZARD I'm talking about, but I'm flipping through WIZARD #200 (Gold) [since there are more than one magazine that is "WIZARD #200", OFMG where's-the-rifle, where's-the-rifle, where's-the-rifle!], and I get to the "50 events that rocked comics 1991-2008" article, and I-swear-to-god-that-I-am-not-making-this-up, but #3 is, with no irony whatsoever, in let me remind you, WIZ-fuckin-ARD magazine:

************ THE BOOM MARKET IMPLODES (1994-1996)

Publishers had plenty of reasons to smile in the early 1990s. Misguided collectors were snapping up record numbers of variant covers, egged on by hyperbolic story stunts; non-sport trading cards were disappearing from shelves; superstar artists would fart out tripe and watch bank accounts swell. And, just like that, it was over: the speculators who had driven companies to over-market gimmickry realized that nothing with a circulation in the millions would ever have long-term value. They had essentially siphoned the industry, leaving dealers with stale back stock, ardent fans holding grudges for being gouged and iconic label Marvel declaring bankruptcy. It was, in short, a paper holocaust that put the Brazilian Rain Forest to shame. ***********

Missing is the sentence that says "Oh, and by the way, a lot of that was actually our fault, oops, sorry!"

I mean, this is the company that, as recently as last year allegedly capitalized on insider information and was Selling CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 on day-of-release for like $30, WITH ads for it on Marvel's own site.

Words fail me, can I say?

By the way? The #2 story? "The Death of Superman", while #1 was "Image Comics Launches".

I know they said that irony was dead, but jinkies, at Wizard entertainment, IRONY IS DEAD...

-B

Why can't these things be more Secret?

The strangest thing about SECRET INVASION #1 actually had very little to do with the book itself. I mean, sure, it’s Okay, it does the job relatively well and Mark Morales’ inks bring a nice shine to Lenil Yu’s pencils that I haven’t seen before, but reading it after having read all the spoilers about it online, I was kind of surprised that not one plot point had escaped being revealed ahead of time.

The feeling of déjà vu wasn’t helped by Marvel having previewed half the book online ahead of its release, either, but I’m not really complaining about that (DC did it first for Countdown’s first few issues, didn’t they? It’s obviously the way to get people talking about your book); at least that déjà vu was earned by actually having read the thing before. But reading the rest of the issue, with all of the intended-to-be-surprise events, after having had every single one of them spoiled ahead of time was a weird experience. It kind of took you out of the story and made you focus on the execution, instead, and… well, that’s not the best thing to think about on a book like this.

Don’t get me wrong. Like I said earlier, the book looks great – the cleaner Yu art, along with Laura Martin’s colors, works a treat, Morales’ inks filling in for some of Yu’s traditional shortcuts and making it look more… well, more mainstream, really, the kind of muscley, glossy thing that you’d expect to see in a Marvel crossover book. But the writing works on the momentum of plot more than anything else, and when you remove the intended “oh shit” moments, all you’re left with are choppy scenes of characters given no real introduction doing things that are given no real context within the book itself other than “aliens are attacking” (Mind you, how much more context do you need?). As the first issue of a series that’s intended to draw in readers who haven’t been reading Marvel books for years up to this point, it’s terrible.

That said, as the first issue of a series building on the recent Marvel Universe exploits? It does the job you expect it to. So, overall? It’s Okay. I’ll just make a point of avoiding spoilers for the next few issues, I think.

Other comics! Quickly!

ACTION COMICS #863: By this point, Geoff Johns has worked out how to play almost entirely to the existing fanbase while making everything so basic that anyone can understand what’s happening – “Superman is in the future with his childhood pals fighting for tolerance? Sure, that makes sense.” As a complete Legion fanboy, I loved this storyline as much for the optimism of the heroes as they dealt with the dystopic future as for the nostalgia of the whole enterprise, and the “Legion of 3 Worlds” tease at the end make me stupidly excited. Good stuff.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #555: Hey, Steve Wacker? Here’s how you solve the continuity problem you ask about in the letter column: Ignore the complaints. Zeb Wells writes a fun script that, unlike all the other Brand New Day writers so far isn’t too retro, and Chris Bachalo’s art is clear and chunky and fun. Pretty Good, surprisingly.

CASANOVA #13: Post everything exploding, Fraction takes a step back for an issue of exposition, surprising reveals (Me, I’m sad that he isn’t dead, myself), and flashbacks showing that Casanova Quinn was kind of an awesome influence on those around him for a self-professed asshole. As we hurtle towards the end of the second album, it’s the small things in this issue that shows once again why this book is Very Good on a continual basis.

(And, on a side note, Fraction, Brubaker and Aja leaving Iron Fist? Very sad news indeed.)

KICK ASS #2: Mark Millar knows what he likes, and part of that really is some strange lowest common denominator stuff. It’s as if Millar really dislikes his audience but on some level recognizes that he is that audience, the way that he writes down to them but with such love. This book is entirely Eh to me; it feels as if it’s being written for an audience entirely alien to what I’m used to. Nice art, though.

YOUNG X-MEN #1: Talking of being written for an audience entirely alien to me, I can’t help but wonder what the thinking is behind this latest version of the New Mutants/Generation X/New X-Men idea: “They’re young heroes in a dangerous world! So they have to become soldiers… who kill!” What, really? There’s something so depressing and hopeless about that idea – and about the fact that the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are the original New Mutant team – that I can’t help but hope that there’s going to be some “surprise” reveal some time soon that shows that everything isn’t as oppressive as it seems. As it is, this first issue was Okay; written fairly generically, but with some nice art.

This week: Surprisingly, no Secret Invasion books. You do all that hype and then let momentum drop the very next week, Marvel? What’s that all about?

Arriving 4/9/2008

Teeny tiny week this week.... wouldn't it be nice if publishers could even out their schedules?

ADAM AMONG THE GODS
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #19
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #556
AVENGERS FAIRY TALES #2 (OF 4)
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #16
BATMAN DEATH MASK #1 (OF 4)
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #183
BOOSTER GOLD #8
BPRD 1946 #4 (OF 5)
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #24
CASTLE WAITING VOL II #11
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 3
CRIMINAL 2 #2
CRIMINAL MACABRE MY DEMON BABY #4 (OF 4)
DEAD OF NIGHT FEATURING MAN THING #3 (OF 4)
DEVI #18
DIARY OF NIGHT #3 (OF 4)
DNA HACKER CHRONICLES #1
DOCK WALLOPER #3 (OF 5)
DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS #5
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #6
EXTERMINATORS #28
FANTASTIC FOUR #556
FOUNDATION #4 (OF 5) (RES)
FX #2 (OF 6)
GAMEKEEPER SERIES 2 #2
GEN 13 #19
GEORGE R R MARTINS WILD CARDS #1 (OF 6) HARD CALL
GHOST WHISPERER #2
GOON #23
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #7
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #23
GROO HELL ON EARTH #4 (OF 4)
HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #6 (OF 6)
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #139
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #14
LAST DEFENDERS #2 (OF 6)
LOCKE & KEY #3
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #10
NOVA #12
NUMBER OF THE BEAST #1 (OF 6)
PUNISHER #56
RESURRECTION #4
SCUD THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN #23
SERENITY BETTER DAYS #2 (OF 3)
SIMON DARK #7
SNAKEWOMAN CURSE OF THE 68 #2 (OF 4)
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #187
SPEED RACER CHRONICLES O/T RACER #4
SUBURBAN GLAMOUR #4 (OF 4)
SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #14
TALL TALES OF VISHNU SHARMA PANCHATANTRA #3 (OF 5)
TERRY MOORES ECHO #2
TINY TITANS #3
TITANS #1
UN-MEN #9
WASTELAND #16
WOLVERINE #64 DWS
WONDER WOMAN #19
WORMWOOD CALAMARI RISING #3
YOUNG LIARS #2

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALIENS VS PREDATOR VOL 2 CIVILIZED BEASTS GN (RES)
ANOTHER DIRT SANDWICH GN
AQUA LEUNG GN VOL 01
BATMAN LOVERS AND MADMEN HC
CAPTAIN CARROT AND THE FINAL ARK TP
CHICKENHARE TP VOL 02 FIRE IN THE HOLE
CLASSIC DAN DARE HC REIGN OF THE ROBOTS
CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG SPECIAL GALACTUS
COMICS JOURNAL #289
COMPLETE PEANUTS HC VOL 09 1967-1968
CONAN HC VOL 05 ROGUES IN THE HOUSE
COSMIC GUARD TP (RES)
FALLEN SON TP DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA
GENE SIMMONS HOUSE OF HORRORS TP
GHOST SONATA TP
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN SC
HALL OF BEST KNOWLEDGE SC
HARBINGER THE BEGINNING HC (RES)
HARLAN ELLISONS WATCHING TP NOVEL
JAMES BOND TP CASINO ROYALE NEW PTG
JAMES BOND TP GOLDFINGER NEW PTG
JAMES BOND TP MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN NEW PTG
JAMES BOND TP OCTOPUSSY NEW PTG
JENNY FINN HC DOOM MESSIAH
JESSICA FARM GN
JESUS HATES ZOMBIES GN
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED TIES THAT BIND TP
LEES TOY REVIEW #186 APRIL 2008
LITTLE GLOOMY SUPER SCARY MONSTER SHOW TP VOL 01
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK TP DEFENDERS VOL 02 DIGEST
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 09 FOES DIGEST
MARVEL ZOMBIES HC DEAD DAYS
MOST OUTRAGEOUS SC
NEW MUTANTS CLASSIC TP VOL 03
STAR WARS TALES O/T JEDI OMNIBUS TP VOL 02
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION THE QUEST FOR COSMIC BOY
TEENS AT PLAY GIRLS WILL BE BOYS GN (A)
TRINITY ACTION FIGURES BALANCED HALF CASE ASST (NET)
WALDOS HAWAIIAN HOLIDAY GN
WHAT IF TP CIVIL WAR
WHATEVER GN
WOLVERINE PREM HC DEATH OF WOLVERINE

What looks good to YOU?

-B