Sorry this is late kids. Jetlag and all. But here it is, as promised: the Picks, Pans & Scans review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Remember, there are tons of spoilers in this thing so if you care, run away as quickly as possible. Enjoy! –Adan.

Brendan: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the best of all the Harry Potter series, and anyone who says otherwise is an ass. And with that, the opposing argument…
Adan: Alright there hoss. You’re gonna throw down right off the bat, are you?
Brendan: I came to play. I will defend this book’s honor.
Adan: Okay, then. This book is merely okay. Enjoyable in parts, but flawed overall. Let’s begin with the biggest of this book’s problems: Harry’s “death.” Don’t promise if you can’t deliver.
Brendan: What was the promise, and what failed to deliver? The Hallows remained Deathly to the end.
Adan: The promise was Harry’s death. There is one (or so) chapter in which Harry has to come to terms with dying for a cause, making this an epic story. But the author punks out instead and the Boy That Lived lives. You can’t make that kind of promise and not deliver.
Brendan: I don’t understand why an ending that tugs both ends of the emotional spectrum is a bail? There is death, yes, but like many heroic journeys, death is not the end. There are greater challenges.
Adan: You mean the stupid ass semantic victory over Voldemort? “I actually beat Malfoy, who beat Dumbledore; therefore I am the actual owner.” That’s almost worse than Eowyn’s semantic victory over the Ringwraith.
Brendan: The act of sacrifice is not the act of dying. The willingness to sacrifice is traditionally the greatest humanitarian value. And hey, she is no Man.
Adan: That’s bullshit is what that is.
Brendan: The problem with a series ending in death is twofold; one, as you say, it is exactly what was expected. Two, it is a downer and kills the ability to hope.
Adan: No it isn’t. Nobody ever expects the death of the main character. That’s why “Get Carter” is so damn awesome. And it isn’t a downer because the hero has died for a cause that is usually won through the hero’s death.
Brendan: But he died. Your bloodlust was appeased.
Adan: He didn’t fucking die. He took the scenic route through unconsciousness.
Brendan: Why must that be the end? Why should Harry’s entire existence be defined by Voldemort?
Adan: Because it has been for six books. Anything else is some kind of left field addition.
Brendan: Harry’s story is over. The story of The Boy Who Lived, his journey into the world of magic and majesty is at an end. This is what the afterward is all about.
Adan: Yeah, nineteen years in the future in some fan-fiction-y epilogue, which was also crap.
Brendan: It isn’t really about Harry’s life. He had a life before Hagrid landed on his doorstep and he had one in the nineteen missing years described. But this isn’t about his life, it is about his journey. To kill him makes it about his life. But there is more to life than what Voldemort decided.
Adan: His journey should have ended in death. Look, the difference between Harry dying and not dying is the difference between an epic story and just another fantasy novel.
Brendan: Bullshit. A seven year story is epic no matter how it ends.
Adan: Now that’s bullshit. Tell that to Laurell K. Hamilton.
Brendan: There is also a difference between what best serves a story and what a fan of the series wishes to see. That is the problem with expectations and an active audience. They become invested in the story, and then feel as though it is their story to persuade.
Adan: Yeah there is. A fan would want to see Harry live and the story would be better served by Harry’s death.
Brendan: You say that, but saying “Death makes it epic,” doesn’t really describe what serves the story.
Adan: The story is better as just another fantasy series instead of an epic?
Brendan: Dude, that means nothing. Those are just words.
Adan: This isn’t about Harry’s life, or his journey. This is about the magical world as a whole. After Harry dies, there are a bunch of other people who can take over, especially since Harry has done what he needed to do.
Brendan: What of the book’s content makes you think that?
Adan: The fact that while Harry, Hermione, and Ron are fucking about the woods of England, people are still fighting everywhere else. Badass Neville and his band are fighting at Hogwart’s. The Order is fighting somewhere. These people aren’t just sitting on their duffs waiting for Harry to save them all.
Brendan: He isn’t a tool. He is a character, a “person” who needn’t be defined by any one conflict.
Adan: He is a tool. He’s a tool that Dumbledore used. We are told as much, plain as day.
Brendan: Dumbledore believed in him, there is a difference. Dumbledore left the journey to chance.
Adan: Believed in his capacity as a tool, you mean. You use the right tool for the right job, and Harry was the right tool. As were his friends, incidentally.
Brendan: No. It was, perhaps, an experiment.
Adan: Yeah, that’s way better.
Brendan: It is, the idea is that the “right” side will prevail.
Adan: This doesn’t preclude Harry’s tool-ness.

Brendan: But let’s move on to that- the use of Dumbledore as a motivating factor, and even as a character, in this installment.
Adan: I didn’t like that his back story was essentially created whole cloth in this book. There were no pointers or foreshadowing in any previous book. This was just sloppy writing to me.
Brendan: Okay, well are we talking about what we like about the book, or are we talking about how the book served as an exemplar of how to pay off an “epic” story?
Adan: Look, sloppy writing is sloppy writing, regardless of the genre. There must be narrative flow.
Brendan: His duel with Grimenwald is addressed in the first book. It is laid out on the Chocolate Frog card. His crooked nose is a constant.
Adan: Sure, but his friendship with Grimenwald and his shared ideals are not, to say nothing of the fact that his brother has apparently been living in Hogsmeade this entire time. We couldn’t have addressed that in a previous installment? Perhaps mentioned a sister, just once?
Brendan: Voldemort’s fear of him as a great wizard is always alluded to, but never described. We didn’t meet Sirius in the first book; these things come up as they need to.
Adan: But we talked about Sirius and his relationship to the Potters in the first book. Hagrid is riding his motorcycle.

And to get back to your point about this being about Harry: no it isn’t, and we get clues to that in the story. The Boy Who Lived could have easily of been Neville; this story has always been about Voldemort and his machinations and fuck-ups.
Brendan: It is Harry’s journey. He acts as our eyes into this magical world. His fears, his wonder echoes our own. Neville’s story would have been about overcoming expectations and bitchy grandmas.
Adan: It is only Harry’s journey because Voldemort made it so. Like I said (and like the story said) it could just as easily have been Neville.
Brendan: Yes, but by deciding to make it about Harry, we learn more about the world as an outsider. Yes, it could have been Neville, but it is the choices that are made that decide the path.
Adan: We, the readers, would have anyway. And it’s Voldemort’s choices that decided the path.
Brendan: Among others. But as a reader, we couldn’t learn via Neville.
Adan: Yes, we could have. We just would have done so at an earlier age.
Brendan: We needed a fresh perspective, one with reactions akin to our own, to fully appreciate the breadth of this world.
Adan: Look, I’m not particularly interested in writing fan-fiction here, so let’s just get back to Dumbledore and his made-up back story.
Brendan: Ok, Dumbledore. Powerful wizards will have interest in Dark magic, as it is a powerful aspect of magic. Much like the Force. There is also a need for Albus to be sympathetic to Muggles. Because otherwise he would have agreed with Voldemort. By creating a back story where his experimentations dabbled on the side of the wrong, he is a much more believable champion of good.
Adan: Sure, but some of this should have been made clear in previous installments. To shove it all in this final chapter makes it seem rushed and not entirely thought out.
Brendan: Why? Did you wonder? Harry didn’t. And that is the point. Look, novel protagonists are, basically, blank slates. That is how we like it.
Adan: Of course I wondered. That man was basically a saint! I wondered all the time if he had a dark history, but was shoehorned into believing he didn’t until it was sprung upon me.
Brendan: Right. He was saintly and kind and childish and good. Well hey; I thought Snape was evil until the very end.
Adan: Snape was evil. None of this love saves the day bullshit. He was evil until Voldemort killed Lily. And then he was just evil to Voldemort.
Brendan: A child isn’t evil. Draco isn’t evil. A child is a product of the world around him.
Adan: Snape was working for Voldemort until Lily’s death. He was a Death Eater, happily killing Muggles until Lily died. But that’s neither here nor there.
Brendan: Actually, it is. Because this book is as much about Snape as Dumbledore.
Adan: I thought it was about Harry. Why did Snape have to go out like a punk? For that matter, why did the lion’s share of the deaths have to happen off panel?
Brendan: Because that is scarier.
Adan: It’s scarier that they die off panel? No, that’s just lazy.
Brendan: The fact is, in a war this epic, many things will happen beyond the eyes of the soldier.
Adan: I don’t entirely hold with the theory that what I can picture is scarier than what I am shown. Sometimes, somebody’s gonna have a way better imagination than I am. And those people usually write for a living.
Brendan: Okay, well let’s go death by death, case by case. The first death was that of Hedwig.
Adan: That was on-panel, and a very good death. The author showed this wasn’t another one of those play fights. This is a real war.
Brendan: This was a pivotal moment to me. The loss of innocence and the fact that nothing was sacred were vital in starting the book off running.
Adan: Hedwig represents Harry’s tether to the magical world. Hedwig was there at the beginning, and now he’s not.
Brendan: Yeah, and who likes to see pets die? Even the loss of the wand hurt.
Adan: Yeah, that hurt a lot. That almost hurt more than losing Hedwig.
Brendan: Next, I will throw out the near-death of Hagrid. This was very important to me.
Adan: This was more pussyfooting to me. I guess to foreshadow the big pussyfoot later.
Brendan: What purpose would killing Hagrid serve?
Adan: None, but pretending to kill him doesn’t serve any either. It’s just a shock moment. It’s, I’m sorry, lazy writing.
Brendan: The fact that a chapter closes with a potential death goes to show that this is a story where anything could happen. It doesn’t mean it will happen, but the threat of the gun is as powerful as the gun itself.
Adan: It’s the cliffhanger at the end of every comic: “Will the hero survive?” Of course he will. You’re just trying to drum up sales.
Brendan: Drumming up drama does not equal drumming up sales. Also, we knew someone was going to die during that journey. It was clear.
Adan: During the escape from 4 Privet Drive, you mean?
Brendan: Yeah. Would stripping Harry of his closest familial figure have further motivated him to take down Voldemort? Or would it have made him reckless and unreliable?
Adan: A little of both, I think. But that’s not as important as who actually died.
Brendan: Losing Mad Eye made Harry accountable for his own fate. There was no safety net left.
Adan: The baddest Auror dies off-panel, and the reader is left caring more about a dead owl and a twin’s lost ear.
Brendan: It isn’t an action story.
Adan: Obviously not. Nor should it be. Nonetheless, there is obviously some action. I will say that this sequence is redeemed slightly by the fact that Mad Eye’s mad eye is found later on Umbridge’s door.
Brendan: How does it redeem the scene?
Adan: That was a pretty awesome scene, and helped to cement Mad Eye’s death (“there is no death without a body”) and just ratchet up Umbridge’s overall dickishness. Plus, Harry goes a little crazy. The best scenes, I feel, are the ones in which Harry stops thinking like the adult he’s not, and start’s thinking like the teenager he is. It doesn’t matter that they’re at the Ministry for a reason, Mad Eye must be avenged. Or at least respected after death.
Brendan: All that Mad Eye is really important for is to serve as a professional hero to Harry. He gives Harry a purpose beyond Hogwarts. By dying the structure of the Order is compromised and the danger mounts. And I think one of the best scenes is his calling out of Lupin, and that was a very adult course of action/manipulation.
Adan: Yeah, that was pretty sweet.
Brendan: Anyways, next death: Scrimgeour. Again, off screen. Does it matter?
Adan: I guess he has to die so that Harry, et al. have no one inside the Ministry.
Brendan: Doesn’t the growing pile of dead bodies serve to illustrate the power of the Death Eaters?
Adan: Yeah, it does. This is actually a good off-panel death.
Brendan: Also, he reached out to the trio. There was an opportunity for unity, but they refused.
Adan: Scrimgeour is little more than a figurehead, and his death is also a symbol. Yeah, this was a good off-panel death.
Brendan: Okay. Next.
Adan: Wormtail?
Brendan: Yeah, and Dobby. That’s a two-fer. This was the most emotionally charged scene of the book, to me.
Adan: Wormtail’s death was very good because this was foreshadowed like three books ago.
Brendan: Yeah, he wasn’t going to be living. He lived long enough.
Adan: We the readers had been told that there was now powerful magic between Harry and Wormtail and this is how it manifested itself. Dobby’s death, on the other hand, is just another shock to me. Harry needed to somehow pay for getting them all caught and this is how the author chose to punish him.
Brendan: It is so much more. Dobby was the responsibility of Harry.
Adan: I think Dobby’s burial is so much more. The death itself, meh.
Brendan: Well they go hand in hand. The fact was we were as deep in the maw of the villains, we were as close to defeat as we had yet come. It was Harry’s foolhardiness, yes, but it is also Dobby’s animal-like love.
Brendan: It is one of the things that proves Dumbledore’s assertation.
Adan: What assertation?
Brendan: Love is the most powerful magic of all.
Adan: Ugh. Sure.
Brendan: Dobby owed Harry his life. He paid only what he was willing to pay. Grimace if you like, but that is the thesis of this entire series. Love trumps Hate every time.
Adan: I think I will grimace, thank you. And yeah, that’s Snape all over.
Brendan: Also, I never really liked Dobby. He was annoying and a burden and talked stupid. Yet his spirit overcame, and he was as important a character as any. He also served as a signal of the human/ non-human relations that were a macrochasm of the wizard/ muggle issue
Adan: I agree with half of that.

Oh Shit, we forgot about Ted Tonks and the other goblin. This is the first time that ancillary characters are killed simply to kill off characters. They were killed just to show how bad the wizarding world now was.
That was all there deaths were good for.
Brendan: Yeah, they were in close proximity to the gang, and it was about how lucky/skilled they were to go uncaught.
Adan: Maybe. I don’t like that Ted was Tonks dad and therefore was important only by association. It was like “Hey, I don’t want to kill off any actually important characters, but let’s pretend that I have.”
Brendan: What good does killing off major characters do? Why is that better than killing other people who are important to the other characters? In either case it ups the ante for the characters within the text, and that transfers to the reader.
Adan: None, but again, there’s no reason to pretend to kill of major characters. It smacks of manipulation. If this important, then it doesn’t matter who dies. Don’t try to force me to care.
Brendan: Death is important by nature of being death. It also is important because it shows exactly what it was Voldemort was so desperate to avoid. It was the finality of it.
Brendan: Next. I think the blood clears until the Fred Weasley mishap. Feel free to tell me why this one sucky.
Adan: No, this is actually also a good death, even though I personally wish the set could have been preserved (as a fan). This is actually the closest this book gets to killing off a major character.
Brendan: I agree as a fan, but I also knew as a writer/critic that not every Weasley could make it. Can’t have both twins.
Adan: Yeah, I assumed as much, though I would have preferred almost any other Weasley besides the twins.
Brendan: And Dobby had more lines, I think.
Adan: More lines than Fred? You’re out of your mind! Fred and George have been in every book.
Brendan: Yeah, but that was mostly George saying he was Fred.

The Percy moment of redemption as a final movement for Fred was poetic and tragic. But don’t worry, he totally has unfinished business as a ghost. Though he’s no coward.
Adan: Next death: Snape. He goes out like a punk. What’s up with that?
Brendan: What makes it punk-ish?
Adan: He just sits there and a fucking snake eats him. He even screams like a girl. He doesn’t fight back or anything. He’s also a smart guy, and should have seen this situation coming.
Brendan: Voldemort betrayed the one he knows to be most loyal to him; he’s pretty evil. This was the risk Snape ran for seventeen years.
Adan: I understand Snape wanted to keep his double agent status secret, but when you’re about to die, all pretense gets scattered to the four winds in favor of survival. He didn’t even lift his wand.
Brendan: He isn’t a warrior; he is a lifelong whipping boy. He can duel kids, great, but that doesn’t make him so tough
Adan: He’s a potions master, as well as a Dark Arts master. Dude’s badass.
Brendan: This scene is all about the betrayal to me, and I think it serves the purpose.
Adan: Yeah, but he still goes out like a punk.
Brendan: Killing him is an afterthought, despite all he does. Plus, Nagini don’t play. We’re left with Remus and Tonks. Complain away.
Adan: And Colin.
Brendan: Ahh, right.
Adan: No. There is no complaining for Tonks and Remus. They were warriors in the middle of a battle, and sometimes an Aveda Kedavra spell just hits you when no one is looking. They died, and that was that.
Brendan: Ahh, what a relief. With Harry as the kid’s godfather, they were doomed anyways.
Adan: Colin, on the other hand, is another throwaway character that was killed simply to pad the numbers. It’s another manipulation moment. Why was he even there? Weren’t all underage kids supposed to be gone?
Brendan: He was half-blood, and had snuck back into the school.
Adan: Yeah, he snuck back in to pad the numbers.
Brendan: I would say that overall, the deaths of the book accomplish the goal of making this story (I’m gonna say it) epic.
Adan: But then there’s Harry. Harry’s “death” was emotional manipulation, pure and simple. I am a big hater of emotional manipulation. I don’t like being forced to care about something simply because an author has made it emotional. Harry dwells on his death for about a chapter before he “dies.” Then he doesn’t, thereby invalidating that chapter.
Brendan: Fiction is emotional manipulation.
Adan: Yes, but you’re not supposed to be able to tell.
Brendan: His struggle to accept death is the whole story of the three brothers, and accepting death. He was willing to serve the greater good. That is different from having to do it.
Adan: Yes, he was. Too bad it didn’t matter. It was invalidated by the fact that he didn’t actually die.
Brendan: You were invalidated by the fact that he didn’t die. You don’t get to decide what happens. It isn’t your book. It is a book that exists for you to interpret and enjoy. You don’t get the right to say “this should have happened.”
Adan: Nobody gets to decide what gets to happen; it’s nobody’s book. And at the same time, it’s everybody’s book. And I do get that right. I am after all, a reader.
Brendan: No, it is JK Rowling’s book.
Adan: No it isn’t. It wasn’t the moment she put it into the world. It no longer belongs just to her. It belongs to us all. Her interpretations are no more or less important than anybody else’s. She can say what was supposed to happen, but if the text doesn’t support her, then she’s full of shit.
Brendan: It isn’t interpretation. Her word is gospel. It’s her world, and you are visiting.
Adan: That is bullshit.
Brendan: No, it isn’t. She made the rules.
Adan: The text exists on its own. It has no master, nor does it recognize any.
Brendan: Right, the text exists.
Adan: On its own.
Brendan: It is whole and complete of itself.
Adan: Yup.
Brendan: Again, you don’t get to decide what it should do. It isn’t a Choose-Your-Own adventure.
Adan: No I don’t. However, I do get to interpret it. And my interpretation is that the text would have been better if Harry had died.
Brendan: That isn’t an interpretation. It is an assertion.
Adan: Of course it’s an interpretation..
Brendan: An interpretation is taking what is there, and spinning it in such a way that it reveals greater truth. You are saying what you wish had happened. There are two worlds to analyze from. You can live inside the book and feel from there, you can internalize the justice and the injustice, you can ride the ride. Or, you can see it as you wish it to be, and never be satisfied.
Adan: I have taken Harry’s non-death, seen that it has sucked, and spinned it in such a way to reveal the greater truth that it would have been better if Harry had died.
Brendan: No matter what happens, it happened. Otherwise you’re left with fan-fic.
Adan: I’m not writing a separate book here. I am merely calling it like I see it.
Brendan: Think of it like this: There is the world. It is governed by its own set of rules. There is what happens, and what should happen. They may not coincide. From there, we can take the sum of both, and learn. That is what happens here. We may not like what happens, but it happened that way. If you are someone who identifies with characters in the book, you will emulate the feelings there.
Adan: Yes, I have acknowledged that, and have found it wanting.
Brendan: Right, well sometimes the world isn’t what we want it to be. In this text, I choose to enjoy it for what it is, rather than what it would have been had I been the one playing God.
Adan: It’s not a question about playing God.
Brendan: Yes it is. It is about deciding what happens.
Adan: It’s a question of what would have made the text better.
Brendan: It would have made it a dead end.
Adan: It didn’t happen that way, and I can’t make it happen that way, but there’s no reason we as critics can’t compare the two.
Brendan: It would have made the story mean one thing, when the intent was obviously that it meant something else.
Adan: I don’t see that.
Brendan: Yes, well as I say, this is Harry vs. Voldemort, not the Life and Times of Harry Potter
Adan: That’s not what you said at all. You specifically said that this was the Life and Times of Harry Potter. That’s why Potter couldn’t die.
Brendan: No I didn’t. I said it is about this one journey. The Life and Times would imply that it is about the end. Let’s get to that: The afterward.
Adan: Ugh.
Brendan: Here is my take: we are given the information needed to satisfy the basic needs of someone who does want to know everything that Harry and gang have been up to. We see who is with whom, and what bonds last. We also see Harry send his kids off to school, which puts the final parenthetical on the entry point to both the Potter series and the magical world.
Adan: Except we know nothing about the magical world.
Brendan: Hogwart’s is the magical world.
Adan: Are the elves freed? Who is the headmaster at Hogwart’s? What about the goblins and the banking? How bad was Voldemort’s coup for the magical world? Do the Muggles know anything? We get none of this. Instead we get fan-fiction about who ended up with whom, and who’s named after whom.
Brendan: You can’t call it fan-fic if the author wrote it. Except for Chris Claremont and X-Men: The End.
Adan: ZING!
Brendan: Why do you need that information anyway? Again, this isn’t about the magical world, but rather Harry’s take and place in it. We could have had drawn out funeral and recap, but it would have taken away from the fact that this is about Harry.
Adan: Because this information is important to the world.
Brendan: Read the first chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone. It isn’t the magical world we are brought into; it is the story of a little boy who loses his parents.
Adan: Read the first chapter of this book. There is no Harry Potter in the first chapter.
Brendan: Right, instead we see his opposition. Still a reflection of him.
Adan: Out in the magical world. And I call shenanigans because it could have been Neville. I think that right there is the most damning evidence against Harry being as important as you make him out to be.
Brendan: It isn’t about Harry being important in the world of the book. It is about him being important as a tether for us as readers into the world of the book. That is his ultimate purpose.
Adan: I’m glad the guy I’ve been reading about for the past ten years is little more than a vehicle for my understanding.
Brendan: He is meant to make us learn and identify with the world, not defeat Voldemort or find peace or die. That is what any protagonist is.
Adan: Dude, that doesn’t even make sense.
Brendan: Fiction is not merely a vehicle to peer into fake worlds.
Adan: No, they’re vehicles to peer into the real world. Which is why elves’ freedom and goblin’s place in the world is important.
Brendan: They win. They fight Voldemort. They liberate themselves. It probably doesn’t happen overnight.
Adan: We don’t know that.
Brendan: Yes we do.
Adan: We get an incomplete world.
Brendan: By the rules set out, we know the outcomes.
Adan: We don’t even know the rules.
Brendan: Look, Harry is an Auror as much as he marries Ginny, the logic prevails.

Look, let’s get to it. Why did you like this book? Why did you like any of these books?
Adan: Because Neville is a badass. Because the twins were awesome. Because Harry tells Ron “Did you expect to find a Horcrux every other day?” We had pages and pages of nothing really happening except traveling, like Sam and Frodo in Two Towers. The characters suffer, therefore the readers must too. That is good fiction. And super important: Neville is a badass! Did you see how he stood up to Voldemort and hacked off that stupid snake’s head? That was awesome! How about you? You couldn’t have loved everything.
Brendan: To me, this was all about payoff. It was a payoff to the issues laid out from page one of the series. It was about Dumbledore using his Deluminator in the beginning, and Ron figuring out the real purpose right when he needed to. It was about figuring out exactly who Albus Dumbledore was, and what made him that way. It was about Snape in the same way. It was the culmination of a masterfully orchestrated scheme. It was about Ron becoming the man Hermione needed him to be right when he was ready. It was about Neville being de-facto AS important as Harry, and contributing to the downfall of Voldemort. It was all of it, and it was what I wanted it to be.
Adan: So you hated nothing? Lame.
Brendan: Look, I thought it got slow in the middle. I thought that Hermione or Ron was going to die. I thought Hagrid would bring a legion of Giants to Hogwart’s door. But I see why it wasn’t that way, and I don’t wish it were what I wanted it to be. I’m not the author, and if I were it wouldn’t have been as good. I’m not willing to sacrifice the things that I wished as a compassionate person to the things I want as a reader and voyeur. I lived and died with each page, and I got out of it what I hoped to.
Adan: You’re gonna be the kind of guy that’s going to make me ultimately hate this book because you can’t find any fault with it. It happened with “Gladiator” and “Return of the King.” I enjoyed both of those movies until people couldn’t shut up about how awesome they were. They were okay at best, as was this book.
Brendan: Well, that’s your problem.
Adan: My problem is with the fantasy genre as a whole (not just Harry Potter). That problem is that magic is mutable and has no fixed position. The only rule of magic we get in this series is that food can’t be created out of nothing. And apparently it’s one of five. This is why Harry’s resurrection is fishy and manipulative. He should’ve died, but because of magic I don’t understand because it isn’t really explained to me beforehand, he doesn’t. There’s a connection between Voldemort and Harry, and slowly but surely, this connection gets more and more powerful until it finally resurrects Harry from death like he was the Lamb of God (he even beats out Jesus because Jesus was a slowpoke in coming back).

My problem is with killing off minor characters to make something seem important. Yes, sometimes minor characters will die because death is random and unseen, but to kill no major characters makes cheapens death to the point of making it mean nothing. It’s just a lazy writer’s way of making something seem important, whether it is or isn’t. If something is important, then it will be by the strength of your writing. You don’t need to shock your readers into believing it is important.

My problem is with critics or reviewers or what have you who don’t point out flaws in works. Nothing in this world is perfect and in not pointing out flaws, you do a disservice to the audience, the authors, and yourself, to say nothing of the works that don’t have as many flaws. You can’t love everything, and you can’t pretend that everything is awesome.

This book was merely okay. It had way too many flaws to pretend otherwise.

Brendan: I feel as though critiquing the action that takes place within the text does a disservice to the text, because it is only skin deep. I can go through any literature, a film, a comic, a song, and say that it would mean more to me if X had happened instead of Y. I can gripe about what would have worked for me, but that is just going to be griping. I don’t disagree that it is important to point out the flaws in a work, but I’m more interested in what makes an “A” and “A,” and not what could have made it an “A+.” I also don’t think that the only way a book can be made “good” or “important” is by major characters dying. In the Lord of the Rings example, none of the Fellowship die within the trilogy, except Boromir. The hobbits, Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas die in the afterwards, when the story is done. It doesn’t lessen the stakes, nor does it cheapen the victory. I’m sorry, but attitudes like that make up why Superman #75 is the most well known comic to people who don’t read comics, or why fanboys clamor at the idea that Cap should have died at the end of Civil War, and not in the aftermath. In those cases, death is used solely for shock value, and create a false sense of breadth to the work. As I said, this book was entirely about payoff for me, and to waste time picking apart the book that could have been instead of the book that was is energy wasted, and misses the point of enjoying literature.

But we have talked about this about as much as any two people could. If you made it this far in our tirade, we hope you’ll come back next week when we get back to important issues like why Tony Stark is such a bitch, and which superhero has the biggest balls.

Hey guys, Adan here, live from the Denver International Airport, on my way to the fabled San Diego Comic-Con (I have to keep rubbing it in Brendan’s face because I’m a big ole jerk). And because I will be in San Diego until Monday, we were going to take next week off. But then Alan Kistler, the great comic book historian usually found at Monitor Duty volunteered his services, and Brendan was totally going to take him up on his offer, until Brendan got a way better idea (sorry Alan). Instead of skipping or getting a guest writer for next week, we’re going to review Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Needless to say, there will be many, many spoilers, so if you haven’t read the book by next week, then don’t read our column next week. Also, I will probably have many tales about SDCC that I will tell to Brendan like fifteen times (I guess it’s possible that Brendan will murder me before we actually write the Potter thing, so if Alan shows up next week anyway, you know what happened).

All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder #6

Brendan: I was as upset as anyone when this book went annual. No twenty-two page comic book, really, is worth that kind of wait. I can, however, afford to wait a few months to see the definitive Batman writer work with the modern day’s definitive Batman artist. With the inclusion of the Dark Knight Returns poster in Batgirl’s bedroom, as well as the insight into James Gordon’s personal life, Miller proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this he is approaching this character as the same one he has written since DKR and Year One. Many people lay claim that this take on the character is a lampoon of the post-Miller uber-gritty superhero, but this oversimplifies the writer’s proven understanding of the character. The Year One Batman was a young man finding his place in an impossible world. The Batman of Dark Knight Returns is an embittered old man, disgusted by what the world became, despite his best efforts. Even The Dark Knight Strikes Back shows the optimism of a man nearing the end of his life, when he finally has found perspective. The All Star Batman, or Goddamn Batman, is a young man who has finally found his calling. He is doing what he was born to, and he is enjoying it. He is naïve, with delusions of invincibility. The world around him is garish and polarized. There are other masks, “amateurs,” popping up, proving that he is having an impact on the world around him, but the world is not yet any less violent for it. With each passing issue Batman grows more recognizable.

This book has sex, violence, and two page Jim Lee spreads. I hope we see the next issue in as timely a fashion as this one.

Adan: For fuck’s sake, can we stop saying “the Goddamn Batman!” Everybody’s saying it now! Commissioner Gordon and Black Canary (or what passes for those two characters in this God-awful book) have joined the Goddamn Batman Goddamn Club. Also, Jimmy Olsen (who works in Gotham) is a pervert and Batgirl’s slogan is “Bullshitting Dad is Cool.” Or, excuse me, “Bull****ing Dad is Cool,” ’cause see, you can’t curse in a DC comic. You can beat the crap out of people and break their arms and get off on doing so, but you can’t fucking curse. Unless of course you’re saying “Goddamn.”

The violence in this book is so over-the-top, it’s just ludicrous. There’s no point to it except to show violence. Why does Black Canary beat up those guys on the docks? Because we need another irrelevant fight scene (plus Jim Lee gets to draw her ass a couple of times). *Sigh* I am so sick of this book.

And by the way, Miller stopped writing definitive Batman books twenty years ago.

Brendan: What makes Jimmy Olsen a pervert? Did you see Vicki Vale?

Adan: Yeah, I saw her, but I didn’t watch her change.

Annihilation Conquest: Star Lord #1

Adan: Military spy action in deep space? Hell yeah!

A crazy assortment of all-but-forgotten space heroes get tapped for a low-tech incursion into the heart of Phalanx space in order to destroy some kind of viral-bomb processing plant. That means Bug, Deathcry, Mantis, Captain Universe, Groot, Rocket Motherfuckin’ Raccoon, and Peter Quill, the Star Lord, are saddlin’ up and riding down on the Phalanx. This series looks like a hell of a lot of fun, full of trademarked Giffen humor, with the possibility of a high death rate (I really can’t see all these guys making it out; Rocket Raccoon, maybe), and fantastic art by Timothy Green II, who’s kind of a mix between the late, lamented Seth Fisher and… uh, somebody else. Crap, there goes my geek cred. Look, it’s good, clean art and this book is awesome.

“We who are about to die, salute you.”

Brendan: I don’t think anyone has ever confused a book Keith Giffen wrote to a book Keith Giffen didn’t write. Only he would see a starship as a “friend, confidant, teacher, and nagging wife all rolled up.” That said, I was half way through the issue and still undecided on continuing the series. Star-Lord was cool and everything, but I was waiting for the hook. Then we met the Dirty Dozen-esque crew that will star in this series. With Deathcry (leather jacket Avengers alert!), Bug (who seems a lot like Ambush Bug), Captain Universe (I have a comic where I became Captain Universe), the Celestial Madonna (most convoluted back story ever), Rocket Raccoon (a raccoon who can handle rockets), and Groot the tree, (a tree), I’d say this series is pretty much a sure shot. Timothy Green the Deuce delivers a good, clean story and should get even better. He may even decide to include a background or two. Either way, this book has Rocket Raccoon. What are you waiting for?

Batman #666

Adan: “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” – Revelation 13:2

Welcome to the end of the world! Damian Wayne, the bastard son of the Batman we know and love, has take over the cape and cowl and dispenses his own brand of justice in a Gotham City much worse off than the one of the past. The final of the three crazy Batmen shows up and claims he is the Anti-Christ, the Son of Satan, Hellbat, and Damian Hellstrom’s little brother. Okay, I made up the last two and threatens to usher in Armageddon. So what’s a psychotic Batman to do? Whup his ass, that’s what.

Morrison’s Batman run, as a whole, has not been very good, and it hurts me to say that. He’s has a few good issues here and there (the text one was fantastic!) and this is almost one of them. I want nothing more that to get behind this and cheer because it’s just crazy Grant hoodoo. A nightmarish future setting in which the Apocalypse is right around the corner? That sounds awesome, right. And it is, mostly. The “What happened to so-and-so?” trap that imaginary stories set in the future always fall into is totally avoided here. There is no explanation given as to what happened to the principal characters we’re used to, except for Barbara Gordon, but she’s somewhat important to the story at hand. The only mentions we’re given are a panel in which young Damian is kneeling over the dead body of Bruce (maybe), Damian’s line “I knew I’d never be as good as my dad or Dick Grayson,” and Barbara’s line “That monster was responsible for the death of… of a good friend” (Damian is the monster), but other than that, bupkus. Who knows what happened to Bruce, Dick, Tim, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Superman, and all the rest of them? We don’t know and it doesn’t matter. This is just a good, interesting vignette of the future that doesn’t require too much backstory (in fact, the only backstory is Damian’s “origin” story told in six panels). That said, though, the main character of this issue is Damian, the snotty little punk who was foisted on Batman (and the readers) as the next big thing. He somehow kicked Tim’s ass (after beating on poor Alfred) and now we’re supposed to belive that he was somehow allowed to become the Batman. What? I call shenanigans. Bruce would have had schemes and plans in motion to prevent such a thing.

Andy Kubert is as solid as ever, giving us what we want on a semi-monthly basis. The aerial shot of future Gotham is probably my favorite panel in this issue, but it’s full of good stuff (like the Hanuman-style double uppercut punch; nobody even knows what that is). But that costume? Oy, I can’t get behind that. It’s a dress with a ridiculous disco collar. And this is issue is a lot bloodier and gorier than usual. Maybe it’s that whole Number of the Beast thing.

Overall, an interesting story with a solid ending (it was my favorite part), but little else. What I’m saying is I wish it wasn’t Damian. That’s what I’m saying.

Brendan: Welcome!!! To the world of Tomorrow! Today!!

In celebration of Batman’s Satanniversary, Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert give us a glimpse into the legacy of the Batman. Someday, Damian will take over as Gotham’s Caped Crusader. Maybe I’m just not up enough on my W.B. Yeats, but this issue fell flat. I’m sure that it was rife with metatextual subtleties and symbolism, but in order for me to care enough to seek that out, I need to first be invested in the issue. The entire Damian storyline has become stale and self-important, like “This character is a big deal because I say he’s a big deal.” Whatever you say. There was little that elevated this particular dystopian take beyond the average “Elseworlds” tale. It lacked any particularly captivating angle, as well as enough touchstones to make it feel relevant to the current storyline. This is a lot like when Robin found out he became a gun toting Batman in Teen Titans , only less… good. Bring back the ninja Man-bats.

Black Summer #1

Brendan: How can you not love Warren Ellis completely unleashed? You get topical insight, superhuman enhancement, and broken bottles in groins. You get the phrase “ninja cripple trick.” It doesn’t hurt that I learned that Juan Jose Ryp was capable of producing work beyond eleven different covers for a pin-up issue. Turns out he has the perfect amount of grotesque influence to bring Ellis’ horrific vision to the page. I will say that I thought that the fact that the issue chapter was two even though the last issue was a number zero felt like a cop-out. If a book is the first chapter, and even provides the inciting incident for the entire series, it should be number one. I guess this way Avatar can almost sell two number one issues, two first issues in any case, but it struck me the wrong way. But then, I do see how many covers they offer with any given issue, so I suppose there shouldn’t be any surprise. Officially badass.

Adan: This issue picks up directly where the last one left off, with the not dead Frank Blacksmith coming to Tom Noir’s front door and trying to kill him. The “Gun Enhancements” these fellas sport are explained a little more thoroughly, and some crazy shit happens. Tom’s fight against the Blacksmith’s goon is pretty sweet, with fire and guns and nutshots. Everything a comic book fight should be. We also get a new “Gun Hero” in Zoe, and John Horus goes a little bit more crazy. I like this book, and I’m gonna keep reading it because Warren Ellis will hurt me otherwise.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #5

Brendan: This is the story of the Buffy who wasn’t Buffy. A young woman who calls herself Buffy is dead, and over the course of this issue we learn who she was and what she died for. Joss Whedon explores the power and value of iconic heroes by showing exactly why someone would go to such lengths to convince the world that she is the celebrated and fabled “Slayer.” The narrative is told out of sequence, and as such takes a bit of concentration to understand. Given the large amounts this book is selling, and especially given the fact that a large contingent of these readers are new to comics, the aim appears to be to challenge the audience and their expectations of what a comic is capable of. This was a pretty good comic book, but I’m sure hardcore Buffy fans will love it more than I.

Adan: An issue of Buffy that doesn’t even feature Buffy. Look, I’m gonna be open here. I thought this series was gonna suck. I thought “Psh! Buffy? Who, besides devoted Buffy fans, gives a damn?” Well, it turns out that I do. I’ve enjoyed every issue thus far (yes, all five of them), and this one is my favorite by far. There’s no Buffy Summers here, just a girl that pretends to be her in order to get the the underground races to band together. And that’s not even all that important. This issue has deep questions, questions about what it means to be… well, just to be. Is your name, or any name, all that essential to who you are? Can you be great and not at the same time?

There’s also some weird storytelling devices that, I think, accurately portray how one’s life would flash before one’s eyes. Disjointed, out-of-order, and bizarre. Pieces of one memory interspersed inside another. I am a big fan of that. Snippets of audio (or in the case of this medium, dialogue) replaced with other audio, or missing altogether. This is good stuff.

Paul Lee steps in to give Georges Jeanty a break in this issue. Longtime Buffy comic readers will recognize him from his work in the previous series. I think I liked his slug creature the best. That’s a big old slug, that is. The rest was fine. It didn’t hurt my eyeballs, but neither did it make me squee.

Doktor Sleepless #1

Adan: “Future Science Jesus,” indeed.

I don’t… what the fuck? I have no earthly idea what this book is actually about. I assume there is a message hidden in here about how the future is the future, whether you recognize it or not, and you should stop bitching about it not looking like you wanted it to (well, it’s not hidden so much as plain for the world to see). This’ll probably be something akin to Transmetropolitan in its scathing societal commentary. I didn’t really like Transmet (I know, blasphemy), so I’m probably not going to like this. However, this book did contain this fantastic exchange:

“I’ll have you know I beat up Samuel Beckett in a fair fight once.”
“A fair fight, you say?”
“Yes. I had a bat and he had emphysema.”

So it can’t be all bad.

Brendan: Yeah, I’m pretty much frame for frame with you here. Ellis seems to step into an over-stylized “too cool for school” thing in this one. It might get better, but I’m not waiting for singles on here.

Second best quote- “Electricity can only be replenished by whiskey. This is actual physics. Do not argue with me. I am a doktor.” There are moments.

Gon TP

Brendan: This week CMX re-offers Masashi Tanaka’s silent masterpiece Gon. With lush environments and wildlife, as well as pitch-perfect storytelling, Gon is fantastic. This first volume tells deceptively complicated stories such as “Gon Eats and Sleeps”, “Gon Goes Hunting,” “Gon Builds a Mansion,” and “Gon Goes Flying.” Gon, a tiny, precocious, ferocious dinosaur in the modern wild, tells his story through action and expression. Each story sheds light both on Gon’s capabilities and his character in more and more imaginative scenarios. It doesn’t hurt that this is the best drawn book to hit the shelves this week. If you’ve ever held off on a manga, either due to content or to the reversed page, consider this the perfect gateway drug; both the cartoonish “bigfoot,” proportions of the headliner and the dialogue and copy free narrative make this a work of sequential art for the ages.

Adan: Super headbutt attack!

Man, this is some hyper detailed work! Masashi Tanaka really knows how to draw, and his storytelling is sharp, too. There are absoultely no words, so of course he’s gotta be aces in the art department. Gon is this tiny dinosaur who is super strong. The whole book is just him making a bunch of other animals his bitches. A grizzly bear, a lion, a bobcat, and a beaver (the most dangerous animal of all). This is a funny book because Gon is kind of a dick, but sometimes he also helps out smaller, weaker animals. And sometimes he’s just a dick.

I have but one bone to pick, and that is that male lions do not hunt. The females of the pack do all the hunting. Tanaka-san should probably watch the Discovery Channel once in a while. You know, just to fact check.

Brendan: If this were Tekken, I’d head butt the shit out of you for saying that.

Adan: What, why? Do you hate research? It makes for good comics, you know.

Immortal Iron Fist #7

Adan: I have a confession to make. I have this weakness. No, it’s not for Brian K. Vaughn (that’s an altogether different confession). I have a weakness for women who kick ass and take names. And for women who just plain kick ass. Wu Ao-Shi is one such woman. The first, last, and only female to ever wield the power of the Iron Fist, she kicked a lot of ass. Most of it was pirate ass, making her a Pirate Queen.

This issue is told almost entirely in prose. Fraction and Brubaker basically write a short story and then get three guys to draw it out for them. This is not a bad thing, at least not this time. They break format only a couple of times, usually for well-timed comedic purposes.

I assumed having three artists on one story would make for some wildly different art styles, but instead, these three guys look almost exactly the same. This was done on purpose, I’m sure, as I’ve seen these guys draw in their own styles. Their own styles look almost nothing like this. Good job, guys, keeping a steady style.

Can Fraction do no wrong? Well, yes actually. It’s called Punisher War Journal, but we’re not talking about that right now. We’re talking about kick-ass women.

Brendan: That was only the coolest fucking Marvel comic you’ll read this year. Of course, when the book is about the Fist of K’un Lun, and entitled “The Pirate Queen of Pinghai Bay,” you have about an eighty-five percent chance of awesome. Danny Rand is nowhere to be seen this issue, and yet it doesn’t miss a beat. This story has all the familiar features of every great kung fu epic while also being wholly original. Traditionally, the aspect of writing that is most likely to get lost with a writing duo is the personal voice. The voice that Fraction and Brubaker achieve is that of a master storyteller. It reads like a charming old man, skilled in the art of pacing and keeping an audience around a fire. This is a romance story, but with enough pirates, dragons, and magic that you’ll hardly notice. The art is seamless and beautiful. Buy this comic twice.

Mighty Avengers #4

Adan: I just don’t understand where this book exists.

Obviously, obviously, Iron Man is not dead. The man is in every Marvel comic every single month. He’s not fucking dead! And yet, Mighty Avengers continues to pretend otherwise as the Starktech 9, a robot that is only supposed to activate when Tony Stark is dead, is activated. Nyargh!

He’s! Not! Dead! (Well, he might be now, but that’s because the Hulk kicked him through a couple of buildings.) Marvel editorial, meet me in the third paragraph (and yes, I totally stole that from Jon Sterwart).

You’ve been cooking these little events for a long time now. I know you have, because I read your comics and I look inside a Previews catalog. You knew the outcome of Civil War and you knew that soon after that, you were going to do World War Hulk. You knew this long before anybody else did. Yet you greenlit this series, with this arc where everybody in this book was going to think Iron Man was dead for a few issue, with an artist that was not going to be able to meet deadlines. Do you know how ridiculous you look when Ms. Marvel doesn’t know whether Tony is dead or not, and hasn’t for that past two issues of this series, but meets with him in every issue of her own series? Do you know how ridiculous you look? I do. It’s pretty damn ridiculous. I think somebody pointed a wand at you and cast the Ridikulus Charm, because that’s the only explanation I can think of.

On the upside, things actually happened this issue. There was a lot of action as new, naked Wasp-Ultron makes its (her?) move. Ares and Sentry beat some shit up (as they are wont to do), including an army of Iron Man armor, and the Starktech 9 and Black Widow make some very good observations. But still, Tony’s not dead. I just saw him give the New Warriors a chance to join the Initiative.

Brendan: So, I’ve got this idea, see? Ultron comes back to fuck up the Mighty Avengers, right? But we’ve got Frank Cho drawing it, so we gotta make Ultron a really hot Janet Van Dyne clone. Boom, start writing checks.

Cheesecake aside, Cho shows what a great cartoonist he is on this book. His action and movement is kinetic and crystal clear. For all the (fair) claims that his chief skill is making the buxom ladies even more buxom, it must be said that his male figures are no less idealized. The Sentry is a pretty man. There I said it. Actually, I think that by nature of understanding anatomy, as well as a keen sense of symmetry, Cho achieves the sort of iconography that readers respond to in their comic characters. They look as we feel they should look. No line is wasted. He also is great at sight gags, and for proof look no further than the Liberty Meadows’s Dean appearance, and catch Ares’ eyeballing Black Widow’s backside. This sort of acting, even when a character is not speaking, is the sort of detail that makes comics fun. In fact, just pay close attention to Ares at all times and you will increase your enjoyment of this book tenfold. Even if he is just Thor-lite.

This book is delivering on its promise to tell stories that have a more classic feel than the New Avengers book ever did. While the thought-bubbles are used only in spurts, and can be borderline obnoxious, they also are valuable tools in giving a personal feel to an ensemble book. It can be difficult to balance characters if you are only focused on their speaking roles, and by giving even the slightest insight into their thought process the dynamic is better explained. Ms Marvel, the character with the most pressure on her shoulders without Iron Man, is particularly enjoyable. There are other purely cool comic moments that permeate this book, from the Sentry actually doing stuff, to a legion of Iron Men (where is the Heroes Reborn armor? For completion’s sake?), a Hank/Janet Pym exchange that provides insight into their storied history, and even a use of the old Thor title font. This book is a fun one.

Oh, and Tony Stark has been “dead” for like twenty minutes. It’ll all be okay.

Adan: Yeah, too bad “twenty minutes” was like seven months ago.

Queen & Country #32

Adan: Remember what I said about my weakness up in Iron Fist? It manifests here again.

This is the last issue of Queen & Country Series One. When last we left our intrepid heroes (what, a year ago now?), Chace and Poole had been captured in Baghdad by insurgents along with a reporter. Lankford, still in Baghdad, and Crocker, back in London, were still doing everything in their power to get them back. If you’ve read the Private Wars novel, then you know how this ends, as the “Red Panda” storyarc is a prequel to that second novel.

I’ve loved this series since the very beginning. This was, in fact, the reason I started paying attention to anything with Greg Rucka’s name on it. It has been a fantastic series from the word go, but these last couple of issues (spread over two-plus years) have suffered from Rucka having no time. I am saddened that this Series One will end on such a down note, but I look forward to Series Two (which won’t be coming out until late ’09, early ’10) with baited breath. Rucka swears that when he starts Series Two, he’ll have a lot more time to devote to it, which will be great. But in the here and now, I’m left with this issue which kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s not awful or anything, it’s just not as good as it should be, especially for a final issue. Everytime Queen & Country came out (especially these last few years), it was an event. It was the book I looked forward to the most. Don’t get me wrong, this issue is still better than almost everything else on the racks. Just don’t compare it to previous issues of Q&C.

Brendan: There are comics, and there are graphic novels that are published serially. Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country seems to be the former. In comics, it is easy to spend an inordinate amount of time in worlds that are far removed from what is plausible in our real world. When you experience the opposite and a book is grounded in the real world tensions that we experience every day, the result can be jarring. Familiar spy-game tropes, such as daring and bloody escapes in the face of impossible odds, are not exciting adventures, as they are often portrayed in film. Instead, they are as frightening as the best thrillers. The thick, heavy artwork of Chris Samnee gives this story the weight it needs. This issue closes out the first volume of Q&C, and makes sure it does so with a story that is both hard-hitting in its real world relevance and fully realized characters.

Star Trek: Year Four #1

Adan: Oh man, this is exactly like an old episode of original Trek. There’s a red shirt who dies almost immediately upon beaming down, Spock says, “Fascinating,” and McCoy says, “He’s dead, Jim.” It even ends with a trite, cliche quotable given by Kirk. There’s caption boxes during the story exactly where Kirk would have his voiceovers. There’s even a hot alien chick for Kirk to make moves on. This book is freaking awesome. I don’t know how he did it, but David Tischman has perfectly captured the essence of original Trek and has distilled it into comic book form.

And if this book is not enough William Shatner for you guys, then check this out.

Brendan: Welcome to the world of comics- the place where cancelled television shows go on to avoid Death’s cold touch.

This was… not really any good at all. The art only just managed to render a remote likeness to the Enterprise’s crew. Even then, they each only had one facial expression. The plot had the pieces needed to tell a classic Star Trek tale, but lacked the flavor. There was an ill-fated redshirt, a buxom beauty for Kirk to ogle, and even the “He’s dead, Jim,” but ultimately, there is nothing to make this any more valuable or meaningful than fan-fic.

Adan: Damn, that is cold son! The art gave the guys only one facial expression because they only had one facial expression in the show. See? It’s genius! I will admit that you probably have to be an OG Trek fan to really appreciate this comic.

All Flash #1

Brendan: Mark Waid and Wally West both return to the Flash title this month. Starting the very moment that both Bart died and Wally returned this issue bridges the gap from the third volume of the series to the… second volume of the series. Actually, given the Golden Age Flash that makes this the fourth volume reverting to the third. Shit man, time travel and legacy heroes are tough nuts to crack.

Waid delivers a heartfelt tribute to Flash/Kid Flash/Impulse, his own creation. It is heartfelt, but forced. The piecemeal art is uneven, and doesn’t seem to serve any greater purpose other than to get the issue out on time. The best pages are by Karl Kerschel, who was on the title for one issue and seemingly couldn’t keep the schedule. It’s a shame, because he manages to convey speed without the standard “speed lines,” the visual trick that sounds like illicit narcotics. We also learn the secret to Bart’s ill timed power loss: Wally’s return sapped the Speed Force. This doesn’t seem to gel with the whole plot point that the Impulse-clone Inertia built a Speed Force tower that siphoned it all, but then who pays attention to what happens in cancelled comics?

The most inspired aspect of the book is the punishment Wally bestows on the evil clone responsible for his cousin’s death. It is the kind of detail that reminds you that Mark Waid once wrote this title with some acclaim. Other than that, it is simply a housecleaning that allows for the new Flash: The Fastest Dad Alive series to come in a month without baggage. If more of this is what we can expect from the un-relaunch, count me out.

Adan: Yeah, what happened over there you guys? I understand that Bilson and Demeo’s arc just sucked (I gave up after only one-and-a-half issues), but Guggenheim’s was actually pretty good. I went back and hunted down the back issues after I heard of its awesomeness. I guess Bilson and Demeo were really just that awful, huh? I hope somebody learned a lesson somewhere.

Anywho, this is just housecleaning, as Brendan said. It’s a pretty unremarkable issue, except for that last two pages, in which Acuna (with the worst art in the whole book) draws scenes from the Flash family’s future; a couple of series teasers like at the end of the first issue of the Justice Society of America. Those two pages are the only reason I’ll take a look at the next issue of Flash (assuming of course that Acuna will not be drawing it.

Let’s talk about the two covers for a second: I usually love both Middleton and Sienkiewicz unreservedly, but holy crap! Both of these covers are just awful! If covers are supposed to make you at least take a look inside the book, then somebody at DC done fucked up.

Highwaymen #2

Adan: This is just all kinds of fun. It’s what every buddy movie should be like. Two guys who don’t really like each other but have to work together for the greater good. One guy shoots, the other one drives. And oh yeah, it’s set in the near future. It’s from my head, people!

Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman (who you will hear more of soon) write an awesome, awesome story about two guys have to do all kinds of cool and crazy shit to protect a girl from sinister forces. The who and the why don’t yet matter (except for Able Monroe and his partner McQueen, who may be so cool that he doesn’t need a first name) because things blow up, people get shot in uncomfortable places, and cars do things cars were not meant to do. At some point in the near future of this mini (probably the very next issue), we’ll be told the why and who, I’m sure.

The artist Lee Garbett is one part Brian Stelfreeze (who does the cover, actually) and two parts Frank Quitely, but in a good way. Garbett’s men look like the old, craggy bastards they are, but his women do not, as Quitely’s so often do. And his action sequences look like all the best parts of The Ride. And take look at the expression on the matador’s face when his bull is unceremoniously shot in the head. Priceless!

This book is all the best parts of Die Hard, Speed, 48 Hrs., and Bullit all rolled into one fantastic, fluffy confection. It’s like comics can be fun once in awhile or something.

Brendan: I enjoyed this issue. I think cops who are too old for this shit are cool. I think hot girls caught up in mysteries they don’t understand is cool. I think cars that perform at high levels despite impediments like bullets are cool. I think President Clinton is cool for having a secret mission fifteen years in the future. I don’t think shooting bulls in the head is that cool, but it isn’t so uncool that I have problems.

But I don’t think I’ll be back next issue.

This is one of those times when I get real pompous and say that comics need to have a reason to be comics. The reason superheroes dominate the industry so wholly, at least in part, is because spandex works way better on the four color page than it does in reality. Just ask a biker. I think that on some level the writing team of Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman know this, because their Monster Attack Network book shows this perfectly. Monsters make good comics. And no matter how many times I see Brian Stelfreeze or someone who emulates him try, I don’t think cars make particularly good comics. They don’t engage me enough as a reader for me to be willing to wait 30 days to find out what happens next.

Don’t get me wrong, I did really enjoy this story, and I will be eager to read it in trades when the time arrives, but I don’t want to wait six months just to finish a buddy-cop action movie. I could do that in two and a half hours by renting any of the movies Adan listed. I dug this, and keep checking the singles if you’re already waist-deep. If you have yet to start this, though, do yourself and the story a favor and wait until you can chug through it all at once.

Meltdown TPB

Brendan: Flare, flame based superhero no one’s ever heard of, this is your life.

It would have to be, because you are about to die.

Meltdown gives no less than the thirty year life story of an average superhero. He is average in that while he is a capable hero, he is hardly an outstanding one. He has dealt with outbursts of rage, a failed marriage, and has crossed the line from hero to murderer. This is an ambitious tale of a man’s reflection on what his life was and what it could have been. It gets pretty depressing at times, but manages to come around with some optimism at the finale.

The real draw in this is the huge range Sean Wang shows in this work. He goes all out in matching the style to the phase of life Caliente is reflecting upon. The art is expressive and playful during his childhood, manga-influenced during the teen years, and progressively darker and grittier as his hero career spins out of control. It is a well utilized device, and manages to convey the breadth of a lifetime well.

This was a two-issue miniseries, and so Image goes all out to spice up this package. You can read the original pitch, see Wang’s style tests, and even get a cool DVD-style commentary more in-depth than most. This is a fun superhero story that the big two would never be able to tell.

Adan: “Fun superhero story” is not how I’d categorize this, but to each his own. This is a very moving story about one guy and all the crap he goes through in his life. It’s almost as if super-heroes are real people too, with broken dreams, lost loves, and shattered promises (put that in your pipe and smoke it, John Byrne!) The premise of this book is that Flare’s powers are quite rapidly eating him from the inside, so it’s gonna be a downer, for the most part. My favorite aspect of the story was Flare’s relationship with Amara. That is some sweet, heartbreaking stuff.

Now I can’t get John Byrne’s comments out of my head, so I have to say this: if we are to believe in heroes, then they need to be people. The success of Silver Age Marvel was in most part due to the fact that all their heroes had real world problems. You can’t deny that Stan and Jack didn’t focus on Donald and Reed and Bruce, sometimes moreso than they focused on Thor, Mr. Fantastic, and the Hulk. And by God, Spider-Man would be nothing without Peter Parker’s problems and maladies! Flame (with alter ego Cal) are just carrying on that tradition.

Sean Wang is one impressive fella. I would have sworn that there was like three guys drawing this book, but nope, it’s just Sean Wang being all badass. If you haven’t for some ridiculous reason, you should read his Runners: Bad Goods. He writes and draws, and it is awesome too.

I do have on problem with this work: Caliente? Seriously? A baby’s born with a fever and the parents decide to commerate that by sticking the kid with an awful name? Bad parents! Bad, bad parents!

Brendan: If Astro City is fun, if Amazing Spider-Man 121 The Night Gwen Stacey Died is fun, then this counts as fun too.

Monster Attack Network GN

Brendan: This book is what AiT/Planet Lar does best. With one part stoic lead, one part mysterious beauty, and about a hundred parts super gigantor chaos monsters you get the blockbuster that is Monster Attack Network. The concept is simple; huge monsters arise and destroy the island of Lapuatu, and M.A.N. rebuilds. When this happens once every month or so, it isn’t a problem. When it starts happening damn near everyday… well, that would be spoiling it.

The story doesn’t give us any more than we need to enjoy ourselves. It has all the banter and action one would expect from a story about fighting monsters. The only trip up comes in the art. Nima Sorat has a unique style and vision for the book, and the characters manage to be familiar while remaining original. When we do see the monsters they are as horrific and awesome as they were when you were ten. The problems arise when the style overwhelms the narrative, and when the lack of consistency between pages impedes the transitions. The opening action sequence takes the knowledge that there are monsters for granted, and fails to give us that one big establishing shot. It evens out towards the end, progressively getting better.

Don’t think too much about this one. You’ll love it.

Adan: This is Marc Bernadin and Adam Freeman doing crazy shit again. This time, instead of blowing things up with guns and cars, though, they do it with huge freakin’ monsters! Nate and company at MAN (I just love calling it that) save the island nation of Lapuatu from the rampaging monsters they coexist with. Coexist, you ask. Yes, coexist. These monsters are usually peaceful, but sometimes they throw a tantrum and MAN has to step in to corral them back to safety while saving humans and fixing the damage. They try very hard not to kill the monsters, as they are also the rightful inhabitants of the island.

Bernadin and Freeman write in so many action sequences, it’s unfortunate they didn’t get a better artist. Nima Sorat is good when the story is slow and relaxed: tender moments between colleagues, conversations with bad guys, dudes sitting in front of banks of computer screens. But once the scene calls for action, the inks get all muddied up and I can’t tell what the hell is going on. Maybe MAN 2 will have an artist with a better sense of space and moving forms.

Other than that, though, good stuff. These two guys are really impressing the hell out of me.

The Order #1

Brendan: I swear this will be the last time I say this: Civil War did many things, good and bad. The Initiative has been an odd non-event marketing push without any unifying events, but a broad philosophy that signifies the paradigm shift in the Marvel Universe. Thunderbolts has shown how the rules have changed, and the old concepts of “good” and “evil” are moot under the new rules. Avengers, both Mighty and New, have illustrated how the balance of power has affected even the heaviest hitters, and changed how they work within the system. The New[er] Warriors represent the counterculture that rises whenever authority takes power. Avengers: The Initiative serve to show how the system is working to make sure that there is never another Stamford, and providing structured training where there was chaos. Oh, and the Great Lakes Initiative are showing how comics are still awesome.

Which brings us to Champions, or the Series Name Yet to Be Determined, or, officially, The Order. There is irony in the fact that Marvel needed to change direction from the legacy of a failed title to a new, albeit nonsensical one, because this is the most original concept driving a new Marvel book since Runaways. Using the model of a sports franchise, where there are various positions to be filled, the Order is the most ambitious team to launch out of the Fifty-State Initiative. The state with the most electoral votes has the least recognizable team, and the most unproven heroes. Try-outs are over, and the game is on.

This book starts with the surprisingly honest story of Henry Hellrung and how he came to the position of Anthem, the group’s field leader. This opening sequence tells you exactly what you need to know about this series and the creative team; Fraction delivers a solid and charming speech that both characterizes Hellrung as a likeable guy and lays out the thematic objectives of the series, and Kitson delivers some of the most engaging talking heads to grace a page. Despite the coy and playful tone of the opening soliloquy we immediately understand the gravity of the issue, as it is revealed that, like Tony Stark, the team leader of the Order is a recovering alcoholic. But there is a difference between the habits of Stark and Hellrung. Stark is a drunk. We don’t see Tony struggle with his alcoholism in the daily way that alcoholics do. We see him drunk, or at best, we see his disease get name dropped. Basically, Tony has always been defined by his alcoholism, but never his recovery. This is unrealistic. The alcoholism of Henry seems to actually be a motivating characteristic and not a crutch. He structures his life in ways that people in recovery do. Obviously, this is a sensitive subject and being a sensitive subject it navigates a tightrope utilizing the characteristic with respect, while avoiding cliché and farce. Fraction accomplishes this tactfully by developing a back story woven into the Marvel fabric while keeping the story moving.

There are some issues, and while a bevy of new characters that don’t make it to the end of the issue is a good way to illustrate what is at stake it is a steep task to ask of readers. The fact that the “positions” and code-names are separate does little to help recognition, and the team jargon can be difficult to parse. But then stuff blows up so all is forgiven. There is a huge amount of potential in this series and provided each team member is as fleshed out as the leader we should have a winner on our hands.

But really, couldn’t it have just been The Pantheon?

Adan: Since Brendan’s said almost everything I wanted to say already, I can now only complain about what he didn’t mention (although take heed that I agree with pretty much everything he said, except for that Civil War lovefest). Henry Hellrung was supposedly the star of an Iron Man television show in which he portrayed Tony Stark as Iron Man, That’s how he and Tony got to be so buddy-buddy and that’s why they went out drinking all the time. But all that was pre-Civil War, when nobody knew that Tony Stark was Iron Man (except those few times when they did… stupid retcons). In the flashbacks, both Tony and Henry are drunk as skunks, which means this is pre-Demon in a Bottle which is definitely when nobody knew Tony was Iron Man. But whatever, it’s just continuity, so fuck it.

Also, Pepper Potts as a super-hero is a little hard to swallow. Not as hard as her flirting with her husband dead only two or three months, but still.

Regardless, I love Fraction and I love Kitson, and if the Coach hadn’t already written a love letter, I would have.

Programme #1

Adan: I’m willing to give Pete Milligan the benefit of the doubt, but this is one confusing first issue. There are various time and space jumps in the story, going from 1945 Germaby to present-day America to some undisclosed time in Siberia. I need some caption boxes telling me where and when I am so that I don’t get thoroughly confused. It doesn’t help that C.P. Smith’s art is really unspecific. The characters don’t really have any facial features to speak up, and settings don’t really look like anything either, thereby exacerbating the problem. I’ll give it another issue, but then I’m out.

But before I go, let’s talk about made-up place names. Why would you call what is obviously supposed to be Afghanistan “Talibstan?” Do you think that’s clever or something? Did you and Rick Veitch make a pact to wipe Afghanistan from the map? Just call it what it is and leave the cute stuff to fantasy writers.

Brendan: If I read this right, the bad guys here are Nazis, Russians, the subtly named Talibstan, and maybe aliens. I think Dubya needs to change his pants about now.

This issue was either intricately planed or slow. At C.P. Smith’s best moments he evokes J.H. Williams, at his worst he seems to just paste photos onto the page. The art is moody to the point of distraction, and when it works it suits the tone perfectly.

Even after reading this issue twice I can’t decide if this is a timely piece about America’s global presence or a feeble attempt to pit us against the entire world. I’m not sure I care enough to find out.

Screw Heaven, When I Die I’m Going to Mars GN

Adan: I’d read some of Wheeler’s Too Much Coffee Man stuff in the past, but I hadn’t been paying all that much attention. It turns out I’m an idiot.

Wheeler is incisive and hilarious, writing about topics ranging from politics to love to aging to nonsense. How can one be incisive about nonsense, you ask? Read the book (especially page 98) and find out, because it turns out that if you explain a joke, it’s no longer funny. This book is chock full of quotable lines, which I shall now give a sample of:

“Rationalization! It’s the solutiuon to all of life’s worries!”
“Money isn’t the root of evil, it’s the fertilizer.”
“Seems like some sort of punchline should go here.”
“This just in, hysteria makes for a good news story.”

Each page contains one complete joke, but is also a part of a larger theme or story. You can read it in order or jump around and read pages at random (I recommend the second method for the first reading only because the juxtaposition of thematically different cartoons makes for some excellent essay fodder).

This is a really smart and funny book and you’re just doing a disservice to yourself by not picking it up (it’s only $12.95!) so pick it up.

Brendan: It is hard to sell an audience on strip-humor, even with the overarching story arc/ discovery. This all begins with Too Much Coffee Man, who we see drink very little coffee, and goes as far as giving us Shannon Wheeler’s own personal story. It is moving and funny. It is tragic comedy, like when a clown dies. Buy it. Read it. Steal it. Just find a way to get at this because these are good comics.

Oh, and my own personal faves are poop jokes, anti-capitalism sentiment, countering counterculture, and the terrifying truth as to the zombie resurgence.

Super-Villain Team-Up: M.O.D.O.K.’s 11 #1

Adan: Okay, so I guess M.O.D.O.K. is Danny Ocean and Mentallo is Rusty. That leaves Spot, Living Laser, Rocket Racer, Puma, Nightshade, Armadillo, and Chameleon… wait, that’s only nine. I guess the other two will be recruited later.

This looks like it’s going to be a hoot. It’s a bunch of morts assembled together to perform no less than “the greatest heist in the history of the multiverse.” I hope it lives up to that promise (like the alluded to Ocean’s Eleven, but not its far worse brothers Twelve and Thirteen). This issue is all set-up as the various morts are summoned by the large-craniumed mastermind. The whole issue is pretty dang funny, from Rocket Racer insisting his name is Bob to Mentallo’s swindling of a Vegas casino while impersonating a Jew. However, and no disrespect intended to Fred Van Lente, but I kind of wish a Dan Slott or a Matt Fraction were writing this. Their ear for comedic dialogue would probably come in handy here (and now I kind of want to see Fraction write a mini like this; maybe he can write M.O.D.O.K.’s 12).

Francis Portela has a style that is very reminiscent of Steve McNiven, especially the faces. In fact, if I didn’t know McNiven is a tremendous slowpoke, I’d swear this was him.

My favorite part of the book, and this should come as a surprise to no one, was the Mexican wrestling match between Armadillo and the Chupacabra commentated in Spanish peppered with English moves. It’s just like on TV!

Brendan:I’m all for Slotted Fractions, but I was happy to see a fresh writer in Fred Van Lente on this book. Actually, he’s popping up more and more lately, taking up a lot of the Marvel Adventures books as well as The Weapon. He is obviously impressing multiple editors, and with a book like this I can see why. Balancing this large a cast can be difficult, especially when they each need to be plucked from obscurity. It is done well enough for me to be curious for more, but I will be super-pissed if we go all three issues and don’t see any M.O.D.A.M.

Francis Portela is clearly channeling McNiven, but I hope we get to see him progress beyond simply cloning what sells. I was also really impressed with GURU eFX’s colors. With all that plus the kickass Eric Powell cover, this issue was a surprisingly well complete package and a great start.

Zero Killer #1

Adan: Arvid Nelson has a knack for creating new versions of the world we live in. This time around, it seems to be a post-apocalyptic world with a dilapitated New York City as its focal point. A kind of Escape From New York-type setting in which different gangs control different sectors and also defend themselves from American military incursions. Don’t bother looking for that in the story itself, as all this information is imparted after the story, in a newspaper section.

The story itself revolves around Zero, a bounty hunter (maybe) who’s hunting Black Cat strays, and Stark, a girl being chased by the aforementioned strays that Zero saves. The Black Cats are the gang that controls the Chrysler Building and presumably the surrounding area. They’re led by the constantly topless Black You don’t really get a feel for any of the characters in this first issue except that Zero is a badass and the Black Dahlia is probably sex-obsessed. Stark is a blank slate thus far and Zero, aside from his bad-assery, is too. Thankfully, Matt Camp’s art makes up for it somewhat. His faces are very emotive and really help to convey meaning, and will do a much better job of that when the characters are better fleshed out. Unfortunately, his panel progression could use some work. For example, in the opening fight scene between Zero and the Black Cats, one can’t really tell how the fight progresses. Zero just punches them all out, but there’s no sense of movement between foes or how they’re all placed in relation to each other. The gutters between panels aren’t that big, buddy.

Still, an intriguing title, one I will read for a few more issues in hopes that it will live up to its promise.

Brendan:I liked all the stuff you pointed out, Adan, but this issue was SLOW. Maybe it was the sparse dialogue, and maybe it is just a factor of the world-building, but this felt like ten pages spread over twenty-two. A girl gets mugged, saved, and the hero brings them to their former master… and that’s it? But maybe I ask too much, after all the premise reminded me of Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld,” and this is already much better than that.

Zero is a cool hero, and I probably liked Dahlia more than I should have, but I hope future issues give us a little more substance within the story. Matt Camp was solid and Dave Stewart was his usual outstanding self. The question isn’t is this story good, it is and will be better, the question is how the topless Dahlia manages to keep her hair in place just enough to remain decent. What’s the secret? Mirrors? Holographic image inducers? Double stick tape?

I have research to conduct.

And Others…

Adan: I know I’ve done nothing but complain about how Meltzer has handled Justice League of America so far (except for the Lightning Saga crossover), but this issue was fantastic! It’s a done-in-one issue with Red Arrow and Vixen trapped within the Watergate Hotel rubble while underwater. Gene Ha provides the art, and conveys the suffocating nature of being trapped under rubble excellently. As the rubble settles around Roy and Mari and the small space they inhabit gets even smaller, Ha’s panels get smaller and smaller, leaving more and more of the page just dark, empty space. It also helps that Ha’s art is dark and dirty, and looks exactly what you would except an enclosed space amid shifting rubble to look like. This is the kind of story, with writing and art conveying the same emotion, that comics were made to tell. Good job, guys.

Brendan: Really? I felt 100% opposite, and that this issue wasn’t nearly as smart as it thought it was. That is actually how I’ve felt this entire run.

I died a little with the Bagley/ Bendis Ultimate Spider-man era drawing to a close, and the Marvel Adventures Giant Sized Avengers was the coolest thing I didn’t get out of the ‘fridge.

Adan: Lastly, let me talk about The Adventures of Rabbit and Bear Paws v1: The Sugar Bush! Which Brendan was too lazy to get to. The two main characters, Rabbit and Bear Paws, are brothers aged twelve and ten, who cause all sorts of mischief for their tribe and the British soldiers currently occupying the nearby lands, so it seemed like a really fun children’s book, but unfortunately, it is very inconsistent. It is very much a children’s book, but not in a good way. It is very simplistic and everything is laid out with no possibility of personal interpretation. I guess that because it was a children’s book, the authors felt a need to really dumb everything down. The only good writing here is in the retelling of Ojibwa fables and myths. We are told a flood myth and an expulsion from Paradise myth. Of course, this just might be my love of mythology talking here, but I really felt those two things were the only well written pieces. Yes, it was simple so that children could understand, but not so dumbed down that an adult would be just bored stupid reading it. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is.

The artist uses a cartoony style with clean lines. Everything is a caricature, which is really the best kind of art for a kids’ book. Both Rabbit and Bear Paws, along with their parents and General Braddock, have really good character design and are easily distinguishable from every other character, who unfortunately tend to look like each other. Excepting those five, everybody else is either and Ojibwa template or a British template and are very difficult to tell apart. Good thing most of them are quite unimportant to the story itself.

Clubbing GN

Adan: It seems the Minx line has finally hit a snag. Clubbing is the story of a pampered rich girl who gets caught using a fake ID to get into London’s hottest goth clubs and is forced to spend her summer in her grandparents’ golf club as punishment (get it, Clubbing?) Whereas previous Minx titles were very much grounded in the real world, in which the protagonists deal with real problems that could conceivably occur to any young girl out in the world, Clubbing veers wildly from that formula. Lottie, the main character, starts out with regular problems (while not advised, getting caught with a fake ID could conceivably happen to any young guy or gal), but slowly become less and less grounded in reality (I guess a woman could be murdered while you’re hanging out), until finally all pretense at reality is thrown away (I’d tell you, but it would just ruin the ending). I understand that the Minx line should not be pigeon-holed into just one genre (that of the teen girl dramedy), but when your first two outings are so strong, you shouldn’t follow it up with a mediocre genre twist.

It’s especially frustrating that this book isn’t better than it is because both creators are favorites of mine. Andi Watson is a fantastic writer, and Josh Howard draws those goth/suicide girls that I like to look at from a safe distance. On their own, they’re fantastic creators, renowned far and wide for their comic work. So why when they’re put together I get mediocre? Watson’s story is simply mediocre, and Howard’s art just doesn’t have the same pizzazz in black and white. I hope Good as Lily reclaims the crown that Clubbing dropped.

Brendan: To me, this story is way more believable than The Plain Janes. I genuinely liked the main character here. Girl-centric and universally appealing, the line is succeeding in its quest in creating content for an underserved and untapped market. This installment is provided by Andi Watson and Josh Howard. Howard’s simple, conservative style suits the work perfectly. Not only is it an appealing and relatable rendition of a young, female protagonist, but it works especially well in the condensed and digest-sized page. Andi Watson crafts a great story free of cliché, but loses points for the androgynous spelling of his name. This is like the J.K. Rowling thing in reverse, how dare he misrepresent himself to young girls and also myself? Doesn’t he know that one can’t write for girls unless you have been one? I feel dirty.

Charlotte has been booted from her London home to a summer of isolation in the bland countryside. While this is a common enough jumping off point, the fact that she doesn’t lash out at everyone around her like a prissy bitch separates Lottie from other fictitious fifteen year olds. Charlotte remains genuine and likable with the help of her charming British diction that calls to mind old episodes of Dawson’s Creek. Not that I ever watched Dawson’s Creek, I’ve just heard that they all talked like university professors. That’s all.

This was a solid YA read. It was mostly told through Charlotte’s inner monologue, but it was playful enough that it didn’t bog the story down. At first I was a bit upset that there was yet another shoehorned love story in this line, but it turned out to be an original enough relationship that it felt natural and real. I was genuinely surprised by this book, both for the quality and the story turns. This makes a great summer day’s read.

Adan: You totally watched Dawson’s Creek. You cried your eyes out when Pacey and Dawson stopped talking.

…Oh shit, did I just out myself?

Deadpool/Great Lakes Initiative Summer Fun Spectacular

Brendan: So it turns out that Deadpool/ GLI is the best Initiative book I’ve read. I have enjoyed the way the Initiative storyline has been utilized in the Avengers books, Punisher War Journal, and The Thunderbolts. I think it is a redundant concept in certain cases, because it’s boiled down meaning is no more than heroes are now authorized to be heroes, but I think that Marvel has made the prudent story choices in the post- Civil War landscape.

This issue did it better than that. The thing about this book is that since both the Great Lakes Initiative and Deadpool are registered, they are heroes as bona fide as Iron Man himself. Michigan or not, they are all signed up and official. That in and of itself is pretty funny. The chapters themselves each have genuinely funny premises; a drunken Marvel universe, Deadpool’s date with Big Bertha, and ‘Pool versus Flatman in a no-holds-barred bathtub death-match. The self-aware recap page of Fabian Niceza’s Cable/ Deadpool is consistently the best part of the book, and that tradition is continued in the frame story, which involves Squirrel Girl and her lost love, Speedball. This issue makes fun of Marvel in ways that are always done best in-house.

But the best aspect of this Summer Fun Spectacular is that it’s surprisingly well drawn. The issue itself is packed with what amounts to four full stories, written by the Nicieza/Slott Marvel team up. Kieron Dwyer, who has done every kind of comic book imaginable, does a great job with the Squirrel girl interludes. His Penance pages really stand out as great, funny illustrations. The artist Nelson, whose work as an inker is spectacular, delivers a gem in the first, drunken tale. The attention to detail in his inks give the gravity and depth that you only see in the best of embellishers. The dimension realized by the cross-hatching gives the work an Eric Powell- like feel. I get the feeling that Dan Slott wrote the script to this story, if only because the pages are tightly packed and the splash images are so conservatively used. The effect pays off, and I can’t help but wish that Nelson was working for Marvel on a monthly basis. Paul Pelletier, who provides the date story along with the well layered cover, is an artist who seems to be progressively improving each month. Marvel editorial must agree, because his work is becoming more and more visible. It will be interesting to see if Marvel makes the effort to promote him further through the ranks in the upcoming year. Clio Chiang does the Flatman showdown in a cartoonish fashion that suits the story perfectly. This issue is a great value for fun in the comic book sun. Humor comics don’t usually perform particularly well, but I think this book has enough super-heroey fun to suit any reader’s needs.

Adan: Jeez, do I even need to say anything here? It’s like the Coach just vomited out a word processor. I guess I’ll say something…

Every Great Lakes Avengers story that I have ever read has been hilarious, and this one is no exception. In fact, this book has two added bonuses in that Deadpool is involved (he is also always hilarious) and Slott doesn’t mix in soul-crushing pathos with the funny in this issue like he did in GLA Missassembled and GLX-Mas Special. Add in the lines “It’s too deep for you! See?! I’m deep now!” and “Yeah, that’s right. Squirrel Girl totally pwns Doc Doom. Know why? ‘Cause of somethin’ that happened in a story by Steve-freakin’-Ditko! That’s so in continuity. So just deal with it, fanboy,” and this book is golden.

…Okay, I guess that’s all I got. Anything else I could say Brendan already said.

Brendan: I can’t help it. I’m an eager beaver when it comes to Deadpool, provided Cable isn’t involved.

Fantastic Five #1

Brendan: Look, despite the crappiness, a lot of people bought Who Wants to Be A Superhero last week. A lot of people watched the show. People give it a free pass because Stan Lee is associated with it, and they will always give Stan the chance, no matter what. I think I am sort of like that with Tom DeFalco. He may not be my favorite creator, but he made a lot of my favorite comics as a kid and the nostalgia factor knows no limits. I’m not the only person who thinks like this; look at how many people buy Rob Liefeld comics. Look at Byrne fans. This may go a long way in cementing the subjectivity of taste, and maybe even offers insight into the randomness of success. Or maybe it just means that 90% of life is showing up. And 100% of life can be reduced to cliché.

The great irony of Marvel’s MC2 books, those titles taking place in the continuity that Spider-Girl, A-Next, Last Hero/Planet Standing, and this Fantastic Five series occur in, is that they are retro style Marvel stories told in the future. The line seems to suggest that the only way we can recapture our youth is through our children. This, too, is consistent to the Merry Marvel style, as a large portion of Stan Lee’s work dealt with parental and guidance issues. At times the attempt may be clumsy, but when it works the books are simple delights. It helps that this issue is drawn beautifully by another longtime favorite, Ron Lim. Lim’s latest work on Cable/Deadpool, Mystery in Space, and A-Next has been as consistent as ever, but the inks from Scott Koblish pull the work above the rest. At a time when John Romita Jr. and Mark Bagley are being rewarded for their longevity with high profile projects like X-Men: Endangered Species, Mighty Avengers, Eternals and World War Hulk, the fact that Lim is working mostly on out of continuity stories is glaring and odd.

On the other hand, what better project is there to work on than the one where Dr. Doom comes back for a final revenge on the Fantastic…Five. Actually, make that seven. Formerly Four, christened Five, really Eight when all the heads are counted. What is great about the MC2 line is the pure farce of a world that presupposes that the ongoing storyline of the Marvel universe ceased somewhere around 1995. Actually, maybe it is a world where Onslaught never happened. Even though the clone- Spidey dies, the baby that time forgot somehow survives to become Spider-girl, Human Torch continued his relationship with the alien Lyja (she’s been replaced by a Skrull!! Oh, wait…), the Thing gets back together with the totally forgotten Ms Marvel II, Sharon Ventura, the ill conceived She- Thing. Oh, and Valeria was never born. It’s the future, man!!

It is pointless and inane and a total blast. I would argue it is worth the three bucks just to see Ron Lim draw the Silver Surfer for one panel.

Adan: Two!? You ate two word processors!? Since the Coach has once again said everything I wanted to say, I instead will make some snide comments:

There are seven guys sporting a “5″ on their chest. Somebody needs to learn how to count. Also, is that Mirror Spock on the first couple of pages? That man can swim way better than Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home would have you believe.

Okay, that’s all I got. Look, this is a fun story, set in a world with very little continuity to bog you down. It’s what superhero comics are supposed to be.

Brendan: There was a two-for-one word and food processor sale! I was practically making money! Pity me, somehow!

Green Arrow: Year One

Brendan: There is nothing about a Year One project that doesn’t feel forced and cliché. It is an overused and unoriginal premise for a story conceit.

But.

There is an allure to a retold origin done well. There is something fun about using the long and convoluted character histories to re-center their beginnings. We know who these people will become, so we are attracted to watching their journey to get there. Of course, this only matters if the story is well thought out and well told. From the early showing, this series will be among the Year One successes.

Andy Diggle manages the paradoxical task of making Oliver Queen a likable asshole. He is spoiled and a womanizer and a drunk, but still his affable nature and the plight he finds himself in does wonders to redeem the character. The Robin Hood mythos is worked into Queen’s personality deftly. Jock’s jagged style fits this book well. I do appreciate seeing his action here as opposed to the comparatively slow Faker book from last week. I don’t know if this book fits perfectly with established continuity, but the existence of both the Multiverse and New Earth makes all that moot anyway. This is a good start, and here’s hoping the quality continues.

Adan: See, Jock is much better when we you give him some action to draw. His style is better suited to fast-paced, kinetic stuff than the talking heads from books like Faker (though Ollie here looks a lot like Cougar from their run on The Losers).

Year One stories have been all the rage since Frank Miller did it with the Batman back in ’87. Both Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson (twice! once as Robin and once as Nightwing) got the full Year One treatment while the entire DC Universe got a mini Year One in all the zero issues after Zero Hour. Now, DC’s doing five new ones and Green Arrow gets to be the first out of the gate.

Brendan is right in that Ollie is a likable asshole. Diggle does a good job balancing out his roguish charm with his inability to keep his mouth shut. However, I don’t agree that the Robin Hood stuff is handled deftly. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s like I’m getting beat over the head with it. And the “green” joke near the end? Come on, Andy, you can do better than that.

Brendan: But the first image is a green arrow! That is totally clever!

Martha Washington Dies One-Shot

Adan: In an effort to sound authoritative while reviewing this book, I went and looked for all the previous Martha Washington publications. I was able to find and read all of them except for issues #2 and #3 of Martha Washington Saves the World. I thought to myself, I’m gonna sound so smart when I review this book.

It turns out I shouldn’t have bothered (except that Give Me Liberty is a fantastic Miller work up there with Sin City and 300). Dies is all of of seventeen pages long, comprised of only 34 panels, most of which appear in four pages, and nothing actually happens. Martha says some philosophical gobbledygook to the soldiers surrounding her and then keels over after what looks like a heart attack. And Dark Horse is charging $3.50 for this!?

You could read the fucking cover for free and call it a day.

Brendan: It was difficult to really see this issue as a complete story. It reads like a post script to Miller and Gibbons’ thirteen year long project. It also seemed to imply that the only way we could reclaim our liberty involved space travel, so who knows. I actually liked seeing the many splash pages, chiefly because Gibbons’ work is often so compressed and tight. It is an interesting counter to his work on Watchmen which hardly used the splash at all. Also included is the original Miller outline for the Give Me Liberty series.

The most important page of this book is the back cover. In it we are told that there will be a complete Martha Washington collection coming in 2008. A pessimist would say this was a cash-in. An optimist might suggest that Dark Horse is merely increasing visibility of the property, and considering the creators that is a good thing. Sufficed to say Martha Washington Dies isn’t a good jumping on point for readers, but a definitive close to a project by two comic legends.

Nexus #99

Adan: Now that’s a comic!

Apparently, when I was reading all that Martha Washington stuff, I should have been reading all the Nexus stuff instead. It sucks that I know absolutely nothing about this character, but it is mighty impressive that I want to learn everything after reading only one issue. Mike Baron and Steve Rude really know what they’re doing here.

While some of Baron’s scripting could use a little tightening, this is still a fun space romp on a planet full of all kinds of alien races. The story moves at a quick clip, oscillating between the birth of Nexus and Sundra’s child and the escalating violence between the Alvinites and the Elvonics. None of this means very much to me yet, but it will soon, especially if Rude’s art is as beautiful throughout the series as it is here. Next issue is supposed to be fully painted!

Brendan: Yeah, I wasn’t sold on this. I, too, am ignorant to the Nexus saga, but I’d heard good things. While I loved Steve Rude’s adventure comic strip style and the various ways he used and broke panels, I found the story to be flat. I don’t know how I can sing the praises of Fantastic Five and not this, given the retro sensibilities. But I never said I was a rational man.

Nicolas Cage’s Voodoo Child #1

Brendan: After this week there will be at least a three-week embargo on Mike Carey-written work. This isn’t in retaliation to bad comics, but merely his over-saturation on BAAPPAS. Stop putting out so many new number ones and original graphic novels, sir, you are killing us.

Virgin continues gearing their publishing line towards magic realism. Taking place in New Orleans, this is the story of revenge and resurrection. It is a black magic tale. Carey’s story evokes the traditional imagery associated with the Big Easy, combining the backdrop of the post-Katrina landscape, the complicated racial history, and, of course, voodoo.

Dean Hyrapiet’s detailed pencils are remind me of Chris Weston. While the figures look good, the angular panelling and storytelling can be a distraction. This book has a unique angle and intrigue, but needs to expand and improve to stand out and be a successful book. If it doesn’t it will be little more than Darkman with magic.

Adan: You tricked me, McGuirk! You somehow snuck in another Mike Carey book while I wasn’t looking! What, is he your gay brother whom you also have sex with or something?

Regardless, this book begins in the deep south just as the Civil War is beginning (the real one, not Marvel’s). A white man tries to help escaped slaves get north but is killed by another white man who thinks that’s a big no-no. Also killed is the first man’s mulatto son. However, a big French-speaking guy uses some voodoo (presumably) to resurrect the kid, so that he can get his revenge on, but that doesn’t happen until the present day for some reason.

What? This book is pretty dang confusing. I might try one more issue to see if anything clears up, but even the sexy, sexy Nic Cage can’t keep my interest in a book this confusing.

Also, and possibly more important, why does Hyrapiet’s cover look like the immediate aftermath of a money shot?

Brendan: Gay brother I have sex with? That’s crazy. He’s my cousin. That makes it okay.

Adan: Incestuous!

Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen #1

Brendan: Denizens of the Colbert Nation rejoice! Finally you too can peer into the 32,000 page fabled opus of Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad Seven: A Tek Jansen Adventure, in comic format! The world, nay, the universe, is now safe!

Colbert’s absurdist political commentary is reflected in this absurd sci-fi installment. Reminiscent of all the worst science fiction, these stories are exactly as bad as they are meant to be. John Layman and Tom Peyer team up to write the lead story, and art is provided by Scott Chandler. It has all the tropes that those who have seen the animated shorts are accustomed to, including self congratulation, unbelievable aliens, and intergalactic ugly-bumping. The lead story is enjoyable mostly for the farce, but the backup by Maintenance creators Jim Massey and Robbi Rodriguez has the satirical slant that defines the television program. This issue is essential for Colbert fans, but if his show rubs you the wrong way it will do little to change your mind.

Adan: Two fantastic Tek Jansen adventures in one easy to digest installment! What better way to support our troops and our President than to purchase this book and proudly display it? I know, buy multiple copies!

Tek Jansen, a Stephen Colbert stand-in with slightly better hair and a harder to control libido, jumps from easily-avoidable catastrophe to easily-avoidable catastrophe (much like our government), attempting to fix everything that’s not actually broken, sort of like a demented, precognitive plumber. Tek Jansen is the people’s hero, and he says it best himself: “I’m already married… to every man, woman and child in this universe!” That’s why this is quite possibly the most awesome comic book in the galaxy.

And that’s the word.

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters TPB

Adan: Graymiotti’s tale of political intrigue is collected here. Well, not so much intrigue as heavy-handed political allegory. Where they usually shine in westerns and books about pay-per-save, they really just suck here. Every real-world metaphor is delivered with the grace and subtlety of this administration’s fear-mongering ways. This could hardly have been less subtle if the President’s name had been Shrub.

Although I will says this: Spin Doctor, Propaganda, Embargo, and Chief Justice are awesome names for government super heroes (although that government has no recourse but to be evil).

I’ve said before that Daniel Acuna’s art just doesn’t so it for me, although it’s slightly better here. One question, though: why does the Ray look like a black man when he’s powered up, but looks like a white man when he’s powered down? Is that on purpose, or merely a coloring error?

Brendan: Shrub…?… Oh, I get it. I agree that for whatever reason Acuna is much better on this book than his work on Green Lantern. He has an interesting and distinctive style that has an iconic feel. There are successfully executed pages, but one misfire and the reading experience is irreparably thrown. The potential for greatness is there, but not yet achieved.

But maybe I just liked the art because I wanted to find something enjoyable about this book. It was better than Battle For Bludhaven, but only barely. Neither of these books feels like they take place in the same DCU as the rest of the books. This wouldn’t be such an issue if the entire premise weren’t based so wholly on continuity. For one thing, I never knew that there were DC brand Celestials, excuse me, Cosmigods.

Ultimately, I just couldn’t bring myself to feel like anything in this series mattered. I didn’t even feel like it was happening in the tapestry of the greater DC multiverse. There was workable structure and viable ideas there, but there was little charm and the series fell flat.

Action Comics #851

Adan: Well it’s about time! After months and months of delays and fill-in issues, we finally get the next part in the much ballyhooed Geoff Johns-Richard Donner Superman storyline.

The writing is fine, but I still feel like I’ve seen this before. Some of it says Superman II, some of it says Superman Returns, some of it even says Fantastic Four circa Waid and Wieringo and magical Doom. Not to say there aren’t some original moments here and there, but overall it feels like it’s been done before and I’m just getting a re-hash. It may be true that there are no original stories left in the world, but a writer has to make the work feel original.

Adam Kubert is still Adam Kubert, so no worries there. It’s solid, it’s clean, it’s crisp, it’s good. Especially good is the difference in style when he’s doing the Phantom Zone and when he’s doing the real world. Drawing it differently means it feels different, and I can actually believe Superman is somewhere not on the Prime Material Plane.

A word on the 3D aspect of this issue: it’s pure gimmick. The only part of the book given the 3D treatment were the scenes taking place in the Phantom Zone, but since, as I already said, Kubert is already drawing those scenes differently, there was no reason to differentiate further. Pure gimmick.

Brendan: I like this story, and I think Johns/ Donner/ Kubert is a sure fire creative team. I like a streamlined General Zod. I like seeing Mon-El. I even like gimmicky 3-D issues! But nothing about this issue is worth the wait. All sense of urgency is lost, and personally my interest wanes. This storyline was supposed to be the big follow up to the “One Year Later,” event. Here we are, one year later, and we are only four chapters in. What’s worse, we won’t even get the conclusion next issue. Instead, we will wait for an indeterminate amount of time for it all to wrap up in an annual.

Comics like this make me mad. Liking these comics makes me even madder.

Black Canary #1

Adan: Ah, the troubles and travails of raising a child. They’re so cute and innocent… and capable of so much destruction. Especially when they come trained in the ways of the League of Assassins.

Green Arrow has asked Black Canary to marry him, but DC editorial wants to drag out her answer for a few months (at least two) and pretend like Canary doesn’t know what she’s going to say (even though last week’s Previews has solicited three separate GA/BC wedding one-shots). Alright, let’s go through the motions and just get this over with. At least the story here is not about Canary being all wishy-washy about her answer, but about her relationship with Sin, the girl she rescued from the League of Assassins, and what other people will do to them to get to Green Arrow. However, I hope Tony Bedard keeps all future references to the “possible” wedding out of the mini, as it looks quite enjoyable.

Paulo Siqueira’s art is an amalgam of artists. His pencils sometimes resemble Gary Frank, sometimes Ed Benes, and unfortunately, sometimes Rob Liefeld. Not everybody needs to grit their teeth or have their mouths open. On the upside, your anatomy is really good instead of, you know, sucking.

Brendan: This was a fun issue. I enjoyed getting a little background on Dinah and Ollie, and I think Tony Bedard is doing well to show how Canary is generally attracted to all the wrong guys. We know where this series is going to end, but until then it is sort of a trip seeing Black Canary do her best “Hard Travelling Heroes,” impression. “Hard Travelling Single Moms,” I guess. Good writing and good art. Good comics, they seem so easy sometimes.

Creature from the Depths One-Shot

Brendan: I picked this up because of the interesting art. I enjoyed that aspect of the book, but found that it could scarcely hold my attention as a read. If you are sick of zombies, but still yearn for horror comics, give this book a peek. If not, wait a bit until you see Mark Kidwell illustrating something new.

Adan: Yeah, I thought the story sucked pretty hard, actually. It was very, very exposition heavy and which was rewarded with a very silly story that’s more derivative than the latest quadratic equation (math humor!) The art was pretty good, though. If Kidwell pairs himself with a better writer, he can go places. Really far places. Places like the non-existent Eastern European hamlet his characters travel to fight Black Lagoon knock-offs. I bet it’s lovely there this time of year.

Faker #1

Adan: Hurm… I’m not sure about this. This is obviously much better than any superhero stuff Mike Carey has ever done (as we established last week), but that’s because all of Carey’s superhero stuff sucks. Compared to, say, Lucifer, Faker isn’t very good. But to be fair, it’s only the first issue. There are five housemates going to college, and they’ve all got secrets, or so the tagline says. I’m not to clear on what exactly is happening, but I’m interested enough to read the second issue when it comes out.

Jock’s art here is almost exactly as it was in the Losers, but it nonetheless feels wrong. Or maybe that’s why it feels wrong. This isn’t a political thriller, and Jock’s art seems tailor made for political thrillers. This isn’t Jock’s fault; in fact, it’s probably mine for trying to pigeonhole him into one genre. Regardless, I still don’t think Jock’s art fits with this kind of story. There isn’t enough action in this story to really show off Jock’s skills (at least there wasn’t in the first issue). At least his character design is still cool.

Brendan: Hurm indeed. (For another Watchmen nod, check out the tee shirt on the Joker in this week’s Detective Comics!) Is Mike Carey the only man writing comics these days? Does he sleep? Does he have a fleet of monkeys chained to typewriters that do his wicked bidding? Does he owe someone a great deal of money?

No matter what the reason, he is everywhere. It is difficult to pinpoint what exactly this story is supposed to be about, mostly because the cliffhanger seems a bit out of left field. I disagree with Adan in that I think Jock is a great fit for a story like this. While I like Jock’s action work, I think he proves here that he does character stuff as well as anyone. Plus, his characters look as hip as any college students should be. I don’t feel like I know enough to judge this series, except that I will check in on the second issue.

New Avengers/Transformers #1

Adan: Oh man. It’s all the bad things about comics rolled into one magazine. It’s an inter-company crossover that makes very little sense, filled with bad writing and bad art. Stuart Moore has about as much finesse as a jackhammer. “The engines of war. A necessary evil, sometimes. But a dark reflection of our better selves.” Really? That’s what you open with? Also, I could really do without the Rob Liefeld clone that is Tyler Kirkham. It even ends with a misunderstanding between the two good guy teams so that they start fighting.

At least there’s no variant covers covered in chrome or whatever.

Brendan: Crossovers exist to appease fan bases. In the best case scenarios they introduce one audience to a new franchise in an accessible and enjoyable story. In worst case scenarios they are often executed much like movie adaptations; disjointed and rushed. It is difficult to see these projects as anything more than cash-ins, because that is undeniably what it is.

That being said, the assignment is still to make the comic as good as it can be. Stuart Moore has experience with big assed robots in his collaboration with BAAPPAS’ fave Ryan Kelly, Giant Robot Warriors. He has also proven his superhero chops, most notably with an eighteen issue run on DC’s Firestorm revamp. This issue also had the bizarre distinction that it starred a living, breathing Captain America. That character has appeared in more comics since his death than he did in the full year before. The cash grab continues.

Blah, blah, blah… there is trouble in Latveria and the core group of New Avengers go in to investigate. I love how the Avengers don’t seem “New” without Power Man. Cage is what makes this team more than a prolonged Marvel Team Up. Anyways, there is some mysterious machinery operating in Doom’s kingdom. There is a contrived reasoning provided for why the team acts and sounds so horrendously out of character, but nothing can pardon the twenty pages we spend waiting for some Transforming. Kirkham is only adequate illustrating this issue, with his strengths plainly being the larger splash images. This is a fun, retro story that Transformer fans should dig, but it isn’t remarkable enough to shed the stigma associated with either movie tie-ins or crossovers.

Pirates vs. Ninjas II #1

Brendan: This comic book makes me so mad. I am fuming like a Looney Tune with steam leaking from my ears. It makes me want to yell and scream and claw and whine.

This was my idea.

I wanted to do this comic book when I was in high school. The only way to truly solve the pirates/ ninjas debate was to watch it play out, and declare the victor. I was so upset about this series during the first volume that I totally skipped it. I decided to give it another go with the new volume, and what do I find? The idea theft continued, and now barbarians are introduced. BULLSHIT! THAT WAS MY THING! NO ONE ELSE COULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT UP WITHOUT STEALING IT FROM MY BRAIN WHEN I SLEPT!

Deep breaths, I’m okay. The worst insult is the last one; given the brilliant seed that was pillaged from my brain how hard can it be to make a fun comic? Apparently, very hard. The art isn’t awful, but the coloring is distracting. The story commits the worst sort of treachery with too much talking and not enough ninjas. Mehhmety meh meh meh.

Adan: And no just barbarians, but English and French soldiers too! It’s like a big old free-for-all to see which team reigns supreme. But overall? Meh… It’s like the first one, but with some extra convulatedness (that’s a word I just made up). Yeah, pirates versus ninjas sounds cool. It may even look cool during the planning stages. But the thing about age-old questions like this is: they are not meant to be answered by mortal man. We cannot comprehend the myriad intricacies required to answer a question like this. We just don’t have the brain capacity. Our brains would explode in a kaleidoscope of shurikens and peg-legs. So, when someone tries to answer an age-old question, these myriad intricacies are not taken into account, and you get an unsatisfactory answer.

Punisher #49

Adan: Ennis just gets better and better on this title, as well as more violent and more sexual (not sexier, just more sexual).

The final part of “Widowmaker” ends not at all like I thought it would, which means Ennis can still surprise me without having to shock me, but he still shocks me, of course. It just wouldn’t be an Ennis book without the shocking, after all. Frank sits most of this issue out, still nursing the wounds he received two issues ago, so Jenny puts on the skull and wreaks havoc on the women who tried to kill her and Frank, going so far as to show her big sister Annabella exactly how the mob makes its money.

Officer Budiansky (aka Samuel L. Jackson, who is not only appearing in damn near every movie known to man, but also every comic; he shows up in Ultimate Power #6 as Nick Fury) seems to get to where he needs to be exactly when he needs to be there, even if he thinks he’s late. It’s a good ending to a good arc, and like I said, it surprised me.

Brendan: Hey kids, look! Starbuck is on the cover of this month’s Punisher! This issue was twisted and poignant and tragic. Garth Ennis gives us an honest look at the cycle of violence. I don’t know what it is exactly that I learned in this story arc, but it was deep.

It was heavy stuff. As good as the Widowmaker storyline was, I must admit that my favorite book Ennis wrote for this week was Punisher MAX Presents: Barracuda #5. That ‘Cuda is a crazy sumbitch, and I can’t wait to see round two.

Sidekickin’ One-Shot

Brendan: This issue was fun superhero fare. Even better, this book has the necessary angle to make it stand out in a market saturated by the genre. Major Hero has the same memory deal as the dude in Memento, but that isn’t the cool part of this book. The cool parts, and there are two, are both provided by the proficient, you guessed it, sidekick. The evil nemesis character is pretty fucking annoying. There is a limit to how much accented dialogue one can read. This issue goes way past it.

I think the art is good. I liked the costumes. I really liked the way the sidekick’s bit inverts the familiar investigative reporter model. It is even funny at times, which can be the hardest part of many new comics. The second story is cooler than the first. Dig.

Adan: There are two shorts in this book about the same two guys. The first sets up the sidekick and his memory-challenged super-hero. It’s kind of funny; the villain is especially hilarious (although his German accent is ludicrously hard to read). Then there’s the second story, which makes the first story better. The second story isn’t all that good on its own (regardless of what the Coach says), but if viewed as merely an extension of the first, it’s actually pretty good, and like I said, it makes the first one even better.

Thor #1

Brendan: Everybody deserves one free pass. When it comes to the Odinson, the bringer of the storms, bane of the Midgard Serpent, bearer of Mjolnir, even the God of Metal, I admit and embrace my inner and outer fanboy. Can’t help it. Wouldn’t try.

So I’m going to be biased. But biased is okay. Deal with it.

Almost three years ago, Marvel screwed me. What’s worse, it was the second time. The first time that Marvel stopped publishing Thor it was tied into the mega-event fondly remembered as Onslaught and the Heroes Reborn relaunches. Oh, right, that stuff isn’t fondly remembered at all. The latest cancellation was once again tied into a line wide publishing stunt, this time the Disassembled storyline that carried through Marvel’s non-X related titles. In the last story Thor was made to face Ragnarok, the fated death of the gods and end of all things. Instead of fighting an unwinnable battle, Thor used his oft-overlooked cunning and broke the death and rebirth cycle that the Norse gods were entangled in. He willed himself and his people out of existence and went night-night.

And that sucked.

But who stays dead, really? After a little hibernation and one clone-induced homicide, our boy is back. Better yet, the title is given an A-list creative team and even one of those Michael Turner variant covers that all the kids buy eleven copies of. Now we can just sit back and wait for the next Ragnarok. There is a lot of exposition to sift through in this issue, what with the resurrection from the void and all. This was a groundwork issue, taking us from oblivion to Oklahoma. Have faith in the heavens, y’all, Thor is back to kick some ass.

Adan: Really? I don’t know, man. I didn’t really like it that much. I honestly didn’t think you’d need that much exposition. He died, he was in limbo for a little while (how low can you go?), and now he’s alive again. Why do I need twenty-plus pages telling me that? This is just more of that decompression shit done not well. Plus, while Coipel definitely is A-list talent, Straczynski lost all rights to A-list after crappy arc after crappy arc on Amazing Spider-Man and that God awful Ultimate Power tripe. No, this isn’t going to work at all.

Union Jack: London Falling TPB

Brendan: And the Union Jack fans arrived in droves. Not even one drove? No droves at all?

Without the fine work of Ed Brubaker on Captain America this series would never have happened. But with a guest spot in a popular title, and a writer in Christos (eN)Gage with rising stock this D level character got a shot. The series gets off on the right foot, immediately acknowledging the work of the 1999 mini series by Ben Raab and an unknown John Cassaday. Joey Chapman has finally rid England of their vampire infestation, but no sooner does he stake the last bloodsucker before MI6 and a gang of super-terrorists get all up in his business. London is in trouble and it will take a coalition of the willing to save her.

I was a little disappointed in the art of this series. Mike Perkins is a phenomenal inker and a great penciller, but I am more used to seeing him ink his own work. Andrew Hennessy is a capable inker, but being so accustomed to see Perkins ink both his own work as well as Steve Epting’s I couldn’t help but notice that the character faces looked a bit off. The bar set in Captain America is a high one, and this came up only a hair short of that. Gage’s story is a good one, and the care he takes in developing character dynamics is not wasted. Jack is also a hero of the average Englishman, and that theme is handled with tactful subtlety throughout the story.

All in all, this is a worthwhile mini. My personal favorite moment came when UJ, after capturing Jack O’Lantern, demanded the criminal be extradited to a country with the death penalty. Thanks to Civil War and the Thunderbolt project, Jack’s wish is granted. Oh, and who doesn’t want to see the snooty British stuffed-shirt get his comeuppance in the end? No one, that’s who.

Adan: We reviewed the last issue of this mini back in the day when this column wasn’t so testosteroney, and I said it was awesome, except that it took awhile to get to the point. “It-Boy” Christos Gage writes an awesome political thriller, but unfortunately it’s disguised as a super-hero romp until the very end. Let me make a comparison: I watched Live Free or Die Hard the other day. It was a good action flick tied in with some political thrilly-ness, but the political aspects were tied in throughout the whole movie. In Union Jack, the political stuff doesn’t really enter the equation until the end. It’s like if John McClane was kicking bad guy ass and blowing shit up through the whole movie, and only in the last act did we find out the bad guys were cyber-terrorists. It’s not very good writing. The first three issues are pretty action packed and Union Jack has very little time to breathe as the fan keeps getting smacked around by fecal matter, and then we get this political angle thrown in in the fourth issue. It’s kind of jarring, but Gage saves it by just being that good of a writer. It’s a very enjoyable mini-series, even with the genre schizophrenia.

Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Feedback One-Shot

Brendan: Wow. Just wow.

After an eternity of waiting we finally got to see the masterpiece Stan Lee and the Sci-Fi network cooked up. It was awful. Feedback, AKA Matthew Atherton, got to realize all his dreams by seeing a comic about himself written by Stan Lee. So what if the story made no sense and reminded us all why comics ever carried a negative connotation? I was reminded of my own childhood dream to one day get in a fight with a bunch of street thugs with mohawks. Also, if I had the idyllic job of being an arcade repairman I don’t think I would even bother becoming a superhero. I would have already paid my debt to society. The art wasn’t bad, but this comic was.

Adan: Now I remember why Stan Lee should have stopped writing comics in the 70s. Please stick to the lakes and the rivers you’re used to (and by that I mean cameo-ing in movies). Here’s the most ridiculous part of this book: the hero wastes time in coming up with a codename and making a costume while the bad guy-terrorist is still at-large. Shouldn’t you be, oh I don’t know, fucking heroing!? Man, this was awful. Possibly more awful than New Avengers vs. Transformers.

Crossing Midnight

Brendan: Mike Carey is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. If only he could cut back on the forgettable superhero work…

Crossing Midnight is the story of a family that is being dragged into a mythic underground. Twins Kai and Toshi were born on either side of midnight, and from that moment on they were tied to a world of demons and honor codes. In this first story arc we see them as they were before they realized their inextricable link, along with their first foray downward. This series is firmly entrenched in the Vertigo landscape of magical realism. It separates itself by using Japanese folklore and culture as a touchstone.

I started this series in the single issues, but I couldn’t maintain interest from month to month. That is no insult to creators Carey and penciller Jim Fern, who both do excellent work here. No, it is simply that Vertigo series are so often paced in such a manner (re: decompression) that the issues simply don’t have enough meat. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well this book read in one session. Part of me wishes there was more resolution in this first arc, just to validate the reading experience. Instead it is mostly setup for where the series is headed, provided the series is given the chance to get there.

Likable cast, perfectly minimal line work, and gods of blades and needles make Crossing Midnight a Vertigo series with a high ceiling and a lot of material to cover. I don’t think I’ll go back for the singles, but I will eagerly await the next trade.

Adan: Yes, I really wish he’d stop writing super-heroes.

I reviewed the first issue of this when it first came out (way back in the day), and I believe I said (and I quote) “What did I learn when reading this book: don’t promise your kids to gods you don’t think exist, because they just might, and then what are you gonna do?” You know what, that still holds true. But as I didn’t really like the first issue by itself because it was slow and suffered from FIE (First Issue Exposition). Now, it turns out the whole first arc was suffering from FIE. This whole arc felt like set-up for whatever’s next. Which kind of sucks, because you know me and myths (or folklore, in this case). Pick up Hellboy: Darkness Calls #3 instead, as it features all kinds of awesome characters from Russian myths and folklore and is not just a lot of set-up.

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special

Brendan: So this issue kicked ass. It kicked a lot of ass.

And then it got good.

Sometimes a creative team and a character are born for one another. Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver were made to team up and tell Green Lantern stories. Of course, this really isn’t a Green Lantern story, it is Sinestro story. It is about fear and domination and storm troopers and… there is so much more, I don’t want to give it all away.

Geoff Johns’ greatest skill as a writer is his ability to tell stories about heroism. Like Grant Morrison’s superhero work, he creates scenarios so impossibly dangerous that the eventual and inevitable triumph of our heroes is all the more impressive. Van Sciver seems to be an artist bred only for telling thrilling Green Lantern stories. After an uninspired stint on Superman/ Batman , he returns to the Corps that made him a top artist. Even here, his rendition of DC’s big three is as finely detailed as anything else he does, but it doesn’t seem to play to his strengths. I believe it is the brightness, both of the Green Lanterns and their Sinestro counterparts, that makes his work shine. It is as if the near blinding starkness of the ring powered constructs highlights the best parts of his hyper-detailed line work. What’s more, the pencils have now achieved a new level of sophistication; where in Green Lantern: Rebirth we were told how each of the Lanterns realized their imaginative weapons, we know are privy to actually seeing it in motion. This is achieved by illustrating the moments in between the Lantern conceptualization and construction.

Johns has the knack to make these kinds of stories work. It seems effortless how he makes his stories seem like the only important thing that is happening. Picking up threads from his Flash run, Infinite Crisis, and 52 you will forget all about Countdown or even the recently wrapped Lightning Saga. There are a lot of new faces in this issue. And a lot of them die. This is a true space opera, with a cast of thousands. Without as much fanfare of hype as the War across town, this issue raises the stakes to the level comics should strive for. Look on that last two page spread, and know fear.

Adan: You son of a bitch! I can’t believe I let you go first on this! This book was seventeen kinds of awesome! Seventeen! Do you how many that is!? That’s like, more than five!

Okay, settle down there, Jimenez. Stop acting like some stupid fanboy, and act like the college-educated fanboy that you actually are.

I know I have knocked Geoff Johns around previously for his work on Green Lantern (and really, for his writing as of late in general), but all is forgiven now (except for issue four; that can never be forgiven). Remember last week how I said a prologue needs to excite you, needs to make you want the rest of the story, needs to make you need the rest of the story? Johns does that here, and he does it so well, I actually read the comic three times, looking for more things that maybe I had missed in previous readings. And I did that because I just cannot wait for the rest of this story. There is just so much in this book, and I’m not just talking about the crazy surprises he puts in here (and believe me, there are a few), but the character work is also phenomenal. From Kyle’s sadness after losing his mother to Sinestro’s barely contained glee after… well, nevermind that for now. I just can’t spoil any of this for you guys; it’s just to damn good.

Let us instead turn our attention to Ethan Van Sciver, the man I have previously proclaimed as the best Green Lantern artist of our generation, and he continues to prove it here. Nevermind that he draws countless Green Lanterns here, including the myriad ways they use their rings; he also draws countless Sinestro Corps members and the myriad ways they use their rings. Van Sciver draws at least one hundred distinct characters in this book, from the GLC to the Sinestro Corps to the JLA to the Guardians. That is a lot of dudes. And of course Brendan is right in pointing out that we no longer need narration to explain to us how the rings work for each of the principal Lanterns. I’m going to go a step further and say we didn’t really need the narration the first time around because Van Sciver is (say it with me now) the best Green Lantern artist of our generation.

This book was just so damn good, I am going to be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t make my top ten of the year.

Also, Brendan is a jerk for tricking me into letting him go first. I hate you and you’re a poop-head.

Jack of Fables #12

Adan: “The Bad Prince” is the arc that’s supposed to conicide with the current Fables arc (conicidentally titled “The Good Prince”). If you remember, Jack’s Hollywood adventure took five years, and Fabletown had to catch up. Well, now it finally has. Jack and the Pathetic Fallacy (aka Gary, as he now wants to be called… or maybe it’s Kevin?) are still on the run from the Golden Boughs retirement facility, and Jack now wants to call Fabletown, but unfortunately, neither he nor Gary (Kevin?) can remember exactly where it was.

Yes, I know Jack is merely a spin-off which stars the least likeable character of the Fables cast, but it’s still a dang good book. It has all the awesomeness of the the main title without all the gloom and doom of war with the Adversary. Bill Willingham writes this series in the first-person, through the voice of Jack, making for very self-centered storytelling. But that’s what makes it so hilarious. Jack just can’t stop talking about how great he is, no matter what may be actually happening to him. However, this same first-person perspective means that it’s kind of weird when the scene shifts away from Jack. During the Golden Boughs scenes, Jack is miles away (presumably), so how could he possibly know what’s going on there? Well, he doesn’t, which means the perspective does an akward shift from first- to third-person and then back again. It actually oscillates quite frequently, exacerbating the problem. Oh well, at least we get a kick ass Brian Bolland cover.

Brendan: Between The Irredeemable Ant-Man, any book with Tony Stark, and Jack…, it is a good time to be an asshole in comics. While I am not as engrossed in Fables as most, I find that the tone of this book suits me better. This book has a built in audience, and a built in ceiling. Although now we have a crossover of sorts, so maybe this will lead to Crisis of Infinite Fables and a weekly Fables series. Yeah, those books would be big time.

Marvel Adventures: Avengers #14

Brendan: If a great Marvel superhero story happened and no one read it, where would it fit into continuity?

Youth oriented books, as a rule, don’t sell particularly well. Quality can be as high as any book across the board, but the fact that the stories exist out of the mainstream continuity keeps most fans from caring. Since it is near impossible to get these books to sell, editorial sometimes uses this line to foster and develop new talent. Without a built in audience creators are forced to take greater risks than they may, while also remaining direct enough to be accessible to a casual young reader. Sometimes they fall flat. This wasn’t one of those times.

To be fair, neither Jeff Parker nor Leonard Kirk exactly qualifies as “new talent.” Both have established themselves as reliable comic professionals, most recently on the successful Agents of Atlas. So it isn’t exactly a surprise that this issue manages to fire on all cylinders. The team is comprised of only the most recognizable of Marvel heroes, all stripped of any unpleasant continuity issues like marriage, Skrull replacement therapy, severe asshole syndrome, nonexistence, alternate costumes, World War rage, and, of course, death. It turns out you can remove all that stuff and be left with a good comic! The formula is simple- take a Conan-like backdrop, add an iconic and recognizable cast, and employ a plot structure that borrows from everywhere and ends up somewhere between The Magnificent Seven and TMNT: III. Okay, it’s really just a Magnificent Seven homage, but I couldn’t resist the reference. The sum is purely enjoyable comics.

So this is a calling out. If you are someone who bitches and moans about line wide crossovers, gimmicky stunts, and variant covers (not wholly relevant, but still) I command you to read this issue. This is what you’re looking for. This story doesn’t exist to push forward the larger Marvel Universe, it need only be read and entertained. Kirk even throws in some cool retro designs, solidifying the value. Time to insert money into mouth, kids, or just prepare for a decade of massive mega-crossovers.

Adan: Everything the Coach said makes sense, but the story has to actually be good. They have new clothes made in this Conan-lite world so that they can blend in with the general populace… but the new clothes looks exactly like their costumes? That doesn’t even make sense. This book is supposed to be for kids, not morons.

But aside from that one faux pas, this is an entertaining story featuring Marvel’s biggest guns together beating things up. It’s fun, simple, and done-in-one. I’m not sold on the “this is for kids” angle, but it might well be. I’ll have to delve deeper by reading the digest that’s out, and you know what? Jeff Parker deserves the benefit of the doubt after writing awesomeness like Agents of Atlas and the X-men: First Class Special.

Also, that was a Seven Samurai homage, bucko. Get your film history straight.

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #1

Adan: Man, this isn’t very interesting at all. While some young tree-huggin hippie in the present tries to stop land development to save his precious rainforest, we get the history of Val Verde (some quasi-Latin country that’s supposed to be in South America somewhere), and the origin of Sheena. Most of the story is about Caldwell Industries, its role in Val Verde, and its ties to the Jungle Queen. Sheena herself doesn’t show until the end (of both time frames), but I wonder how she got those fashionable hoop earrings. Is there a mall in the middle of the rainforest? Just skip on this. We’re about to get hit with a slew of jungle girl books, and one of those is bound to be better than this.

Brendan: Adan covered most of my issues with the story. Still, that Sheena sure is easy on the eyes. But before anyone jumps down my misogynist, cheesecake loving throat, let me clarify; this issue is very well illustrated. Matt Merhoff has a solid, clean line and a direct sequential style. At his best, he channels manga influence emotion through Mark Bagley cartooning. I didn’t find this issue to be horrible, but I would be hard pressed to say it was better than average.

Snakewoman: Tale of the Snake Charmer #1

Adan: I don’t know, man. I don’t think the Snakewoman saga is going to be as good without Michael Gaydos on art. No disrespect to Vivek Shinde, who’s art in this new mini isn’t bad or anything; it’s just not Gaydos. Gaydos created the look for this story, and for it to change so markedly… it’s going to take some getting used to. Zeb Wells is going to have to step up his writing so that this feels like an extension of the story, and not like a completely new one. He succeeds for the most part, keeping most story elements intact (Jessica and the Snake God within her; the 68 and James Harker). But that guy on the slab: is that supposed to be Raj? See, this is what I’m talking about. I can’t tell because the art is so different. I’m obviously going to keep reading as I’m pretty invested in the story, and I can only hope Shinde’s art grows on me.

Brendan: I never really warmed to this series in the first run. I think it was partly because Gaydos’ Jessica Peterson felt too much like Alias’ Jessica Jones. In fact, I couldn’t tell them apart. I knew little going into this relaunch, but I feel like Wells covered all the bases and brought us up to date. I agree that Shinde needs to improve over this series. There are inspired moments, but on the whole it is simply too hard to tell what is what. The highlight of this issue is undoubtedly the beautiful cover.

Subculture

Brendan: This issue came up just short for me. We are introduced to Jason, a twenty-something nerd with nerd friends who read comicbooks. The gang also partakes in every single nerd activity imagined. Scared of girls, unkempt, and overweight, it is a real all winners squad. Enter Noel, a pretty girl in a comic store, and apparently a story ensues.

The art by Stan Yan is fun, and suits the book. His characters are distinct, and their emotions are clearly read. The writing, while it has moments, is uninspired. Relying too much on clichés to do the heavy lifting of character development, and over writing dialogue such that it cramps the page and engenders no transitional page flow, this was average. The characters themselves were unsympathetic, and barely even likable.

Telling a story about your life is fine. Many in the comics’ community are more aware of the Warcraft scene than the nightclub scene, so it stands to reason that the art would reflect that. However, you can’t just go on about the world around you without a purpose. This issue seemed to talk about the “subculture” of dorkdom without really saying anything. If anything, it is saying that sometimes nerds get the girl too. This is a nice reminder, but hardly enough to sustain a story.

Adan: Man, I’m offended. Yes, some geeks are overweight and can’t to girls, but that’s not all of us. And I’m fairly certain this Jason isn’t even a nerd at all. He makes fun of his actually-nerdy friends, he seems to not enjoy D&D (although that scene was somewhat humorous… but offensive nonetheless), but he does buy comics on Wednesdays.

I don’t know, I am severely put off by this whole endeavor. The hot comic book girl gets immediate play even though she’s kind of a bitch, but the nice, sincere comic book girl doesn’t because she’s a little overweight. That’s bullshit, and I’m calling shenanigans.

On the upside, we get a nice Jim Mahfood cover in which he sneaks in a dirty word. I’ll give you a hint: it’s supposed to say “Clint” on that name tag, but it doesn’t say “Clint.” It says something else entirely.

X-men #200

Adan: Well, it wasn’t completely awful. This 200th issue extravaganza is not very extravaganza-ish. The team goes to Rogue’s house (sans Cable as he is still in Providence doing some future shit) and get ready for a nice day at home. Rogue’s crazy, Iceman and Mystique fuck in an upstairs bedroom, and everybody else just kind of hangs out. Of course, Wolverine, Cyclops, Emma Frost, and Beast show up because we need to sell more issues. And then the Marauders attack! Hey, awesome, a team of clones that nobody’s cared about for awhile. Back in Providence, Gambit and Sunfire attack Cable, and possibly kill him (read this week’s Cable/Deadpool if you really want to know). Also, there’s some shady shit going down in the Big Easy with the Marauders, but nobody knows what that’s about yet. I guess that takes place in the past? Or maybe it’s just extra Marauder clones? Who knows? Also unanswered is the question of whether or not Gambit and Sunfire have anything to do with the Marauders. Bachalo’s cover certainly seems to imply so, but within the book, those trains do not meet.

Let me leave Mike Carey alone while I make fun of Humberto Ramos for a second. Humberto, I love you like a brother. I think you make up about 100% of total Mexicans in mainstream comics, and I have enjoyed your art immensely in other books, but your style does not fit with the X-men. You’re much too cartoony, and I can’t take this book seriously. Just take a look at the covers (of which this issue had three). Dave Finch’s, who has a more realistic style comparatively speaking, X-men (he draws damn near every X-man ever) look so much better than Ramos’s, or even Bachalo’s, who is another artist I enjoy immensely on occasion. But even the style isn’t as bad as some of the panel and page transitions that are made in this book. For example, take the scene in which Omega Sentinel takes out Emma Frost. In the first panel of the page, there is clearly a man’s arm visible in the frame (possibly Cannonball’s arm) when Emma figures out Omega’s now playing for the other team. Before she can say anything, Omega zaps her, but nobody seems to notice. In the very next page, Omega’s sitting amdist the other X-men like nothing fucking happened. And it’s not just the art responsible either. As soon as Omega zaps Emma, she says, “Couldn’t use a plasma burst. Too noisy.” I guess that explains why nobody heard the commotion (or it would have if Emma hadn’t take a table down with her; plus, that arm had just left the room), but it doesn’t explain why Omega’s talking to herself.

That’s just one example; the book is chock full of stupid scenes like this that make no sense whatsoever, even in a super-hero universe. In fact, the back-up story starring Beast (the “Endangered Species” that started last week), which is really just a recap of the end of House of M and all of Decimation, is way better than the main story, and much more interesting, especially once you see who it is McCoy is recapping these events for. But those eight pages are not worth the $3.99 Marvel is charging for this travesty.

Brendan: Bobby Drake, you dog. Also, read Cable/ Deadpool this week even if you aren’t curious, if only to see a guy out-Liefeld Rob Liefeld.

Was this issue an anniversary? I mean, I saw the big round number, and I saw the crazy-assed covers, but nothing in the story made me feel like this was any particularly important comic. I actually dug the Ramos/Bachalo tag team. Bachalo has been an X-Men artist for long enough that I accept him without thinking about it, much like Salvador Larroca. Ramos is a bit of a fresh take, and I can’t help but smile when I think of his work on DV8. He has come full circle. The styles are unique but still mesh well enough to avoid distraction.

Like I said last week, I have removed myself cleanly from the X-universe. I’ll check in every once and a while, but they have got to sell me on the books. I gave this book a shot and it failed. Apparently I am too far from the soap opera, and this book did nothing but drive me further. I guess I’m happy to see the original Gambit costume back. I guess.

Scott Eaton has been on a sharply inclined curve over the last few months, and his Endangered Species installment shows just that. The story has intrigue, but no amount of intrigue would make me buy eighteen issues of shit I don’t normally read.

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers! Annihilation Conquest: Prologue, Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13, and Justice League of America #10 (which we don’t even review here; we’re just a couple of dicks) get the “So no shit, there I was,” treatment. You have been warned!

Annihilation Conquest: Prologue

Adan: I had never, ever enjoyed Marvel’s cosmic stories. It’s not that I think Infinity Gauntlet sucks, it’s just that it’s not for me. Like the Hulk, I viewed the cosmic characters as too powerful, and therefore able to easily defeat anything thrown their way, and therefore uninteresting. Able to defeat anything except each other, that is. But why should I care about what happens between Adam Warlock and Thanos, or the Silver Surfer and Terrax the Tamer? None of them are human and most them don’t even remotely act human. Nope, cosmic stories just weren’t for me.

And then Annihilation came. Apparently, all that was needed in order to make me care about cosmic characters was a war of unimaginable proportions and a few human characters at the center of it all.

Now that the Annihilation Wave has been stopped in the face of a united front encompassing Skrull, Kree, humans, and even ex-Heralds of Galactus and Negative Zone denizens, there is a race within positive matter space which thinks it can easily take the remnants of once proud empires and call them its own. And this race is a race not seen since a failed attempt to take the Earth in the pages of the X-books about, what, ten years ago? That’s right, suckers, the Phalanx is back and they’ve just taken what’s left of the Kree Empire in one fell swoop.

A prologue is supposed to set the mood, provide background information, and above all, get you excited about whatever it is it’s prologuing. DnA (Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s nom de guerre) have succeeded in all three respects. The mood is one of despair: after fighting a brutal war against an invading force that it very nearly lost, the universe is now taken apart from within. The background is relayed through Phyla-Vell, the new Quasar, and Peter Quill, the once and future Star-Lord, who both survived the Annihilation Wave and saw exactly how close galactic civilization came to ending. And the excitement… man, if you can’t get excited about the Phalanx just taking the Kree Empire like that, then there is something really wrong with you.

Brendan: So wait… the known world suffers through a war of unprecedented horror and destruction, and during the rebuilding phase there is an opportunistic imperialist movement that capitalizes on the instability of the region? Why do I feel like I’ve heard that story before?

And there is the heart of good cosmic, or sci-fi material. It uses extraordinary backdrops and trappings to remind us of the world we live in. Mike Perkins manages to ground this story in humanity with his gorgeous artwork, not to mention draws a mean Kree Sentry. I won’t defend or compare to the metaphysical conflict that defined Jim Starlin’s cosmic Marvel work, but I thought this was a good issue that will get people pumped for the coming Conquest.

The Brave and the Bold #4

Adan: When I did the first issue of this awhile back, I said that I liked it, but I didn’t really know why. It was just enjoyable as heck. Three issues later absolutely nothing has changed in the book’s execution, and yet I find myself not liking it as much. Maybe it’s my complete non-feelings about the two main characters this issue (Supergirl and Lobo), or maybe the novelty of this book has worn off. A book that visits Destiny’s Garden as well as the new Legion’s future should still excite me (interesting note: now that Batman has met two different Legions from supposedly the same point in the future, what will he think? what will readers think?), but for whatever reason, it doesn’t.

Brendan: This book should be DC’s biggest sure thing. George Perez gets an opportunity to draw the entire DCU, and Mark Waid gets to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of all things DC. Both are solid, proven creators, and no one seems to be getting in their way. As such, I still can’t figure out how this book is so average.

I think it is well drawn. Tom Smith’s colors seem outdated, but that is hardly enough to take away from Perez’s magic. I think Waid wants to tell these stories. I feel like he has made good decisions in the characters he chose to include, and those he decided to match up. I think his knack for each character’s voice is as natural as Perez’s ability to draw them. But for the life of me, I can’t bring myself to care about this plot. I don’t see how the “A” and “B” stories synch up, although I will admit I can’t become invested enough to care. On top of that, it all hinges on time travel, destiny, and… gambling?

I can’t bring myself to not read this book. It has a lot going for it. For example, I feel like I never realized how much I liked the new Blue Beetle until I saw him paired up with Batman. The sexual tension, first with Green Lantern and Supergirl, and now with Supergirl and Lobo, is playful and fun. Lobo stays true to his bastich roots, and Supergirl is doing her best Britney Spears “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” impression. This is probably a book strictly for fanboys and fangirls, but it is fun, classic-style comics.

Adan: “The sexual tension… with Supergirl?” The girl is sixteen! There should be no sexual tension! Pervert!

Brendan: I’m not the bastich here. I’m just calling it like I see it. Plus, she was in that space ship for a long time…

Adan: Yeah, a long time. About sixteen years worth of time!

Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13

Brendan: By the time you see the cover, you will know the story.

By the time you hear this weekend’s convention coverage, you will know that this book has been cancelled and both Mark Waid and the Volume Two numbering will be returning to the book in September.

Long story short, Bart is out. The youngest Flash quickly became the least successful. It seems as though Bart Allen was no more than a sacrificial lamb given up for the sake of “One Year Later.”

“You can’t have a Crisis without a dead Flash.”

These were the words of Dan Didio two summers ago in regards to speculation that the Flash title would be shaken up following Infinite Crisis. It turned out to be a misdirect, as Wally and his family were whisked into obscurity for a rainy day, (that rainy day turned out to be this week), and Barry Allen made a Crisis appearance. In the end Bart Allen, who only three years prior had been the original creation “Impulse,” and was only just coming into his role as the second “Kid Flash,” took on the lightning bolt mantle.

He was screwed from the start. Wally West spent over two hundred issues adjusting to the role of being the fastest man alive, and was often defined by his inferiority complex and hero worship of his uncle. He was also a rare character who was given the opportunity to grow and mature, never more so than when he rescued his miscarried children from limbo and defeated his entire Rogue’s gallery. It took twenty years, and two writers with lengthy runs and an affinity for the character, but Wally overcame his uncle and became a family man. Then he ran so fast he became lost with them in obscurity.

So thrust into the spotlight is the erstwhile Impulse as the brand new Flash, with a new number one and everything. DC pulls some guys from the world of television and film, the ones that made a Flash television show that failed, and an unproven but high ceiling artist in Ken Lashley, and told them to, ahem, run with it. The scripts were bad, the artists couldn’t keep up on quality or a schedule, (punctuality killing the book, Barry Allen would be proud), a car accident was foreseeable. It was going to take a lot of things going right for fans to accept a kid who was raised in the future in a virtual reality program as a relatable character, especially when he aged four years for no reason other than One (or more, if you are trapped in the Speed Force) Year Later. If I were Bart Simpson, and not above such things, I would say it was the suckiest sucking thing that ever did suck. Of course, I would never say that.

Hope seemed to come in the form of solid writer Mark Guggenheim and Tony Daniel. All of a sudden the title wasn’t the worst book you bothered to read. You’ve got to walk before you run.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, thirteen issues and now you are cancelled. Congratulations, now we have another dead Titan. This issue itself felt something like a snuff film. It was also the best issue of the run. You motherfuckers. From the first page, to the homage of Barry’s own death, to the forced last words of Bart Allen, this was a hopeless story. The last five pages kill me. I guess the most interesting thing about this story is where it will lead the Rogues, because they have officially taken it up a level.

It just sucks. I liked Conner Kent and I liked Kid Flash. I wish DC would have had the guts to simply cancel The Flash for a year and reevaluate their plans for the title. Instead, we got a year of half- cooked stories and we’re left one character short of where we started. I liked this issue, but I’m pissed I had to read it.

Adan: Yes, but which cover? And it’s not like covers haven’t lied to us in the past. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with more than ten covers that told the truth. Regardless, the Coach is totally right. This relaunch was mishandled and frankly sucked until Guggenheim came aboard and tried to save the book. Alas, it was too late. The damage had done and even a pretty solid arc by Guggenheim could do nothing to save poor Bart Allen, a boy who was forced to grow up way too quickly. He’d been Kid Flash for about a year before they decided to stick him in the red suit and made him run. Now, he’s dead, we’ve got only one founding Young Justice member left, and precious few speedsters left in the world (well, except for that fact that three just came back from limbo thanks to the efforts of a certain future super-hero team).

The Rogues, however, do look like they’re ready to hit the prime time alongside other villains like Batman and Lex Luthor. For a long time, they didn’t kill people, not because they didn’t want to, but because it was unneccesary and they thought it would bring too much heat on them. Well, they’ve just beaten a Flash to death. I think that might qualify as heat.

Madame Mirage #1

Brendan: What’s the point?

That is the question that ran through my head most as I read this issue. The world is corrupt, and heroes are outlawed. Bad guys run the show. Oooooooooo.

Ken Rocafort does a decent job putting us in this world, but Paul Dini comes up flat. There don’t seem to be any stakes in this series. It feels like little more than an expression of fetishism, but without much direction. A character shrouded in mystery isn’t compelling in and of itself, and the visuals aren’t enough of a draw on their own. This isn’t a bad issue, and I would bet that there will be some that swear by this new character, but to me, it is only almost as good as any given issue of Detective Comics by Dini. So what’s the point?

Adan: I don’t even give it that much. I’m super disappointed in Paul Dini. Spectacular issue after spectacular issue of Detective Comics buys you a ticket into the door that is my reading list, but then you got to prove yourself all over again, and Dini did not do it at all. I was asking myself “Who cares?” Ken Rocafort’s visuals remind me of Rob Leifeld, so no points there, either.

I’m just so fucking disappointed.

Mythos: Spider-Man #1

Brendan: Sometimes there’s a reason you hear a story again and again. We often get to a point where the story is so familiar we take the simplicity for granted. But there is a reason we can hear these tales again and again.

The Mythos line is meant to bridge the gap from Marvel fans familiar with the characters outside of their original comic trappings. It is chiefly designed to take the movie franchises and the “Ultimate Alliance” fans and show them how it all started. Paul Jenkins is a man of many writing hats, and does a good job compressing the familiar origin story. It is exactly how we remember it. This isn’t the hardest job in the world, but a dropping of the baton would be imminently noticeable.

The key, however, is the painted work of Paolo Rivera. At first glance, the art feels “photo-realistic.” This is really something of a misnomer, because Rivera’s characters are realized more out of cartooning than meticulously gathered photographic reference. His Peter Parker looks both like Tobey Maguire AND Steve Ditko’s portrayals. He is creating a reality where both entry points are valid.

The scenes this book lumps together are straight out of Stan Lee and Sam Raimi. The web-shooters are not organic. So ends that argument. Oh, and we get a Conan O’Brien cameo. That clearly rules.

There isn’t much new in this book. It is what it is. It is also well executed, and that counts for something. Personally, I can’t wait until this entire Mythos project is completed and treated with a nice oversized hardcover. If all the Marvel staples are recreated as well as this one, that will be a collection worth holding on to for a long time.

Also, Tony Stark doesn’t appear in this issue, so that is a plus.

Adan: This is the first Mythos book I’ve read and the reason for that is because I fear Paul Jenkins and his writing as of late. However, it seems I feared for naught (well, not for naught; that fear is still a healthy thing to have) as this book is actually pretty good. Jenkins does a good job of updating the origin while still rooting it firmly in its own mythos (uh, no pun intended). I like the little things he adds, like Peter wearing elbow and knee pads the first time he goes out swinging and Uncle Ben wanting to take Aunt May to Hawaii with the money Peter’s making. I also like that all the familiar beats are kept intact with very minimal changes.

Also of note is Paolo Rivera’s art (once voted sexiest man at Marvel by staffers). Watching this man paint, which I’ve been lucky enough to do once, is almost a religious experience, especially when his art comes out as awesome as it usually does. His art here is pretty cartoony, so I’m not sure why B says it feels photo-realisitc (just take a look at the thief as he runs past Spidey; that is one cartoony mug). I’m not complaining, mind, I’m just saying.

Conan O’Brian is also quite cartoony, but then again, he is in real life too.

Repo #1

Brendan: Oh my God, the world of Repo is my worst fear realized: a world where debt collectors are give the rights of bounty hunters. Rick Spears and Rob G team up once again to deliver this raw dystopian future. Rob G’s pencils only get tighter with each successive project, and Spears’ dialogue feels modern and true even in this supposed future.

I don’t want to describe this story in too much detail, it is simply too close to my own personal nightmare. I don’t think I’m alone in this fear, and that is what will make this book a success. I expect this book will get better with each issue, and I expect you will all check it out. Or they’ll find you.

Adan: A mix between Brian Wood’s Couriers (in which Rob G handled art chores) and the Jetsons. The text piece at the beginning tells you most everything you need to know: “This is the future they promised us — hover cars, jet packs, hotels on the moon — but they neglected to inform [us] that it all came with a heavy fucking price tag.” I can see why Brendan is terrified of this future. Frankly, I am too (you’ll take my big screen when I’m dead). Rick Spears is a fantastic writer and I’ve enjoyed everything he’s ever written, and the same actually goes for Rob G. That guy can draw gritty better way better than Michael Turner can draw ridiculously proportioned women (and Rob can draw feet, to boot). There is no reason at all why this will not continue to rock, so pick it up with no fear in your heart.

Tick’s 20th Anniversary Special Edition #1

Brendan: This is a nice testament to a character’s longevity. The Tick is a quirky character that speaks to the era he was created in much the way the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do. They both spoofed mainstream comicbooks but managed to surpass the popularity of the competition through television and merchandising. How long before a Tick movie?

This issue is full of varied creators taking a hack at a character they enjoy. Most have done work on this title somewhere down the line, but many just join in the fun for the ride. Mike Kindt’s “World War Spoon,” serves as the high water mark for the shorts, no small task for a list of creators that includes Zander Cannon, Fred Hembeck, Josh Howard, Billy Tucci, Terry Moore, Cory Walker, and Trina Robbins. Oh, and also, there is Tick in carbonite. He’ll be quite safe there. Creator Ben Edlund throws down with a quirky three pager. You are going to want to pick this up.

Adan: Yeah, when I first read about this, I thought it was going to be a reprint. It turns out I was super wrong and is instead a collection of funny shorts by a bunch of funny creators. Most of these are one page gags, but there’s a few two-pagers thrown in there as well. You’re going to want to pick this up if you’ve ever been a fan of the Tick in his myriad forms. You might want to pick it up if you’ve never even heard of the Tick. It is pretty funny.

X-men: Endangered Species One-Shot

Adan: When there are only 198 mutants left in the world (give or take fifty or sixty), the death of one of them is a big deal. Some kid we’ve never heard of dies off-panel and all our merry mutants show up to the funeral. Representatives from all four X-men squads are there (Uncanny, Astonishing, Adjectiveless, New), as well as X-factor Investigations and current government agent Bishop are in attendance. There are talks about numbers and grief and blame, but really it’s just a commercial for the next X-event with a few good lines thrown in. Oh Mike Carey, I just gave you my half of the BAAPPAS Book of the Year Award, and this is how you repay me? Regardless, there are some good lines, like I said, the best one coming from Sebastian Shaw: “Face it, Charles. We were supposed to be the clever ones. The visionaries. You. Me. Eric. And all we’ve ever done is to fight each other until our knuckles bled.” That’s powerful and almost makes up for the mercenary existence of this book.

Scot Eaton has some fantastic pencil work here, which is only enhanced by inker John Dell and colorist Frank D’Armata. This books looks really, really nice, even if it’s actually not so much.

Brendan: Hi, I’m Brendan, and I was once an X-fan.

Man, that feels good to get off my chest. Now, getting to this issue. I want to weep for the lost mutant. I want to care that mutants are… ENDANGERED. I showed up, I’m trying here.

But I’ve got nothing. I like Astonishing because I enjoy the cast and the way it handles the characters. Other than that, I’m over the “persecuted and feared” part of my life, so I just can’t connect with their plight with the ease I could at thirteen. I check in on the X-titles every once and a while, but never find myself begging for more. And here wr are again. The Shaw scene is definitely the best of the book, and D’Armata kills, but otherwise this is the pinnacle of talking head comics where nothing happens. And think about it, buying this issue is spending $3.99 on a prologue to a series of backups, where we can presume Beast will talk about how he wants to tackle problems.

And now I remember why I’m a recovering X-fan.

Yotsuba&! v4

Adan: Argh!!!! This comic is so cute!!!!

Yotsuba is a little girl, about four or five years of age, who acts exactly like a four- or five-year-old should, making for some excellent comedy. This is by far my favorite manga, and not because I’m some weird pervert (though I’ve heard this comic appears in one of those phone book anthologies in Japan that is geared for a very specific kind of pervert: the kind that likes to look at little girls, but hey, that’s Japan), but because it is by far the funniest, sweetest, cutest, most heartwarming book I’ve ever read. The adventures Yotsuba gets into are at once hilarious and sweet, and she brings all her friends into it whenever possible. She doesn’t understand more adult concepts like heartbreak or global warming, and she takes everything literally (for example, not touching a soccer ball with her hands ever because the rules forbid it), but she tries her hardest anyway. And her dad is a super awesome dad, the kind of dad I’d like to become. He tries to include her in everything he does, and he humors her ridiculousness, but in a healthy way, you know. When Yotsuba tells her dad that a tsukutsukuboshi is in fact a cicada and not a summer fairy at all, he acts as shocked and surprised by the “big news” as she is.

Look, I know I’m a big old softie, but dammit, this is quality work. I enjoyed the heck out of Kiyohiko Azuma’s first manga work, Azumanga Daioh, but this is so much better, it’s not even funny. Well, actually, it is funny. It’s downright uproarious.

Brendan: This book completely nails both the unbridled joy and unmatchable frustration of spending time with children. With basic and unmistakable emotive expressions and a knack for saying no less than every single thought in her head, this one is no less than a romp.

I didn’t want to like this. Damn you, Adan. I’ll never forgive you for this.

And Others…

Brendan: I think I liked the finale to The Lightning Saga, but I’m not sure it made sense. There were some very cool moments, and I’m sure it will read better in one sitting.

Captain America was as good as it should be, while Spider-Man in both Amazing and Fallen Son were short of worth the wait. Sensational, on the other hand, is the best issue to bear the header Back in Black. We get deep into the mind of the tortured Eddie Brock, and it is as disturbing as it ought to be.

Greg Pak showed the more character driven half of last week’s World War Hulk in Incredible. It is good.

Adan: Every World War Hulk tie-in (with the exception of the always awesome Heroes for Hire) was basically a re-hash of World War Hulk #1 from last week. There was some new stuff added in, but re-hash for the most part.

Brendan: Call it re-hashed browns.

Okay, listen. There’s gonna be some spoilers here, okay? You guys should be used to this, but once in awhile, we’ve gotta spoil something pretty big, so I’m trying to warn you in advance here. If you are one of those who cares about such things, then read Green Arrow #75, Justice #12, New Avengers #31, and World War Hulk #1 before you read the column. You’ve been warned.

The Agency TP

Adan: This originally came out back when names like this were very popular: The Authority, The Monarchy, The Alliance, The Establishment, so on and so forth, so I didn’t pay it too much attention. That may have been a bad call as this is one interesting read. It’s the future, and the police suck so hard, people need to turn to private law enforcement. That’s where the Agency comes in. This particular mission has them going to Houston on the trail of a serial killer thought captured long ago. I haven’t liked Paul Jenkins in a really long time, mostly because the man is as long-winded and precious as Chris Claremont, and that’s a really long-winded and precious. There’s some of that in here (especially during main character Virtual Jones’ internal monologues), but it’s mostly Jenkins pre-Spectacular Spider-Man and Wolverine. This is Jenkins when he was writing Inhumans and The Sentry (the first time). This is Jenkins when he was good. The sci-fi future he builds is a believable extension of our own world (moreso now than when he originally wrote it, actually…. spooky). The weather is fucked, the government blows, and society as a whole has sunk into a well of vile degeneration and the laziest of ennuis that can only be roused by technofied sex or virtual violence (the previously mentioned vile degeneration). His characters are weird and crazy, yet still believable, from the psychic Siouxsie to the trigger-happy Kerrick, all these guys are products of the world they live in.

Kyle Hotz brings it all to life with the creepiest art style this side of Ben Templesmith (and with Hotz, I always know what I’m looking at). This guy can draw some really disturbing shit with crystal clarity. There is a maxim in the horror genre (a maxim I think Templesmith and his ilk believe in wholeheartedly judging from their art style): never show the audience the monster or the gore or the whatever the scary part is supposed to be, because it will never be as scary as what exists in the audience’s mind. I’m not sure I believe that anymore after reading this. I never would’ve thought up the stuff Hotz draws in here. That is some seriously disturbing shit.

Is this book worth twenty bucks? Maybe. Luckily for you and me, we only have to pay fifteen, making this an easy sell.

Brendan:: I agree that there is a quality in this book that harkens to The Authority. It seems like it was a time when violent, semi-political comics flooded the market, much like zombies the last few years or genre mash-ups today. I, too, skipped this series, but if we learned anything from the NBC ads of this same era, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you.” Also, remember the Budweiser frogs? And ‘wassaaaap’? Those were some good times.

Yes, the past is invariably better than the future. We have seen the future of Jenkins and Hotz, and once again it is grim. That internet thing isn’t to be trusted. Nor are cops, nor are priests.

I didn’t find this to be the most impressive ghost of Christmas future, but if you dig Jenkins, Hotz, or really want to read something twisted this week, this book will cure what ails you.

The Black Diamond #1

Adan: Well, fuck.

I was really looking forward to this book, as an eight-lane transcontinental highway sounds fucking awesome. Unfortunately, we don’t really get to see it in this first issue (except in the back-up story, but that hardly counts). We get background on the world (made readily available once again by a text piece at the beginning) and the main thrust of the plot, as well as two pages on why a certain car is really, really cool (is Larry Young channeling The Ride or something?), but not much more. And the art, good God, the art! It looks like that awful Waking Life movie or those obnoxious Wachovia ads on TV. My eyes! They burn!

So yeah, I’m disappointed.

At least Larry Young is a marketing genius. (I’m just fucking with you Guy, settle down. No seriously, put the knife down. Oh shit, I gotta go.)

Brendan:: Okay, this week I say we finish the “text piece as an introduction” argument. It isn’t the right choice all of the time, and you shouldn’t use it unless it is the exposition is too difficult to weave into the story, but it is a tool and when used properly can enhance the story. I liked this one, anyways, if only for the voice it was delivered in.

Blah, blah, blah, the Black Diamond is like Mos Eisley only in is in America, and also a highway. Apparently, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than on the highway we reactionary Americans will build over our heads to circumvent the middle of the country. The concept is strong enough, which is no surprise given writer/ publisher Larry Young’s Proof of Concept graphic novel. There are some neat scenes, with wit that harkens to good Aaron Sorkin. I am also a fan of unkempt police officers. I am less of a fan of the art. The “comicscope” employed evokes rotoscoping animation, where real film is treated to look animated. This is most recognized in the recent Wachovia commercials. The problem is, the beauty of rotoscoping is the way it emphasizes the subtle human movements animators take for granted. We see the person through the cartoon. This art feels like it was gathered via photo reference and merely ran through Photoshop to add both the defining lines and the coloring. It feels like a gimmick and not a tool. There are no backgrounds to speak of, either. I do like the storytelling and paneling, but the look of the art itself disagrees with me such that I couldn’t even really enjoy that.

As far as the plot goes, it was a mixed bag. My favorite aspect of AiT/Planet Lar has been their publishing edict to only print original graphic novels. I thought it was a bold step against the tide of the Direct Market. This book changes that approach, and in so doing seems to admit defeat. The trade off, of course, is that we get a bonus story, “Tales from the Black Diamond,” that shows us what the text piece told us. We see firsthand the lawlessness that exists above the common American through the eyes of Jet Swanson, provider of Automotive Service Excellence. I enjoyed this issue, but I won’t follow it up until it is collected. I suggest you do the same.

Green Arrow #75

Adan: I’ve been right pissed at Judd Winick because of his writing on Green Arrow for awhile now, but this last issue wasn’t half bad. There are some pretty neat twists (like Nudocerda getting totally punked by Tuckman), but the best twist was that Deathstroke beats Green Arrow in a mostly fair fight (Ollie has the Black Canary to back him up). No gimmick, no joke. Slade whoops Ollie’s ass so hard, Ollie actually begs for Canary’s life while offering his own up in exchange, knowing full well Slade can take them both out and doesn’t have to take any kind of deal. The only thing that saves Ollie and Dinah is a well-placed JLA distress call. Likewise, Drakon roughs up the two kids, Connor and Mia, and they are saved from certain death only by the timely intervention of the aforementioned JLA. That takes balls, Winick, to say without a shadow of a doubt that the guy you’re writing can be taken out by one of his big baddies, pretty easily, I might add.

Scott McDaniel is merely the poor man’s Phil Hester, I’ve always said, but he’s passable in this final issue.

Oh yeah, Ollie asks Dinah to marry him, but who cares? It’s not like she answers or anything. No, they’re going to drag that out another four issues with the Black Canary mini-series.

Brendan:: This book should have ended fifty issues ago. Kevin Smith came up with a great take on the character, created a good tone and cast to set him against, and did his thing. Brad Meltzer took the reigns and delivered a great twist in what is still his finest comics’ effort. Winick put Mia in the costume, gave her HIV, and had her join the Teen Titans as the least relevant Titan since Jason Todd. That’s it.

What else did he do? Did Conner evolve? Is Ollie a better man than he was the last time he wanted to propose to Dinah in issue eleven? What have we learned?

This is my biggest problem with Judd Winick. He has had fifty issues to play with an icon, and what has he created? An Oddjob rip off and a Blockbuster rip off. I always felt like the best parts of this book were complete outside influences. Immediately following Identity Crisis we were offered the story with Merlyn and Dr. Light that had spun out directly. One Year Later Ollie is doing his best Ex Machina impression, with the not so subtle Hurricane Katrina allegory. Green Arrow then takes on Deathstroke, another plotline picked up from Identity Crisis, along with Winick’s own Frankenstein the dead Robin Red Hood. The series ends with a question, not an answer, and even that seems like it was built more out of Birds of Prey than this book.

It just strikes as plain, unimaginative writing, and in superhero comics especially that is a cardinal sin. I’m sorry if you’ve been buying this series for the last fifty issues, that was just a “pause” until the next step for the Arrow family was decided. Pretend Ollie proposed soon after he was raised from the dead like he would have and continue to suspend your disbelief. We’ll see you at the wedding.

Oh, and on top of it all, are you telling me Oliver Queen wouldn’t recognize the irony of his Reagan-like “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech? That, ladies and gentlemen, is lazy writing.

India Authentic #2 Kali

Adan: So here’s me loving my mythology again. India Authentic seems to be a sort of anthology series in which each issue features one Hindu god. This issue focuses on Kali, the goddess of death and the mistress of time, as the gods call on her to defend their realm from a blood demon. I can’t say I enjoyed Saurav Mohapatra’s script very much, as it was very confusing. Whenever there was an internal monologue, it was took some time before I could figure out who it was that was speaking, but Abhishek Singh’s artwork more than makes up for it. This man is a master painter. Just take a look at the first page after Deepak Chopra’s introduction and tell me you don’t want that framed. It gets a little murky sometimes, but overall it is fantastic. I look forward to more of this series, even if I have to wade through Mohapatra’s somewhat confusing scripts.

“Kill for the love of killing. Kill for the love of Kali.” I had to say it.

Brendan:: I dig mythology, and I dig pretty pictures. Despite this, I couldn’t say I enjoyed this comicbook. The mythos this book explored more than lent itself to the lush visuals provided, but it still felt flat. The more removed you are from your comfort zone; the more important the accessible inroads need to be. Instead, this read like homework. Screw homework. And while the art was beautiful, the way it actually read sequentially was less than stellar. Not a bad comic, but a mixed bag.

Justice #12

Brendan:: Call it All Star, call it Elseworlds, or call it “we’re not labeling this series so we can decide what to do with it later on after it is finished,” but creators like to build their own sandboxes. Frank Miller writes only one version of the DC universe, Frank Miller’s DCU. With this, it seems, Alex Ross closes the book on his own DC universe.

It seems like he did it backwards. First he told the story of the future, showing traditional values overcome short sighted uber-violence in Kingdom Come . Later, he crafted the most stark and iconic origins and parables of these characters in the World’s Greatest Superheroes tabloid sized series. Finally, we are given Justice , the most massive Silver Age cataclysmic team up story that never happened. First the end of the story, then the setup, and here the fantastic second act. It was an irregular approach, but Alex Ross has succeeded in showing all the best takes on these heroes. And to the surprise of no one, he did it outside the trappings of “continuity.”

Granted, Mark Waid, Paul Dini, and now Jim Kreuger are worthy writers who crafted these tales. But it is the photo real art of Alex Ross that makes these images so exciting to the unexpecting reader. Show anyone who doesn’t read comics any one of these three books, and they will be taken aback by the art.

Now, if you show someone who read Kingdom Come twelve years ago this last issue of Justice , the reaction will not be as strong. There is truth in the argument that Alex Ross has done little to improve his style in these many years. My favorite part of this series was the exciting layouts by Dougie Braithwaite. Seeing a fresh angle on Ross’ work was essential to me, as it seems like his own sequential work often falls by the wayside to his meticulous reference gathering and paint work.

The story did what it was supposed to. It starred all the greatest heroes and villains and the stakes were no less than the entire world. Everyone from Captain Marvel to Aquaman was given his or her moment in the sun.

The Silver Age that Ross seems to dedicate all his DC work to never really existed. His take is like a childhood remembered, it is true to the emotions but not the history. The result is something that uses the storytelling standards we’ve come to expect, but harkens back to the simplicity of yesteryear. This is the Justice League story we should have expected all of this time. Now I hope Alex Ross turns away from the DC world, and expands his horizons elsewhere. We’ve seen what you can do in this sandbox, sir, now what will be your next trick?

Oh, and if you can’t laugh at Count Joker’s “Superfriends” line I don’t want to know you.

Adan: I don’t really like Alex Ross. I’ve always thought he paints super-heroes too fat. And Jim Kreuger… well, let’s just be nice and say he’s verbose. I read the first issue of Justice, re-confirmed my thoughts on the two, and quickly forgot about the series. Now, we’re on the last issue, and it all still looks exactly the same as it did before, only it’s the end instead of the beginning. There were two things I enjoyed about this issue: the last-minute save by the Green Lantern Corps, and the cameo of the Legion of Super-Heroes with the Cockrum-designed costumes. That’s it. This book is obviously not for me, as there was very little in it that appealed to me, but maybe other people enjoyed more.

I will say this: why give the heroes armor they don’t really need? Was this series little more than a toy commercial?

Brendan:: Hey, play nice. Some of my favorite cartoons are no more than toy commercials. But yeah, Alex Ross Battle Armor Justice League is a little over the top. I just can’t wait until I get the short-shipped scarred Wonder Woman variant figure!

Mystic Arcana: Magik #1

Adan: Eh, what?

This is actually two stories in one. There is an overarching story in which the magician Ian McNee is attempting to retrieve four powerful artifacts corresponding to the four elements. Then there is a short story within the McNee story explaining one of the artifacts and featuring a magical character, in this case Magik of the New Mutants. The short story is pretty standard mutant fare: Magik and Mirage time travel and then Magik has to grab a sword for an evil magician who ends up getting his come-uppance at the end. Standard writing from Louise Simonson and standard art from Steve Scott and Kris Justice. The overarching story is a bit more complicated and slightly confusing. Firstly, it starts with McNee trapped in someplace I’ve never heard of before, the Serpent’s Sea, whilst in a dream. He begs somebody to help him, and Oshtur, a god of some kind, does, but it gives him a quest to perform for services rendered. And then boom, we got our motivation. That all happens in the first three panels, by the way. There is a weird intellectual battle later on with a sphinx that’s kind of cool, but again, confusing. I don’t rightly know what’s going on, but I’m intrigued, so I guess David Sexton has succeeded there. On top of that, Eric Nguyen’s art fits the tone and subject matter of the book very well, so I’ll definitely be coming back for more.

Brendan:: The second story far surpasses the first. Even that story is surpassed by the surprisingly intriguing lead text. The first few paragraphs of this book, describing the four pillars of magic, were far and beyond the most clear and purposeful aspect of the entire issue.

It is my understanding that the Mystic Arcana mini- event is meant to define and streamline Marvel’s magic players, much in the same way Annihilation cleaned up the intergalactic scene. If I were designing a plan to make this world accessible, I don’t think I would lead with one of the most convoluted characters the X-Men have to offer. Think about that, the most confusing character…in the X-Men. So that wasn’t doing it for me.

The second story was better, but it still made my brain explode at least a little. I really dug the layered art by Eric Nguyen. After I read this issue I needed a nap. I was exhausted from trying to understand. Then I was blasted awake by awesomeness in our next issue…

New Avengers #31

Adan: So, some background: back when the Civil War was merely a blurb in Previews, and not actually in play yet, some buddies of mine came up with a theory as to why Iron Man would become such a huge dick and force everybody to register. They said he’d turn out to be a Skrull. It was a pretty simple theory which the evidence for was seemingly everywhere. Why had the Skrulls chosen this time to retake Hulkling in the last arc of Young Avengers? Why had a Skrull suddenly come to earth to woo Karolina in Runaways? Why was there a Superman knock-off in Marvel Knights Spider-Man who turned out to be a Skrull? Why was Paibok the Power-Skrull freed in the Drax mini-series? Why had Marvel chosen this time to reprint Skrull Kill Krew? Even Marvel Team-Up had a couple of Skrulls running around doing things (the big bad Titannus and Freedom Ring’s mentor Crusader). They thought all these things added up to a Skrull infestation on Earth. Many people would turn out to be sleeper agents or the like and splitting the super-hero community down the middle was the first salvo in conquering the Earth. It seemed like a neat idea, but then Civil War came and went (along with Annihilation and Planet Hulk) and we all quickly forgot about this idea because it had obviously not panned out that way at all. Iron Man simply was a huge dick and the Skrulls were just getting their asses handed to them again in deep space.

But now we’re at New Avengers #31, in which the super-secret ending is that the Elektra who was running the Hand and the Yakuza turns out to be a Skrull, and suddenly, my buddies’ idea is in play again, and my fevered fanboy mind can’t stop making connections.

But that’s about the only good part about this issue (yes, the only good part about this issue is that maybe my buddies’ idea isn’t such a big crock after all… well, that and Leinil Yu’s art). Back when we didn’t know who Ronin was, he was all weirded out about how much this team talked during battle, leading many to believe Ronin was somebody who’d never been in a team before. Now that it’s been revealed that Ronin is actually Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, he’s having a “mid-battle witty zinger” competition with Spider-Man. That’s just fucking bush-league, sloppy-ass writing. The dialogue in this entire issue is actually quite atrocious. Like somebody was told only the bare bones of what these characters are about and were then told to write them. They all come off as cardboard cutouts getting bent in half by a bunch of ninjas. Thank God Leinil Yu is around to at least make the whole affair look good, even if it actually isn’t, although what’s up with those close-ups on the eyes? Those are really creepy, man…

Brendan:: I firmly believe that New Avengers is Marvel’s top and most consistent performer. Brian Bendis’s edict was to turn the World’s Mightiest Heroes into Marvel’s mightiest comic, and since the team was dis and reassembled it has been. I hope Marvel keeps their promise and Lenil Yu stays on the book for over twelve issues.

Comics aren’t always that hard. Sometimes you need friend versus friend drama. Sometimes you need a metaphysical journey wherein the universe is saved. Sometimes you need a warrior to fall. Sometimes you need aliens. Sometimes you need ninjas. And when you need ninjas, you need hordes of ninjas. Ninja legions.

Yu kills this issue. He has perfected the ninja equation, with red clad Hand warriors bleeding into all this issue’s negative space. Not one inch is left un-ninjaed. We even get bonus boss level ninjas like Iron Fist (rich ninja), Echo (cross-dressing ninja), Ronin (sort of a ninja), Wolverine (mutant ninja), and Elektra (phoenix complex ninja).

That’s all I really need. With those groceries I’m going to eat a good meal. It would take a good number of miscues for me to dislike the story. Fortunately, this remote possibility is avoided. Yu completely delivers, with his comprehensive action only being outshone by his subtle character cartooning. Brian Bendis often catches flack for what he was once known best for; his dialogue. What frustrates me with concern to this argument is the accusations that he either over or under-writes it. The idea that he overwrites, flatly, is untrue. Empirically, look at any given page in this issue and see how little actual copy there is versus amount of action. This isn’t “lazy,” this is minimal. Having characters act within the parameters they are defined by, like witty, nervous banter by Spider-man, rough, no nonsense talk from Wolverine, or straight, no bullshit out of Luke Cage. Clint Barton asks if there is always as much banter, gets his answer, and decides to join in the fun. This is who these characters are. This is how they interact.

What is overlooked in the dialogue argument is the way Bendis composes a comicbook. Compare, from this issue, when Echo Bullseye’s Elektra, to the page in issue 26 when Elektra similarly impales Echo. You will note the way that similar shots are reversed, giving a parenthetical to this relationship. Also, look at the accessibility of the complex opening two page spread. Opening up the page, using the splash as an emphatic tool, and other subtle pacing tricks are the trademarks that make Bendis Marvel’s most clutch contributor.

The reveal itself, to me, is overshadowed by the well constructed comic. My internet, again, is left unbroken. I would recommend re-reading the opening conversation by Wong and Jessica, because his question and the look in her eyes may be a hint. The last panel is a little slightly ambiguous, but not as ambiguous as that damn baby’s name!

As far as what this story will mean to the greater Marvel universe, I’d say the answer lies in SHIELD. If this is the Elektra that appeared in Enemy of the State, then she was brought in by SHIELD. This would be a platform that could both address Iron Man and Nick Fury, as well as the corrupted influence evident from New Avengers ‘ first story arc.

Re-Gifters GN

Adan: If DC can keep up this level of quality, then they have a tremendous line of books on their hands. The Plain Janes was good, but Re-Gifters is great! And, while I understand why they want to market these books towards girls, they’re frankly for everybody, and that’s how you know how great they really are. Dik Seong Jen is a high school Korean girl living in LA. Her mother makes jewelry, her dad lost his store on April 29th, 1992 (look it up; there’s a Sublime song by the same name, if you need help), her younger twin brothers drive her crazy, her cat actually is crazy, and she’s fallen for a surfer boy. How could you possibly not relate? It doesn’t matter how specific these details are because everyone has parents who work hard, siblings who drive you crazy, and mad crushes on people, or close approximations thereof. It doesn’t matter that you don’t live in LA, that you’re not Korean (or a girl, for that matter), or that you don’t take Hapkido. This is the quintessential coming-of-age story, only different and new. Way to go Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, and Marc Hempel; you guys created one awesome graphic novel that should be on everybody’s bookshelf. I don’t do this often, because rarely am I wowed this much by a comic (which says something about comics today), but this is hands down the best comic so far this year. Buy this book; you will not regret it.

Brendan:: This was a really good graphic novel. All my concerns with the Minx launch book were addressed in this second outing. The visuals by Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel were stark and memorable, and the story truly was accessible to everyone. Dixie is an honest and admirable character who echoes all adolescent experiences.

But maybe I just liked Re-Gifters more than Plain Janes because there was more fighting. It seems I like books with fighting.

It is nice to see Mike Carey show his versatility as a writer, and I hope the Minx line accomplishes its goal of broadening readership and content barriers, if only to see what other comics’ talent can lend to the other underserved genres.

Tank Girl: The Gifting #1

Adan: This is one filthy, raunchy comic, and I laughed my ass off! This is a collection of short stories featuring Tank Girl and her assorted supporting cast, of which I know absolutely nothing about. That’s right, it’s time to come clean: I have never before read Tank Girl at all, but I think that has to change. Alan Martin has come up with some of the most mundane premises known to man and then written ridiculous, hilarious short stories about them. Dog shit in a handbag? Check. Kangaroo man forgets anniversary? Check. Favorite band playing across the country in less than an hour? Check. There’s even some haiku in there for poetry lovers. And finally, a book in which Ashley Wood’s art doesn’t annoy the hell out of me. It’s remarkably clear (I mean, compared to other Wood art, anyway), and I can tell exactly what every line is supposed to be doing. Yeah, good book all-around, and one I’m definitely keen on continuing to read.

Brendan:: I don’t even know what to say about this comic. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Zombies vs. Robots , but Adan is right, the art is better defined. Part of me enjoyed this book, but part of me felt the characters were more relevant fifteen years ago. I’m probably over thinking it. I enjoy kangaroo sex jokes as much the next guy.

World War Hulk #1

Adan: Aside from absolutely no explanation as to how She-Hulk got her powers back after supposedly having them permanently removed, this was really good. They’re not kidding around about Hulk being pissed. He takes out two of the four people he’s come to take care of in this first issue, but one of the others doesn’t even show except in the video playback the Hulk shows the entire world. I hope the rest of the slightly less-than-Civil War bloated crossover is just as good as this first issue. I enjoyed the hell out of Planet Hulk (the hardcover collecting the whole she-bang is out this week), and I hope Greg Pak can keep up that kind of quality.

Brendan:: To those who complained that Civil War was too much talking and not enough action, Marvel gives you World War Hulk . I’m pretty sure the rundown holo-Hulk gives the people of Manhattan is the only conversation we’re going to get. The rest of the time will be far too busy with the various smashing and thrashing.

John Romita Jr. bleeds Marvel. The stable of characters are all realized effortlessly. Storytelling is counted as a strength of Romita. At first pass I thought this issue was too splash image-heavy, but upon reflection I think it served to exaggerate the power and scale of the story. Even more impressive is how Romita is able to fit multiple actions and details into singular images.

Greg Pak seems up to the challenge, as well. His run on Planet Hulk showcased his imagination and creativity, but was removed from all but the most obscure Marvel characters. Here, he manages to make a hero out of Iron Man, if only for a few moments. This looks like it will be a fun ride.

But if you suffer from “event fatigue,” just take the path of least resistance. Ignore all house banners, be they “Initiative,” or “World War Hulk,” and buy exactly what you would normally buy. If every title bearing the WWH dress sees a 200% increase in readership, we will not be able to stem the crossover tide. Please, for the love of good comics, buy responsibly.

Black Summer #0

Adan: The setting of this book is a strange mix of the real world and every conspiracy theorists’ wet dream. September 11th happened and there is a war in Iraq, and both are the fault of a corrupt and evil American government. John Horus, the premiere super-hero of this world, knows this and other awful things that this government has perpetrated, and has assassinated the President, as well as the Vice-President and top aides, on the basis of that knowledge. This looks like it’s going to out-Civil War Civil War, and by that I mean be totally better because Ellis and Avatar will do it right.

Oh my sweet fuckin’ Jaysis! Did I just say Avatar was going to do something right!? This is all Civil War‘s fault!

On another note, Warren Ellis writes a text piece after the comic portion of the book in which he explains the genesis of the idea for this book, as well as explaining some of the world that these heroes inhabit, thereby lending itself to the ongoing debate of text pieces that we’re having here on BAAPPAS. I felt like a pretty good grasp on the world before reading Ellis’ text piece at the end, but after reading it, I have an even better grasp. I have some history on John Horus, as well as the Seven Guns group that he and Tom Noir belonged to. Ellis also gives me an insight on Horus’ character that I didn’t know from reading this issue: that Horus was always “the Good Man, the one who could be trusted, the one who believed most passionately in justice for all.” To me, this falls under background of the world. Since Ellis doesn’t have a continuity to play around with, he has to create his own, but he doesn’t have the time or space to give it to us in comic book format, so he just tells us. He tells us enough so that a) we’re not lost, and b) we know where these characters are coming from. I continue to applaud the use of text pieces.

Brendan: Must…buy…each and every variant.

The afterward by Ellis is good bonus material as this isn’t even the first issue, and does explain some of the setup of the story. However, I am sure it will all be clearly told via the sequental art at some point during the series. This is an aside to the reader, but more about the real world than the fictional one.

While this book is no doubt informed by Marvel’s last event, it was the similarities to Dynamite’s The Boys that I was most intrigued by. Like The Boys, the level of violence seems to classify it as an “adult,” title, only here there are obvious mature themes seem to match the mature content.

I thought it was a stroke of genius to have the first “Zero” issue deal almost solely with the inciting incident of the series. Up to this point, maybe the world was sort of like ours, if only with a super-guard militia. Now, though, shit has hit the fan.
Ellis is sure to hit another grand slam with this series. As much as Ellis publically derides superheroes and the genres’ stranglehold on the medium, it is impossible to deny the care he brings to stories dealing with them. Admit it, Ellis, spandex always leaves you coming back for more.

Catwoman: When in Rome TPB

Adan: I read this mini as it was coming out because I used to love all of Jeph Loeb’s Batman work, but decided this story was really quite superfluous once it finished. This is still the case. I will never balk at looking at Tim Sale’s artwork, because it has always been awesome, but the story itself was useless. Don Verinni dies, and we’re never told why (though I guess we’re supposed to assume it’s so his son can take over), nor who does it (the suspect list is populated by the Riddler, the Don’s son, and even Louisa Falcone). The Riddler’s grand plan is to find out the Batman’s secret identity by screwing with Selina Kyle, and somehow this requires involving the Don’s albino son, the Scarecrow, and the Cheetah, as well a Freeze Gun and Joker Juice (maybe)? It just doesn’t make any sense. If in fact the Riddler killed Don Verinni (as we’re supposed to believe as it was done with Joker Juice than only Nigma could get), what was the reasoning behind it? Just so Catwoman couldn’t ask him about her parentage? The plot holes are so big, you could drive Unicron through it. Don’t bother with this; it’s even worse than Dark Victory.

Brendan: Way to spoil the ending, dude. There are a few things in Loeb’s Batman I always dig. First, the collaborations with Sale are stunning. I thought in this piece Sale did more in the way of “cartooning,” and using greater exaggeration of poses to sell his story, (Eisner would call this “bigfoot” comics versus “little foot” ones). I think the creative team respects the mythos, and works hard to create world where the gangsters and the costumed villains can coexist. Finally, I really like the way that Loeb and Sale, and even Loeb and Lee, keep the story insular in such a way that even though many story years have passed they are always following up the same storylines, be it the fate of Harvey Dent, the relationship betwixt Catwoman and Batman, or the Riddler finding his identity as a villain.

That stuff I like. So I put myself in these situations. This was eminently “okay.” The murder mystery was not as phoned in as some, and I was invested enough in Selina’s own mystery, (case of the missing parents) to remain interested. Of course, Sale is top notch, and even when it feels rushed, it almost feels purposefully rushed and only serves to stylize the work more.

One thing I couldn’t decide on was what I thought of Loeb’s take on the character. She walked a fine line between empowered woman and damsel-in-distress cliché. She is either over or undersexed as a character, I can’t decide. On the one hand, can’t you do a story about a female lead without making it a love story? On the other hand, is it possible to NOT do a love story in Rome? But you do get the Jeph Loeb trademark “Bat-villains on parade” type of story, an intriguing twist on Selina’s heritage, and solid work by Sale making it at the very least worthy of a glance.

Adan: Way to spoil it? This thing came out like five years ago! There’s such a thing as a statute of limitations on this sort of thing. But since we’re on the subject, Darth Vader is Luke’s father.

Invincible #42

Brendan: The crazy thing is that the tagline “Probably the best superhero comic book in the universe!” is the fact that it is an understatement. It is definietly the best superhero comic in the universe. Truth be told, it was the last “cheep” issue 0, at just a quarter, that drew me into the series in the first place. It was two years in, but hey, better late than never. I went back and read the first hardcover and fell in love. It is the pure central concept that elevates this book beyond standard superhero fare, in “best in universe” status. It feels like the idea that Stan Lee forgot- Superman has a son, but Superman is evil. Even that doesn’t encapsulate the richness of the universe Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley explore. This is a world that can grow and evolve, and that is not taken for granted. Mark Grayson is a different man than he was in issue two, or issue eighteen, or issue twenty-four.

I especially love the way that Mark’s family dynamic is forever in flux in a way that makes it feel real. As people it is our family that define us, and that is illustrated no where as well as in this book. The last page of this issue makes it perfectly clear that Invicible will now have resposibilities he never dreamed. That and another million things make this issue great and if you haven’t read Invincible yet drop the buck ninety-nine here and get it.

Adan: Seconded. The whole review. Just pretend I’m repeating everything the Coach just said. The only thing I’d add here is the “review” portion of the comic. A text piece written by David Campbell and spanning six pages, it gives the complete rundown of everything that has happened in the Invincible Universe (except for the Lizard League killing a bunch of heroes on Earth while Mark and his strike team were beating the Sequids). This doesn’t really count as an explanatory text piece as all this was written and drawn out in the previous forty-one issues, but it’s nonetheless good and in text. So there.

Lightning Lady GN

Adan: At first glance, this is just a collection of comic strips I don’t read. I opened it without knowing what it was about and then kind of just fell in love with the premise. A world in which fiction and reality intermingle is usually pretty cool (see Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but not Cool World) and the eponymous Lightning Lady is a comic book character who exists in the real world as well. And she has a boyfriend, but it’s kind of hard to give up the evil when you’ve done it for so long. But she’s trying, and that’s what’s really important. But don’t worry about any that if you don’t want to, as the strips within the book are pretty funny.

The only problem I have is Brad Guiger’s layout. Guiger, the writer and artist of the strip, redesigned his traditional four-panel strips “into a cohesive page structure like you’re likely to see in a graphic novel.” This meant making panels bigger or smaller; fitting five, or three, or one panel per row; or just cropping some art to make it look less like a bunch of four-panel gags put together and more like a flowing narrative. Some of the four-panel strips were even broken up into two pages so that you had to turn the page to get the punch line. Unfortunately, this layout scheme didn’t work at all. It just made things confusing and some of the art bad (especially the blown up panels). Luckily, Guiger is a good enough writer that his jokes weren’t lost in all the jumble.

Lone Ranger #6

Adan: Oh, so sad! This arc was five issues of awesome only to end in a mediocre fashion. The big showdown between the Lone Ranger and Julius Bartholomew ends with kind of a bang, but gets quickly sanitized. Look, fucking spoilers here, but why don’t the Ranger and Tonto kill him? He’s a really bad guy who totally killed your family! How do you walk away from him and just hope the authorities find him before he escapes out of the wreckage? You’re a Texas Ranger with a mandate to kill all criminals. The poster says “Dead or Alive” for a reason. And that reason is that “Dead or Alive” is the ethos of the Wild West. You can’t just sanitize that away. I don’t know, I’m pretty pissed. I’m going to keep reading, of course, if only to see of the Lone Ranger mans up when he comes face to face with the guy that ordered the death of his family.

One good thing of this issue is the conversation between Bartholomew and Tonto after Bartholomew ties him down. That man is seriously screwed up to be able to think in such a fashion.

Brendan: Ahh quit your whining. He’s supposed to be a hero, and heroes don’t kill. Or rangers don’t kill. Or something. Ultimately Black Bart is supposed to be a sympathetic character, and killing him would cost the series a good foil down the line. There are already hardcore old west books, this is a superhero in the old west book, so morality and such must operate on a different level. I thought this issue was a quality ending to this story. It had a big payoff action sequence, resolution to the Ultimate Lone Ranger origin, and even one of the tongue in cheek catch phrase homages this series has done so well. I remain impressed that Dynamite has put out such a well crafted book that is so accessible to the average DC or Marvel fans. Now that the opening arc is done I hope a lot of people buy the collection and hop on board. It is good times.

Adan: Then they should have made this a super-hero western from the outset instead of dicking me around, because this is Texas we’re talking about, and Rangers certainly do kill. And how is Bartholomew even remotely sympathetic? The guy kills people in very imaginative ways. That’s not sympathetic, that’s sociopathic. I do agree that Black Bart needed to continue living in order to provide a good foil down the line, I just wish they’d thought of a better way to keep him alive than “I’m gonna be a super-hero now.”

Loners #3

Adan: Ooooh! A mutant from the past has come back from Limbo in a book I did not expect to see her in. I like the Generation X kids a lot (especially Jubilee, the SoCal mallrat), so whenever one of them pops up, I get all fanboyishly happy. Yes, Penance has returned to the Marvel Universe (though her name seems to have changed, I guess so that Speedball can take over it).

The Loners is a strange book. On the one hand, it’s about this sort of AA-like group of super-heroes who are trying to not be super-heroes anymore. On the other hand, this MGH operation is still around in LA and the Pride is no longer around to protect anybody. So it becomes this psychological write-up on these heroes and their motivations moreso than most (the last page is especially telling in that regard), but they still punch things…. or do they? In a situation that I was sure would end in a brawl rather quickly, Mickey Musashi, ex-hero Turbo, talks everybody down and the bad guys walk away without their prize and the heroes don’t get slapped down by S.H.I.E.L.D. for being unregistered heroes. I’m digging this book a lot, and if you’re looking for some therapy mixed with your action, then give this book a shot.

Brendan: If you ever loved Runaways, you owe it to yourself to read this book. The best part of that book was the specialized area of the Marvel universe that it served. Where Runaways was the disinterested teen market, The Loners is the disenfranchised twenty-something. It feels as though this book should have always existed. Artist Karl Moline really hits his stride in this issue, nailing the style needed to sell the faces that once hid beneath the masks. The characters all feel like friends you knew in elementary school, but haven’t seen in ten years and are shocked to see where they have ended up.

I hate to say it, but I wish there was an “INITIATIVE” header on this book. It mentioned registration, so it should qualify, and I bet it could use the sales bump.

New Warriors #1

Adan: And speaking of Limbo-locked mutants returning to the world, I give you Sofia Mantega aka Wind Dancer, as well as…. well, that would be telling, but trust me, it’s awesome. There are heroes in this world who don’t truck with Iron Man’s view of a registered corps of super-heroes, and they’ve decided to resurrect the name of the heroes supposedly responsible for inciting all this. The New Warriors are back, and they’re fighting crime the old-fashioned way: striking from the dark and leaving the bad guys trussed up for the police to deal with. I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and not just because of the returning mutants. The New Warriors team (of which only three are actually shown, with a clue pointing to a fourth) is actually working like a secret super-hero team should. They strike from the shadows, and are never seen except by the villains they’re running down. The cops are baffled (but they’re excellent supporting characters) and aren’t sure what to do about these new New Warriors. Kevin Grevioux seems to know what he’s doing and I hope he continues in this vein. Paco Medina’s awesome art also helps. He’s familiar with mutant kids from his work on New X-men, so he should have no trouble here.

Brendan: I have said it before, but I am more than a little tired of the Big 2 letting people learn to write comics on the fly. This book had a lot of strong points, the secret mutant character being a high water mark, but I thought the pace was too slow. Understand, I don’t mean that it was bad by any stretch, and I think the first issue of Young Avengers was a little slow too, but I do feel that it takes the readerships’ interest in the next issue for granted. I think the YA comparison is an accurate one, because I think Marvel is hoping that this project will follow in that one’s success, taking a successful Hollywood writer, an up and coming slick artist, and some lesser known teen aged characters and striking gold. This is a noble goal, as no one misses Heinberg and Chueng’s book more than me, but in order to get there each issue must be better than the last.

I think that my main issue is expectations; I want a first issue to stun me. I want to finish it and think, “Wow, this book is unlike any other that I have read before and not only can I not wait until next issue but I can’t wait for this series to go on and on.” I think I just miss the days where the first issue had a greater obligation than just being the first chapter in the first trade. The dialogue was spot on, though, and Paco Medina seems intent on taking this opportunity to establish a premier reputation for himself.

In any case, I liked it. I’m waiting to love it, but I liked it.

Superior Showcase #2

Adan: This book is awesome! It has three shorts, one about superhero antibodies living inside a young girl, the second about Hollis, the awesomest super guy, and the third about the Unremarkable Tree Frog. Personally, I enjoyed the Joey Weiser’s Tree Frog short the best (his awkwardness around Thievery Girl is super cute and anti-hero Jack Hammer’s origin story is hilarious), but they’re all super good. Hollis is what Batman would look like if he read comics instead of starred in them, but Farel Dalrymple plays it straight, so Hollis is perceived by most as an urban myth who nonetheless strikes fear into the hearts of criminals. “A Long Strange Trip” by Maris Wicks features Antibody, Neutrophil, and Mr. T-Cell, the super-heroes that live in your body. Seriously, if you only buy one book this week, it should be this one.

Brendan: The James Jean cover really separates this book from the anthology competition. Well, that and the idea that there are super-heroic Pac-men that defend my body from evil bacteria. That is a good selling point as well. Hollis (Mason?) is sort of like Forbush Man, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Tree Frog was okay. I really enjoyed the setup but the end did nothing for me. You would like it though, Adan. Go cry about McKeever leaving SMLMJ or something.

If you are looking for some quality, original comics, get this. It has stuff you won’t find anywhere else.

Adan: That was… that was just mean. Why do you have to keep reopening old wounds like that?

Witchblade/Punisher

Adan: Well, that’s ten minutes I’ll never get back. I don’t plan on wasting any more time on telling you exactly why this sucked; just trust me on this one.

Brendan: Okay well I will say something, I guess. This book did exactly what it was supposed to. Punisher, meet Witchblade. Witchblade, meet Punisher. Behold the hijinx. No explaination is given to the universe sharing, but then it wasn’t in Marvel and DC’s first Superman meets Spider-man crossover. I wouldn’t say there was much wrong with this issue, the art was clear and pretty enough, and the story did put the characters in the same room to compare pathos. I even thought it channeled Garth Ennis Frank Castle at moments, which is no small feat. That was all it did, though, and nothing really happened. I would say that this is probably a fine comic to read if you are deeply involved in either headlining character, but otherwise it isn’t worth the time.

Can something be very average?

QUICKIES!

Brendan: Dini’s Detective continues to be solid, although that character seems to be sort of everywhere these days. Continuity be damned!

Adan: Dini is an excellent writer and the twists in his Detective are awesome, especially the one in this issue.

Brendan: Alien Pig Farm 3000‘s second issue has all the same great stuff as the first. If you want a moody comic about tripping balls through dreamland, check Image’sStrange Embrace. Scary, moody and original, this will be a series to watch.

We’re back! Again, we apologize for last week’s scheduling issues. We’re here a day late due to the holiday release, but we continue with our eyes focused on the less appreciated and visible books on the shelves. Miss hearing us bitch about mainstream fare? Like us shining a little light on the underdogs? Let us know!- B

Avengers Next TP

Adan: I don’t think this is for me. The future Avengers are cool and all, but I just don’t care. I barely care about the current Avengers, and they at least have some bearing on continuity (assuming Marvel hasn’t thrown it out the window along with the bath water). Most of these updated, future characters seem little more than cookie cut-outs of their present-time counterparts. Stinger is a genius like Ant-Man, Mainframe is a hard-ass like Iron Man, Bluestreak is a troublemaker like Quicksliver, Thena is haughty like Thor, etc. I don’t think this is for me, but I do think this might be for young kids, like maybe five to ten-year-olds. And this isn’t a bad thing at all. Standard super-hero fare without all the blood and mature themes that most super-hero books have nowadays. Sort of like super-hero training wheels for the kids.

Brendan: Ah, if only that I could agree with you. This week, some people will claim The Boys as their guilty pleasure, but mine is the wacky and sometimes stupid world of MC2… Marvel’s second generation! The fun of these books lie in the total throwback retro storytelling. I feel like I could set my watch to this book; setup…fight…wound licking…misunderstanding that leads to a superhero fight…reconciliation. What is funny about the MC2 line is that it launched around the same time as the Ultimate line, and where the Ultimate line stripped away continuity and attempted new ways to structure and market stories, the MC2 line went the opposite way, cementing in the oldest of old school style and being entirely predicated not only on careful continuity, but continuity that is already dated over ten years. I shouldn’t like it, but I can’t help it.

The truth is I read this book for just one reason, THUNDERSTRIKE. Even though this ponytail wearing blonde is merely the son of the original Thor knockoff, there are still about 7,205 reasons he is cooler than any character not named Thunderstrike.

Basically, I have an unnatural affinity towards that crappy 90s character, and anyone reading Cable and Deadpool or begging for Gambit to come back is no better than me.

Ron Lim delivers a clean and concise story, and DeFalco makes the same sort of comic he made twenty years ago. That is comforting, somehow.

Adan: Thunderstrike? Thunderstrike!? Did you love the Scarlet Spider a ridiculous amount, too?

Boys TP and Boys #7

Adan: Well, here it is. More Boys. Listen, I actually do like this book (or at least I did the first time I read it) and I know everybody thinks it’s the Second Coming or whatever. However, and I found this out upon reading the trade, it does not hold up well at all. Sure, the first time I read it, it was shits and giggles and “Oh my God, I can’t believe he did that” (and this actually happened again as I read issue seven), but the second time I read it, I was just bored. I wasn’t appalled or titillated or anything else. I didn’t even chuckle. I was just bored.

Upon reading the all-new seventh issue, though, I was once again enjoying the book. I laughed out loud on numerous occassions (especially during the final scene with Tek-Knight and his boy sidekick) and I peeked around to make sure no one on the subway could see what utter filth I was guffawing at. I am now eagerly awaiting the eighth issue. But I’ll tell you what, if Brendan and I hadn’t already decided to do the seventh issue, I would have quit Boys altogether after re-reading the trade. I was just bored.

Brendan: People had to buy this comic for me to get me to read it. The central premise of superhero gangbusters just didn’t appeal to me. When I read it I was entertained and shocked, as I was meant to be, but I didn’t see how it would, in Ennis’ words, “out-Preacher Preacher.” That is some hyperbole. That said, it obviously deserved to be continued and Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson have enough credibility that I will stick around until I know for sure I don’t care about this book.

My main concern had been the violence. It wasn’t so much that I was disturbed by the sex or violence this book so clearly dove into, but rather that I didn’t see any point to it. Preacher used violence to contrast the optimism it championed, and this series seemed to use it only for sheer shock value. I was looking forward to the reread, if only to learn if this cast would warrant the long term approach the creative team has taken with the book. I agree with Adan that it was in no way better the second time around.

The new issue got me thinking, though. Well first I thought that I almost definitely knew the guy on the cover, and that disturbed me. But then I had a thought during the scene in the comicbook shop. I thought that maybe Ennis is using the rampant fetishism and skewed reality prevalent in mainstream comics. Perhaps he is trying to explore the roots of that psychological attraction, and do so by kicking superheroes in the balls. I don’t know if these or other lofty goals are in this title’s future, but I hope they are. But shit, worst case scenario it’s just another book where people kick each other and fuck in most unnerving ways. Can never have too many of those.

Intergalactic #1

Brendan: Matt Olson is a comics’ talent. His design and cartooning skills are showcased in this new series. His art is reminiscent of the Star Wars books by Dark Horse, if only a bit more stylized and memorable. Lead Alyssia Sentropy is a space elf designed by the pseudo- government to subvert and infiltrate corrupt space corporations. Also, importantly, she’s hot.

Creating a cool female action star can be tricky because the line between heroic fantasy and icky keep- it-to-yourself fantasy can be gray. On the one hand creating the girl of your dreams is the exact goal one should strive for, but on the other hand it can be overly gratifying and limit one’s potential audience. Whenever I think of kickass she- heroes I think of Buffy. While Buffy is sexy, and can quip a mean one-liner, it is the emotional rollercoaster she rides and the supporting cast that ground her that make her relatable to an audience. If she were just being strong and kickass all of the time, and never showed herself with her guard down, she would be reduced to cheesecake. It remains to be seen if Alyssa will become a three dimensional and fully realized character, but for now it is enough that she kicks ass and spouts one liners. (“Oh snap!”)

More so than the character or the story, Olson’s art was the true standout for me. I thought his facial expressions were easy to understand and fun, and his designs were effective enough to sell his “Intergalactic” vision. More fantasy than sci-fi, this book compares favorably to Devil’s Due’s Hack Slash series.

It was overwritten at times, notably with the heavy interior monologue, but it was a good example of the exposition debates we’ve had here for the last few weeks. The bulk of the information was “told” in words, but was accompanied by art that served as a strong visual lead to complement the copy. This book was a success to me, and I see a strong future for it so long as we see evidence of real characters and not just farce.

Adan: See? This is what happens when you don’t have a quick opening spiel explaining a little bit of your world to your reader. You spend most of your comic in clunky exposition telling me that Earth is run by corporations and fight wars and what not. You waste one full page (as well as many other obnoxious asides) on exposition you could have gotten out of the way in a short piece of text.

However, this may have just been badly written. Clunky exposition aside, I actually was looking forward to enjoying this futuristic world, but unfortunately it wsn’t just the exposition that was clunky. It all was. The origin, the mission specs, the introduction of characters, and on and on and on. It was just bad writing. It’s the kind of writing I’m more accustomed to seeing in a Creative Writing class (or on a Marvel or DC book). It’s not all bad news, though, Matt Olson, as your art is fantastic. Your character design is pretty sweet and your tech is sufficiently “of the future” while still maintaining a Steampunky feel. Either start writing better, or just get yourself a new scripter, and you’ll be fine. I expect great things from you, artwise, regardless of what you do with the writing.

Brendan: But you liked the art, right? So why WOULDN’T you want to see more of it to progress or set up the story? The rest of the writing, I agree, does not live up to the standards of the art. It may get better with more practice, but I agree that a polished voice would not be the worst thing for this book.

Adan: Yeah, I like the art a lot and would very much like to see less of it obscured by stupid, clunky text boxes. I think we have a disconnect, you and I. If there had been text piece at the front explaining the world, it would not have cut pages out of the comic. There would have still been the same number of pages, but there would have been more actual story.

Justice Society of America #6

Adan: We did JLA (excuse me, Justice League of America) two weeks back and now we tackle the old fogeys half of “The Lightning Saga.” I don’t know what it is, but even after acknowledging Meltzer’s vast improvement on the premeire super-team of today, Geoff Johns’ handling of the premier super-team of yesterday is leaps and bounds better (so is his handling of the premier super-team of tomorrow, by the way). It’s like Johns was born to do this. Yes, I know his final Teen Titans arc was phoned in and his Green Lantern usually infuriates me to no end, but he has never written a bad JSA story. Ever. And, as I said two weeks ago, old school Legion just multiplies my enjoyment factor by a factor of about ten.

Eaglesham’s art is also pretty good. Sometimes his character’s look too similar to each other (is that Superman or Catman?), but overall it’s good. More importantly, his attention to detail is damn fine. Take a look at the swamp scenes, and then take a look at the boots of Damage, Hourman, Black Lightning, Wonder Woman, and Liberty Belle. There’s swamp muck on them, and it stays there until… uhh… the villain attacks (no spoilers for you). But then more muck gets on more heroes’ clothes and it sticks on ’till the end. It’s amazing that something as simple as swamp muck makes me this happy.

Brendan: You and your muck. So the Lightning Saga rages on. Dale Eaglesham has forced his way into any conversation regarding today’s best superhero pencillers. Geoff Johns’ double page layouts continue to get more and more intricate and only Eaglesham has managed to master the style without sacrificing clarity. To me, this was Tony Daniel’s most difficult assignment on Teen Titans. Every line in this book looks purposeful and valuable. My biggest regret of this crossover has been the interruptions on this creative teams’ run, but the art has retained the high standard.

Regrettably, this story is becoming more and more of an almost exclusive Legion story. This is well and good for longtime fans, but I think everyone tuned in to this story to see the Justice League and Society interact, rather than the re-reinvention of a few obscure characters into adult versions of their 1970s counterparts. It isn’t a bad story, but it does distract from the center of the books, namely cutting down on interaction between the main characters. This has been more true on JLA, whereas it feels as though this book has done better to maintain the thematic core. Both, though, have made sure to allot at least one really fun character moment, (in this issue… who will Liberty Belle set Wonder Woman up with?).

It is still novel to see the see our new Multiverse in action, which we do here. I am also loving the slow reveal of Superman’s history. It seems as though most every Superman comic is once again somehow in continuity, and the decryption process feels like a journey we the readers are going on with both the creators and characters. The latest issue of Action Comics also scratch this itch.

Dug this one, and I really hope that Johns and Eaglesham are committed to this book long-term, because they have really hit their stride.

New Avengers: Illuminati #3

Brendan: This has been a top notch mini series for Marvel. Of course I would prefer to see Jim Cheung work on the excellent Young Avengers, largely due to the youthful faces that seem inherent in his work, but this is an excellent second option. Seeing the extra layer the Illuminati add to Marvel’s event history is a dicey sell. Knowledgeable readers already know the final outcome of each issue’s central conflict, and so the book’s purpose instead becomes a character study of Marvel’s secret movers and shakers.

This issue dealt with the first miniseries “event” Marvel published, The Secret Wars. A pretty major retcon is revealed in regards to the enigmatic Beyonder. Revisionist history can trouble longtime readers, but this layer serves to develop the Marvel Universe in a believable way, and to me greatly enriches Black Bolt. It seems to fit Bolt into a more classic Marvel mold, peering past the ultimate stoic leader to his own feet of clay.

This story manages to change both nothing and everything. Can’t wait for the next installment.

Adan: It’s been awhile since the last issue of this series came out (and even longer since Tony took his pants off in space), but the Secret Six make their triumphant return (sans Tony, pants and all) to explain the mystery of…. the Beyonder? Really? Okay, but it better real good. He’s a mutant inhuman! Oh, crap, it’s totally not good at all. And what’s with Dr. Strange telling the Beyonder what he does violates the natural order of things? You do magic, ya goober! How is that not violating the natural order of things? Well, I guess Bendis and Reed had to stall somewhere on this mini and they picked the midpoint to do it. I just wish this hadn’t taken so long to come out after the second one, then maybe we wouldn’t have noticed (we totally would have).

Of note is my complete confusion as to when this takes place. It’s after the first “Secret Wars”, that much Xavier makes abundantly clear, but I guess it’s before “Secret Wars II”? The Beyonder is wearing his jumpsuit from that arc, and he’s hanging out in a facsimile of
Manhattan… Wait, did Bendis and Reed just place “Secret Wars II” out of continuity? You sly devils, you. I may have to take all of that back.

Cheung’s pencils are still good, thank goodness. Check out his aerial shots of Manhattan, especially the first one through a field of asteroids. That is breathtaking. I want that blown up and on my wall.

Brendan: Secret Wars II goes, but the leisure suit stays. There is justice in this world.

Adan: There’s something in this world, alright, but I don’t think it’s justice… unless you’re talking about that crappy 90′s character Justice that you also love for no real good reason.

Ray Harryhausen Presents Wrath of the Titans #1

Adan: A sort of sequel to the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans, which was itself a retelling of some Greek myths. I don’t know. I’m torn by my love for all things mythological and for the almost complete ennui this story elicited from me. I guess if I almost don’t care even though Perseus kills some suckas and a Hydra shows up, then it can’t be that good. That’s really unfortunate because I really want something like this to succeed, especially after looking at the ad for Sinbad: Rogue from Mars in the back. Doesn’t that sound freakin’ awesome? I’ll give this book another shot and hope the writers, Darren G. Davis and Scott Davis, can figure out how to make their writing less clunky and coma-inducing.

On the other hand, the art team of penciller Nadir Balan and colorist Joey Campos make some pretty pictures. It has a kind of charcoal element. That might come simply from adding colors directly to the pencils and skipping the inking stage altogether, but I like it nonetheless. Although, Perseus does have one goofy-ass smile. Whatever, Bubo is still around and he’s pretty damn cool.

Brendan: First things first, I agree, this was beautiful. It evoked the work of Cary Nord on Conan, which was fitting considering the subject matter. I thought it worked particularly well on the more complicated and busy pages, with the simpler three panel talking heads pages could have used an inker’s flair. I always understood what was going on in the art, and that is no small task.

I also thought that this was a brilliant concept to license. It did just enough to feel familiar and accessible.

I had fewer problems with the writing than Adan. Any attempt at “dating” dialogue can always feel contrived and is often stilted. This reason alone contributes largely to why Marvel hasn’t published a Thor comicbook in three years. It doesn’t drive me away as a reader, but I can understand that it does others. It wasn’t quite as funny as it wanted to be, but it had a lightheartedness that salvaged the contrived language.

We agree again, Adan. Comics as a medium were created to tell stories like Sinbad: Rogue of Mars. If it is anything like the Sinbad vs Dinosaurs sketch in the bonus back material of the book we should be in for a trip.

Adan: Yeah, I’m gonna be there faster than I’ve ever been to anything else.

The Ride: Die Valkyrie #1

Adan: I’m not a car guy in the least, so whatever on that front. I mean, I guess a 1968 RS/SS is cool and all (it certainly looks it), but I wouldn’t know a 1968 RS/SS from a 1986 Mustang if my life depended on it. I am, however, a tomboy-with-guns guy. Laci, the schoolgirl assassin who was first seen touching herself immediately after making a bus blow up in the first Ride mini-series, is back here, hanging out with a bunch of nuns trying to stick on the right path, but not doing a very good job of it. Also in this issue, we get three new characters collectively calling themselves Valkyries who do know cars (and who also know that the Valkyries of Norse myth rode wolves and not winged stallions; extra brownie points to Wagner and Stelfreeze for knowing something even my Dungeon Master didn’t*). It’s a fun read and Stelfreeze’s art is clean and crisp. I especially enjoyed his Hulk Hogan-esque father character (who is appropriately named Sturluson, after Snorri Sturluson I presume). In fact, this whole book is full of Norse myth references. That one-eyed guy who wants his car back? Probably descended from ol’ One-Eyed Odin himself (I wasn’t joking when I said I had a weakness for the mythologies).

Brendan: Ah to be a young, irresponsible girl again… Or something… Stelfreeze doesn’t waste a line here, and it pays off. I like the parallels between the two storylines. Somehow it feels clever and fresh to have all your protagonists be women and all the antagonists men. The plot itself is still pretty straightforward and simple, but the mythological trappings and the fast pace make sure the story stays fun.

And who, pray tell, was Snorri Sturluson? (okay, I know too, but there’s no reason this can’t become a learning BAAPPAS).

Adan: Snorri Sturluson was the 13th century poet who took all the Norse myth stuff, which had been told orally only before him, and wrote it down. He arranged the myths into his Eddas and this is why we, the people of the future, have the Norse myths as complete as we do. Just imagine, if Sturluson hadn’t written down the Norse myths, there is a very real chance we wouldn’t who the hell Thor was, much less make comics about him. Raise your mead and thank the stars for Snorri Sturluson. And this has been your PCS PSA.

Adan: *Actually, my DM probably did know, and chose the winged stallion route anyway. But just so you can say you learned something today, “Gunn’s horse” is a kenning for wolf (a kenning is an old Norse poetic device similar to a metaphor), Gunn being a Valkyrie. If you already knew this, then congratulations, you’re smarter than the average Wolf of Bees.

Silver Surfer: Requiem #1

Adan:The cover is very reminiscent of the last Marvel Knights mini to come out. I assume that’s done on purpose and I applaud it if this is true. I also applaud the apparent decision to make all MK minis alternate future-type stories. A return to What If? stories is always welcome, especially if they’re good (nevermind what I said about the future Avengers). Requiem also fast forwards to an alternate future in which the Silver Surfer did not resume his duties as herald of Galactus, and instead his power is waning. Straczynski is pretty wordy in this book, but I guess the Surfer has always been wordy. Ribic, on the other hand, slings a brush with the best of them. He can paint a space scene better than most, and can paint the reflective body of the Surfer better than anybody. Seriously, just look at any panel with the Surfer in it and you will believe that a man can be your mirror. If he stands still, that is.

Brendan: Is anyone shocked this came out only just in time for the upcoming movie? And the Ultimate Galactus HC shipped this week, too? And Silver Surfer is on the cover of both regular and Ultimate FF this month? Is Marvel, like, paying attention or something?

The new standard Marvel Knights cover dress does well to brand the minis in a way that feels important. I don’t know if it means “Elseworlds” or whatever, but so far it has meant quality.

Silver Surfer is at a turning point in his life. Facing a bleak future, he apparently begins a journey of self-rediscovery. Like the best Surfer stories, this explores the depth of human emotions and other philosophical wonders. For newcomers, we get a quick recap of his origin. Straczynski delivers a solid script devoid of pretension, and Esad Ribic paints beautifully. There may be a few too many splash pages from a storytelling perspective, but the awe-striking art makes up for the worth. Perhaps the most noticeable quirk of the art was the fact that the FF looked less photo-realistic than the Surfer, a testament to how naturally Ribic’s style meshes with the character.