A Month of Wednesdays: May 2026

BOUGHT:

Speed Racer Adventures Vol. 1 (Papercutz) This is one of the two new comics I bought this past calendar month, so I'm putting it here in the "BOUGHT" category of the column, although because I ended up reviewing it for Good Comics for Kids, I'll also include it—and write more about it—in the "REVIEWED" category near the end of the post. 

Yotsuba&! Vol. 16 (Yen Press) It's been five years since the fifteenth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma's brilliant manga about precocious five-year-old Yotsuba Koiwai, so the appearance of a new volume is cause for real celebration. I'm sure you've heard me enthuse about the series before over the years. In fact, if you know anyone who reads comics and has decent taste, you've probably heard them enthuse about Yotsuba and, if they haven't, it's probably only because they haven't yet read it. 

Azuma is an absolute master of sequential art, having completely perfected the most subtle, intangible aspect of comics, that which happens in the space between one image and the next. 

I think perhaps the best example of that in this volume, or at least the one I remember most clearly a week or so after reading it, is in the final story in this collection, "Yotsuba & Teacher." In it, the neighbor girls take Yotsuba to the school playground with them, so one of them can work on mastering the back hip circle on the bars. 

Unexpectedly, they find their teacher there, also practicing back hip circles; this is the first teacher Yotsuba has ever met, and she's in awe of her, while the teacher feels the intense pressure of living up to Yotsuba's expectations. 

As the pair hang from the bars side by side, the teacher talks about various "techniques". In the last panel of one page, the two are shown hanging side by side by their arms and in conversation, and then in the next panel, the teacher is suddenly draped over the bar at the waist, completely still and silent, while Yotsuba reacts with one of her big, intense expressions of surprise. 

It's hard to explain exactly why this might have worked as well as it did, but it was one of several times I laughed out loud while reading this volume, mostly in surprise at the sudden and dramatic shift between the two panels. ("Laundry," the teacher says without raising her head, apparently naming the "technique" shortly thereafter. "Yotsuba wants to be laundry too!" the little girl exclaims with intense determination, and, within a few panels, they are both hanging perfectly still and silently side-by-side.)

The book—the whole series—is full of these moments. The majority of the comedy, I think, comes from the characters' reactions to one another, particularly Yotsuba's big emotions, often of surprise or wonder or dismay, which, being a little kid, she has a hard time disguising, and, being a great cartoonist, Azuma is great at capturing. 

Another notable sequence, I thought, was when Yotsuba's dad talks to her about how difficult it will be for the two of them to go on a trip to a mountain unless they bring another grown-up, and Daddy's friend Jumbo, who Yotsuba loves, is busy. They have this conversation in front of Daddy's other friend, the younger and more annoying Yanda, who Yotsuba does not like. Realization slowly dons of Yotsuba over a series of panels, and she ultimately looks with suspicion at Yanda, who, being an adult, has already caught on, and is looking at her with an insane look of extreme self-satisfaction and expectation.

Later, when the trio are on the mountain, Daddy notes that the two are bickering, despite the fact that he had made them both promise beforehand that they would not fight.

"It's okay," Yotsuba tells her dad. "We can fight now because we're already here at the mountain." She begins to run away laughing "HAH HAAA!", when her dad retorts simply, "...I wonder what Santa would think of this behavior..."

Yotsuba freezes, and then a close-up of her wide-eyes and open mouth demonstrate how deeply shocked she was by the remark, almost as if she had just been stabbed in the back.

She ultimatel answers her father:

The mountain trip seems to take up the majority of this volume, which contains eight chapters, about half of which involve the trip to and up Mount Takao. Yotsuba also gets a Christmas tree, plays restaurant at a playground while her dad and Jumbo talk, plays doctor with the neighbor girls and then goes to the playground where she meets the teacher.

Yes, it's all basic, slice-of-life stuff. It's great.

One nice thing about the series is that there's no real stringent story continuity between the various stories and volumes, no overarching narrative one needs to keep track of, as Yotsuba's little adventures are all basically little vignettes. This means that a reader could pick up any volume and read it and enjoy it, regardless on the number on the spine. So, if you've never read the series before, I think you would be absolutely fine picking this up and reading it. Or if your library only has some random, out-of-sequence volumes? You're cool; pick 'em up.

Reading them all in sequence does reward the reader, as one gets to know Yotsuba and her circle's likes and dislikes and relationships better, which deepens one's appreciation of the melodrama of situations like, for example, Daddy coming down the stairs to find that Yanda has let himself in, made dinner and curled up under the kotatsu, but honestly, all you need to know is that Yotsuba is a little girl, Daddy is her dad, he has two friends and Yotsuba is close with their neighbor girls. 

Anyway, if you haven't read any Yotsuba&! yet, please do so. I implore you.

While I was sad to get to the end of the book, I was comforted by the words "TO BE CONTINUED!" on the last page, over a drawing of a Christmas tree and the two-word phrase that could be the book's mantra: "Enjoy Everything." 

Hopefully, it won't take another five years for the next volume, but I'll be excited to read it whenever it does come out. 

BORROWED:

Anxietyland (Gallery Books) At the risk of making this brief, amateur review of Gemma Correll's excellent comics memoir Anxietyland about me, I think it's relevant that there's some overlap between Correll's experiences as chronicled in this book and my own.

I too suffer from anxiety, and I have since at least the fourth grade, which is when I started getting frequent but entirely random stomach aches, often before or during school, or something else I was worried about doing. And I too went far too long without seeking any sort of professional help (I was in my late twenties before I ever sought out a therapist of any kind), as I didn't seem to realize that what I was dealing with was actually a not unique, or even uncommon medical condition, rather than something particular to me personally. And, for most of my life, I dealt with my anxiety by practicing what a therapist would call "avoidance", simply avoiding any and all potential triggers for my anxiety which, given that it involved a degree of agoraphobia, meant avoiding a lot of things.

Now, lucky for me, I've never had things quite as rough as Correll has. I wasn't treated as poorly by my peers in school as she was, I never tried self-medicating with alcohol as she did (This is a very bad idea! Don't try it! But damn, these are some of the funniest passages of the book). And I never had an episode quite as horrible as the inciting incident of the book, in which she suffered from a panic attack that lasts for whole weeks without ever subsiding, and was bad enough that she eventually went to the hospital for it. (My worst anxiety came when I idiotically decided to just stop taking my medication and had a week-long panic attack that lasted until I started taking medication again.)

The reason I bring this up is because I have never read a comic book or a prose book (nor seen a movie or TV show) that managed to so perfectly capture what anxiety feels like, nor have I ever seen the experience of avoidance, one that I am so intimately familiar with, expressed or dramatized anywhere else before.

This may sound weird coming from someone like me, a straight white cis male, but I've never before seen a work that I related to so much, one in which I could see aspects of my own life and experiences reflected back at me.

So, I speak with some authority when I tell you that this is the best comic (or book, or anything) about anxiety. If you're curious what your friends or family members who have to deal with anxiety might be going through, you need to read this book.

Now, the subject matter is obviously quite dark, even scary, so it might be weird to hear this, but the book is also hilarious. Like, genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny. At times, anyway.

Correll, a supremely gifted cartoonist, tells her story in a book that feels more like a cartoon narrative than the traditional graphic novel/comics narrative most readers have grown accustomed to. That is, for the most part, she eschews grids and panels but fills the pages with drawings and words in what amount to implied panels. In that regard, there's also something of a picture book quality to the narrative, or even the feel of an extremely polished sketchbook.

I honestly can't recommend this book strongly enough...and I can't remember the last time I felt so emphatic about a book's quality, and a sense of urgency when it comes to urging others to read it.  

Jeff The Land Shark: Friend and Rivals (Marvel Entertainment) I was pretty puzzled to see the back cover copy shouting "Everyone's Favorite Walking Fish Boy Stars in His First Series!" I mean, I've read multiple comics featuring Jeff The Land Shark before. I've reviewed a few of them for Good Comics for Kids. What's this "first series" business...? 

Just to be sure I wasn't insane, I plugged the word "Jeff" into the Grand Comics Database, and found a half-dozen different Jeff The Land Shark books, although those were all under the title It's Jeff, while this one is entitled Jeff The Land Shark. Is that what whoever wrote the back cove copy was talking about? Or were all of those previous Jeff comics ones that originated online and were then later printed, making this the character's first series to be original to published, paper comic books, rather than starting as a web comic...?

I have no idea, but as someone who engages with comics via print, it certainly confused me. I hope kids ages seven to 10, which is the age group the back cover says the book is for, aren't similarly confused, and don't pick this up, read the back and think that there aren't a whole bunch of other, previous Jeff comics to be found at their local library or comic shop.

Well, regardless, we've got a new Jeff comic from writer Kelly Thompson. In addition to the slightly different titling format, there's another big difference between this one and the previous ones: This one is not drawn by the art team of Gurihiru, which drew all of the Jeff comics I've read before (I see now that there was apparently something called It's Jeff: Infinity Paws that was also not drawn by Gurihiru...nor written by Thompson).

I found that cause for some concern, as not only are the Gurihiru team among my favorite (and, I'd argue, the best) superhero comics artists working today, but also because one of the great pleasures of the Jeff comic to date has been seeing Gurihiru tackle so much of the Marvel Universe, Jeff's many friends, occasional enemies and other guest-stars all being drawn in the lovely Gurihiru style.

Gurihiru does provide covers for this five-issue, 2005 series, though, and their absence is softened by the presence of artist Tokitokoro, of whom I know absolutely nothing. 

The art is pretty great, I thought, and while it might be interesting for some readers to grab an older, Gurihiru-drawn Jeff comic and compare it side by side with this one, I don't know if a lot of those seven-to-10-year-olds will really notice.

The style is still very much manga-inspired, the Tokitokoro Jeff looks just like the Gurihiru Jeff and the storytelling is quite similar (As one might expect, given Thompson's presence). I think the most notable differences are that this one was apparently created to be published on paper in a comic book and it thus looks built for the comic page in a way that some It's Jeff stories might not (The art is here sometimes more dense and less airy). 

That, and the non-Jeff, non-animal characters are more notably the work of a different artist, with a different style. Tokitoro's renderings of these characters still look influenced by Japanese art and still look far cuter than they might in the average Marvel comic, but they also look bit less solid, and drawn with a thinner line, than those of Gurihiru.

So, what goes on here?

Well, Jeff is on his way home from a picnic and nap in the park when he strolls by the Sanctum Sanctorum, just as Doctor Strange is flying out of its open doors. Jeff uses his picnic basket to hold those doors open and invade. Despite the warnings of talking striped snakes Anton and Aleister, Jeff explores and gets into mischief, eventually pilfering a couple of magical gem stones and releasing a Shadow Demon.

The demon promptly steals Jeff's shadow, becoming a sort of Shadow Jeff, and then opens a portal to escape. Jeff, intent on retrieving his shadow, gives chase. What follows is a tour of the Marvel Universe, as each portal leads to another Marvel guest-star (most of whom Thompson has written extensively before), and thus a little mini-adventure teaming Jeff with various heroes.

And so Jeff meets Deadpool, and then Rocket Raccoon and Groot, and then Rogue and Gambit, and then Wolverine, Psylocke and Luna Snow, and then Elsa Bloodstone, eventually finding Gwenpool and a trio of Marvel magic users who can help set things right. (These guest-stars don't map directly onto Gurihiru's cover above—in fact, of those on it, only Rocket and Strange appear within the comic—which is a bit of a bummer, as I was kind of looking forward to seeing Squirrel Girl again. It's been a while.)

Just as seeing Gurihiru's version of various Marvel characters was part of the fun of previous Jeff comics, so too is seeing Tokitokkoro's (I'm curious what X-Men fans might have thought of the artist's versions of Gambit and Rogue. Gambit seems to be drawn about as sexy as I've ever seen him, while this Rogue looks smaller and cuter than I think I've seen her in a mainstream Marvel comic before).

The set-up is one that allows for plenty of guest-stars and Marvel Universe gags (Wolverine inventing "the Jeff-Ball Special" for example, where the throw-ee becomes the thrower), but Thompson doesn't just leave it as a tour of the Marvel Universe, as what begins as a simple chase is gradually explained, and Jeff comes to understand that there's more to Shadow Jeff than he initially thought, so that this conflict can't just be a simple good guy-defeats-bad guy kind of thing.

There are several running jokes throughout the series, and the one that I found to be the most delightful was Jeff's problems communicating, given that he can't really talk. It's a bigger problem here than usual too, as every time a portal takes him to a new character, he has to explain what's going on to that character.

First, he tries charades with Deadpool. Then Rocket gives him a universal translator type device, but it translates his words not into English, but "Modokian," so that each of his "words" is actually a little drawing of MODOK emoting. And then Rocket whips up a little mech suit for Jeff, with a big button that, when pushed, says "Hey!", allowing Jeff to speak exclusively in "Hey!"s for a bit. (Eventually, Rogue kisses Jeff in order to absorb his thoughts/language, and she writes a note for him to carry around with him...this he puts in his "skin pocket" and, like Jeff, I don't care for hearing people talking about his skin pocket). 

All in all, then, Friends and Rivals is like all of the Jeff comics I've read before: Cute, fun, funny and quite well-made. 

Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2: The Omega Act (DC Comics) I guess some regularly published serial comics just aren't meant to be collected into trade paperbacks and read and enjoyed that way. 

The thought occurred to me while reading The Omega Act, which despite the "Volume 2" on the spine, is actually the third trade collection of writer Mark Waid's JLU title. The second one was the unnumbered Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday, which contained JLU #6-8, and thus slots between volumes one and two of JLU. Hell, that alone suggests that the series is meant to be read in single issues as released, rather than in this collected form. 

This volume collects JLU #9-11, but it also collects a pair of one-shots, Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1 and Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1, and here those specials come between the issues of the main series, and, due to their differing artists and slightly different focuses, seem to interrupt the narative of JLU. 

Of course, the events of the volume repeatedly reference things going on in other books, particularly involving Superman, Booster Gold, an evil version of the Legion of Super-Heroes and maybe Doomsday/The Time Trapper (He's the thing guy with chains on the cover above). The asterisks and editorial boxes in the book seem to suggest these events are all taking place in the pages of Superman.

At almost a dozen issues in, it's become abundantly clear that Justice League Unlimited is functioning as something as a bridge between event series, as it launched out of Waid's own Absolute Power and is now building towards DC K.O. (Indeed, the cover includes a slug reading "The Road to DC K.O."). That, and a generator of spin-off miniseries, of which there have been more than I can keep up with...or am even interested in.

From a sales point-of-view, I suppose that's a good strategy for the publisher, as it makes each issue of the series seem "important" to a certain sort of reader (That is, the sort that buys new DC comics each Wednesday at a comics shop). But from even a slight remove—that is, reading the issues in bunches every few months in a collection—it makes it clear that the book isn't devoted to telling stories so much as selling stories.

Also, at this point, I think it's become clear that as fun as the "Everyone's a Justice Leaguer now!" premise of the series is, in practice, when everyone is a Justice Leaguer, it feels a little bit like no one is a Justice Leaguer, and thus the book feels more like a parade of guest-stars than one that has an ensemble cast. 

There doesn't seem to be a point-of-view character anymore, or even regulars; Mister Terrific probably appears the most often (alongside the Trinity and Red Tornado, although the latter is more of a plot device than a character in JLU), and Waid has written Terrific with a specific enough tic (growing unreasonably frustrated and angry when he can't solve a problem) that it seems like it might be going somewhere eventually. But otherwise, this is a pure toy box comic.

Again, watching a skilled writer and obvious DC Comics fan like Waid play with the toys might be fun if that's a small part of your monthly DC comics diet (especially when Waid's paired with a skilled artist, as he is in several of the issues within this trade, as artist Dan Mora draws two of the JLU issues), but if you're reading the series in trade, well, it feels like the storytelling equivalent of a bag of potato chips versus a meal.

Somewhat irritatingly, this collection only has a single credits page listing all of the writers and artists, rather than saying who does what, so I'm afraid I'm not sure of who to credit with each issue or passage. I mean, I obviously recognize Dan Mora's work versus that of Carmine Di Giandomenico, but I couldn't tell you if Yasmine Putri or Cian Tormey drew one special or the other, nor do I know if frequent DCU writer/architect Joshua Williamson or writer Marc Guggenheim each handled a special apiece, or if those were co-written, or if they helped Waid out on JLU. I mean, I could look that all up, but if DC didn't feel it worth delineating in the book itself, I'm not going to do that for them in this blog post. 

Anyway, here's what this volume contains... 

•First is JLU #9, clearly drawn by Mora, the perfect artist for such a comic, where we get to see one of DC's best artists drawing a swathe of their universe. In the aftermath of "We Are Yesterday", the usual crowd of Leaguers standing around the Watchtower are now joined by a crowd of time-lost characters also standing around the Watchtower. Then the newly svelte Doomsday-as-The Time Trapper appears with The World Forger from Scott Snyder's Justice League run (which, come to think of it, was also just a bridge between two big event series). They want to collect Gorilla Grodd in order to vivisect him to study the omega energy trapped within his body; the League are anti-vivisection and put up a fight, and ultimately Grodd convinces the visiting cosmic beings his knowledge can reveal more than his sliced-up body can, and the trio disappear together. Also, Mister Terrific rescues Airwave from wherever he was dispersed, the Trinity holds a secret meeting and I met a new-to-me character, Marilyn Moonlight, who has a pretty cool design.

•Then it's the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special, in which "Omega Demons", which look like Crisis On Infinite Earths' Shadow Demons but with a red omega symbol on their faces, hunt down and kill various time travelers, starting with a spectacularly off-model Waverider (That's him above. Maybe he got a drastic redesign somewhere recently I missed it, of course). A mysterious time-traveler calling themself "Legend" comes to the Watchtower for help and assembles a team to start rescuing time travelers from the Omega Demons. The team? Gold Beetle, Marilyn Moonlight, Batman Terry McGinnis, Air Wave, Jonah Hex, Plastic Man and a Huntress (Batman and Catwoman's daughter, so from the future, I guess...?). I think most of them are time-lost, but some of them seem to have been time-lost before Grodd broke time in "We Are Yesterday."

They ultimately confront a caped woman that Plas refers to as "the blue lady", despite the fact that her skin is chalk white and she's wearing red and black (and what looks to be turtle shells on her shoulders and over each breast?). Pages later, Legend's narration says they recognize their opponent as "Shadow Lass of the 31st Century," whose skin is supposed to be blue; apparently whoever colored this issue just mistakenly made her white throughout...and DC decided not to correct it when it was collected...?

Then the team finds themselves unable to return to the 21st century, due to a temporal firewall. 

•Back to Justice League Unlimited, for issues #10 and #11, the first of which is drawn by Mora, and the second by Di Giandomenico. In the first, Time Trapper is mortally wounded by the evil LOSH (all of whom seem to sport omega symbols and bits of rock on them, so I guess the mis-colored Shadow Lass was actually wearing a stone bra and shoulder pads, rather than turtle shells). He crash-lands on the Watchtower. A group of heroes—Martian Manhunter, Niles Caulder, Metamorpho—use their particular powers and knowledge in an attempt to save his life through emergency surgery, while his built-in temporal defenses age the Watchtower into pieces around them, and Mister Terrific deals with a Parademon Trojan Horse. 

Meanwhile, the Trinity continue their secret meeting, apparently about the vetting of the Leaguers, during which Batman and Superman both seem extremely pissy with one another. And, in Markovia, another superhero team (Geo-Force, Power Girl, Captain Atom and Cadejos, the big werewolf with a flaming head and chains I've seen in backgrounds but don't think I've ever formally met) investigates a new fire pit opening and clash with the evil Legion.

•Finally, there's the Justice League: The Omega Act Special, which jumps between the distant past, where a young Lara and Ursa of a pre-exploded Krypton go exploring where they aren't supposed to and discover some off-world artifacts and some Doomsday dogs, and the present, where Superman, an older, skinnier, bearded Booster Gold and Doomsday/Time Trapper gather every hero for a big meeting. Before the meeting takes place, however, Time Trapper stops time so he and Booster Gold can argue and, with The Flash Wally West tagging along, the trio go on a little side quest to visit various familiar futures, where the evil Legion seems to be killing DC One Million's Justice Legion, Superman Beyond, OMAC and others. Then they fight the Legion, and return to the present for the meeting, giving the whole issue/chapter the feeling of a time-killing, place-holding side quest...which is weird, because it happened in a special, not an issue of an ongoing series.

And that's it. Will I be able to make sense out of the Justice League Unlimited Vol. 3, the fourth collection of the title, if I don't read DC K.O....? I guess I'll find out...?

Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! (Andrews McMeel Publishing) If I had to guess at two of cartoonist Asia Miller's influences here, I would guess the Animal Crossing video games and Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim comics. Or, at the very least, those are two things this excellent graphic novel reminded me of.

Though the book is set in the real world, Miller populates it with an equal number of human characters and anthropomorphic animal characters. Our heroine's bandmates are a llama and a dog, for example, and the "white boy" of the title is also in a band, and his bandmates consist of an alligator and what I am going to guess are an anteater and a meerkat...? (Miller's drawings aren't super-realistic). The characters occasionally note that some of them are animals, too, as a human character refers to the alligator character as a gator at one point, and the llama character identifies the particular breed of the dog (they ae a bichon frise). 

As for the Scott Pilgrim-ishness of it, Lindsey Cheng revolves around college-aged kids in bands, and, like O'Malley, Miller's style is informed by manga and anime to an extent, although her art is much looser, with thinner lines and more abstract character designs; it has the look and feel of a college newspaper comic strip or an alternative comic. When Miller draws a Lindsey in profile though, she looks quite a bit like the way O'Malley draws his characters in profile.*

As for the book itself, it is delightful, a winning comedy of young adults navigating relationships at a time in their life when they are in the liminal period between childhood and adulthood, allowed to focus on and prioritize things like romance, creative endeavors and fun over spending all day every day at a job. 

It is set "Once upon a time... ...in some liberal arts college in the 2010s." When we first meet Lindsey Cheng, she has just tried to trim her own bangs shortly before a date; in a panic, she calls her mother for advice, and we get a sense of their particular dynamic, which seems to be a fairly typical mother/daughter one, although their conversation is conducted in Chinese and English. 

That date is with Jason, a tall blonde boy whose hair permanently covers his right eye. Jason is the lead singer for the local band Bitch In French, which is apparently popular...or at least popular enough to get to play shows, a milestone that the still-nameless band Lindsey drums for hasn't yet reached.

We learn all about Jason quickly, thanks to a bit of deft shorthand by Miller. First, we know he's dreamy, as when he appears in Lindsey's doorway, he emits sparkles. Second, we know that he's perhaps not all that bright, or at least doesn't have the best of judgement, or perhaps cares more about looking cool than anything practical. Miller demonstrates this when Lindsey, bundled up in a scarf, asks the t-shirt wearing Jason if he's going to be cold and he says no....and then, in the next panel, we see him hunched over with his arms crossed, shivering.

Similarly, in the record shop they go to for their date, it's made pretty clear that Jason might not be all that sensitive to Lindsey, as when he finds a prog rock album and she recognizes it from a playlist he sent her, he thrusts it at her (Complete with "SHOVE" sound effect) and insists she take it, even though she demurs that she doesn't even have a record player (and, a little box with an arrow appears next to her and tells us that she "didn't like it THAT much").

The rest of the book tracks Lindsey and Jason's short relationship, as she goes to watch his band practice and meets one of his bandmates' girlfriends (though human, she's dating the...anteater-looking guy), she takes her friends to a party that Jason and his friends are at, she attends an art show that proves revelatory to her and then the young couple have theirfirst—and last—fight. 

Meanwhile, there's another funny and charming (and queer) relationship happening in the background, involving a pair of supporting characters.

Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! is pure comics, and I loved it. It's one of those rare comics I kind of want to hand sell to friends I think might like it, and, in any other month, I would say this was the best and my favorite book but, well, this month I also read a new volume of Yotsuba& and Gemma Carroll's outstanding Anxietyland, so...

Predator Kills the Marvel Universe (Marvel) This is, by my count, writer Benjamin Percy's fourth miniseries plopping Predator aliens down into a version of the Marvel Universe, following books in which they tried their hunting skills against Wolverine, Black Panther and Spider-Man (Yeah, I said "Preadator aliens"; sorry, I can't bring myself to say "The Yautja"). While they all seem somewhat connected (I skipped the Black Panther one, personally), I don't think one needs to have read those to follow the action in this one. I mean, that which came from those stories—the Predators apparently gaining access to vibranium, Kraven having been recruited to join their society—is addressed in passing here, and, well, it's not like this is the most complex story. I mean, the premise is right there in the title, isn't it?

In an effort to tell a Predator story that involves the whole Marvel Universe—or at least as much of it as can be jammed into just 100 pages—Percy strays pretty far from the core concept of alien big game hunters targeting the most dangerous prey, which can certainly seem like he's breaking the basic Predator premise here. But, at the same time, the fact that he is doing so, that this is so different from any previous Predator story I've seen, either on the big screen or in a comic book, is also what makes the series interesting.

Well, kind of interesting. Like, if you've grown up with Predator stories, I guess, or if you're someone who has ever wondered if Daredevil could take a Predator, of if a Predator could lift Mjolnir.

So, the basic premise here is that the Predators, who generally visit Earth solo or in small groups to hunt bad-ass human beings or the occasional superhero, have decided to invade Earth and conquer it (Blame global warming; as Percy's narration says, "The Planet has been cooking itself with chemicals and industry, heating up. And the Yautja like it hot.").

A huge ship that looks a bit like a series of metal triangles blended with modern skyscrapers touches down on the moon. A/the Predator king sits on a weird throne that looks like it is made from the exoskeleton of a giant dead bug, and he receives their advisor Kraven, who hooked up with the Predators in last year's Predator vs. Spider-Man (Which I reviewed in this column, if you're interested).

While learning the aliens' ways, Kraven has also been detailing the names, whereabouts, powers and weaknesses of Earth's superheroes and supervillains to the Predators, so that, when they launch their attack, they are well-prepared for each. Though this is a military operation rather than a hunt, I suppose it's worth noting that the Predators basically use the same tactics, weapons and gadgets as usual; there's just a whole army of them hunting all the Marvel characters at once, rather than one or two or a small handful of them hunting a single character.

The first three issues mainly detail the Predators taking out their opponents: The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fantastic Four, Magneto and a handful of the X-Men, The Avengers (here represented by just Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow), The Hulk and Thor. 

If you're wondering how on Earth the Predators could take out some of those guys, it's mostly via hand-waving. The Predators have come into possession of a great deal of vibranium, and used it to fashion specific hero-killing weaponry that allows them to, for example, somehow drain all the gamma radiation from The Hulk so that Kraven can kill him as defenseless Bruce Banner, or, for another, design a bullet casing capable of piercing Thor's skin, in which a gravity well is housed, plunging the divine hero from the surface of the Earth to its core.

Essentially, Percy here treats vibranium as a sort of do-anything magic substance, a sort of cheat code the Predators can use to get around the superheroes' powers.

While that accounts for the most popular characters, there's no time to address how the Predators might tackle every big gun in the Marvel Universe. So, for example, how did they take down Doctor Strange? However they did, it happened off-panel, as Strange is simply shown hanging upside down among other dead characters like Daredevil and Elektra in a single panel.

And what about all the other magic or supernatural folks, like, I don't know, Ghost Rider or Dracula? What about Man-Thing? Or heavy hitters like Doctor Doom, Namor or Captain Marvel? Well, there's only 100 pages here, so Percy doesn't have time to have the Predators kill their way through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. (Predator Kills Its Way Through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe would be a hell of a ongoing series though; I'd totally read that.)

Around the midway point, Percy focuses on a handful of characters who have survived the initial assault and begin to fight back. These include Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, Black Panther and the Wakandian military and, alone on the moon, The Invisible Woman. An unlikely turning point seems to be the assassination of Kraven, killed by "Predator X", the Weapon X program's brain-washed Predator, who wears a helmet like Wolverine did in the original Weapon X miniseries. 

It might seem strange, but I actually think this idea, the Predators launching all-out war on the Marvel Universe's Earth, would have been better suited to a bigger story, something event-sized, with a miniseries acting as its spine and tie-in issues or miniseries focusing on different characters and their individual fights.

It would certainly have made the story seem bigger and more important, as suits the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime nature of this IP mash-up, and it would have allowed for more compelling stories, presenting a series of "final" stories for Marvel characters and letting them go out in various blazes of glory, putting up genuine fights. Here, because the space afforded to the story is so small, most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe, characters who have been repelling similar alien invasions for like 60 years now, all fall remarkably quickly, many of their fights against the Predators occurring mainly off-panel. 

(For example, after a surprise attack that takes out Magneto, who was playing chess with Professor X, a group of Predators wander into the Danger Room to confront the X-Men: Cyclops, Beast, Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler. How did they manage to kill the likes of Colossus or Storm? No clue. One of them smashes Cyclops' face when he turns away from them, assuming they are a Danger Room construct, and then we just skip ahead to the aftermath, where all of the X-Men save Nightcrawler are apparently dead.)

The art is...well, it's not great, that's for sure. There are three pencil artists listed, two of whom ink their own work, and another inker. I didn't recognize any of the names, nor could I distinguish the work of one from that of another. Like, they obviously handed the baton to one another throughout the five issues—and why did Marvel need four artists for a five-issue mini-series completely divorced from the monthly goings-on of the Marvel Universe?—but I couldn't tell you when the artists changed just by looking at the art.

So, this seemed like a fairly interesting idea for a comic that did not live up to its potential, but, given the page count allotted to it, it's not like it ever really had a chance to do so, either. 

There were a bunch of variant covers, some of them featuring characters who don't appear in the series at all (Moon Knight, The Punisher, Sabertooth). My favorite was probably Kyle Hotz's for the fourth issue, featuring Ka-Zar, Shanna and Zabu vs. a Predator (None of those guys don't appear in the series either). It made me wonder what the series might have read like if an artist with as distinct and compelling an art style as Hotz had been hired to draw it...

REVIEWED: 

The Definitive Yokai Field Guide (Drawn & Quarterly) Probably the best way to learn about yokai, the wide-ranging class of Japanese supernatural entities, is to read Shigeru Mizuki's classic manga, like his signature work GeGeGe no Kitaro and the autobiographical NonNonBa, translated and published in the North American market by D+Q. 

The second-best way? This book, a fun, heavily-illustrated prose guidebook that talks about yokai in general as well as breaking them down, kind by kind, in the style of a kids encyclopedia. In an addition to introducing readers to the world of yokai, it is also a pretty great showcase of Mizuki's artwork, and it contains a short Kitaro story, giving readers a sample of the series, and introducing the title character and his friend/foil Nezumi Otoko,

It was interesting reading this a week or so after reading Matthew Loux's My Journey to Japan: Escape to Yokai Mountain, which was a guidebook to Japan in general that used yokai as host characters to introduce and explain various topics, as doing so made it seem a bit as if the books were in conversation. For example, I was looking forward to seeing an entry on the kudan in Mizuki's Field Guide. That's the yokai that Loux referred to as "a menacing cow" and drew as a cow with a very stern expression; unfortunately, the kudan didn't make it into Mizuki's book (There are a lot of yokai). 

Also, in Loux's book, the children protagonists are surprised to meet a Bigfoot on the mountain full of yokai; the big guy, we're told, is there as part of an exchange program between Japan and Canada. I thought Loux had simply chosen a Western monster as a good ambassador to that particular section, which dealt with a part of Japan to great interest to overseas visitors who love Japanese pop culture, so I was delighted to see that Mizuki's Field Guide included a bit on whether or not what we now call cryptids can be considered yokai (Short answer: yes; same goes for our friends King Kong and Godzilla).

Anyway, here's my formal review from Good Comics for Kids. 

Opting Out (Scholastic) The headline here is that this is the new book from Maia Kobabe, who created a little memoir that you've probably heard of called Gender Queer. Here, Kobabe collaborates on both the writing and the art with co-creator Swati "Lucky" Srikumar to tell the story of Saachi, a 12-year-old who wishes things didn't have to change and that she and her friends didn't have to grow up. While she can't freeze time, and she can't opt out of growing up, she eventually comes to the realization that maybe she can opt out of some elements of doing so, like gender performance and the romance that so many of her classmates suddenly seem to be obsessed with. Beyond these specific conflicts though, Saachi also experiences several other ones that are more universal, making for a book that should appeal to anyone who has similarly wrestled with the difficult years in which childhood starts to fall away, and one finds themself becoming a teenager. More here. 

Science Comics: Prehistoric Mammals: From the Jurassic to the Ice Age (First Second) I like when someone makes a comic about one of my specific interests, like the weird, mammalian megafauna of prehistory.** Joe Flood tells the story of the rise of mammals and their various expressions over the millennia, and he does so in a clear and engaging enough way that someone like me, who isn't exactly science-oriented, could follow along easily enough. While reading this, I did find myself wondering if human co-existed with certain animals, like the Indricotheres, the Chalicotheres and Gigantopithecus (no, yes and yes). I don't know why, but if makes me feel bad that not only did I never get to see an Indricothere, the largest land mammal ever, but no human being ever did. Anyway, more here. 

Speed Racer Adventures Vol. 1 (Papercutz) Artist Derek Charm is one of the comics creators on a relatively short list whose work I so admire that I will read anything they do, so Charm drawing a new series of kid-friendly original graphic novels based on the old anime I used to watch on MTV as a teenager (and was the source of a great movie, with one of the best trailers ever cut)...? Yeah, I'm down for that. Charm draws, while the script comes from Franco, a prolific writer of kids' comics, maybe best known for his many collaborations with Art Baltazar on comics like Tiny Titans. I thought it worked and, as a grown-up, I was particularly interested in Charm working in a different style here, and the fact that Franco made the bad guy a pretty transparent Elon Musk stand-in. Yes, let's teach the children that Cybertrucks are ugly and the creation of a villain, and that oligarchs are bad...! Full review here. 

Uncle Scrooge: "A Little Something Special" and Other Tales of Fiendish Foes (Fantagraphics) This 350-page collection is devoted to the introductions of and greatest battles with Uncle Scooge's considerable rogues gallery, including Flintheart Glomgold, Magica De Spell, The Beagle Boys and some lesser opponents and rivals. I had read the Carl Barks stories before, but the rest of the book was new to me, and I especially appreciated that each story included an introduction about the particular fiendish foe appearing in it, including behind-the-scenes information, where they came from and how they were used in the future. The highlight here are a pair of Don Rosa stories, the brilliant "A Matter of Some Gravity", in which Scrooge and Donald are magically afflicted by "horizontal" gravity and still struggle to navigate the comic book pages on which they are no longer properly oriented, and the title story, a sort of "ultimate" Scrooge story featuring an alliance of his greatest villains (I posted a few noteworthy scenes from that one here). 

The book seems to be the first in a new series of Fantagraphics Disney collections, called "Disney Greatest Comics Collections". The next in the series, Donald Duck: "Big Top Bedlam" and Other Tales of Visual Duckvolution,is due in October. It looks like the idea behind the sub-line of books is to trace the history of various aspects of Disney characters. 

Anyway, for my formal review of the Uncle Scrooge volume, click here. 

*I suppose one could make further comparisons, too. Jason, the white boy of the title, is a rather dim, even clueless band guy, although without any of Scott's redeeming qualities. And, of course, he is dating an Asian woman. Even the title reminded me of Scott Pilgrim, as Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! echoed the line "Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!" 

Miller seems to acknowledge the similarities in one of the sketches in the back of the book, in which Jason is peeking out of her bag, like Scott in Ramona's bag:

**If you too like comics and these creatures, I'd recommend the manga series Cage of Eden, which I actually just mentioned the other day. It's about a class of Japanese high school students and others stranded on an island full of such creatures. 

Sorry, I'm running a little late.

I don't know if anyone other than me knows this, but I do have a pretty strict posting schedule that I like to keep. So I usually post on Mondays and Thursdays and do a bookshelf post on Sundays. The exception to this is my "A Month of Wednesdays" review posts, which I post on the sixth of each month, regardless of day (And then this sometimes rejiggers the schedule briefly, as if I post it on, say, a Wednesday, I will then forego a Thursday post, so that the bigger, longer column stays at the top of the page longer).

Anyway, today is the sixth, and yet I still have two books from May left to review before I can post this month's column...and I've got to work at my day job today, so there's a very good chance I won't get the post finished and posted today. Definitely tomorrow though, so do come back then.

Oh, and as for that image? That is, of course, our hero battling the villain known as deadline, which seemed appropriate. 

A bookshelf interlude

Let's take a break in our tour of my bookshelves to address something I alluded to in the pevious post of the series. That is, this big pile of un-shelved comics. Yes, although most of the available wall space in my house seems to have a bookshelf filling it, I still don't have quite enough bookshelves, and this pile here are all the books that need shelved yet. (There's a similar series of piles across that same room that will also need shelved someday, although those particular piles are my To Be Read piles, so I'll need to read those before I shelve them). 

The majority of the books in these little stacks are manga, so let me just list those that aren't manga first. 

First, there's Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis The Menace 1953-1954, the second volume in Fantagraphics' typically handsomely designed series...and the last which I bought.

There's a pair of Marvel books, the collections of Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers Unleashed, the 2010 series by Chris Eliopoulos and Ig Guara, and Marvel Zombies 5, the 2010 Fred Van Lente and Kano entry into the franchise, this one featuring Howard the Duck and Machine Man travel to various Marvel alternate realities to retrieve samples of the zombie virus.

And there's a whole stack of DC Showcase Presents volumes: All-Star Squadron Vol. 1, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld,  Batgirl Vol.1, Hawkman Vol. 1, Justice League of America Vol. 6, The Phantom Stranger Vol. 1 and Superman Family Vols. 2-3. (I sure would like to see the rest of All-Star Squadron collected, in any format. I loved this particular format, but DC has obviously ceased making them.)

The rest are all manga, from a bunch of different publishers...some of which I don't think are around anymore. I'm just going to list all of the titles below, and only offer some thoughts on a handful. You will probably notice that the numbers I have are...weird. 

There are a lot of first volumes, which is usually because I would try a series out and then stop at the first volume, because I either didn't like it, or else I got distracted and lost track of it immediately, or because it was a review copy from the publisher (When DC's short-lived manga imprint CMX launched, for example, they sent me the first volumes of their first wave of offerings). 

And sometimes I'll have later volumes in a series but not the first ones; that is generally because I started reading the series from the library, and then decided I would like it enough to own it, and started buying new ones as they came out...or that I got caught up on it via volumes from the library and then started buying new ones as they came out. 

I should also note that while I've read all of these, looking at their covers as I sifted through the piles for this post, I realized there were an awful lot of them that I have virtually no memory of at all.

Anyway, here's all the manga in those piles...

•Abenobashi: Magical Sohpping Arcade Vol. 1-2

•Animal Land Vols. 5-11 (Here's one where I read the first few volumes and was then enamored enough to start buying new volumes as they came out...and then I lost track of it. Looking it up now, I guess it only had 14 volumes, so I gave up just as it was nearing its climax, I guess. )

•Astro Boy Vols. 1-6 (These were from Dark Horse and were smaller and slimmer than the standard manga digest. I feel like everyone should read at least one volume of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, if only for, like educational purposes)

•Battle Vixens Vol. 1-5

•Cage of Eden Vols. 1-6, 11-21 (This one was recent enough that I know I've talked about it on the blog before. A comic about Japanese high schoolers fighting extinct prehistoric megafauna with rather horny art, it is one of those relatively rare works that seems like it was created just for me. There's a Lost like element, as it involves a plane crash on a remote island with an overarching mystery that unfolds clue by clure, and while the resolution left me cold, I liked the whole series up until the resolution was revealed. I started buying new copies with volume 11 and read the rest of the series. Then realized it was probably going to go out of print, so I went back and bought the first six volumes, and then I think I had trouble finding 7-10. Are you a comic shop that has them? Let me know and I'll buy 'em!)

•Elfen Lied Omnibus Vol. 1

•Flowers of Evil Vols. 3-11 (Fun fact: Volume 9 blurbs something I wrote here, and credits it to "Every Day Is Like Wednesday." My reviews have been blurbed a few times here and there, but almost always by the place the review ran, rather than by my name. Like, my Good Comics for Kids reviews get blurbed here and there, but the publishers always credit the blurb to School Library Journal, which is obviously more authoritative sounding than "J. Caleb Mozzocco", and is fewer words than "J. Caleb Mozzocco of School Library Journal's Good Comics for Kids.I think this instance was the only time EDILW was blurbed, though.)

•From Eroica With Love Vol. 1

•Full Metal Panic! Vol. 1

•Fushigi Yugi Vols. 1-4, 6-7 (Volume 5 was, randomly, on the previous bookshelf on the tour. I guess the series ran 18 volumes total, so I got less than halfway there.)

•Gals! Vol. 1

•Gothic Sports Vol. 1 (Still love that title.)

•Hetalia: Axis Powers Vols. 1-2 (Probably the weirdest manga in this post, and the hardest comic to explain to someone else.)

•High School of the Dead  Vols. 1-7 (Daisuke Sato and Shouji Sato's zombie apocalypse series, featuring a handful of Japanese high school students trying to survive the familiar scenario and distinguished by its extremely horny art. The series ended prematurely with the death of the writer. It must have been fairly popular, as there was an anime adaptation.)

•Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers Vol. 1

•Jim Henson's Return to Labyrinth Vol. 1

•Kare Kano Vols. 1-2

•Kimi Ni Todoke: From Me To You Vol. 1

•Land of the Blindfolded Vol. 1

•Leave it to PET! Vols. 1-3 (Volume 4, the final one in the series, was also atop the last bookshelf discussed. I liked this series a lot.)

•Lost World (A 2003 Dark Horse release of Osamu Tezuka's 1948 sci-fi riff on Arthur Conan Doyle's story, in which a rogue planet filled with dinosaurs and monsters approaches Earth and is visited by a group of explorers. Another seemingly made-for-Caleb book.)

•Madara Vol. 1

•Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (A CLAMP anthology, the first chapter is a loose riff on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.)

•Monster Collection Vol. 1

•Musashi #9 Vol. 1

•Negima! Vols. 10-11, 13, 15, 17-20, 23, 26 (This one has a pretty labored premise, following a 10-year-old boy wizard sent to Japan to teach English at an all-girls school where he's supposed to keep his magical powers a secret, but the weird student body, including a vampire and a robot, continually lure him into using them. There are elements of a harem comedy to it, but it's also a rather shonen-like fight comic, from what I remember...? Anyway, it's from Ken Akamatsu, who was responsible for the previous Love Hina, which I enjoyed. I started reading the series and, at one point, I found all of these available for half off at a used book store, so I snapped them all up. Unfortunately, I never made it through the first nine volumes, sooooo these are all still unread. I guess there were 38 volumes total. At this point, I can't imagine I will ever assemble them all and read them...) 

•Neon Genesis Evangelion Vols. 1-3 (Later printings of original manga adaptation of the anime. I originally read the manga in volumes borrowed from the library, hoping they would provide some clarity to the mysteries of the anime, particularly regarding the ending. They did not.)

•Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project Omnibus Book 1 (A manga based on a video game based on the anime; I never played the video game, and I don't think I knew there was a video game when I first read this. It features the same characters from the manga, but the tone is much lighter and more fun. I should probably reread this and then see if I can still find the rest of the series.)

•Phoenix Vol. 2: A Tale of the Future (More Tezuka; was there a volume 1? Do I own it? If I were texting you this, I would insert a shrugging emoji here.)

•President Dad Vol. 1

•Primitive Boyfriend Vol. 3

•Saving Life Vol. 1

•Soul Eater Vols. 4-6

•The Stellar Six of Gingacho Vol. 1

•Summoner Girl Vol. 1

•Swan Vol. 1

•Sweet & Sensitive Vol. 1

•Sword of the Dark Ones Vol. 1

•Triage X Vol. 1 (I checked this out as it was from the artist of Highschool of the Dead. It's about sexy, scantily clad nurses with guns fighting crime or something. I didn't care for it.)

•Tuxedo Gin Vols. 1-8 (Teenage boxer Ginji is on his way to a date with his dream girl when he's killed in a motorcycle accident. An angel tells him that, if he lives out the natural life span of an animal, then he can come back to life in his own body. He chooses his would-be girlfriend's favorite animal, an Adelie penguin, and spends his new penguin life with her, although she's unaware that he's really Ginji in penguin form. I liked this crazy-ass premise enough to stick with the series for eight volumes before losing track of it. I've always meant to return to and finish it though; it looks like it ran for a total of 15 volumes.)

•Who Says Warriors Can't Be Babes? Vols. 1-2

•Yakitate!! Japan Vol. 3 (This is a manga series about bread baking, and it's very good. One of the most magical things about manga, at least looking at it from the Western perspective, wherein most comics fall into one of a half-dozen or so genres, is that manga can seemingly be about anything and, no matter how off-beat the subject matter might be, it can still be incredibly engaging. Manga like this one are eloquent arguments that subject and genre don't matter nearly as much in the production of a good comic as the talent that goes into it.) 

Rereading Chistopher Moeller's JLA: A League of One and "JLA: Cold Steel" via the new JLA: A League of One: The Deluxe Edition

I used to think about the Justice League a lot in the late nineties and early '00s, and I remember at one point thinking that a good qualification for whether or not a hero belonged on the team at the time was if they would conceivably be able to defeat all of the other members of the line-up.

That probably sounds like a pretty dumb criteria—like, if Martian Manhunter is able to defeat Superman, would Superman be able to defeat Martian Manhunter?—but I was just thinking conceivably, not that, say, J'onn could take Superman every single time if they fought repeatedly. 

Of the "Big Seven" in 1997's JLA #1, I think that criteria holds true, for the most part...I guess Aquaman is the only character I can't see reasonably beating any and all of his peers one-on-one, although he did drive away an early version of the League featuring Wonder Woman and J'onn in 1996's Aquaman #16.

This many decades later, I'm afraid that I can't necessarily think of in-comics examples of stories in which a particular Leaguer had to, for some reason or another, take on the rest of their teammates, but Christopher Moeller's 2000 fully painted JLA: A League of One is the story in which Wonder Woman has to take on and takedown the other six founders of the JLA. 

The "One" referred to in the title is, of course, Wonder Woman, and, if you're wondering why she's on the cover by herself, well, all the boys are on the other half of that image, as you can see in this lovely, text-free image from the JLA: A League of One: The Deluxe Edition, which pairs the title story with one published in 2005-2006 miniseries JLA Classified: Cold Steel. 

Moeller's story opens in 1348, as the world's last dragon is being driven back to her underground lair by the warriors of the day, who engage in furious battle with her humanoid dragon servants while she hides. The humans ultimately seal the lair's cave entrance, and the problem of dragons is solved once and for all...or, at least, for the next 652 years.

In the present, we get a bit of day-in-the-life of the JLA, as J'onn, Wonder Woman and Superman do some Justice League business, and then, perhaps surprisingly, we meet a pair of gnomes in Switzerland: These are small, spindly, mostly naked little guys with bald heads, no beards and pointed ears. We get a little bit about a day in their life too, and then the pair, Emrick and Elmen, return to find something extraordinary in the history of their people has happened: Behind a set of gigantic doors deep underground, the gnomes have discovered the slumbering Drakul Karfang Drakonis Serpente, the last dragon from the opening scene. 

She is shown cradling a large crystal in her arms. This is her heart, as, we are told, dragons, like unkillable characters in some folklore, hide their hearts outside of their bodies so that their enemies can't hurt it and thus kill them. The gnomes, who used to serve dragons in their olden, glory days, plan on waking her up to lead them to greatness once again.

Meanwhile, we spend some time with Wonder Woman at home on Themyscria, where she hangs out with a wood nymph named Althea and nereid named Zoe. Under Moeller's brush, these characters look like photorealistic little girls, save for the fact that the former is green and the latter blue (Moeller's Diana, I think, has more than a touch of Lynda Carter to her face and expressions, and she wears a costume that hangs and fits in ways evocative of Carter's, rather than simply resembling body paint). 

(It's not just me, right? You see a bit of Carter in there too, right...?)

The girls accidentally reveal to Diana that the oracle in Delphi is expected to foretell Wonder Woman's death in a prophecy that night, and Wonder Woman decides to attend. 

The prophecy is, of course, vague, but Wonder Woman thinks she gets the gist of it: There's gonna be a dragon, the Justice League is going to fight and defeat it, but, in so doing, they will also die. 

Within the week, the full League—or at least the main seven—are seated around the meeting table, with J'onn bringing up various issues and the team deciding who will tackle which mission. Aquaman notices that Wonder Woman seems a little out of it, and Batman (who Moeller draws without the usual white triangle eyes, as if there's always a shadow over his face, giving him a creepy eye-less look) notices, and seems suspicious. (Indeed, he's so suspicious that, when the other Leaguers all leave, he uses tweezers and a plastic bag to lift a fiber from Wonder Woman's chair to analyze.)

Once it becomes clear that this dragon business is about to come true, Diana executes a plan she had apparently put together over the last few days. If the Justice League is destined to die defeating the dragon, she has no choice but to defeat her fellow Leaguers for their own good, removing them from play, and then taking on the dragon by herself. In other words, by beating up her teammates and sacrificing her own life to defeat the dragon, she can save the rest of the Justice League.

And so, then we get to what might be the most interesting passage of the graphic novel, and what I imagine was the selling point when Moeller was making his pitch: Wonder Woman versus the Justice League.

Now, given her powers—super-strength, super-speed, near-invincibility, flight—and her combat expertise and magic lasso, I think Wonder Woman could conceivably take out each of her allies in a protracted one-on-one fight, with J'onn's mental powers probably proving the biggest threat to her (Aquaman and Batman would, obviously, go down easiest). 

Moeller doesn't actually have her engage in long drawn-out fights with each of the other Leaguers, though. She mostly resorts to surprise to ambush them each, taking them out before they have a chance to mount a defense. 

J'onn she lassos, punches and then tosses into a teleporter, sending him to a prison from which he can't escape (This attack actually seems the most cruel, as, in a bit of foreshadowing, J'onn shares with Diana, and the readers, how much he would hate to be in that particular place).

For Green Lantern, she slyly removes his ring and then headbutts him into unconsciousness. There seemed to be an element of seduction to this scene to me, the way she touches Kyle, but maybe I'm just reading too much into it:

Perhaps oddly, the third panel on the second page above, the one with the star imprint from Wonder Woman's tiara on GL's mask, is the single image from this comic that stayed with me over the past 26 years. It's a neat visual of just how damn hard she must have hit Kyle there, and I'm actually kind of amazed she didn't pulp his head. I guess she has amazing control of her super-strength. 

Aquaman, with whom she was assigned a mission, is taken out easily enough. After they save a shit, she simply picks him up and flies off with him. He protests the whole time—"I won't have this, blast you!"—until she dumps him into Charybdis, the mythical whirlpool*, while the nereid Zoe looks on and laughs. 

The Flash fight is even funnier and also involves one of her little mythological friends. Flash and Batman have been sent to the Amazon to thwart Poison Ivy's nefarious plans there, and the nymph Althea causes a root to grab The Flash mid super-speed stride. 

The scene includes my favorite sequence of the whole book, as The Flash tripping is watched from afar by Batman using binoculars. On the next page, Wonder Woman steps out of the jungle, and no sooner does The Flash, not expecting anything untoward from her, is in the middle of realizing that his leg is wrapped up by a vine, when Wonder Woman kicks him into unconsciousness ("WHD").

The next two are, perhaps surprisingly, the most challenging: The World's Finest.

Batman is the only one Wonder Woman doesn't surprise attack, and, ready for a fight of some kind, seems to fare the best against her. She's on the Watchtower and in the middle of trying to launch the unconscious Flash and GL into space in little statis tube thingees when Batman confronts her ("I've fallen into the same trap his opponents always make-- --I've underestimated him," she tells herself...with somewhat awkward phrasing on the first half there; I think an editor should have cleaned that up to, "I've made the same mistake his opponents always make"...)

After the confrontation and argument, the fight takes a full seven pages, with Batman having a clever way to escape her lasso, but while he manages to dodge and trip her up a few times, she eventually prevails, hitting him in the head with a chunk of rock and then taking him out with a pair of punches.

Their dialogue is interesting here. At the outset, Batman is charmingly dickish to her regarding Greek myth and her belief: 

He takes it pretty far, though, and at one point I recoiled at a few of his lines, which are sexist and show a remarkable lack of empathy (she calls him a "reptile" at that point), but a few panels later she says, "I...know what you're doing...Trying to goad me into a mistake." I wonder which of Batman's mentors and teachers taught him to weaponize Being An Asshole in order to win a fight...?

Finally, there's Superman, and this leads to the funniest scene in the book:

The guileless Superman falling for such a simple trick (and just pages after Batman told Wonder Woman to get out of the betrayal business, because she's such a bad liar...but apparently good enough to trick Superman!), the kicked Superman skipping like a stone, and then his face skidding along the ground...? Comedy perfection. 

I shared this anecdote on Bluesky when I was rereading this story in the Deluxe Edition a few weeks ago, but I remember a friend of mine excitedly showing me this scene a few years ago, laughing as she did so.

I believe this is the "There's the door spaceman" of fight scenes.

Now, I think Wonder Woman could take Superman, especially after a devastating surprise attack like that. I mean, just throw the lasso on him, and the notoriously vulnerable-to-magic Superman is done, right? 

But Moeller apparently thought having Wonder Woman take out Superman was a bridge too far, and so she has devised another plan to remove him from the dragon fight: Those pods she was loading The Flash and Green Lantern into? (And then, after beating up, Batman as well?) These were basically designed to keep Superman busy, as the time it would take him to fly into space to rescue them would be the window in which Wonder Woman would fight the dragon. Why fight him at all? (They trade a few more blows, including one that sends Wonder Woman skidding along the desert floor.) Well, Wonder Woman explains that she wanted to weaken Superman enough that he couldn't save the others too quickly. But I imagine it was actually because devoting a few pages to a fight allowed for that hilarious scene.

So with the League out of commission, it's up to Wonder Woman to face the dragon, the climax of the story. She does have a little help, from Althea, Zoe and one of the gnomes. By this point, A League of One very much transitions into a Wonder Woman story more than a JLA one, and while I was originally put off by this fact half a life-time ago, now I really appreciate how much work Moeller put into the lore of his characters and story here, making the fantasy characters and the dragon actual characters, with distinct personalities and motives (He will do the same with the aliens in "Cold Steel", which we'll get to in a little bit). 

I don't love his dragon, her huge nostrils making her quite distinct among dragons but also a little funny-looking, I always thought, but she's well-conceived and rendered. And, as I said, it's admirable that Moeller makes her an actual character, rather than just a generic threat. 

You won't be at all surprised to find that the dragon is destroyed and that Wonder Woman is still alive at the end of the book, the result of the prophecy being only technically true. (That is, she does die...but just temporarily, Superman bringing her back to life with some super-CPR.)

The rest of the League seems to forgive and forget pretty quickly...with the exception of Superman, whom Wonder Woman has a few pages worth of a heart-to-heart conversation with. It ends with a happy group shot, though: 

And no one ever brought this up ever again. Meanwhile, the team kicked Batman off the team over the events of that same year's "Tower of Babel" arc in JLA, and still seem to give him shit about his whole developing-plans-to-defeat-them-all-in-case-any-of-them-ever-go-bad thing...

It's a pretty good JLA story, from a time when there were a lot of JLA stories, many good and many not so much, and it's an even better Wonder Woman story. I'm glad to see that DC republished it in this format, as it gives it another chance. 

I'm more glad still that they collected it along with "Cold Steel", though, as I think that story probably got rather lost in the shuffle of the publisher's chaotic nature at the time of its release.

Despite being written and painted by Moeller, and featuring the same seven Justice Leaguers, "JLA: Cold Steel" could hardly be more different from A League of One. Perhaps most distinctly, it is a true Justice League story rather than a Wonder Woman story featuring the Justice League in it. 

The presentation was pretty different, too. While A League of One was an original hardcover graphic novel, the follow-up was published as a standalone two-part miniseries in early 2006, under the unlikely title of JLA Classified: Cold Steel. 

A discrete JLA story not tied to month-in, month-out continuity and published shortly before the 1997-2006 JLA title would be canceled, it came out in the "End of JLA" period I wrote about last year, and would thus seemingly have fit into either JLA proper, which, in its last years had become a Legend of the Dark Knight-style anthology series featuring different story arcs by different creative teams, or the pages of JLA Classified, a 54-issue, 2005-2008 ongoing that was also an anthology series featuring different story arcs by different creative teams. 

Instead, Moeller's Cold Steel was a Classified miniseries, a spin-off of a spin-off, apparently. 

I would love to know what, exactly, was going on behind-the-scenes regarding DC's JLA material around the time, as, between the two books, the publisher seemed to be burning up inventory stories and repurposing miniseries. Moeller's short text page about Cold Steel suggests part of what might have been going on, but we'll get to that in a bit. 

At any rate, this new edition rescues Cold Steel from the relative oblivion of 20-year-old back-issue bins and re-presents it to what I hope is a more appreciative audience.

Oh, and because this book came out when it did, you will notice that the line-up doesn't fit into JLA continuity anywhere. The line-up are the same Big Seven heroes that were in the first issue of Grant Morrison and company's JLA, and the same that were in Moller's own A League of One. 

But you will note a few cosmetic changes meant to update the cast. So, the Watchtower exteriors we see show the squatter redesign that Brian Hitch had given it during his short tenure on JLA, with the emanating out-buildings. Green Lantern Kyle Rayner is now sporting his newer, Jim Lee-designed costume, the all-black-and-green one with the prominent collar, that he started wearing in the summer of 2002. And Aquaman has cut his hair, trimmed his beard, picked up a magic water hand and put on a new pair of pants, a short-lived look that lasted only about 14 issues of his 2003-2006 series (After which he would start going cleanshaven again for a while, and put his favorite orange shirts and green pants back on).

And yes, Kyle left the League in 2003's JLA #76 and never rejoined. Similarly, while Aquaman came back to life in the present, the epilogue to "The Obsidian Age" arc (the only issues of JLA in which Kyle wore that particular costume), he also left the team, and didn't reappear in the title until deeper into the "End of..." era, appearing briefly in "Syndicate Rules", "Crisis of Conscience" and the post-League "World Without a Justice League" arc, though not in this particular get-up).

In other words, these seven Leaguers, wearing these particular costumes, were never on the team at the same time.

So, if the elevator pitch for A League of One was Wonder Woman vs. The JLA, that for "Cold Steel" seems to be "the JLA pilot giant robots." In fact, the book seems to have been reverse-engineered from that concept, much of it—probably too much of it, actually, as Moeller explains later—written to get the team into the particular circumstances where they need to climb aboard giant robot versions of themselves.

As with his previous story, Moeller does an admirable job of world-building, thinking through the biology, culture, religion and technology of the two warring alien races in the story and, gradually, revealing them not to be simply a good race and a bad race, but two complicated peoples.

Their conflict pretty much crashes into the team's lunar Watchtower in the opening pages of "Cold Steel," as a crescent-shaped, metal ship containing a Ghoji expedition seeking out the League is attacked by a stranger ship, one that seems to be alive, pursues and seeks to destroy them. It's piloted by the Voruk.

The former are roughly humanoid, extremely thin with pale skin, big eyes, antennae, and "backwards" legs like the hindlimbs of some mammals. The latter are more fish-like, resembling rays and prehistoric creatures, and floating through their water-filled ships, which are organic in nature.

After the Ghoji are taken into the Watchtower and everyone is speaking the same language—the Ghoji, it turns out, are psychic—they tell the story of an interplanetary war, one in which the Voruk attacked and sought to conquer the Ghoji home world, taking them as slave labor. In the end, the Voruk subjected the Ghoji's planet Penumbra to a strange super-weapon. A huge metal ring in appearance, it has the effect of putting everyone on the planet to sleep from which they cannot wake, and during which they don't seem to age. 

The Leaguers discuss whether to involve themselves in a war like this at all. Aquaman has reservations and Batman has suspicions that they aren't being told everything, despite J'onn's telepathy and Wonder Woman's expertise revealing that the Ghoji are telling the truth. The deciding factor, however, seems to be that a Ghoji Green Lantern had previously ventured to Penumbra, back when there was still a Green Lantern Corps, and thus Kyle wants to rescue her if they can, and finish her work.

So, after a brief call to the JSA to tell them they'd be off-planet for a bit, the League boards a ship and heads to space, intent on saving Penumbra, rather than picking a side in the war. After scenes set among the Ghoji, we eventually get to the giant robots. The Ghoji have technology to shield ships from the effects of the sleep weapon, but it's big technology, not something that could be worn on a belt or as a backpack.

Luckily, the Ghoji also have very large robots.

And so, in short order, with Batman doing the design work and the super-strong and super-fast Leaguers the heavy-lifting, they have the giant robots from the covers to pilot.

"I've designed the armatures to mirror as closely as possible our personal strengths and abilities," Batman explains: 

In battle, I want our instincts to work for us, not against us. 

For example...

Superman's machine is loaded up with armor. It can take a hit from a battleship and keep going. 

We've installed cutting lasers that he can trigger instantly, from inside the cockpit, with his heat vision.

Aquaman's vehicle has been equipped with undersea propulsion and a harpoon arm-- 

--while Martian Manhunter's machine has been fitted with a powerful psychic amplifier. 

And so on. Some of the exact abilities won't be revealed until the robots are in use, like the fact that The Flash's humanoid-shaped vehicle can uncurl what looks like a giant backpack on it to turn it into a sort of giant super-speed wheel...

Or that Batman's can transform, Robotech-style, into a sort of Batplane...

It almost sounds like a Transformer, doesn't it...? 

As for the color schemes and superhero sigils, those are the work of Green Lantern and The Flash. "Something's missing," Kyle says, regarding the giant gray robots, "Can we get ahold of some paint? We'll need a lot."

Not sure why Moeller left that up to artist Kyle Rayner. I mean, when has Batman not matched a vehicle of his to his costume colors, and applied a bat-symbol to it...?

Finally inside their giant robots at the end of the first issue, the second issue is devoted to their mission on the sleeping planet, where they fight alongside the Ghoji—each has one of them as a co-pilot within their vehicle—against native dangers on the planet, as well the Voruk and, ultimately, the super-weapon, which is malfunctioning in a way that threatens the planet...and galaxy...maybe even all reality. 

I don't want to spoil anything else about the second half of the story than I already have, as this is where Moeller subverts a lot of what we think of as standard genre tropes, and we get payoffs regarding Batman and other characters' suspicions about the Ghoji, but it's a pretty great story, showing the Justice Leaguers as peacemakers as much as warriors, and giving each of the heroes an equal share of the spotlight.

Oh, and Kyle manages to rescue the long lost Ghoji Green Lantern, and they get along pretty well:

At this point, I don't remember who Kyle would have been dating back on Earth (Was it Jade, maybe...?), but I suppose the fact that this issue doesn't really fit neatly into JLA continuity anyway means he's off-the-hook for flirting with and kissing an alien lady, right? 

I wonder if any other writer ever picked up this character, Shirea Vaas in the 20 years or so since this story saw publication...? I mean, there are thousands of Green Lanterns, right? She could be one of them now. Oh, and I wonder what became of her, her ring and her lantern between the end of this story and the return of the Corps after Green Lantern: Rebirth...? 

Anyway, this was a really fun story, and probably one of the most toyetic Justice Leaguer stories I can think of off the top of my head...

After this story ends, there's a 25-page "Making of JLA: A League of One" section, a 34-page "Making of JLA: Cold Steel" section and seven pages of paintings related to the covers, one of which went unused, but featured League of One's dragon fighting Cold Steel's Superman mech fighting in the background, with Wonder Woman leading the seven Leaguers and GL Shiera Vaas in a dramatic charge, Aquaman in his gladiator harness and Kyle in his later GL costume.

There's a prose passage about working on each of the books, and plenty of sketches and design work. Moeller went so far as to sculpt the head of the dragon for League of One, and the Cold Steel section is full of detailed designs for each of the robots in Cold Steel. 

In discussing the later project, Moeller reveals that he was approached by then-JLA editor Dan Raspler to do a follow-up to A League of One, and was reluctant to do so, as he was busy producing covers for the series Lucifer. He was given a longer-than-usual production schedule, and had completed the obviously extensive design and world-building work as well as the script and the art for the first of what was meant to be three issues before Raspler was laid off and, as he says, the project was "orphaned."

In the end, the last two issues were compressed into a single issue, and I imagine this orphaning is why Cold Steel came out as JLA Classified: Cold Steel, rather than as a standalone miniseries...and I imagine Raspler's layoff might explain some of the chaos in the last few years of JLA. 

For fans of this particular era of the Justice League, I'd definitely recommend this book. 

*Not to be confused with the villain Charybdis, who's the guy that had Aquaman hand chewed off by piranhas at the beginning of Peter David's Aquaman series, and whom Erik Larsen later brought back as Piranha-Man.