Lester, Tester: Please Ignore This Post and Enjoy Your New Year's, Please.

Yeah, so we're having problems publishing, hmmm?

Lemme check.

Arriving 1/2/2009

Your first shipment of 2009... and it, mm, isn't very large at all. Let's hope this isn't setting the tone of the year...

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT NEW COMICS ARE ON FRIDAY THIS WEEK -- if you go into your LCS on Wednesday, they're going to sadly shake their head at you, and no one wants THAT.

Have a great New Year, everyone, and be safe out there!

30 DAYS OF NIGHT 30 DAYS TIL DEATH #2
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #95 (A)
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #20 DKR
AVENGERS INVADERS #7 (OF 12)
BACK TO BROOKLYN #3 (OF 5)
BATMAN #684
BATMAN CACOPHONY #2 (OF 3)
BLUE BEETLE #34
CAPTAIN AMERICA #45
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #52
CYBLADE #2
DOCTOR WHO FORGOTTEN #5
FANTASTIC FOUR #562
FANTASTIC FOUR COSMIC SPECIAL
FINAL CRISIS SECRET FILES #1
GALAXY QUEST GLOBAL WARNING #5
GOON #31
GREEN LANTERN #36 (RES)
GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #8
INCOGNITO #1
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #124
JACK OF FABLES #29
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #28
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #22
KICK ASS #5
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #49
MADAME XANADU #7
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #43
MARVELS EYE OF CAMERA #2 (OF 6)
NEW EXILES ANNUAL #1
NORTHLANDERS #13
PHANTOM #26
PROOF #15
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #26
PUNISHER WAR ZONE #4 (OF 6)
SCALPED #24
SIR APROPOS OF NOTHING #3 (OF 5)
STAND CAPTAIN TRIPS #4 (OF 5)
STAR WARS LEGACY #31 VECTOR PART 12 OF 12
SUPERMAN #683 NEW KRYPTON
SUPERMAN BATMAN VS VAMPIRES WEREWOLVES #6 (OF 6)
TEEN TITANS #66
TRINITY #31
ULTIMATE HULK ANNUAL #1
ULTIMATE X-MEN #99
VENOM DARK ORIGIN #5 (OF 5)
WAR MACHINE #1 DKR
WAR THAT TIME FORGOT #8 (OF 12)
WHAT IF SECRET WARS
WINTERMEN WINTER SPECIAL #1
WOLVERINE #70
WOLVERINE MANIFEST DESTINY #3 (OF 4) MD
WORLD OF WARCRAFT #14
WORLD OF WARCRAFT ASHBRINGER #3 (OF 4)
X-FORCE #10
X-MEN MAGNETO TESTAMENT #4 (OF 5)
X-MEN WORLDS APART #3 (OF 4)
YOUNG X-MEN #9 MD
ZOMBIE TALES #9 CVR A

Books / Mags / Stuff
CABLE TP VOL 01 MESSIAH WAR
COMICS JOURNAL #295
DEVILS PANTIES HC VOL 02
ESSENTIAL PUNISHER TP VOL 03
GIANT ROBOT #57
HULK GIANT-SIZE HC DM ED
JUXTAPOZ VOL 16 #1 JAN 2009
LOOKING FOR GROUP TP VOL 01
RUNAWAYS TP DEAD END KIDS
SCHOOLGIRL MANIA TP (A)
SEXUAL SERENADE TP (A)
STAR WARS CLONE WARS TP VOL 02 CRASH COURSE
SUPER TEEN TOPIA INVISIBLE TOUCH TP
SUPERMARKET TP (NEW PTG)
THOR VISIONARIES WALT SIMONSON TP VOL 01 NEW PTG
VIDEO WATCHDOG #146
VINYL UNDERGROUND TP VOL 02 PRETTY DEAD THINGS
WHY I KILLED PETER GN
WIZARD MAGAZINE #208 WOLVERINE MOVIE CVR
YOULL ALL BE SORRY MMPB

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Mostly a test

I can't quite figure out if something is broken with our blog, or what, but Douglas has had a post pending for 3 days that JUST WON'T PUBLISH, so I thought I'd post a little test thing here to see if it is his message, or if it is the blog

Just to keep things vaguely on subject, I was complaining in Tilting last week that December was horrible. And it mostly has been. However, this last week has been really terrific, and Christmas Eve was the best Christmas Eve we've had in terms of sales in nineteen of them... it doesn't look like the last minute surge will be good enough to send the month positive, but I think we'll be in the single digit loss, rather than the doubles so color THIS retailer happy-pappy. And, who knows, we still have five days left...

-B

Let the monkey row: Douglas dips into some 12/17 Marvels

THOR GOD-SIZE SPECIAL #1 is a very pretty-looking comic, and I don't mind paying the $4 Marvel toll, even for a series I don't normally read, to get a 38-page Matt Fraction story plus a Walt Simonson reprint. (A 22-page story, on the other hand... well, I suspect I won't be buying certain titles much longer.) It's a Fraction riff on a particularly charged scene from 1985's THOR #362, which is the backup reprint, and it's got fancy high-gloss artwork from Dan Brereton, Doug Braithwaite and the previously-unknown-to-me Miguelángel Sepulveda, as well as Mike and Laura Allred doing their Allred thing. But only the Allreds' section looks anywhere near as interesting as the splintery power and scenery-chewing grandeur of the 23-year-old Simonson artwork; the other three artists are pretty much channeling a "painterly" look that I associate with the sub-Frazetta cover artwork of third-rate fantasy paperbacks from the '70s. And after I re-read the Simonson story, it started to bug me even more that Fraction's story was getting basically all its juice from nostalgia for a sequence that Simonson did perfectly well in six pages. EH, overall.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #20: Bendis's one-incident-per-issue schema for the Avengers tie-ins to Secret Invasion had its moments, but it ended up leaving a lot to be desired. This issue could have fleshed out the ending of SI, or set up something with Nick Fury's team of larvae that didn't end up doing much in SI proper, or given some kind of dramatic closure to the "government-affiliated Avengers team" concept that this series barely even touched under Bendis despite that being its ostensible premise, or clarified the multiple-stranded flashback structure of Bendis's SI material (within the story, rather than in Tom Brevoort's blog), or... anything. Instead, what happens? Hank berates Tony at Janet's funeral. That's it--and the five straight pages of clip-reel "remember our last few Big Event Comics?" in the middle are particularly maddening. AWFUL.

THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #8: This, on the other hand is GOOD Fraction and a good setup for Dark Reign, even though my suspension cable snapped instantly at Dark Reign's premise. The obligatory action scene isn't much to speak of (Tony lifts a heavy thing! It doesn't go well!), but Fraction packs a lot of other lively stuff in there--a nice character sketch of Maria Hill, a heavily freighted moment between Tony and Pepper, Tony and Maria snark-flirting, Tony and Norman Osborn playing Number Six and New Number Two, and the setup of a credible conflict to drive the new storyline, accompanied by the eating of Chinese takeout. It snaps right along. I'm still not totally sold on Salvador Larroca's artwork--a little photo-ref, a little CGI-type near-reality, a little more photo-ref--but I'm getting used to it as the look of this series.

Arriving 12/24/2008

Here's your last shipment of 2008...!

New Comics Day is Christmas Eve, Wednesday, just like normal. Next week AND the week after, it moves to Friday.

Do your local comics store a favor and go and clear out your holds box before the end of the year. They'll thank you, as will their accountants!

If you're in San Francisco, and have nothing much better to do, we'll be having our annual Christmas party at CE, starting at 5 PM on Christmas Eve. Stop by for libations, and good people!

I'll try to squeeze out a few reviews tomorrow, but I've got to print ONOMATOPOEIA, so maybe not...

Happy Holidays to one and all...!

1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS ADVENTURES OF SINBAD #6
ANGEL SMILE TIME #1
ARCHIE #592
ARCHIE DIGEST #250
ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #11 (RES)
ATOMIC ROBO DOGS OF WAR #5 (OF 5)
BART SIMPSON COMICS #45
BATMAN #683
BATMAN GOTHAM AFTER MIDNIGHT #8 (OF 12)
BEYOND WONDERLAND #4 (OF 6) CVR A STEIGMAN
BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #3
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20
CAPTAIN AMERICA THEATER OF WAR AMERICA FIRST
CITY OF DUST #3 A CVR LANGLEY
DAREDEVIL #114
DARK TOWER TREACHERY #4 (OF 6)
DARKNESS #73 LUCAS CVR A
FALL OF CTHULHU APOCALYPSE #1 (OF 4) CVR A
FARSCAPE #1
FERRYMAN #4 (OF 5)
FLASH #247
FREEDOM FORMULA #4 A CVR REILLY
GALVESTON #2 CVR A
GEARS OF WAR #3
GHOST RIDER DANNY KETCH #3 (OF 5)
GIGANTIC #2 (OF 5)
GREATEST HITS #4 (OF 6)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #33
GRIMM FAIRY TALES ANNUAL 2008
GUERILLAS #3 (OF 9)
HULK #9
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #21
INDIANA JONES & TOMB OF THE GODS #3 (OF 4)
INVINCIBLE #57 (RES)
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #146
LORDS OF AVALON KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS #2 (OF 6)
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #6
MILK PRESENTS XXX MAS #1 (A)
MISTER X CONDEMNED #1 (OF 4)
MS MARVEL #34 DKR
NECRONOMICON #4 (OF 4)
NEW AVENGERS #48 DKR
NEW WARRIORS #19
NO ENEMY BUT PEACE ONE SHOT
NOVA #20
PATSY WALKER HELLCAT #4 (OF 5)
PUNISHER WAR ZONE #3 (OF 6)
RANN THANAGAR HOLY WAR #8 (OF 8)
RED SONJA #40
REIGN IN HELL #6 (OF 8)
REMNANT #1 (OF 4) CVR A
RUNAWAYS 3 #5
SAVAGE #3 (OF 4)
SAVAGE DRAGON #143
SCOOBY DOO #139
SECRET INVASION REQUIEM #1 DKR
SHE-HULK 2 #36
SKAAR SON OF HULK #6
SONIC X #40
SPAWN #187
SPIDER-MAN BRAND NEW DAY YEARBOOK
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF OLD REPUBLIC #36 PROPHET MOTIVE PART 1
SUPERMAN SUPERGIRL MAELSTROM #4 (OF 5)
THOR #12
TOP 10 SEASON TWO #3 (OF 4)
TRINITY #30
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #129
ULTIMATUM #2 (OF 5)
UMBRELLA ACADEMY DALLAS #2
UNKNOWN SOLDIER #3
USAGI YOJIMBO #116
VIGILANTE #1
WHAT IF SPIDER-MAN BACK IN BLACK
WILDCATS #6
WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS #10
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #31
WONDER WOMAN #27

Books / Mags / Stuff
AMERICAN FLAGG DEFINITIVE COLL TP VOL 01
BEASTS BOOK 01 GN
DEATH I BLK HOODIE
HEDGE KNIGHT II TP SWORN SWORD
HOT BREATH OF WAR GN
HP LOVECRAFTS NYARLATHOTEP HC
LILLIAN THE LEGEND GN
LONE RANGER TP VOL 02 LINES NOT CROSSED
MAGENTA POWER OF PINK GN (A)
MAKA MAKA GN VOL 02 (A)
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 11 DIGEST
MIDNIGHTER TP VOL 03 ASSASSIN8
NARUTO TP VOL 33
NICE WORK VOL 01 (OF 2)
PREVIEWS #244 JANUARY 2009 (Net)
SALEM TP VOL 01
SIZZLE #40 (A)
SPAWN BOOK OF THE DEAD HC (RES)
STAR TREK MAGAZINE #15 NEWSSTAND ED
STAR WARS OMNIBUS RISE OF THE SITH
STATION TP
SWEET WISHES
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #173
ULTIMATES 3 PREM HC WHO KILLED SCARLET WITCH
WHAT IF CLASSIC TP VOL 05
X-MEN COMPLETE ONSLAUGHT EPIC TP BOOK 04
YOUNG LIARS TP VOL 01 DAYDREAM BELIEVER

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Tilting v3 #8 is up

You can find it over on Comic Book Resources!

As noted in the article, you can also pre-order Tilting at Windmills v2 TP, with the end of my tenure at Comics & Games Retailer, as well as my entire run at Newsarama, from any store with a Diamond account by using the order code of DEC084122, thanks to the loverly folks over at IDW, hooray!

Go ahead and preorder that copy and put some pennies into my pocket!

Feel free to drop any comments here, as well...

-B

Back to Hell on 12/17: Jog shouldn't have sworn an oath with his final breath

Hellblazer #250

(art and color by Rafael Grampá & Marcus Penna; there's also captions in the actual comic)

John Constantine, how long has it been? Just over 20 years since this thing started up? Almost 25 since The Saga of the Swamp Thing? That's a lot of Silk Cuts, a lot of magic. A lot of politics - there was once a whole goddamned issue (#3) on the Conservative election victory of 1987. But there's some enduring character to this Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette & John Totleben creation too; I often wind up thinking of Eddie Campbell's parody version in Bacchus, who had the poor barmaid climb all the way to the top shelf, only to make her climb back down bottom to fetch the same label. "It's 'cos I'm a vicious bastard, ennit." Soon thereafter he burned his own head off lighting a smoke, fortuitously before his lawyer could arrive.

Campbell wrote a handful of proper Hellblazer comics too (#85-88), and he's now returned for this 48-page, $3.99 anniversary special. So has the artist from his run, Sean Phillips (now of Criminal and others). So has the fellow who wrote the 1987 election episode, Jamie Delano. It's not often you see an old-and-new-faces 'landmark' issue for a series like this; it's really a superhero thing. Often a tedious, self-congratulatory superhero thing at that. But just as Hellblazer started out as something among the superheroes, yet different, its #250 uses its commemorative status as a means of exploring different aspects of John Constantine, whose many adventures have indeed seen various sides of him emphasized.

The results aren't all good, but it makes for a decently-paced package. I'd have liked to see a far stronger opening story, though; aside from writer Dave Gibbons' amusing decision to cast the piece as a sequel to his last Constantine tale, an illustrated prose story from nine years ago (in Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3), there's almost nothing that seems particularly attuned to the strength of Hellblazer. It's just John Constantine chasing after a bad guy who's stolen a magical sharp thing to slaughter a baby and become immortal.

And sure, Constantine interrupts some rich people having a party, and he saves the day by kicking someone in the balls and a pretty girl shows up and a cork pops off a champagne bottle in a suggestive manner in the final panel, but that's all fairly generic low-down supernatural action hero stuff; it does work for Hellblazer -- it's not inappropriate -- but it doesn't offer anything striking for the curious reader, save for the visuals of the aforementioned Sean Phillips (with frequent colorist Val Staples). Those are as crisply-laid and glowingly dingy as ever, although I wonder that large, distracting white space on his first page was supposed to hold the credits at some point.

A better two-fisted Constantine story is later in the issue, from veteran writer Brian Azzarello and Rafael Grampá (he of Mesmo Delivery), one of the better two-fisted action artists to get attention lately. That's one of Grampá's panels up top (printed noticeably darker on the page, mind you), and I think it nicely summarizes his utterly gleeful approach to the project, loading his pages with nimbly caricatured faces and funny details, even as handles the moment-by-moment of Azzarello's barfight-with-a-demon scenario with fine precision. Even the coloring (from Mesmo cohort Marcus Penna) comes off as a very broad take on the stereotypical Vertigo palette, all rusty and muddy browns and blood soaking into white and grey.

It mixes nicely with Azzarello's script, actually a poem presented via captions, chronicling Constantine's trip to Chicago to lift the Curse of the Billy Goat from the Cubs. Of course, Our Man can easily summon a demon, but it's up to the people to eventually take responsibility for their own shortcomings, so "our battered dreams and hope" might bloom better in the spring. Feel free to look for metaphors where applicable!

(art & color by David Lloyd)

Other stories are quieter. Jamie Delano & David Lloyd (of The Horrorist) offer Constantine the Observer, divining the sad histories of combatants in a holiday poker match. An element of human exploitation is present, as it often is with Delano, but he remains as sure in the compassion of regret as Lloyd is with his effortlessly lovely art, the present lit as if from a maze of roaring, off-panel fireplaces, and the sad past getting more icy and blue as things slide closer to hell.

Meanwhile, debuting series writer Peter Milligan has Constantine encounter ghosts and politics in a low-key investigation that ties a personal haunting to Our Man's own troubled past, if not in a melodramatic way or anything. It seems abrupt at only six pages, wherein the stewing emotions of the piece's focus don't have a lot of time to cook. Campbell provides the visuals here, and while he draws a wonderfully aged and worn and tired Constantine, his work doesn't gel much with Dominic Regan's shiny digital colors, which add a distracting sort of body to Campbell's characters, trampling whole sequences with gloss. Oddly, two of Campbell's panels are presented beneath the book's table of contents in a black, white and blue style, which I thought was more effective.

But then, Jamie Grant (of All Star Superman) is also a very shiny colorist, and his work mixes better with Giuseppe Camuncoli (breakdowns) & Stefano Landini (finishes) in the book's fifth and final story, maybe because the duo have a rounder, sleek style going - their Constantine carries a whiff of manga along with the tobacco. Prose novelist China Miéville seemed like a good fit to write the material when announced, and he proves to be as adept as expected with a vivid, funny social justice adventure, playing up the series' tendency to mix social ills with droll supernatural society. Hell, he even pulls out the demonic yuppie, hell-as-corporation idea born in the '87 election issue - this really is a journey through the years!

It's the last thing in the book, and probably the most broadly entertaining. A company spits poison dust into the streets, where children play. Their work is literally evil -- as in, they're trying to manufacture it -- and Constantine is retained by demons pissed that perdition's exclusivity is in danger. Phantoms rise and angels act in less than beatific ways. John Constantine, ahead of them all, urges tomorrow's adults to wage supernatural war on the sins of salt mines and cocaine plants. Not a bad way to leave him after a GOOD enough party; he might be making crazy wishes, but reaching issue #250 seems a little crazy on its own, yet here we are.

Arriving 12/17/2008

Some good stuff shipping this week!

I've got to go write a TILTING though...

2000 AD #1613
2000 AD #1614
AGE OF SENTRY #4 (OF 6)
AIR #5
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #581
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #3
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #15
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #19 SI
BATGIRL #6 (OF 6)
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #14
BEANWORLD HOLIDAY SPECIAL ONE SHOT
BETTY & VERONICA #239
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #190
BIRDS OF PREY #125
BLACK TERROR #2
BRIT #11 (RES)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #20 CHEN CVR
C E MURPHYS TAKE A CHANCE #1
CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #6
CTHULHU TALES #9 CVR A
DARK REIGN NEW NATION
DCU HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2008
DEAD OF NIGHT DEVIL SLAYER #4 (OF 4)
DEADPOOL #5
DOG EATERS #2
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #10
EX MACHINA #40
FABLES #79
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #32
FEAR AGENT #25 1 AGAINST 1 (PT 4 OF 6)
GHOST RIDER #30
GHOSTBUSTERS THE OTHER SIDE #3
GREATEST AMERICAN HERO #1 (OF 3)
HELLBLAZER #250 (NOTE PRICE)
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #8 DKR
JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES STORM FRONT #2 (OF 4)
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #146
MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #12
MANHUNTER #37
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #31
MIGHTY AVENGERS #20 DKR
MOON KNIGHT #25
NEW EXILES #16
PUNISHER MAX #65
PUNISHER WAR ZONE #2 (OF 6)
REX MUNDI DH ED #15
ROBIN #181
SAMURAI LEGEND #4 (OF 4)
SIMPSONS COMICS #149
SPIDER-MAN NOIR #1 (OF 4)
SPIRIT #24
SQUADRON SUPREME 2 #6
STAR TREK LAST GENERATION #2
STORMWATCH PHD #17
SUPER FRIENDS #10
SUPERGIRL #36 NEW KRYPTON
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #10 (OF 12)
TERMINATOR REVOLUTION #1
TERRA #4 (OF 4)
THOR GOD SIZED #1
THUNDERBOLTS #127
TINY TITANS #11
TRINITY #29
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #59
UNCANNY X-MEN #505 MD
VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS #4
WALKING DEAD #56 (RES)
WHAT IF NEWER FANTASTIC FOUR
WORMWOOD GENTLEMAN CORPSE DOWN PUB (ONE SHOT)
X-FACTOR #38
X-FILES #2 (OF 6)
X-MEN KINGBREAKER #1 (OF 4)
X-MEN LEGACY #219
ZOMBIE TALES #8 CVR A
ZORRO #9

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALDEBARAN TP VOL 02 GROUP
ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES TP VOL 02
BATMAN PRIVATE CASEBOOK HC
BEASTS B0OK 02 HC
BIGGLES GN VOL 01 SPITFIRE PARADE
BOYS DEFINITIVE ED
CAVALCADE OF BOYS TP VOL 04
CINEFEX #116 JAN 2009
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE #1650 FEB 2009
COMPLEAT NEXT MEN TP VOL 02
DARKNESS COMPENDIUM LTD ED HC VOL 01
END LEAGUE TP VOL 01 BALLAD OF BIG NOTHING
GEEK MONTHLY JAN 2009
GETTYSBURG GN
KRAMERS ERGOT HC VOL 07
LADY S GN VOL 01 HERES TO SUZY
LEES TOY REVIEW #194 DEC 2008
MIGHTY AVENGERS PREM HC VOL 03 SECRET INVASION BOOK 01
MOME GN VOL 13
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER TP VOL 18
PROGRAMME TP VOL 02
QUEST FOR MISSING GIRL
SCREAM TP
SECRET WARS OMNIBUS HC DM ED
SHOWCASE PRESENTS BRAVE & BOLD BATMAN TEAMUPS VOL 03
SILVERFISH TP
SPAGHETTI BROS HC VOL 02
STAR WARS LEGACY TP VOL 04 ALLIANCE
SUPERMAN PAST AND FUTURE TP
SWALLOW BOOK 05
WARHAMMER 40K EXTERMINATUS TP VOL 01
WITCHBLADE COMPENDIUM VOL 01 LTD ED HC
WOLVERINE ORIGINS TP VOL 05 DEADPOOL
X-FACTOR TP VOL 05 ONLY GAME IN TOWN

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Not Comics: Jeff Checks Out Punisher: War Zone

[Warning: I intend to spoil plot points from the movie Punisher: War Zone--to the extent anyone can spoil anything in a movie called Punisher: War Zone; also, technically it's misleading to call them 'plot points' since that suggests Punisher: War Zone has what one could call a 'plot,' so really I guess I should be warning you I intend on spoiling 'events' from the movie Punisher: War Zone--so if you really do intend on seeing the movie stop reading and go catch it now because it won't be in theaters more than two weeks, tops.]

I saw Punisher: War Zone the other day with my pal Robson and two friends we helped sneak in to the theater, Asahi Super Dry and Sapporo Premium. Possibly due to keeping such fine company, I enjoyed the movie as bad-but-entertaining, the type of flick that keeps the gunfire and gore abundant (reminding me of last year's grindhousey Rambo flick which was also bad-but-entertaining), and is clever enough to introduce a gang of parkour-using scumbags solely so one of them can be blown apart by a rocket launcher in mid-roof-to-roof somersault.

Ray Stephenson from Rome is Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, and Dominic West from The Wire is Jigsaw, a.k.a. Billy Russoti; and I confess I found their presences a little distressing, as if this flick was commissioned by another premium movie channel for the express intention of subliminally soiling HBO's reputation. In fact, although I suspect it's unintentional, Punisher: War Zone also made me think of The Sopranos: not only does West seem to be doing the longest Paulie Walnuts imitation ever committed to celluloid, but at about two-thirds mark, the horror gore, the crime cliches, and the very big can of beer I was drinking convinced me that Cleaver, the terrible movie made by Christopher Moltisanti in the final season of The Sopranos, would've been more than a little like P:WZ. In the context of the movie, West's performance works, and while I think Stephenson plays The Punisher as a sad guy who gets very, very angry when it should really be the other way around, I thought he was fine.

In fact, I feel like I had more faith in his acting than the filmmakers: although the Punisher works best as a stoic character, he says far too little in this film, and a lot of it variations on "I'm sorry," since part of the story's hook is that Frank, in taking out a gang near the beginning of the film, kills an undercover fed, tries to make it up to the surviving family (Stephanie Janusauskas, as the young daughter and Julie Benz, with her patented post-Angel gamut of angry defiant weepiness, weepy angry defiance, or defiant weepy anger, depending on what the situation calls for, as the widow), and then swears to quit being the Punisher--an idea the film takes seriously for little more than forty-five seconds. Sadly, there's next-to-nothing like the bit in the trailer where Stephenson says, "Sometimes, I think I'd like to get my hands on God," with muted anger and grief and conviction. I don't know if it's just because the filmmakers didn't have much faith in Stephenson's accent (which does indeed slide all over the place in some of his longer line readings) or couldn't be assed to cherry-pick Castle's better lines from Garth Ennis' run, but it renders this incarnation of The Punisher little more than a glum cipher.

(And as long as I've got my bitch on, I'm still baffled why every film incarnation of The Punisher insists that the character have the darkest hair possible--as if that's the character's superpower, or main visual motif--but it does Stephenson few favors: he looks very much like the older, grizzled vet Ennis' Max run makes him out to be until you notice the Reagan-colored hair on his head and then he seems silly and vain.)

But to return to my main point, which is one of general praise: rocket-launcher meets parkour jerk. Shotgun to a guy in a chair. Room of waiting bad guys introduced to a grenade launcher. A "one lives, one dies" choice where one does, in fact, die. Excellent lighting on a scene-to-scene basis, even if it doesn't hold together throughout the film. Proof of human cloning, as Doug Hutchison is a tiny, tiny replica of Frederic Forrest apparently grown from fingernail and hair clippings. Multiple beheadings. The woman behind me and Robson who laughed at every single line in the movie and also yelled helpful advice to the screen like, "Kill him!" Machine-gun pistols. Enthusiastic audio mixing, particularly when broken bones or snapped tendons are involved. The occasional Garth Ennis line. Mark Camacho, the poor man's Paul Giamatti. The scenes between Frank and the daughter.

Overall, Punisher: War Zone is executed with such craft and devotion to clearing the very low bar set for it that I can understand why Robson mistook it for a good movie, rather than a very good bad movie: it's easy enough to overlook that the movie throws in a plethora of characters to distract from the movie's go-nowhere story and lack of character arcs for all involved, that it sets up situations that make no sense even by its own logic, that it can't quite shake the tone of exhaustion from the silly stuff, and the sense of silliness from the world-weary stuff. The movie is all blown-up with nowhere to go.

Financial failure notwithstanding, Punisher: War Zone is more likely than not a snapshot of the current state of the American Action Movie, the production equivalent of Disney's It's A Small World: directed by a German, produced by an Israeli, starring three guys from the United Kingdom, and crewed by apparently the entire French-Canadian population of Quebec and Montreal. While not that a good Punisher movie--again, considering all the material Ennis has put into print about the character, it's shocking how truly far away from that goal the movie is--based on the weekend box office, Punisher: War Zone is probably going to be about as good as we're ever going to get. I give it an enthusiastic OKAY, particularly if you've got some beers in you and are looking for entertaining junk.

I don't know how to title this one!

I meant to say something last week (ugh, or was it two weeks now) when Spurgeon linked to Johanna's (we miss you!) note about the pending release of the last color BONE volume.

I volunteer at Ben's school library one day a week (what can I say... I believe in libraries!), and, man, do the comics circulate like crazy! I'm only in there one day a week, but based on looking at the shelves I think it is true for every day in there -- the comics circulate the INSTANT they get put back out on the shelves.

My responsibilities include checking in each classes books, as well as checking the kids out each week (basically, it's just retail, but it is free -- using POS to scan stuff in and out, the whole thing), and I quickly learned that the first thing I should do when I'm done checking everything in is to shelf the 741.5's. That's the Dewey Decimal System code for graphic novels. Virtually everything I shelve while the librarian is reading to the kids gets checked back out during the same shift. It is insane!

The King of 741.5? Jeff Smith's BONE.

Those always always always go back out the moment they come in (not even counting the Hold requests) -- even when the kids have to read them OUT OF ORDER, they freaking fly off the shelf. Our library has two full sets, and the Librarian is getting at least a third one in because they circulate so fast.

The only other books (at least during my shift) that circulate as fast are the Lemony Snickett "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books.. but even those aren't quite (to my eye) as consistent -- usually you can find 3 or 4 of the 13 volumes on the shelves (they also have two sets of those... I think)

I suspect that this couldn't have happened without Scholastic (as much as it pains the self-publishing lover in me), and it could not possibly have happened to a nicer guy. Jeff Smith is a sweetheart among sweethearts, and he deserves every single copy sold.

Obviously, this is just a snapshot of ONE Elementary school library, and ONE shift of that library, at that, but it is an awesome awesome thing to encounter every week, hopefully saying really good things about 21st century comics literacy and the future of the comics readership.

I love volunteering at school in general: watching the ASTONISHING gains the kids have made just blows my tiny little mind every time I think about it. It's been... 14 weeks, is that right? since Ben started Kindergarten. When he started he knew his ABC by sight, and he was pretty decent with the phonic sounds of the letters. He could JUST write his name (though oddly spaced, and nearly always with backwards "N"), but that was it.

Now he's writing (simple) sentences ("I see my _____"), and the characters are pretty correctly spaced and sized and facing. He can sound out a word and basically spell things about right.

What I find fascinating is that what we're meant to teach them isn't really how to do things exactly correctly, but for them to have the tools to do those things for themselves. In other words, my instinct when Ben asks "how do I spell...."? is to tell him how to spell it. "'Witch' is spelled 'W. I. T. C. H.', pal." But sitting in class one day a week, I've realized that what you do is actually turn it around. "How DO you spell that? What's the sound of the first letter?" "It is 'wuh', Daddy." "Right, so what is that?" "Uh...W?" "Exactly, you little rocket scientist! Good job!"

To the point where even if they're not spelling a word correctly (A "cuh" sound could be either a "K" OR a "C"), the important thing at this stage isn't that they're spelling it right or wrong (they're only five and six!), but that they're developing the tools to FIGURE OUT how to spell it. The actual spelling correctly part comes later -- confidence is the skill to install right now.

As far as I can tell, nearly EVERY kid in the class is making AMAZING progress... and thanks to their awesome awesome teacher, they're ENJOYING making that progress. Schoolwork isn't "work", it is FUN, which is EXACTLY the kind of attitude that I was hoping school would inculcate.

We feel hugely lucky that we got the Kinder teacher we got at the public school that we got -- for security sake I'm not going to really broadcast those details -- because we really won the lottery for the type of school environment we were hoping for where learning is something that not only every child sees has value, but that they encourage in one another as peers. I (naturally) think my kid is pretty inherently smart, but to have an environment that really works at encouraging that is something we weren't sure we were going to get from public school.

And it makes it even that much more exciting to volunteer into that kind of environment where you can help OTHER people's kids make the same kinds of leaps, too!

Kids WANT to learn, really. It's pretty awesome to watch them do so, so well.

******

A comic review? Sure why not...

SECRET INVASION #8: I'm not so bugged by the What of this, as I am of the How. I mean, no matter what, you've got to give the Marvel universe some props for changing up the status quo every few years, and doing so in FAIRLY organic ways. By this I mean, by and large, the things that have changed have largely flowed from character, rather than being imposed from above. Sure there's been a few mis-steps (most of them involving Spidey), but overall, the generalities of the Marvel U have been reasonably logical and satisfying.

YMMV, naturally.

While I might dun Secret Invasion for misreading the post-'08 Election environment (the ending feels a lot more suited for a McCain/Palin administration), you have to give it points for setting up what will POTENTIALLY be a story-rich new Status Quo. That doesn't mean that writers WILL be able to draw that potential out... but it is there.

But I'm more convinced than ever that Bendis just shouldn't be writing this kind of a story -- he's just not very good at it.

As a conclusion, SI #8 is marred off the bat by its structure: you WANT to see the Big Fight Scene at the end. We've had seven previous issues that were basically nothing than unimportant fights, and when we finally get to the Title Bout (as it were), Bendis decided that it's best to mostly cut away from it, or to handle it perfunctorily and via narration (!)

It opens with a completely pointless death -- one that isn't really relevant to the 150-ish pages that proceed it -- and one that can be retconned faster than Bendis drops to talking heads: Thor just sent her someplace that she'll end up getting saved. She'll be back faster than Mockingbird was, bet on it.

But even if it wasn't so trivially reversed, what sucks the most about it is that it was a punk death, where none of the characters involved were even remotely heroic. I have no problem with death (or even "death") in comics, but I do very much want for it to invoke heroism and sacrifice for the greater good. If the character who died did so by stopping the Skrull doppelganger she was most associated with by using a weapon based upon their technology, that might be one thing, but instead the character died from plothammer and fiat, where it wasn't even explained WHAT was happening, or really how it was resolved. Yuck, that's just awful storytelling, lacking any thematic resonance, IMO.

I also have to say that one of the few genuinely human relationships in recent comics has been Luke & Jessica's. I truly like those characters as "people", so for us to have a "The Dingos ate mah baby!" scene... and without ANY payoff; and with that being on top of what now appears to be a complete red herring of that "glowing eyes" thing... well, most of my goodwill is just utterly pissed away.

I'm also upset that the well-toted idea that the Skrulls had this religion, and that this was actually meaningful from a story perspective, and to have it all basically come to nothing in the end... sheer anti-climax. They had a real opportunity to make the Skrull newly significant in the Marvel U, and it all feels pissed away to me.

As for the "Illumi-naughty", I really am not buying it. Oh, it's a clever enough conceit, but not those characters in that way. I mean, really, do you think Doom and Namor and Loki are going to give 10 seconds consideration to Mr. Crazier-than-a-shit-sandwich, and the jumped up thug? Really? Emma doesn't make any sense to me either, in the post-San Francisco world. Gah, plus that coloring -- I thought Namor was a Skrull, at first...

So, yeah, I didn't like this as a comic. It was pretty stupendously EH, and your Big Finish to your Big Event needs to be a lot more than that.

What did YOU think?

-B

Arriving 12/10/2008

Fighting a cold again, brain failing. I have more things to say, but... tomorrow.

This is an extremely small week for 14 shopping days before Christmas...

100 BULLETS #98
30 DAYS OF NIGHT 30 DAYS TIL DEATH #1
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #94 (A)
ACTION COMICS #872 NEW KRYPTON
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #27
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #580
AMBUSH BUG YEAR NONE #5 (OF 6)
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #126
ASTONISHING X-MEN GHOST BOXES #2 (OF 2)
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #24
BIG HERO 6 #4 (OF 5)
BOOSTER GOLD #15
BPRD WAR ON FROGS #2
BUCKAROO BANZAI THE PREQUEL #2 (OF 2)
CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI 13 #8
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #32
CIVIL WAR HOUSE OF M #4 (OF 5)
COURTNEY CRUMRIN AND PRINCE OF NOWHERE
DARKNESS LODBROKS HAND (ONE SHOT) OEMING CVR A
DEATH DEFYING DEVIL #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #851
DMZ #37
DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS SERIES 2 #1
ELEPHANTMEN #14
EPILOGUE #3
FALL OF CTHULHU GODWAR #4 (OF 4) CVR A
FINAL CRISIS #5 (OF 7)
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #4 (OF 5)
GEN 13 #25
GHOST WHISPERER THE MUSE #1
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #15
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #31
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #8
I KILL GIANTS #6 (OF 7)
INVINCIBLE #56
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #27 SIGHTINGS
LONE RANGER #16
MAD MAGAZINE #497
MAN WITH NO NAME #6
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #46
NIGHTWING #151
PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #127
PHONOGRAM 2 #1 (OF 7) SINGLES CLUB
PS238 #36
PUNISHER WAR ZONE #1 (OF 6)
RETURN OF THE SUPER PIMPS #6 (OF 6)
SALEM #4 (OF 4)
SAMURAI LEGEND #3 (OF 4)
SAVAGE DRAGON #142
SECRET INVASION DARK REIGN
SECRET SIX #4
SIMON DARK #15
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #195
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE SEASON 2 #5 (OF 5)
STAR WARS CLONE WARS #3 (OF 6)
SUPERMAN BATMAN #54
SUPERMAN BATMAN VS VAMPIRES WEREWOLVES #5 (OF 6)
TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #31
TERRY MOORES ECHO #8
TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ANARCHISTS #1
TITANS #8
TRINITY #28
UNCLE SCROOGE #383
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #698
WHAT IF CAPTAIN AMERICA FALLEN SON
WITCHBLADE #122
WOLVERINE FLIES TO A SPIDER
WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ #1 (OF 8)
X-MEN SPIDER-MAN #2 (OF 4)
X-MEN WORLDS APART #2 (OF 4)
YOUNG LIARS #10
YTHAQ FORSAKEN WORLD #1 (OF 3)
ZMD ZOMBIES OF MASS DESTRUCTION #3 (OF 6)

Books / Mags / Stuff
AMERICAN FREAKSHOW GN
ANNE STEELYARD AND THE GARDEN OF EMPTINESS GN VOL 01 (OF 3)
ARCHIES GREATEST HITS TP VOL 01
BATMAN JOKERS ASYLUM TP
BLACK CANARY 1/6 SCALE DELUXE COLLECTOR FIGURE
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL TP VOL 20 DEMONS LAIR
BRAVE AND THE BOLD LORDS OF LUCK TP
BUCK ROGERS IN 25TH CENTURY DAILIES HC VOL 01 1929 1931
CAMELOT 3000 HC DELUXE EDITION
CAPTAIN AMERICA TP CHOSEN
DAREDEVIL MAN WITHOUT FEAR PREM HC
GREEN LANTERN SECRET ORIGIN HC
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY PREM HC VOL 01 LEGACY
HULK 100 PROJECT
JACK OF FABLES TP VOL 04 AMERICANA
JSA HC VOL 03 THY KINGDOM COME PART 2
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES THE MORE THINGS CHANGE TP
NEW BATTLESTAR GALACTICA SEASON ZERO TP VOL 01 BATISTA CVR
NOCTURNAL CONSPIRACIES NINETEEN DREAMS GN
NOVA ANNIHILATION HC
PX GN VOL 02 IN SERVICE O/T QUEEN
RED SONJA HC VOL 05 WORLD ON FIRE
RED SONJA TP VOL 05 WORLD ON FIRE
SGT FROG GN VOL 16 (OF 16)
SULK GN VOL 02 DEADLY AWESOME
TOYFARE #138 MARVEL UNIVERSE CVR

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Nothing is More Dangerous Than a Comics Artist: Jog knew the truth on 12/4

Criminal Vol. 2 #7

And so another tale from Ed Brubaker (writin'), Sean Phillips (drawin') & Val Staples (colorin') crashes to its close, as does another run of Criminal itself. It's going on hiatus until May 2009 or so, while the team works on the creator-owned supervillain-in-witness-protection series Incognito, although it won't relaunch or anything once it's back (so, next issue will be vol. 2 #8). In case you're getting tripped up by the pamphlets/trades numbering, vol. 1 of the Criminal pamphlet series covered the first two trade paperbacks (Coward and Lawless), while the newish The Dead and the Dying trade hits issues #1-3 of the second pamphlet series.

I like the pamphlets, myself; if you're gonna charge $3.50, it helps to be 36 pages, ad-free and stocked with little bonus essays on the crime genre, on top of being rather nicely designed. These things look nice sitting around in a pile, which is usually how I've got them arranged, since I rarely read them as they come out. I guess that's a little irony there - a series I like having as individual comic books that I wind up reading in big, 'collected' chunks anyway.

But that's how I've found they work best, now that we're up to the fourth storyline - it's all structured nicely enough as chapters, but the real big impact demands at least an all-at-once re-read, and even then maybe a quick skim of past storylines, since Brubaker isn't even limiting himself to individual trades. No, this is a huge, sprawling intergenerational saga at heart, with the big, beating theme of family -- both a driving force and a font of poison -- keeping steady time from its center.

Anyway, this issue ends the sad saga of Jacob Kurtz, that very troubled author of the series' surreal daily newpaper detective comic, Frank Kafka, P.I. The strip first popped up in issue #1 of vol. 1, so little connections have been present for a while - Jacob is a former counterfeiter, and old friends with Tracy Lawless (of Lawless), whose thoroughly awful father (of The Dead and the Dying) used to pal around with Jacob's own dad.

Jacob also used to be married to the niece of local syndicate head Sebastian Hyde, which got him into all sorts of trouble after the woman vanished without a trace, and Jacob got branded her murderer by the law and the media. He was abused by the police and crippled by Hyde's men, although after his wife's body was found and the death deemed an accident the boss did offer Jacob a lifetime job drawing his Frank Kafka comic, thus evoking the old tale of Krazy Kat's endurance at the behest of William Randolph Hearst, except with severe beatings. Drawing comics is hard, as the insomniac Jacob knows, but he's pretty close to his character, by which I mean he literally sees him standing around and urging him to take tough-guy action when he really shouldn't.

Laying it out this way makes it seem obvious that Jacob, also the story's narrator, might not have the most trustworthy point of view. The beauty of this storyline is that Brubaker has let this implication lay low, allowing his story to proceed for much of its length like a typical Criminal storyline -- it involves a forged FBI badge, a heap of Chinese triad money, a femme fatale, her boorish thug boyfriend and a police detective who still can't let go of Jacob's presumed guilt, particularly since the artist has been totally busting his balls in his comic -- then suddenly kicking the whole thing into a mess of subjectivity that not only messes with the plot but gently pokes at the kind of plots this comic has been working with so far.

This issue's the one that kicks, and it puts some weight behind it. Even the structure of the storyline gets knocked around, as Brubaker basically stops the plot at two points to back up and present scenes from the point of view of the detective and the femme fatale, with an omniscient narrator suddenly provided to free them from Jacob's skewed perspective. In less assured hands it could have come off as a clanking mechanism for filling out the backstory, but Brubaker seizes the opportunity to present these characters as slightly more complicated than the simple archetypes Jacob (who hears the voice of a fictional noir detective in his head, remember) has fit them into via the plot that is his life. Too much time alone drawing crime funnies, I think!

Eventually the truth is revealed, and earlier sequences take on new connotations. The comic drifts a little over the top. Criminal does that sometimes, but while Coward launched itself into guns-blazing one man army nonsense, to its detriment, Bad Night is strippers-in-the-mental-ward good, a real nightmare party of ruinous perception, with a nice crack-up scene and the best atmosphere of doom the series has yet managed. I'm not mentioning much about Phillips & Staples here, since they're mostly working from the same level of quality as before (although Jacob's tortured body language deserves note), but be assured that they compliment Brubaker's writing as nicely as expected.

I'm glad I read this all in one shot; it's even worth reading again after that, since there's a subtlety to Brubaker's characterizations that only comes out once everyone's motives and desires are at hand. This bolsters the story's affirmation of its primary cast as error-prone people, longing for affection (since the 'family' here is most emphatically that of romantic partners) or pursuing a kind of virtue, if generally in the worst ways. It also empowers the onrushing horror of the tale's conclusion, with one person demanding emotional truths from another, and the reader getting the sinking impression that there's no way of knowing what's authentic anymore, not in a story told like this, and just when it's most important. VERY GOOD.

I'M FINISHED! Abhay Is Never Going to Write about SECRET INVASION Ever Again After #8.

So, with the eighth and final issue of SECRET INVASION now in hand, we’ve come finally to my favorite part. Not the ending of SECRET INVASION. The endings of crossovers are always lousy. The end of CIVIL WAR? Terrible ending. WORLD WAR HULK— I have no memory whatsoever of how that ended, and that’s a series I liked. INFINITE CRISIS— I still don't understand the end of that series. RETURN OF THE JEDI— the Jedi wake up next to Bob Newhart from the THE BOB NEWHART SHOW...?

No, my favorite part is spoiler-dodgin'.

Marvel asks readers for, what, $32 (if not far more) for a crossover, by repeatedly promising them an ending that changes things… forever. But if you give them your money, they do everything in their power to spoil the ending of the story for you. So then the fun part is: will you get any shred of your money’s worth or will they manage to spoil every single possible thing for you before that happens?

Certain parts, there’s no avoiding. If you’re a comic fan, there was really no avoiding the fact this series ends with the “Dark Reign” starting. Which means— look: it more likely than not means the bad guys win in some fashion or another at the end of SECRET INVASION #8. But we don’t know the precise mechanism by which they win— well, except that it very heavily involves Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. They spoiled that in THUNDERBOLTS back in November. But— okay— but the precise mechanism by which Norman Osborn is the conduit for evil winning? That’s kind-of sort-of still a mystery, right?

See, that’s the fun part. Marvel tries to spoil that, too! It’s only a mystery unless you read the New York Times. Because they put an article in the New York Times the day the issue was released, to make sure the ending got spoiled. The New York Times doesn’t cover just anything— Marvel had publicity personnel work very hard to have that story placed. Worked hard to have it placed on Wednesday, and not on a Thursday when none of us would be spoiled. After all: by Thursday, the nonsensical events transpiring in an imaginary universe to fake people would no longer be “breaking news.”

So really: the most suspenseful— strike that, the only suspenseful part of SECRET INVASION for me was this last week: Would all of #8 get spoiled or just most of it? Fun!

Let’s give Marvel some credit, though: Marvel’s only able to spoil the end of SECRET INVASION because they can understand it. DC would have loved to spoil the end of BATMAN RIP, but they’d have to understand what happened at the end. And as far as I can tell, nobody does. The issue after Batman is killed by Satan / his Father / some actor (?) / a helicopter that he punched too hard (!)(!)(!), he’s trapped in a machine by alien gods from the god dimension and forced to relive For the Man Who Has Everything outtakes.

What? What in the fuck? How do you conceivably spoil that?? DC has no idea! They don’t understand it anymore than anyone else.

***

Let’s just get this over with. I wish I could tell you I had anything big and elaborate planned for this final installment, but: I really just want this to be over. I just want this to be over. It’s my most sincere desire for this to be over. This? Over? Yes, please.

*************************************

The status quo prior to SECRET INVASION: a force for evil had infiltrated the very heart of the Marvel universe, and were threatening to bring down the Marvel heroes from the inside. Who can the Marvel heroes trust?

The status quo after SECRET INVASION: oh my god, guys! A force for evil has infiltrated the very heart of the Marvel universe! It’s threatening to bring down the Marvel heroes from the inside! Who can the Marvel heroes trust?

Just tell me who to hand my money to. $4 an issue in a deflationary economy? Sold! No Whammies No Whammies No Whammies!

***

The best line in this entire damn series belongs to Joe Quesada in his afterword: “The surprises in store lie in every corner of the Marvel Universe during DARK REIGN. Who are the DARK AVENGERS? … [H]ow far down can these villains actually get when given greater power? … How will Hank Pym deal with the loss of his beloved ex-wife?”

SECRET INVASION literally did not get more entertaining than that sentence during its entire run.

***

The first half of this comic is just…

The issue starts with the Wasp increasing in size, thereby causing black dots to erupt onto the other characters. The black dots cause pain. There’s a narrator during this scene, but even the narrator can’t come up with any explanation whatsoever as to what’s going on in this scene. Then, we’re told “There was Only One Way to Stop It.” What was that one way? Seriously: I don’t know. What was that one way? Can anyone even understand what’s happening in this scene? I can’t. Did Thor kill her to save everyone else? That would have been a cool thing to happen— is that what happened? I can’t even make out what was happening.

Blah blah blah: so, the Wasp is dead. Which— at least something has finally happened in this series!! I'll take what I can get.

Then, Spider-Skrull-Woman-Queen wakes up from having been killed in the last issue, so that the greatest heroes in the Marvel universe can unite to kill her again. However, while last issue she was shot in the head by an arrow, this issue she’s shot in the head with a ray gun. The guy who shoots her with a ray gun is a hero to the entire world and gets a Cabinet-level position with the government, while the guy who shot her in the head with the arrow is promptly ignored by the public.

Kids thus learn a valuable lesson about heroism: nobody think it’s heroic to shoot a woman in the head with a bow & arrow; they only think it’s heroic to shoot a woman in the head with a ray gun. (This is all really incredibly bizarre material politically, and the only thing that makes me comfortable with this series is my deep and abiding belief that comic creators, publishers, and fans are so divorced from the real world around them that they literally have no clue that what they’re creating, publishing and/or reading is completely and totally batshit fucking crazy. I don’t even want to talk about it. No joke, it makes me genuinely uncomfortable.)

***

The rest of the issue? Nothing much happens. Last issue’s cliffhanger involving the Jarvis Skrull threatening a baby, like every cliffhanger in the series, leads absolutely nowhere. Didn't the Jarvis Skrull get exploded by Maria Hill in issue #5? Don't sweat the details.

Various characters come back from the dead, including my favorite character of the series— the LED lights from issue #1. Finally, Barack Obama (?) puts the Green Goblin in charge of the Government, and Dark Reign starts on the last double-page spread. "Dark Reign" is just a plain old Masters-of-Evil story. They JLA-ized the Masters of Evil. It's an idea, I guess— I'm not continuity-savvy enough to tell you whether it's been done to death before or not.

There are six Masters of Evil. I was able to identify four of them: Emma Frost, Doctor Doom, Norman Osborn, and Loki. There’s also Namor and the Hood who I didn’t recognize because they’re colored red for… some reason…?

***

So, the big game-changer, the big change in status quo for the Marvel Universe: before SECRET INVASION, there were eight incarnations of the Masters of Evil in the Marvel Universe, and now after SECRET INVASION, there are now nine incarnations.

Truly, the Marvel Universe will never be the same.

Kids today are lucky. In my day, we didn’t have nine incarnations of Masters of Evil. We could only fantasize what a ninth incarnation would look like, with only the prior eight incarnations and the North star to guide us. Kids today don’t know how good they have it.

***

Points to Leinil Yu and Mark Morales, though, for including Elvis on the Skrull ship, in the distant background. I'm an easy mark on a "Elvis isn't dead" joke.

Nice work on the series from those two— especially, on the double page spreads. Personally, I thought they nailed a whole heck a lot of those. We can say that they handled some moments better than others— e.g. I personally was never too taken by their outer space stuff. But like I tried to mention last time: they delivered a quality product on a timely basis. It’d be a damn foolish thing not to have some appreciation for that, in this day and age. Marvel fans should be hoisting these guys on their shoulders anytime they leave their house.

I gave it a sort of re-read. Skimming through the entire series beginning to end, issue 1 to issue 8. It only took about 5 minutes to skim through it.

Conclusions: It’ll be okay enough for trade readers, I suppose, who will pay less and not have to read the series over an 8 month period. Parts of the story won’t work at the trade level, either, though. Anything involving Captain Marvel and Marvel Boy should have been left to spin-offs as those parts went especially nowhere. The trade will work fine as a shallow character-free action comic.

I just don’t know how to judge that or what to make of it. Does it mean anything to you that the trade will be okay? It doesn’t endear me to the work any more that it succeeds at that level, but it’s at least worth acknowledging, I suppose.

I think the key issue has been the timing. For an 8-9 month event, each issue has been shallow and slow. If they could have found a way to squeeze all of this into 4 months, maybe this would have worked out pretty well despite all of its narrative problems. It’d have still been flawed, but the flaws would have come fast enough and often enough that the reader might have stopped caring. 8 months is just too damn long to live with this many flaws and this little substance, though. I guess sales have been good, and fans are happy, but to me... to me, 8 months is a very long time. I don't see how you can expect anyone to sustain their enthusiasm for 8 months. But I have commitment issues, maybe, so...

***

So: what are the “story possibilities” that the new Masters of Evil generate exactly?

Maybe I’m not understanding but isn’t it really just a question of when and how the Masters of Evil’s existence gets revealed? Once somebody goes “Hey, the Masters of Evil are in charge of everything,” isn’t the story over? Which- how long does it take for that to happen if two of the Masters of Evil are good guys? How evil can they get without Namor or Emma Frost stamping down on the brakes?

Or- I'm confused how much damage Norman Osborn is supposed to be able to do just because he runs ... whatever it is that he runs. Is Captain America going to start eating babies because Norman Osborn says so? Would Captain America eat a baby from the feet towards the head, or do you think he'd start from the baby head and eat towards the feet? If Norman Osborn made us all eat babies, I think most of us would eat from the feet towards the head because we'd want to put off realizing that we were eating a baby until the last possible moment. I know I certainly wouldn't start at the head, like some kind of fucking pervert. But Captain America? He fought in the War and probably ate all sorts of crazy stuff while he was wandering around World War 2 era Europe during the winter. I'm thinking Captain America would want to just get it over with because all the time spent playing with his food? Hey, brother, that's time that he could spend fighting for his country. I think he would start at the head and goes towards the feet, but in his case, not because he's some kind of weirdo, but because he's a fucking hero. (Bucky or Steve Rogers Cap; I don't think there would be any difference between the two when it comes to baby-eating).

It seems like they’re angling towards putting together an espionage/conspiracy thriller for the Marvel universe, some kind of "chess match"-y type thing. That could work, I suppose, but… I'm having a hard time seeing how they're not going to tread dangerously close to Roger Ebert's Idiot Plot territory every step of the way, based upon the characters they've chosen.

Am I misreading the situation? Is there any series that people are looking forward to coming out of this? Are people excited?

***

I am so happy this series is done. I am so happy this series is done. But look: it’s not completely the series’ fault. You’re not supposed to read series like how I read this one, with the essays or the hooplah or the thinking about it or the hoping it’d be any good or the expecting anything to happen—anything at all! I’m like the boyfriend who’s “suffocating.” Me and the Marvel Universe just need some space. A lot of space. So much space. The more space, the better.

What happens next for me? I’m going to clean up my apartment, wash my hair, and then get started writing reviews of the new issue of HUSTLER MAGAZINE. I’ve decided that from now on, I’m going to only write reviews of hard-core pornography magazines for this blog.

HOLY SHIT: LAST-MINUTE TWIST ENDING! Comics used to be a passion before SECRET INVASION, but as you can see that didn’t really work out. But luckily, I have a passion for vaginas.

Here’s a taste of what you can look forward to in 2009:

HUSTLER’S ASIAN FEVER #1: while the cover of ASIAN FEVER (NSFW) promises a “Penetrating Premiere Issue”, it turns out this is a gross overstatement. In terms of insight into either the topic of Asians or the topic of Fevers, very little is offered that would qualify as "penetrating." Why, I hate to say it but this magazine is barely even literate! Instead, Mr. Flynt seems to have intended “penetrating” to be a mere double entendre for sexual penetration involving an erect “penis.” Come on, Mr. Flynt: aren’t we a little old for that sort of low-brow humor? I wish ASIAN FEVER would expect more of its readers. On the other hand, boobies. Very good. THE SAVAGE CRITIC WEBSITE WILL NEVER, EVER, NEVER NEVER BE THE SAME, NEVER. Except it still won’t update very often. We’re sticking with that.

Here is the reason for the season: Jog on the Holiday Gifts of 12/4

Drop your cocks and grab your socks, irregardless of anatomy! I'm taking you on an old-fashioned sleigh ride through today's seasonal Marvel comics, just like Grandma used to do back in the '60s, when she posted comic book reviews on the internet via heroic doses of hallucinogenic substances. Those were some good comics, or good hallucinogenics.

Moon Knight: Silent Knight #1:

One thing I've gotta say: I do like that Laurence Campbell & Lee Loughridge art, and there's 32 pages of it in here (for $3.99, mind you), so that's something. They're also the current artist-colorist duo on The Punisher MAX, where some fun stuff is going on with heavy, angry blacks and hot & cold colors - there's a thing at the end of #63 where the Punisher is literally vanishing into a bush, just scraps of face and white skull, and it does an awful lot to bolster the mood for writer Gregg Hurwitz, who's mostly working from a stock 'Punisher agrees to help folk in need; encounters awful villain' scenario.

Their work isn't quite as vivid here, since the action is mainly kept to chilly city exteriors, but I appreciated how snowflakes are used as a sort of static, really aggravating the action into worse violence, and even giving peaceable scenes some visual overload. There's some kitchen interiors too, which Loughridge washes over with a sick green tone, which adds an extra queasiness to the rather plain 'superhero love interest is upset' caption monologue writer Peter Milligan has going.

Yes, Milligan! That's why I always read the solicitation copy for these one-shots - you never know who might pop up! Unfortunately, the best that can be said of this comic's writing is that it's sturdily adequate in its workmanlike approach. The story sees Moon Knight hunting killers for the holidays, with Khonshu (I think; I don't read the ongoing) acting as demonic comic relief a la Ryuk from Death Note (just the first example that pops to mind). It's pretty tough being a superhero -- innocents die because Moon Knight just wasn't fast enough -- but it's also a bother being a superhero's longtime lover, as a subplot with Marlene indicates from its lack of shared turkey and wine.

A tiny little beam of light shines through on occasion, like a fantasy panel with a monster leaping out of Marc Spector's skin, or Khonshu commenting on the racial dynamics of Moon Knight's hunt. But this is mostly dead-typical costumed angst, with no more compelling narrative drive than its lust to remind us how being a Marvel superhero is the apparently the most difficult thing ever, and really bad when it's a holiday. And while those visuals make it crueler than usual, in a good way, they're not the type to overcome a story like this on their own merits. 'Tis the greatest EH of all.

The Punisher MAX X-Mas Special #1:

This, on the other hand, climaxes with a blood-drenched shootout in a manger at the birth of a boy, so it pretty much has the contest won right there.

I might have expected that. The writer's Jason Aaron, who's proven to be pretty good at these one-off issues (this one's 34 pages of story for your $3.99), and here he strives to present an extra-special Christmas wonder: the beloved story of the birth of the Christ, as a Frank Castle adventure in mob slaughter.

Really! A dreaded boss sends a horde of gun-toting thugs into a hospital to shoot every baby in the nursery to death with large automatic weapons (one guy's pretty unsure about the whole thing!), but they miss the also-evil Mary and Joseph characters from a rival gang. There's little the Punisher can do to miss a good birth (cue 'Nam flashback!), so he winds up protecting the trio from three kings of the East... kings of murder, that is!! There's even a street thug named Shepherd who wants to find the baby for the purposes of ransom. He and a cohort:

"You know how much smack a million dollars would buy?"

"A lot, I bet."

Anyway, the Punisher kills the bad people for the baby's sake, because there's nothing good around save for the fragility of innocence; the only savior around him is potential, and even that counts as a holiday miracle.

The focus isn't quite on all that, however - Aaron is more interested in having a wise man enter the nativity scene with a blazing gun, only to get kicked in the head by a nearby animal. It's all deeply silly -- almost proud in how obvious it all is -- and probably would collapse into rubbish with an even slightly more ponderous approach (or something more blatantly slapsticky, in the Garth Ennis Marvel Knights manner), but the right aesthetic of total scriptural irreverence and nonstop movement is thankfully struck.

I haven't seen artist Roland Boschi's work with Aaron on Ghost Rider, but I like how Daniel Brown is coloring him in a very similar manner to Goran Parlov's work (especially on similarly comedic The Punisher Presents: Barracuda), almost as a form of visual continuity. If I'm gonna compare, Boschi isn't as strong an artist - there's a strange distortion to some of his character work, like faces are bending a little, which I find more distracting than evocative. But he serves up the gory enthusiasm with just enough of a straight face to keep the script on the level, which is most crucial. GOOD all around.

The Debut Switcheroo: Jeff Advocates Cthulhu Tales #10 for Entirely Self-Serving Reasons

Um. So, I wanted to talk about last week's Previews. More specifically, page 225:

CTHULHU TALES #12 by William Messner-Loebs, Jeff Lester, Jeremy Rock & Chee

Jeff Lester pens "Reunion Tour," what is probably our favorite Cthulhu Tale to date, a story melding rock and roll, age-old partnerships, unnameable beasts from the dimensions beyond time and space, and flight attendants! Also, William Messner-Loebs returns to Cthulhu Tales with a short story of chilling horror!

Honestly, as solicitation text for my comic book debut go, I couldn't be more fortunate...except for one tiny, nagging detail: my story isn't in Cthulhu Tales #12. It's been moved up to Cthulhu Tales #10.

And so, rather than an extended, perfectly planned and executed series of posts in which I woo you into purchasing my first story, I have to go with the last minute, flat-out shameless pitch: please purchase Cthulhu Tales #10, coming out in January. (You can use order code OCT083937.) Although it's long past the date for initial orders, if you go to your retailer, tell them you want a copy of the issue (and give 'em this code: OCT083937), they can proably still reserve you a front-row seat for my transition from "guy who talks too much on the Internet" to "guy whose characters hopefully don't talk too much on the printed page."

Here's the splash for the story (every time I try to bump the size a bit higher it breaks the page, so...):

From CE

I chose this panel because Chee, the artist, did such an amazing job with blacks, whites and particularly (what looks to my untrained eyes as) those grey washes, that the editors decided to run the story in black and white, and I hope you can at least see a little bit of that here.

This panel is also the closest I get to sounding like classic Lovecraft, so it may not be entirely representative of the story as a whole. The other stuff is a bit more like this:

So... you know. If you enjoy my writing on this site (as well as the humor stuff I've done over here), I think you'll dig this. You know your comics store better than mine, but most stores don't stock Cthulhu Tales in Avengers-sized quantities, so if you're interested, you might be better served by going to the retailer (with this code: OCT083937) and trying to get 'em to order a copy in advance from whatever amount over the initial orders Boom! printed.

Again: Cthulhu Tales #10. Order code OCT083937. Coming out in January.

Thank you. Apart from a brief notice the week the issue comes out, I promise not to do any additional shilling here.

(Oh, and speaking of last week's Previews, if you check out the IDW section, you'll see Hibbs has a second volume of Tilting At Windmills coming out. I'm hoping he'll talk here about that one sooner or later. We were amused we both had stuff in the same issue of Previews, though.)

Jeff Asks: Hey, Is Manga Dying?

Don't get me wrong--I'm not asking if, y'know, manga manga, that whole ginormous industry over in Japan is dying? Nor am I asking if, like, collections of Naruto or Bleach are sitting there rotting on the shelves.

But is the manga industry in America dying? I'm totally reluctant to ask such a question--not least because I'm totally in the dark about how something like, say, publication schedules in Japan can allow American publications to catch up (like with Sgt. Frog, I think) and all sorts of other mitigating factors.

It was one thing when the sixth volume of Yotsuba&! never shipped from ADV. And it was another thing when DMP announced it was cutting eleven publications from its monthly publication list and the fourth volume of Flower of Life would be coming out in May, 2009. Although frustrating, these events made a certain amount of sense to me because these were smaller fish in the manga pond, and maybe their ambitions had outstripped their ability.

Similarly, although incredibly pissed and frustrated that volume 13 of Beck Mongolian Chop Squad, originally promised for September 2008, is not listed for June 2009 on Amazon's website, I can similarly see how Tokyopop has been over-extended for some time now, and any number of short-sighted strategies are coming back to haunt it.

But, you know, where's that second hardcover of Tezuka's Black Jack? (For that matter, why did the first hardcover volume have an exclusive story but a non-updated table of contents?) Where's volumes 11 and 12 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure from Viz, while Amazon still lists Vol. 13 as scheduled for release in April of 2009? Why are major publishers cutting huge corners, dropping titles from their publication schedule unannounced, if not because, you know, they have to?

I don't know. I guess I'm just pissed because if I had hopped on the scanlation train, I'd be long since finished with Beck by now.

So, what's the scoop? Is the great manga implosion happening? Or am I just pulling a big Chicken Little about the whole thing? As Hibbs would say: What do YOU think?

It is 2006 again! (or maybe 1993)

Something reasonably rare happened this week: SUPERMAN, BATMAN, and WONDER WOMAN all shipped in the same week.

SUPERMAN #682: I'm just not feeling this "New Krypton" storyline -- maybe because I agree with the idea that Superman works better when he's the "Last Son of Krypton". I can just barely accept Supergirl, too, but when there are Kryptonians everywhere (including, we're told, new versions of Superwoman, and Nightwing & Flamebird; not to mention Zod, etc.) I start not to care.

Superman is a hard guy to write, I get that, and not everyone is suited to him. I really like James Robinson as a writer, but Superman doesn't play to what I would consider his strengths as a writer (same with Greg Rucka, of the newly announced Superman-less ACTION)

There's nothing at all wrong with any of this -- in fact the story as presented is fairly solid. The Kryptonians decide to "clean up" Superman's problems, which leads to more strife, fair enough -- but I just don't have any affection for Kandor or Kandorians, except in some abstract pathos-driven view ("Oh, how sad they're trapped in a bottle, as one of Kal's greatest failures") -- one that put the "man" in "Superman", look HE can fail, too. I also like Kandor as a silver-agey plot device, as a way to show that Superman is still heroic, even without his "super" bits. But those are both based on KAL, not on Kandor itself, of any of its specific inhabitants.

This is somewhat similar to my Problems With Atlantis, if you think about it.

Like I said, the issue itself is competent -- I'd give it a high OK -- but at the end of the day I don't like the setup, and all I'm thinking is "how fast can we get them back in that bottle"?

Sounds like that ISN'T happening, however -- we're told that Kal goes off into space, and he won't be seen on Earth for some period of time. In fact, he's losing the starring berth in the title that started it all: ACTION. I just don't see how that's going to lead to compelling stories, in and of itself. I'm old enough to recall the last time he set off to space for an extended period, and thinking "Man, when is he going to get back to Earth?" in every issue.

WONDER WOMAN #26: This is probably going to be a bit unfair, but my first thought upon finishing this was "Women in Refrigerators!" -- the helpless civilians all sadistically slaughtered are all women, and we end up with Diana hung looking crucified. Ew.

There's some potentially interesting other stuff here, with the Old Gods returning (From where? And what the HELL are they wearing?!?!), and sounding like they're going to quit, which is presumably how we'll get the "manazons" we've been told about, which will lead to, we assume, the Wonder Not-Woman who will be "Olympian"?

We'll see how this all plays out, but I did think this comic was unnecessarily cruel, and not really focused on anything that I much like about Wonder Woman. OK.

BATMAN #681: I don't think the world needs another BATMAN #681 review, really, so let me just note that I felt like all of the reveals were undercut pretty much right away. Is he Thomas Wayne? The dialogue immediately afterwards would seem to indicate not. Did Bruce blow up in that helicopter? Considering the entire issue repeats again and again that Batman is the master of the contingency plan, let's call that one "unlikely".

Fuck, the local news, I guess having read it on Drudge, called me Friday night and wanted to shoot a story in the store. I'm not one to turn down free publicity, but I felt really awful on this one -- I don't want a bunch of civies coming in thinking this is Batman's "death" like they descended for Cap's. I said something like "It's more of a psychological death, than a physical one", but there I am on the channel 5 news report anyway. Ha!

Plus, since Morrison has directly said that this takes place before FINAL CRISIS, it would seem safe to assume that he DIDN'T "die", as such. Making both "what next?" and "why?!?!" to be extremely confusing questions for this reader.

I thought the issue itself was (again) competent, and things were certainly clearer on a single read-through than the earlier chapters, so, again, OK.

This week also brought us TRINITY #26, the half-way point of the series, a series we were told was ABOUT the "Big Three", but has since become about them NOT being around. Week-to-week, I'm enjoying it decently as a tale, but it doesn't feel like what it was billed at, and, beleive it or not, we're actually selling fewer copies than we were of COUNTDOWN at this same point. It, too, is OK.

I was reading some interview or feature in the last few weeks where someone, maybe Didio, maybe Johns, maybe Giffen said something along the lines of "The DC universe works if Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are working"

On the face of that, I'm not really certain that statement is true, but let's pretend that it is, without objection.

My question is: ARE they "working"? I, for one, really don't think so. In fact, what I see is playing a VERY familiar hand out over again.

Cast your mind back to the dark distant days of 2006. In those dim and hazy days, DC declared there would be a weekly mini-series exploring a year in the DCU, without Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. While we didn't SEE most of that missing year for those three, the idea was the characters weren't the characters.

Right now, of course, we have a weekly mini-series that is showing the world as it would have been without Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. There will be a "battle for Batman's cowl", Wonder Woman is going to be "replaced by manazons", and Superman is no longer unique, and is going off into space to not star in his own books.

Does current DC management only have ONE idea for how to make this all work?

And of course, this is all echoes of 1993 when Superman was dead and replaced by a bunch of like-a-looks, there was a battle for Batman's cowl, and Bat-rael took over and (well, a little later in 1994) Wonder Woman was replaced by the darker more vicious Artemis. Only real difference is they didn't have weekly comic books back then...

DC is in deep deep kimshee right now. Our BATMAN sales have dropped precipitously, and, trust me, Tony Daniel isn't going to bring them back. ACTION spiked up for Johns/Frank, but that never played into SUPERMAN, and that's all going to piss itself away right now, and WONDER WOMAN is back into decline again. Meanwhile anything b-list on the schedule is dying fast, and c-list stuff like REIGN IN HELL or RANN/THANAGAR WAR has dropped to, and I'm not kidding, where I'm now lucky to be selling a SINGLE not-preordered rack copy.

This is comics, and in comics reinvention is King, and every month a new issue comes out again that holds the potential to erase every sour thought... but DC needs to do something serious, and something fast because they're headed in absolutely the wrong direction right now.

What do YOU think?

-B

Arriving 12/4/2008

New Comics Day is THURSDAY in the US this week, because of last week's Thanksgiving holiday. Don't come in early, or you'll feel silly!!

I'm finishing the order form today (I hope), so a review tomorrow, I believe.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #579
ANITA BLAKE VH LAUGHING CORPSE #3 (OF 5)
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #194
ARMY @ LOVE THE ART OF WAR #5 (OF 6)
ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #10
AUTHORITY #5
BATMAN #682
BETTY #177
BOYS #25
BROKEN TRINITY WITCHBLADE BLAKE CVR A (ONE SHOT)
CABLE #9
CHARLATAN BALL #5
CHUCK #6 (OF 6)
CRIMINAL 2 #7
CRIMINAL MACABRE CELL BLOCK 666 #2 (OF 4)
CROSSED #2 (OF 9)
DARKNESS #72 LUCAS CVR A
DOCTOR WHO FORGOTTEN #4
DREAMLAND CHRONICLES IDW #6
EL DIABLO #4 (OF 6)
ENDERS SHADOW BATTLE SCHOOL #1 (OF 5)
ETERNALS #6
HACK SLASH SERIES #18 SEELEY CVR A
HAUNTED TANK #1 COVER A (OF 5)
HELLBOY WILD HUNT #1 (OF 8)
HULK FAMILY GREEN GENES #1
I HATE GALLANT GIRL #2 (OF 3)
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #20
IRON MAN HULK FURY ONE SHOT
JINGLE BELLE SANTA CLAUS VS FRANKENSTEIN (ONE SHOT) CVR A
JONAH HEX #38
JUGHEAD #192
JUNGLE GIRL SEASON 2 #2
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #21
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #145
KULL #2 (OF 6)
LIBERTY COMICS A CBLDF BENEFIT BOOK (NEW PTG)
LOONEY TUNES #169
LORDS OF AVALON KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS #1 (OF 6)
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT SECRET INVASION AFTERMATH
MARVEL ZOMBIES 3 #3 (OF 4)
MARVELS EYE OF CAMERA #1 (OF 6)
MOON KNIGHT SILENT KNIGHT #1
MOUSE GUARD WINTER 1152 #4 (OF 6)
NECRONOMICON #3 (OF 4)
NEW AVENGERS #47 SI
NEW EXILES #15
NINJA HIGH SCHOOL #165
NYX NO WAY HOME #4 (OF 6)
PUNISHER MAX X-MAS SPECIAL 2008
SANDMAN DREAM HUNTERS #2 (OF 4)
SECRET INVASION #8 (OF 8) SI
SECRET INVASION FRONT LINE #5 (OF 5) SI
SGT ROCK THE LOST BATTALION #2 (OF 6)
SHE HULK COSMIC COLLISION
SHIRTLIFTER #3 (A)
SIR APROPOS OF NOTHING #2 (OF 5)
SOLOMON KANE #3 (OF 5)
SUPERGIRL COSMIC ADVENTURES IN THE 8TH GRADE #1
SUPERMAN SUPERGIRL MAELSTROM #3 (OF 5)
SWORD #13
TERRA #3 (OF 4)
TERROR TITANS #3 (OF 6)
TRINITY #27
VIXEN RETURN OF THE LION #3 (OF 5)
WEAPON X FIRST CLASS #2 (OF 3)
WHAT IF HOUSE OF M
WOLVERINE MANIFEST DESTINY #2 (OF 4) MD
WOLVERINE POWER PACK #2 (OF 4)
X-INFERNUS #1 (OF 4)
X-MEN MANIFEST DESTINY #4 (OF 5) MD
X-MEN NOIR #1 (OF 4)
YOUNGBLOOD #6
ZERO G #3 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALTER EGO #82
ASTONISHING X-MEN HC VOL 02 DM ED
ASTOUNDING SPACE THRILLS ARGOSY SMITH TP
BLEACH TP VOL 25
BUMPER BOOK OF ROY OF THE ROVERS HC
CALIBER HC VOL 01 FIRST CANON OF JUSTICE
CHICA GN VOL 02 (A)
CLEBURNE GN
CREEPY ARCHIVES HC VOL 02
DAREDEVIL BY MILLER JANSON TP VOL 02
DAREDEVIL PREM HC YELLOW
EROTICA UNIVERSALIS SC (A)
ESSENTIAL WOLVERINE TP VOL 05
FALL OF CTHULHU TP VOL 03 GRAY MAN
GLACIAL PERIOD GN 3RD PTG
GODLAND TP VOL 04 AMPLIFIED NOW
HEAVY METAL JAN 2009
HERCULES HC VOL 01 THE THRACIAN WARS
INFINITY CRUSADE TP VOL 01
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN PREM HC VOL 01
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK TP VOL 04 DIGEST
MICE TEMPLAR HC VOL 01 THE PROPHECY
MISKATONIC PROJECT HP LOVECRAFT WHISPERER IN THE DARKNESS
PS238 TP VOL 06 SENSELESS ACTS OF TOURISM
RISERS GN VOL 01
SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERGIRL TP VOL 02
SPIRIT TP VOL 01
STAR TREK ASSIGNMENT EARTH TP
SUPERMAN BATMAN VENGEANCE TP
TEEN TITANS ON THE CLOCK TP
TINY LIFE GN
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #172
WALT DISNEYS CHRISTMAS PARADE #5 (RES)
WAR AT ELLSMERE TP
WASTELAND TP BOOK 03 BLACK STEEL IN THE HOUR OF CHAOS

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Speaking of Turkeys, Here's Abhay's FOURTH Blue Beetle Essay.

I. Starting in April 2008, the SAVAGE CRITIC website began to bring you a five-part series on the cancellation of BLUE BEETLE. It “technically” hadn’t “happened” yet. “Technically”, BLUE BEETLE was only canceled on November 12th, but...

It wasn't exactly difficult to predict.

And suddenly, last week: our little corner of the internet spasmed. Suddenly: I’m not alone. All sorts of people were asking themselves: “Why didn’t BLUE BEETLE succeed?” And their answers involved things being shoved into asses! I’m not alone, universe! I’m not alone!

So... This one’s going to be extra ramble-y. Sorry.

II.

Before the blog post which received some attention last week, the book’s author, John Rogers posted an earlier statement to his (actually, otherwise quite entertaining) blog, a sort of recap of his intent as the writer of BLUE BEETLE:

We wanted to establish a new superhero for younger readers, and add a different viewpoint to the DCU. Something you could give your 12 year old nephew to read without first forcing him to complete a degree in DC Continuity. A lot of people hated us, then some of them liked us, and then some of them loved us ... while a lot of people still hated us. Those people can go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers.

Let’s begin by seeing if we should go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers. Let’s pound out a single issue of the series, issue #16 of the BLUE BEETLE series. Just so we’re all on the same page as to what it was exactly that got cancelled.

Issue #16 is very near the end of the series (if not the technical final issue of publication). The series’ story concludes in issue 25; it just kept getting published past that point.

So: a rock crawled up young Jamie Reyes’s ass and turned him into the Blue Beetle. In issue #13, Blue Beetle learns that the rock was a device from an alien empire named The Reach. At first, the Reach pretend to be “good guys”, but the book abandons this idea within that issue and reveals that they’re evil immediately, rather than create or maintain any sort of suspense. However, the rest of the world is unaware that the Reach is evil, as the Reach has approached the governments of Earth promising aid & assistance.

A reader might expect this to be a source of tension & conflict in future issues. Nope, not at all: that reader should go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers! Aliens invading Earth-- what’s the logical next thing to happen?

Eclipso opens us up. To the wonders of interpretive dance. FAME, I’M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER-- LIGHT UP THE SKY WITH MY NAME-- FAME! So, for the 12 year old nephews: who is Eclipso?

Dear Joss Whedon, Please go back in time and prevent your own existence, perhaps by seducing your own mother at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. Very truly yours, Me After Having Read BLUE BEETLE. P.s. Would Willow make out with me even though she turned all gay at the end? I hope so. XOXOXO.

Say: Who’s that talking and explaining all of this? It’s Blue Beetle’s brand-new romantic interest, Traci 13, introduced to BLUE BEETLE readers for the first time in issue #16.

Things I Don’t Know To This Day: (a) who this character is, (b) who created this character, (c) if this character is featured in any other DC comic, (d) what other characters she hangs out with, (e) who the “Croato—Uh, some detectives” are, and (f) what love feels like.

The issue begins with Eclipso fighting Traci 13, who is wielding the “stolen Staff of Arion”, a reference to a supporting character debuting in 1982 in the series WARLORD. This will be exciting for your 12-year old nephew, provided that your 12-year old nephew was born in 1970.

To help in the fight, Traci 13 recruits Blue Beetle. Together, they discover that Eclipso has strung up members of the Posse like the victims of the aliens in Aliens, using some kind of sadness-goo. Blue Beetle uses his powers to free them from the sadness-goo that’s holding them.

Blue Beetle, Traci 13 and Blue Beetle’s friend Paco then confront Eclipso. Paco saves the baby, and Traci 13 defeats Eclipso. The issue ends with Traci 13 and Blue Beetle holding each other, presumably to start making out once the comic fades to black. Despite the fact that Blue Beetle mentioned vomiting earlier in the issue. As soon as this comic is over, Traci 13 is going to shove her tongue into Blue Beetle’s vomit mouth, and taste the flavor of his upchuck. I think this will be a huge turn-on for your 12 year old nephew, in so far as he’s probably into some pretty weird-ass kinky shit that I’m not even hip to. You know: like, stuff involving boners, basically.

***

What was the story told by issue #16?

You could argue that the story of this issue is “Blue Beetle gets a girlfriend by being heroic.” But the problem with that interpretation: Blue Beetle never acts heroically once in the issue. Not once. The only thing he does the entire issue is defeat some sadness-goo. Which— hell-naw, if wiping away sadness-goo was enough to get you laid, I got a tube sock that’s Wilt Chamberlain. Furthermore, that interpretation ignores page 21. Page 21 needs to be shown in whole…

So, your 12 year old nephew is now supposed to understand that:

1) This is a reference to the DC character, the Elongated Man, a former Justice League member who dates back to 1960.

2) Traci 13 was apparently raised by the Elongated Man and his wife Sue Dibny.

3) Sue Dibny was murdered by Jean Loring, the Silver Age ex-wife of the Atom.

4) Jean Loring became Eclipso in some issue of something sometime, for some reason. I don’t know when or why myself, but that apparently happened.

This issue is all about the character of Traci 13 and her revenge on Jean Loring / Eclipso for the events of 2004’s IDENTITY CRISIS (which your 12 year old nephew would love since it’s wall-to-wall rape and dead pregnant women). HOW DID THIS COMIC EVER GET CANCELED???

***

Allow me to head off a counter-argument: I didn’t pick a bad issue from the run on purpose, to make my point. I picked an issue involving two ladies having a sexy catfight. I didn’t pick an issue to make BLUE BEETLE look bad-- this was the part of the B-movie montage where Kato Kaelin starts up a bonfire in the background, and Trishelle from Real World: Las Vegas takes off her top, and George Perez and I high-five. It’s all fucking downhill from #16.

***

Here’s the bigger problem--

Two words are never mentioned in the issue: THE REACH.

The bad guys for the entire series.

They’re never mentioned once. Three issues after their introduction.

In any competent work, The Reach would become the focus of what follows. The stakes would escalate, getting the audience to hate The Reach more and more until the book reached its emotional and thematic climax.

Instead:

Issue #15 is a fill-in issue involving a team-up between Blue Beetle and Superman.

Issue #17 involves Blue Beetle fighting Typhoon, the “Soul of the Storm”.

Issue #18 involves the Blue Beetle teaming up with the Teen Titans to fight Lobo.

Issue #19 minimally advances the La Dama subplot.

Issue #20 is a SINESTRO WARS cross-over that features The Reach, but only while it crosses over to another multi-title crossover I haven’t read, and have no intention of reading.

Issue #21 involves the Blue Beetle meeting the Spectre.

The book ignores its own bad guy until the finale, at which point we’re supposed to care about them again. The bad guys don’t spend the second act … being bad guys, doing evil things, antagonizing the hero, any of that.

They flat-out don’t even appear in the comic.

Dude!

III. The conclusion I draw from the foregoing:

BLUE BEETLE tried to be a simple story about a young boy learning to be a man and to find his place in the world by heroically facing insurmountable odds with the help of his friends and family.

But that isn’t the story they told. The story they told was: a new DC character introduces himself to other DC characters, and finds his place in the DCU.

The audience for that isn’t 12 year old nephews; it’s DC fans, for whom that story served no pressing need or desire or want. And also: BLUE BEETLE?

Look, it’s sort-of a rip-off of INVINCIBLE.

INVINCIBLE is a creator owned series created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker that launched in 2003, and is currently published by Image Comics. It’s about an optimistic teenager who gets superpowers and tries to juggle his exciting new life as a superhero, his teenage friends, and family, without losing his upbeat attitude. BLUE BEETLE, on the other hand, is about…

I was at a bookstore the other day; saw this quote by Stephen King in his book ON WRITING (haven’t read the book, but I thought it was a good quote): “People who decide to make a fortune writing like John Grisham or Tom Clancy produce nothing but pale imitations, by and large, because vocabulary is not the same thing as feeling and plot is light-years from the truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.”

This was a series that didn’t offer anything to people that they couldn’t already get elsewhere, from a product with more acclaim, less baggage, easier to jump onto, more fun to jump onto, with more issues in the can, and … shit: how about a *twist*…? BLUE BEETLE doesn’t have anything resembling a twist anywhere in it; my theory is that a twist would be too upsetting, and the fanboy definition of The “Fun” Comic usually equates to nothing more than hyper-bland inoffensiveness, but… that’s a separate debate perhaps.

Even if you’re not willing to join me on the phrase “rip-off” – look, would you at least agree that BLUE BEETLE was second place? You don’t get points for being second place; comics don’t have a silver medal. Remember any vampire series in comics after 30 DAYS OF NIGHT? How many worthwhile crime comics have had to live in the shitty shadow of shitty-ass SIN CITY? How many other series about cat-people in wheelchairs fucking and sucking can you name besides OMAHA THE CAT DANCER?

The fact the 15,000 people who stuck with it liked it enough to say so on the Internet doesn't make a series "critically acclaimed." Bart Beaty isn't exactly working on a monograph, as far as I know. It just means 15,000 people live near a public library.

They didn’t have anything new to offer. That’s the sadness of comics. The cancellation is just gravity.

IV.

The cancellation isn’t the mystery here. The mystery is this: DC launches failed title after failed title. Off the top of my head, just in 90’s and 00’s: Young Heroes in Love, Damage, Power Company, Chase, Hawk & Dove, Suicide Squad, Major Bummer, Xero, Breach, Bloodhound, Manhunter, Doom Patrol, Primal Force, Lab Rats, Stars and STRIPE, Vext, Aztek, All-New Atom, Harley Quinn, Hourman, Martian Manhunter, and probably many more I don’t remember. Just for the DCU alone.

None of them ever, ever work.

There’s an Einstein quote President-Elect Obama (yay!) is fond of: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

The mystery is this: Why do they keep doing the same thing that doesn’t work, over and over again? The pertinent question isn’t why was Blue Beetle canceled. The pertinent question is: why did they publish it to begin with? What did they think would happen, in spite of the overwhelming weight of history and experience? Did they think they were doing anything differently from what had failed countless times before? Why would this cancellation be surprising to anyone anywhere?

Does it even look like a publishing scheme to you, or some kind of elaborate sleight-of-hand so Time-Warner-Keebler executives don't ask too many questions? When the executives come to check on how things are going, do you think there's someone at DC whose job it is to yell "They're coming! They're coming! Pretend you're working!"? It looks like an embezzling scheme.

With respect to the cancellation, as has been widely reported, author John Rogers angrily pointed the finger at DC’s publishing strategy, DC’s confused self-identity, “creepy” specialty shops, DC’s offices in Manhattan, DC’s gender confusion, the time DC fondled his balls at summer camp, DC’s gut-flopping fetish, etc. (And don’t forget the rest of us, still busy pounding our sand and collecting our Final Crisis variant covers.)

The standard Comic Creator “It’s Us vs. Them” finger-pointing... uhm: usually, it’s from people who work in comics, talking about series they still write…? Petty-Me found the whole thing extraordinarily strange: an author who didn’t actually write a comic anymore, angry that DC couldn’t find a way to continue to exploit the creative energies of young writers and artists in order to keep his abandoned creation alive, angry despite the fact sales straight-up cratered during his tenure on the title. The fact people quoted that without comment or question? A little strange.

“How dare DC not continue to suck the creativity of young talent to keep a series I created alive after I didn’t want to do anything with it? P.S. I was completely not in any way at fault for simply having written a comic that shed 35,000+ in sales while I was writing it. It’s time to go rogue on the Internet, maverick-style!”

And by young talent, Petty-Me is referring to folks who didn’t get handed their own DC ongoing series on near-zero comic-writing experience, just based on screenwriting credentials, a comic culture obsessed with Hollywood star-fucking, and well-connected friends, and then completely fail to deliver sales. The disinterest in nurturing native talent in favor of fly-by-night screenwriters is not something that’s wrong with comics at all!

But… But that’s all Petty-Me, and Petty-Me's a bit of an idiot sometimes, so... Let's try to find the deeper issues. V. I suppose it’s worth noting here the obvious truth that BLUE BEETLE succeeded by the only criteria that matters. It generated a parcel of IP that DC/Time-Warner-Keebler was able to exploit in a cross-media property. On a balance sheet, the rest—you, me, Grandma Midge-- we’re all minutiae.

Some fans question canceling the series once the character won the IP lottery. But: they have books they can sell curious Blue Beetle fans. They have four volumes of BLUE BEETLE trades that they can sell to all the new BLUE BEETLE fans of the world. All that argument amounts to is “they could have had five or six volumes instead of four.” Oh. Oh, well.

And what lucky new fans! Getting to read SINESTRO WAR or IDENTITY CRISIS tie-ins-- fun! Maybe the error wasn’t canceling the book; maybe the error was not insuring that those four books would be able to stand alone. I’ve heard the argument that you can understand the issues without knowing the specifics of the SINESTRO WAR crossover—but I personally think there’s a distance between comprehension and entertainment that argument doesn’t account for. For me, that SINESTRO issue especially was a huge turn off; you could perhaps understand the What of what happened, but not the Why. Reasonable minds could differ on that point, though.

VI.

My eyes glaze over anytime I hear the phrase “mid-list” though. I guess because I always flash on the same image anytime I hear it, the double-page splash from CRISIS OF INFINITE EARTHS #5:

In my head, I always hear “Why are you reading about Batman? Why aren’t you reading about that one speck instead? The little half-doodle George Perez made in the upper left-hand corner is a really great character. You should really read about the red speck next to the blue-green speck on the left hand cluster of specks. You have beautiful hair.”

It drives me a little crazy when people say “Fans don’t want new superheroes.” Because usually the people saying that? That’s not what they’re selling—— they’re just selling new specks. It’s less than surprising that there’s a ceiling on that enterprise.

But a mainstream comic market that’s as harsh as this one to new series. It’s … well, Jesus, it’s something, isn’t it?

Though: to an extent, it doesn’t make me entirely sad. You know, because I read good comics, too, and those are doing pretty decent lately…? I’ve got BERLIN 2: CITIZENS ON PATROL on the coffee table, waiting to be read. I finished the BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON recently—— pleasant book. I’ll end the year reading POPEYE, maybe. It’s often hard not to look at comics and think that the good guys are winning. And if Marvel and DC can’t get their acts together, and end up with failure after failure, well: there is a part of me that takes a certain pleasure in that. I might be very slightly bummed that I don’t get to read THE ORDER anymore, but if Marvel never sustains a new series again? Well: isn’t that satisfying to the part of you that believes in karma? Marvel, DC, these aren’t companies that deserve any love. These were never people to root for.

But…

But the water’s edge isn’t BLUE BEETLE. It’s Image series, Vertigo series, alternative monthlies. It’s the serial format, paper-and-staples comic. It’s a whole era of comics which, however misbegotten, is the one I was raised with, have affection for, want to continue with, etc. Plus: people I hope good things for still work in that system. For a certain kind of creator, whose work falls outside the narrow confines of what’s considered “artistic”, for genre creators, that’s still an important industry for any number of reasons.

I don’t suppose I’m interested in offering any great solutions to the problem here; having no real-world expertise, doesn’t that become absurd quickly? It’s just too premature to say how digital delivery systems are going to play out, and beyond that, any fancy prognostication becomes silly quickly. Until… until you’re the weird guy in the comment section yelling “Why don’t they sell Batman in an anthology like SHONEN JUMP?? They can sell them like they sell SHONEN JUMP in Japan, at newsstands next to stops for the bullet train. Because this country is also riddled with newsstands and bullet trains. The Japanese have the right idea—they like art, they’re fond of underage girls and they hate pubic hair. Me, the Japanese and John Ruskin, we’re all on the same page. Join us on Team Ruskin, DC.” Which—you know, I shouldn’t speak ill of Team Ruskin: I have my own silly little predilections (stand-alone maxi-series, one-shots, CBZ files, ass-to-mouth, etc). But…

But let’s ask: when people talk about a book like BLUE BEETLE failing, isn’t that an inherently different conversation, just by virtue of being a DCU title? Is the BLUE BEETLE conversation nothing more than-- “Why won’t the guy who buys BATMAN, SUPERMAN, X-MEN, SPIDERMAN, etc. also buy this other book? Why aren’t the people we squeeze and squeeze and squeeze for money—why can’t we squeeze some out of them, for this other book instead?” Isn’t that a question with its answer built into it?

There’s an implied belief in all of this that the important metric in the comic transaction should be the quality of the product, instead of the purchaser’s affection for the characters. That superhero fans should read the best superhero comic instead of the one featuring the best superhero. Which—— it's probably a belief I subscribe to myself, or want to, but…

But look where that line of thinking leads: after 22 issues, I can’t tell you what Blue Beetle’s powers were. At all. I can’t tell you what he had to do with beetles. Holy shit, dude: I can’t even tell you why he calls himself THE BLUE BEETLE. The part where he gets his name? They didn’t fucking show it in the comic. Holy shit, y’all!

...?

If you think a superhero comic should have great writing, those decisions don’t seem like the end of the world. But if you think a superhero comic should have a great superhero in it, then I don’t think that decision and many, many others can be justified.

Blue Beetle? He’s just some lame dude in a suit of arbitrariness. Sure. I remember being a kid and tying a blanket around my neck, and saying “this blanket can do various arbitrary things as the situation and context demands; I look forward to getting beat up in grade school.” Sure, sure.

After Alan Moore and SWAMP THING, we say to ourselves, “There are no bad characters; all those characters are just waiting for the right team.” But comics aren’t long on Alan Moore’s, so maybe we should revise that to "There are oodles of bad characters, but sometimes one-in-a-million creators write those characters for the short period of time that they manage to get work done without DC pissing them off enough to quit the company forever.”

(Tangent: I’m loving the part of WATCHING THE WATCHMEN where Dave Gibbons says “Fortunately, there was a greater pressure on us—that of keeping to the publishing schedule. We had given our own timeline to DC (which incidentally, we met), but they had advanced the publication dates for, no doubt, sound business reasons.” Love that part! Neat book.)

VII.

Recent Tradition demands that anyone writing about BLUE BEETLE conclude by demanding that you, the reader, insert things into your own asshole. This is a tradition that I whole-heartedly support.

I recommend inserting the Tristan 2.

The Tristan 2 is waterproof and made of a silicone material, which it’s heat-resistant, nonstick, and easy to clean. According to the Tristan 2 literature, the Tristan 2 was “inspired by fans” who wanted a plug that was bigger, longer and thicker than the paltry Tristan 1. Much like the Wu-Tang, the Tristan 1 is for the babies. You’ll notice that it indeed has a longer neck than the typical teardrop-shaped plug; that means greater staying power.

However, I should note that the Tristan 2 website has the following warning: “This is obviously not a plug for butt beginners.” This is obviously a warning that should be heeded by all of you butt beginners out there. Leave the Tristan 2 to the butt journeymen. There’s no official butt-ocracy that will tell you when you can advance from butt acolyte to butt made-man, but… pretty soon, you too can butt paraphrase Darth “Lord” Vader, and say “Now, the butt student has become the butt master.” Very good.

And the chorus goes bang: Douglas briefly surfaces to gasp for air

Yes, I've been gone for a bit--working on some stuff that's top secret, yet boring! FIGHT OR RUN: SHADOW OF THE CHOPPER: This might be my favorite comics pamphlet of the year so far; it's on this week's Diamond list, and if your local store doesn't carry it it's available from Buenaventura Press. It's a trifle of a thing, but so perfectly executed that I keep coming back to it with renewed pleasure. A bunch of "Fight or Run" shorts have appeared in Kevin Huizenga's other comics over the last few years, although I don't think this duplicates any of those. The premise couldn't be simpler (Huizenga describes it as "an open source comics game"): two characters (from a stable of several dozen, each with its own set of loosely defined abilities) appear on panel, and either they fight, in which case one of them wins, or one runs from the other, in which case the winner is the one who either escapes or captures the other. The battles sometimes proceed by videogame logic and sometimes go someplace totally unexpected--a page involving a hypercompetent character called McSkulls winning eight contests in a row through sheer girliness cracks me up every time I look at it. Actually, almost everything about this project cracks me up: the characters' names and designs (Pronouncement is an eye-in-the-pyramid with wings, Birther has a little Anders Nilsen scribble for a head), the terrain of horizontal dashes that functions just as well as any oh-what-the-hell videogame background, the "Rabbit Vs. Duck" fights that turn into abstract reinterpretations of the entire concept. EXCELLENT, and really not like anything else.

The last time I praised one of Huizenga's comics here, it appeared next to a joke about a (nonexistent) new Steve Ditko comic. This time, there actually is a new Steve Ditko comic: DITKO, ETC..., published by the artist and Robin Snyder. As Ditko gets older, there's something about his style that gets purer. He's not even pretending to carry stories any more--everything has been reduced to images of purity half-corrupted and sequences of thugs and snickering namby-pambies getting their comeuppance. About half of the issue is single-page pieces with titles like "Who Is Safe in a World of Non-Anti-A?"; there's also a sequence devoted to a new entity-with-a-costume called H the Hero, whose distinguishing characteristic seems to be that he's... a hero. After a few full-page pinups of H stomping out a formless mass of Ditko squiggles that's labeled "Anti-A Violence Crime Force Hatred Corruption" (and so on), we finally get a couple of pages of continuity, or something like it--really just H beating up some thugs while leaping around Spider-Man-style, as if to reassure us that Ditko can still play something like the old tune. Rather EH, on the whole, but jeez, it's new Ditko; I can imagine the gradual simplification of his artwork continuing for another few decades until everything he draws is just a straight line on the left side of the page and a squiggly line on the right, and it will be a perfect squiggly line.

And speaking of Spider-Man, I picked up last Wednesday's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #578 on the strength of Mark Waid's byline, and I'm glad I did: it's the first issue of the post-Brand New Day incarnation I've sampled that's made me want to see what happens next. This issue is one long, nearly continuous scene, which works for an episode of a weekly serial in a way that it might not for a monthly serial. There's not much in the way of plot here, but what there is is paced awfully effectively: a panel that reads at first as the climax of a joke turns out to be the moment where the story pivots from light farce to disaster-horror, and the cliffhanger ending is topped with a very clever second, character-based bit of suspense. Really nice artwork from Marcos Martin, too--it's got a buoyancy and flair that's always welcome in Spider-Man stories, and he conveys so much of the story visually that Waid gets to make most of his dialogue bouncy rather than expository. (Which also means it sometimes seems unnecessary, but even so there's something pleasantly Stan Lee-like about that effect.) Plus: the reliably entertaining image of Spider-Man about to be crushed under a big heavy thing. GOOD enough that I'm coming back for more.