Not really a review of Supergirl

•It is certainly a choice for James Gunn and other DC Studios decision-makers to follow last year's joyful, inspirational, all-around fun Superman with this movie, in which the traumatized star attempts to self-medicate by badly abusing alcohol in a dark, grimy part of the galaxy, fighting a band of little girl-hunting sex slavers in order to save the life of her dog, the lovable scamp Krypto from the previous movie, who spends the majority of this movie on his deathbed, dying from a painful paralytic poison. Much of the comic relief comes in the form of a violent mercenary who distinguishes himself from the villain by boasting that he kills for money, not sport. 

•Call me crazy, but I think it might have been better if they had made a Supergirl movie that was appropriate for all-ages, rather than targeted towards the same grown-ups who read DC Comics and still go to theaters to see the latest Marvel movie. That is, a Supergirl movie that actual girls could enjoy and maybe, just maybe, a heroine they could relate to and seek to emulate. 

•Yellow sun, red sun, green sun, everywhere is equally poorly lit.

•And yes, there's a green sun, something that I, a comics blogger and semi-professional comics critic who has been reading DC Comics for 35 years now, have never heard of. After the movie, I looked it up, and apparently there was a single appearance of a green sun in a single Superman comic, 1962's Superman #155 by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring (Actually, the planet their Silver Age story is set on orbits a blue sun, but the villain apparently uses a satellite to turn its light green, rendering Superman powerless in the same way a red sun would). The only other usage of a green sun in a DC comic, according to the Grand Comics Database, is Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which this film is apparently a rather direct adaptation of (I never read it, and you can't make me). It is an innovation of King's that a green sun wouldn't simply strip a Kryptonian of their powers, but actively poison and kill them like exposure to green kryptonite might. 

And so, like the hypno-glasses mentioned (jokingly?) in Superman, this is a bit of trivia that was a) new to me and b) technically from the comics, but not exactly common. Unlike the hypno-glasses, this is an important plot point in this film. 

•The beams that Kryptonians empowered by the light of a yellow sun shoot out of their eyes are heat beams and therefore would not work anything at all like that. I guess Cyclops' mutant ability, to emit force beams might, but that's another superhero, franchise and universe.

•I counted two uses of the word "bastich", zero usages of the word "frag" or expression "Feetal's Gizz!"

•While Lobo was one of the brighter spots in the film, I think the filmmakers played him a little too straight, and took him too seriously, so that he came off as the sort of character he has more often than not been a parody of. More on this below. 

•I didn't like that his flying motorcycle/space hog also had wheels like a regular motorcycle and was more often than not depicting as driving around on the ground, rather than flying above it. I can't explain exactly why, but if felt a little weird and cheap to me, like something we might have seen in a 1970s or 1980s TV show featuring Lobo...not that Lobo was around that long ago, of course.  

•I thought Milly Allcock was pretty great as Supergirl in the film. Oddly, although perhaps refreshingly in some respects, I don't think this Supergirl is much like any Supergirl we have seen previously anywhere else...not even in last summer's Superman, where she seemed to be more of an intergalactic party girl in the mold of Alan Moore's Tesla Strong (at least as Tesla appeared in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales #1, in that memorable short story drawn by Jaime Hernandez). Here she seems less Tesla Strong and more of a Greg Rucka-written hard-drinking anti-hero...or maybe an early Vertigo John Constantine (She's even got the coat!).

I'm hardly the first to observe the subversive nature of giving the role of the aging, world-weary warrior who has seen some things to a little slip of a girl who we are explicitly told has just turned 23, but it's neat, and Allock sells it. Hell, she sells everything, from drunk, happy Kara, to sad, traumatized Kara to confident, powerful Kara. 

I like that they cast someone who wasn't already a household name—I know she's got some roles under her belt, but this is the first time I've seen her—which makes it easier to believe in her as Supergirl than, say, Jason Momoa as Lobo or Will Smith as Deadshot or Ben Affleck as Batman or Insert Your Own Example Of A Quite Famous Actor Playing a Comic Book Hero.

In addition to carrying the movie, I also like that Allcock has such a distinct face, so that she looks like a real person rather than a generic blonde baddie, and that the movie doesn't do a damn thing to glamorize her. I've never seen a Supergirl, for example, who looks like she not only didn't brush her hair that morning but might never have brushed her hair in her life. 

•Jason Momoa was fine, I thought, and he clearly seemed to be having fun. That said, he didn't seem to quite fit into the movie, and, days after seeing it, I'm actually kind of wondering why he was in it at all (Maybe to sell tickets? I know I was more interested in seeing what a live-action Lobo might look like than I was seeing, like, the fourth or fifth or sixth live-action Supergirl). 

I think part of the problem was that he was relatively tame, presented as an anti-hero rather than a parody of an anti-hero. Most Lobo comics portray him as completely over-the-top, more cartoon character than comic book character, and even when he's interacting in a more serious fashion with other characters in a crossover or team-up, there seems to be an inherent tension between his character and the others (I mean, just stand Lobo next to Superman and it's clear they don't belong together). 

A greater problem might be that because the movie is so goddam dark—in content as well as lighting, costuming and set design—that he doesn't stand out at all. Plop Lobo into Metropolis or the midst of the Justice League, and the sharp contrast makes him pop in the world of colorful superheroes. But in dark, smokey bars, nighttime brawls and shadowy prisons, up against a bunch of other guys who dress in black and wear big boots and chains? There's little to distinguish him from the Brigands he fights.

It will be fun to see if Gunn and company make use of him elsewhere, maybe duking it out with Superman at some point, or perhaps even starring in his own movie.

The one aspect of the character I thoroughly enjoyed here was the intense, almost perverse interest he had in watching Supergirl or Ruthye (Eve Ridley) when they were either committing an act of violence or were about too. He had a real "Sicko"-at-the-window meme vibe, or perhaps that of the Jack-Nicholson-nodding-expectantly meme, and I wonder if, had the director leaned into it a little more, Momoa looking approvingly toward Kara near the climax might have become an enduring meme, regardless of how the movie gets remembered. 

•I guess it's nice that they named a planet after Woman of Tomorrow artist Bilquis Evely. If the movie is as closely based on that miniseries as everyone says it is (again, I didn't read it), well then, they could have gone ahead and put a "Based on the graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely" in the opening credits, rather than the "Based on characters by DC" or whatever the exact verbiage was. Heidi MacDonald seems to have sat through the credits, as she reports how those credits referred to the various comics creators whose work served to inspire the film at the end of her review, if you're curious).

•One of the major throughlines of the film involved whether or not Ruthye, the girl who watched her whole family get murdered by the film's villain Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) near the beginning, should kill him. Supergirl says no, that taking a life for revenge will change and haunt Ruthye for the rest of her life, only adding to her trauma rather than healing her.

They argue about the point off and on throughout—the only reason Supergirl and Ruthye spend the whole movie in pursuit of Krem together is because Krem also poisoned Krypto and carries the antidote on his person; that, and because Ruthye keeps following her—and the climax of the film involves what Ruthye decides to do when Krem is at her mercy, lying helpless on his back with her sword literally on his throat.

The argument, and that moment (and the moment that follows), lack much weight because, throughout the movie, it isn't entirely clear what Supergirl thinks about killing people. 

Now, Krem looks human, albeit with a face covered in metal studs, and the guys he hangs out with, The Brigands, are all similarly humanoid, although some have horns (They actually all look kinda like background characters from Mad Max: Fury Road). We are told at one point that Krem has the strength of a thousand men, and, at another, we see him catch a very heavy object that falls on him and toss it aside, implying that he has super-strength.

He also seems to have some degree of invulnerability, as he survives a whole bunch of super-punches, kicks and various flying body slams and piledrivers from a fully-powered Supergirl near the end—in fact, the reason he seems to be at Ruthye's mercy at the climax is because Supergirl has pummelled him so badly. (Despite his ability to absorb Kryptonian blows without being pulped, he is apparently still quite stab-able; an unfortunate aspect of the movie is the inconsistencies of the characters' power levels. For example, while the fact that Kara's fluctuate depending on what planet she is on is part of the backstory, the colors of the suns don't always explain her strength and weakness. So, alcohol has no effect on her under a yellow sun, which is why she goes off into space to drink on red sun planets, right?. But apparently poison can affect her under a yellow sun. At least on one planet. On a different planet with a yellow sun, it doesn't.)

Are the rest of the Brigands similarly super-powered? No one ever says. (They are apparently all part of the same species though, as the reason they take female slaves is that their species is all-male.) This matters because, if all the Brigands aren't super-strong and invulnerable-ish like Krem, then Supergirl must massacre dozens of them in a couple of fight scenes, as she punches and kicks them, throws them from great heights and blasts them, blasts them her heat-vision and flies through their vehicles, causing them to explode. The fact that she doesn't pulp them with her punches suggests that they are invulnerable, but I don't know, maybe she pulls her punches...?

Again, this only really matters because so much is made about the question of killing but, because the film is so unclear on the matter, by the time Supergirl and Ruthye have to decide how to deal with the defeated Krem, Supergirl may or may not have killed all of his fellows. 

•Supergirl's super-senses, like her strength and invulnerability, similarly come and go...even under a yellow sun. We see her use her X-ray vision at least twice; doesn't she also have telescopic vision, and super-hearing...? It doesn't seem so. There's one pivotal scene where she and Ruthye are in a room for a long time, and she leaves the room to approach a couple speaking to one another in hushed voices in the kitchen; comic book Supergirl would have been able to hear them just fine from the room upstairs, though.

A short time later, she's searching for Krem as he stalks a girl, tauntingly talking to his prey the whole time, yet Supergirl seems unable to hear him, or spot him with her vision powers. 

•So, as I mentioned before, when I first saw the trailer, it didn't excite me about the prospect of seeing the film...or even really pique my interest. Full of glimpses of Supergirl in a dark, junky, lived-in looking version of a sub-Star Wars vision of outer space, dramatically set to an old pop song ("What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"), it looked for all the world like someone doing a pastiche of Gunn's own Guardians of the Galaxy movies...only with all of the wit and color of those trailers drained out of it. 

I'm happy to report that it is far better than that trailer made it look. It's not Supergirl in a GOTG movie with all of the wit and color drained out (Although God knows it could use more wit and, especially, more color). Rather, it's True Grit and/or John Wick starring a troubled young dog mom in a Joss Whedony, James Gunnish version of outer space, fighting space-orcs that could have come from Serenity or Thor: The Dark World or GOTG or Masters of the Universe to save her CGI pet.

Is it a Supergirl movie...? Not one I would have expected, but it's an interesting take. 

I've read a handful of reviews from professional movie critics, and all but one were bad (Heidi liked it too, and the friend I used to watch the Supergirl TV show with for the first two seasons or so liked it). Many of the gripes seemed to be about the script not seemingly quite right, despite Gunn's promise that no DC film would go into production unless and until the script was perfected, and the fact that it seems stapled together from other movies.

It's not as bad as you might have heard and, aside from the murkiness regarding whether or not Supergirl kills throughout and my various nitpicks, for the movie they were trying to make, I think they did a fair job. The main problem with the result, I think, comes down to aesthetics: Our first look at the DC Universe beyond Metropolis in a movie just looks dark, generic, boring and uninspired. 

Maybe this was due to a lack of imagination among the various designers involved, maybe they just didn't have the budget, but, if they were going to adapt Woman of Tomorrow, I wish they would have made it look like it took place in a universe Evely had drawn. 

Bookshelf #35

This week's bookshelf is my Marvel shelf...or, at least, it was my original Marvel shelf, when I started reading Marvel in 2000, although I have since come to fill a few other shelves with various Marvel books, like those Essential volumes discussed last week, and the digests from a few weeks back.

It's not just Marvel though, and there are some books stuck on this particular shelf either because of their size and shape, or because there was some empty space in which to shove some comics. 

Let's take a brief-ish look, going left to right. 

We start with the last of my Essential volumes, Essential Marvel Horror Vol. 1, containing stories featuring Son of Satan and Satanna. As I mentioned last week, I was particularly drawn to the publisher's 1970s horror/monster hero hybrids, and, of these two, I was fonder of Daimon Hellstrom. I liked him best at this point in his fictional career, when the Satanism and the batshit crazy nature of the character were the selling points (I feel like he's been more-or-less watered down ever since, and I haven't enjoyed later portrayals where he was given a trenchcoat and turned into Marvel's answer to John Constantine). 

Next to that are Cerebus Vol. 2: High Society and From Hell, both there because they are basically the same size and shape as the Essential volumes. And if you're wondering why I have the second volume of Cerebus, and only the second volume of Cerebus, well, the late Gib Bickel at the Laughing Ogre told me that Cerebus didn't really become Cerebus until volume two and suggested I start there. At the time, I was going to do a phone interview with Dave Sim for the paper I was working at, and the only Cerebus I had ever  read was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8. I did plan to read the rest of the series, but, as it was such a big undertaking, I kept putting it off, and I soon realized Sim was getting to be one of those artists you have to separate from the art and, well, 25 years later, I still haven't read all of Cerebus. One day, I hope...

From there, we get into the Marvels. There are some classics, stuff I think most people would say belong in the Marvel "canon", like Roger Stern, "Michael" Mignola and Mark Badger's 1989 Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment, and later collections of Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall and John Beatty's 1985 Squadron Supreme maxiseries (which I had heard referred to as "Marvel's Watchmen"), Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' 1994 Marvels and Alan Moore and Alan Davis' Captain Britain. 

There are the first two Marvel collections I had ever bought, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's original Marvel Knights Punisher series, collected as The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank and Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones' Marvel Boy (The reason I started buying Marvel comics in the first place in 2000 was that they started hiring writers I knew and liked from their DC work, like Ennis and Morrison, and then started their Ultimate line, specifically geared toward new Marvel readers like me.)

The rest is more or less a hodgepodge, books I waited to read in trade, like the Dwayne McDuffie-written Beyond! and the small-scale crossover Doomwar, some attempts to try and read some acclaimed runs I had missed the first time around in singles, some random stuff found in sales. Plus, some more Ennis Punisher, from when I stopped reading it in singles and switched to trades for a while. 

Looking them over now, I see two others worth noting, as I highly recommend them: Hulk: WWH—The Incredible Herc (collecting Greg Pak and company's earliest stories pairing Hercules and Amadeus Cho, which eventually lead into the various "Incredible Hercules" books by Pak, Fred Van Lente and company that offered a comedic take on the mythological hero turned Marvel superhero) and two collections of Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee's short-lived 2010 series Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Which was, and probably still is, one of the better superhero comics I've ever read). The best way to engage the former now is probably The Incredible Hercules: The Complete Collection Vols. 1 and 2, and Thor: The Mighty Avengers—The Complete Collection, provided you can still find them. 

I also notice that I have six volumes collecting Marvel's original G.I. Joe series from the '80s; I must have bought those and shelved them without ever getting around to reading them though, as when I recently started in on the Image-published Compendium collection, I had no recollection of any of the stories (save the one that introduced Kwinn, which I remembered from having bought a reprint of it off a drugstore rack in the '80s). 

Finally, there's a handful of non-Marvel comics. There are four volumes of Roger Landgride's Muppets books for Boom Studios (which are all great although, if you don't already have an appreciation for the Muppets, I'm not sure how appealing they may be), two volumes of Sophie Campbell's predictably excellent Shadoweyes from Slave Labor Graphics and Yuichi Yokoyama's extremely weird Garden from PictureBox. 

Ten scenes of note from Supergirl's Family Vacation

When this book was first announced, I wasn't interested. I'm not a fan of the character, I wasn't familiar with the creators, I didn't recognize the other characters on the cover, the apparent sci-fi setting (Kandor? Outer space?) didn't appeal to me, and the apparent Adventures in Babysitting homage wasn't doing much for me.

Then I read a blog post about it—this one, to be precise—and learned that the rest of the/a Superman Family was also featured in it (That's actually Jonathan Kent and Natasha Iron on the cover, by the way), I saw how great Sarah Leuver's art was, and I read a few short scenes in the sample pages that made me realize that, contrary to my first impressions based solely on the cover, the book might actually be...delightful? (This instance also reminded me of the utility of comics blogs in selling readers on particular comics; I think comics has lost something fairly valuable as the number of active comics blogs have dwindled so precipitously.)

So, I read Brandon T. Snider and Sarah Leuver's Supergirl's Family Vacation, loved it and ended up reviewing it for Good Comics for Kids. 

It's great, and, if you are a Superman fan, or have any interest in reading more about him and/or his little cousin, you too should go read it. Now, preferably. And then you can come back here to read the rest of this post, which will have a couple of spoilers in it, but I promise not to include the big ones, as exciting as those are; the surprise villains of the piece are interesting choices, and the nature of their plot sort of informs the way much of the story unfolds.

1.) Two things of note here. First, I was impressed with just how stretchy that harness Lex wears actually is. Look at how far he dangles from her hand! It's almost like he designed and wears it specifically so that superheroes can comfortably pick him up by it and carry him around like luggage!

Second, Supergirl calling herself a "horse girl" is fun because, while I don't know if she knows Comet the Super-Horse here, the character has had a very long, very weird history with that particular horse. 

2.) When Supergirl arrives at the Fortress of Solitude, the departure point for her family vacation, we get this great, two-page spread of its interior. I love images like this in comic books and this one is just full of little Easter Eggs, like Kelex dusting the Phantom Zone Projector, the Thought-Beast in the zoo, the Supermobile in the corner and Superman's two best friends getting instructions. Batman and Wonder Woman, it turns out, will be acting as fortress-sitters. 

3.) Is there a better sentence than "We've got a perfectly good Supermobile"...? You'll notice that the Supermobile looks bigger than usual here. Rest assured, it still has its most distinctive feature, although that too works a little differently the first time we see it in action.

"There's a fridge in here," Jonathan shouts out the window of the Supermobile. "And a button with a big fist on it."

"Do not press that!" Lois replies.

4.) Okay, I will spoil this bit, but I did warn you.

Now, I was pretty surprised to see Lobo appear here, although I suppose I shouldn't have been. First, his appearance was somewhat presaged by a small pod of space dolphins the Superman Family sees out of the Supermobile window before they stop at an intergalactic gas station. Second, his well-advertised appearance in the upcoming Supergirl movie have all but linked the two characters in popular imagination. 

On one page, the four-armed alien behind the counter hears someone shouting, "Back off, ya filthy scuzzball!" off-panel. "Ugh. This guy again," he says aloud. "I gotta call a Green Lantern."

Superman, who is dressed quite dad-ishly in Clark Kent clothes, takes off his glasses, and tells the attendant he will handle it. Then we cut to the above scene, and our first look at Leuver's Lobo.

I like the big, bushy mustache. I've never really been sure if Lobo was meant to have facial hair or not. Simon Bisley always drew the dark markings around his upper lip to resemble some kind of paint, like makeup or maybe a tattoo, and seemingly of an entirely different texture than the character's hair and sideburns. I had long since come to regard Lobo's mustache as something akin to Groucho Marx's, a two-dimensional, theatrical signifier of a mustache more than an actual mustache.

Leuver's version of Lobo's stache, on the other hand, is clearly really facial hair. It makes him look more than a little "off" to me here, but also gives him a Yosemite Sam-like look, which seems appropriate, particularly in this book, where the character designs all seem to have been suggested by one Superman cartoon or another. (I'm curious to see what the character's mustache situation might be in the upcoming movie, which is the first time we'll see a live-action Lobo, as remarkable as that might sound.) 

Anyway, Superman confronts his occasional foe, switching into his Superman costume at super-speed when Lobo says, "Dat you, blue boy? I didn't recognize you without your cute little cape and shorty pants."

The confrontation lasts a few pages, during which Lobo threatens Superman's family, Supergirl in particular and then the Supermobile, before he is finally taken out. Not by Superman, but rather by Lois.

There's a closeup of her finger pushing a button inside the Supermobile ("BOOP") and then we see this version of the vehicle's punching feature in action: 

5.) The only thing I don't like about Natasha Irons being Steel in the mainstream comics is that I think, more so than other "duplicate" characters, her appearances seem to come instead of those by Steel John Henry Irons, instead of in addition to them. For example, I don't think I've seen John Henry on the Watchtower or interacting with any characters on the current, massive Justice League line-up, although I have seen Nat.

Anyway, here Supergirl makes a good argument for them both being Steel at the same time: "If there can be three Olivias in my class, there can be two Steels." Sure. I mean, these days, we've got, what, eight Green Lanterns from Earth? Three Flashes? (Or is Barry retired at the moment?). Two Batmen? Two Supermen? Two Wonder Girls? And I can't keep track of who's Robin and who isn't month to month anymore...

6.) So that third panel there, the one of Superman as Clark Kent dancing? That's easily my favorite panel of the book...and one of my favorite panels ever. Leuver just plain draws the hell out of the big guy dancing, and doing so with such passion, such wild abandon and with such good moves. Like, one, two or three of those various Clarks dancing would have sold the gag perfectly well, but all seven of them there? Wow!

As funny as Clark's dancing scene is, though, I love the set-up, in which Superman says, "Wait! This is my jam!" 

For some context, Superman is on an alien planet he has only ever visited one single time before, and he is eating dinner alone in an empty restaurant with Lois, while an alien band plays music in the background for their amusement.

What are the chances that Superman has ever even heard this particular song before, let alone it actually being his jam, and one that he can dance to in such a fashion?

Lois' thought cloud makes it clear that Superman/Clark is acting out of character here, as if he's been exposed to "red-K", the variety of kryptonite that effects Kryptonians in random, unpredictable ways, like giving Superman the head of an ant, or making him grow into a giant or shrink into a dwarf, or rapidly age or grow a beard and so on. 

How Superman is acting in this passage seems akin to a human being getting drunk—indeed, in addition to his bad table manners and lack of inhibitions here, Lois will have to help him walk out of the restaurant, and the next morning he will appear hungover—but I suppose it will depend on the age or experience of the reader to recognize that. 

In any case, it's hard to imagine Superman drinking alcohol at all, let alone enough to get drunk (and he would have to be under a red sun in order for alcohol to even affect his Kryptonian physiology, I imagine), so I guess we'll just go with red kryptonite can affect Superman the way strawberry frozen margaritas affect me...

7.) I mentioned this moment both on Bluesky and in my GC4K review, so I'll at least drop the art here. This is the climax of a sequence in which Lois tells her husband she's off to enjoy a spa day, and, in actuality, she gets to investigating what's really going on with the seemingly too-perfect planet, she fights some robots hand to hand and she ultimately frees a whole stampede of alien animals, one of which is psychic, and is thus able to explain the political situation on the planet, and how Superman is in danger. 

The juxtaposition of those two panels—crusading journalist Lois Lane ready and eager to overthrow the corrupt regime on another planet, a completely smitten Superman taking her in—are about as eloquent a delineation of the modern Superman/Lois Lane dynamic as I have ever seen or can even imagine. 

8.) Up until the climax, we've seen Nat wearing either mechanics' style coveralls (as on the cover) or various street clothes. During the occasions in which she had to fight, she uses special gauntlets. Here, though, she dons a Steel-esque costume. 

I like the contrast between the shiny, metallic silver and the girlish pink (In the current DCU, her Steel costume is a duller, more iron-like gray armor with a red and black cropped hoodie over it). And I love that not only does she get a very brief magical girl transformation sequence, but that it begins with her holding up a disc with an S-shield on it, in the same pose that the Power Rangers used to hold aloft their "morphers" to morph into their costumes.

And if this particular costume doesn't seem as practical as her DCU one, what with her head exposed, don't worry; later, as she's about to go into action against one of the surprise villains, her head and hair also get encased in protective metal. 

9.) Nat's not the only one who gets a disc and a transformation sequence. Supergirl does as well, and it results in a new costume. I really like it, especially how it has so many similar elements to her regular costume yet simultaneously looks so distinctly different.

I'm not sure how I would feel about it being a new, semi-permanent costume—those starfield elements have proven to be hard for some artists to draw well in the past when we've seen them in other folks' costumes—but as a new, temporary, leveled up costume here? It works quite well.

10.) Finally, during the book's epilogue, we see a trio of familiar Green Lanterns in a single panel, including one of the breakout stars of last summer's Superman film, Guy Gardner.
 

Supergirl gets the magazine format anthology treatment

We've seen these for Batman, Superman and the Justice League before (I posted about the latter here), and now, in this so-called "Summer of Supergirl", Superman's cousin from Krypton has got her own over-priced, magazine format collection of four comics stories available outside of comic shops, just in time for her new movie. 

I heard about the magazine online, and so when I found myself in a Walmart, a place I avoid ever being as much as possible, I figured I might as well see if they carried it. After finally finding their small magazine section, I saw that they did indeed have a copy, displayed just as you see it in the image above. 

The cover is by Dan Mora and taken from the variant cover he drew for last year's Supergirl #5; as you can see, it puts the star in the exact same pose that her cousin struck on the cover of his magazine, which is right next to hers.

You can't see it because the football magazines are blocking that part of the cover, but the cover copy reads "Four Acclaimed Comic Book Stories By All-Star Writers and Artists!" Curious what those four stories might be? Let's take a look, shall we...?

But first, there's a prose introduction by Jim McLauchlin, under the headline "The Maiden of Might" and the subhead "More than just Superman's cousin, Supergirl has carved her own path." Now, I just saw that nickname used on the back cover of Supergirl: The World last week and noted that it was well past time to retire it.

The word "maiden", as you know, has two meanings: A virgin or a young, unmarried woman. Maybe it made sense to the old men running the publisher in the late 1950s to refer to Supergirl as such back then, but it's 2026, and we really shouldn't be defining a young woman by whether or not she's had sex or is married. 

I mean, Carol Danvers became Ms. Marvel in 1977—Ms., not Miss—I would hope that DC in 2026 could be at least as progressive as Marvel was during the Carter administration. Instead, might I suggest we stick with The Girl of Steel (or Woman of Steel) or Woman of Tomorrow...? The latter is how she is referred to on the cover of a recent issue of Lobo. 

The introduction is fine, a rather basic, even generic introduction to the character that alludes to her many names and the many places she's been a hero, without actually getting too deep into her kind of crazy history. 

The current status quo of the current Supergirl is that she's the original, pre-Crisis Supergirl who died in Crisis on Infinite Earths and was then resurrected in a 2004 Superman/Batman arc (actually, that was a reboot of the character at the time, but it's been retconned into some kind of resurrection), which McLauchlin puts thusly: "Years later, Supergirl got a reset and returned to her former heroic glory." 

I assume the stories chosen were ones that someone at DC thought would be among the best introductions/jumping-on points, a sort of comic book equivalent of a sampler platter or a beer flight. You can try part of a bigger story arc here and then, when you reach the end, there's a kinda sorta ad telling you which collection you can find the rest of the story in. (In that regard, then, I suppose any story chosen had to be part of a collection currently in print).

They also, wisely, ignored the post-Crisis, pre-2004 Supergirl, the Matrix version, so that even if elements of the continuities might feel a bit wonky here and there, all four comics star the same basic Supergirl, the Kara Zor-El, cousin-from-Krypton version.

I've read two of these, but not the other two. I am, of course, a terrible person to ask what the best four Supergirl issues might be to stick in an anthology like this, due to my lack of familiarity with the character.

I think half of these make perfect sense, the other two much less so; I probably would have put her first appearance in there if for nothing other than historic context, as DC Finest: Supergirl: The Girl of Steel means there's a trade to connect to that, but, if the target audience here is kids, I can see why they might not want to use a comic book from when those kids' grandparents were the target audience. 

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #1 (2021) by Tom King and Bilquis Evely I've never read this, despite how much I love the work of Bilquis Evely (which I first encountered in the pages of DC Comics: Bombshells, which was full of great art), and now likely never will, as I have long since lost patience with King's work, and my apathy has curdled into distaste. 

What I do know about it is that it was apparently the major inspiration for the upcoming Supergirl film, so yes, putting it in here probably makes a strong degree of sense. I see Krypto on the cover of the first issue, but, scanning the others, I don't see Lobo. Is he an addition to the story made for the film, I wonder...? 

Supergirl #1 (2025) by Sophie Campbell This one I have read, and I think it makes perfect sense for an anthology targeted at potential new readers like this. Not only is it, and the trade paperback collection in which it is included, seemingly addressed squarely at new reader and all-ages appropriate, but it's also the current, ongoing Supergirl book, so if one happened to read it in the magazine, it would be fairly easy to either pick up the back issues and/or the first trade (Supergirl Vol. 1: Misadventures in Midvale) and a handful of back issues to get caught up and then start following it monthly (or, like me, following it in trade). I reviewed Misadventures in Midvale in this A Month of Wednesdays column and then talked further about it here.

Supergirl: Rebirth #1 (2016) by Steve Orlando, Emanuela Lupacchino and Ray McCarthy I have no idea what this is. I see it is written by Orlando and came out in 2016 though, so I would guess it was a one-shot special lead-in to that year's new Supergirl series that Orlando was writing, part of the publisher's "Rebirth" branding effort. 

I think this was still part of the New 52 continuity, which got shakier and shakier as time went on; at the very least, at this point, DC had not officially decided that the New 52 continuity reset was itself to be reset. 

Is this a good one for a collection like this? I wouldn't think so, but I suppose it's better than 2011's Supergirl #1, debuting the New 52 Supergirl and maybe her worst costume ever, a one-piece that inexplicably had a red triangle pointing to her crotch. 

Superman/Batman #8 (2004) by Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner The final inclusion strikes me as an odd one, and makes me imagine whichever editors who were assigned to putting this book together were casting about for what to put in the book after Woman of Tomorrow #1 and the first issue of Campbell's run. 

This kicks off the six-part "The Supergirl from Krypton" story arc, which was a complete reboot of the Supergirl character, a story that pretends that the pre-Crisis and post-Crisis versions just never existed, and that Kara Zor-El had just arrived on Earth for the very first time and would become the very first Supergirl. I hate stories that attempt reboots like this in-universe (like John Byrne's 2004 Doom Patrol reboot, or Marvel's 2007 "One More Day"/"Brand New Day" Spider-Man reboot), as they retroactively render so many past stories into a weird limbo; if reboots follow events that alter the very fabric of time and space like Crisis, Zero Hour or Flashpoint well, they might still be lame stories, but at least they have a degree of in-story logic to them. 

Anyway, Supergirl lacks a great degree of agency here, and is something of a pawn as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Darkseid all have different ideas of what is best for the powerful new player in the DC Universe...and not only Darkseid but also Wonder Woman resort to violence to effectuate their plans.

 It's been a while since I read this first chapter, but, if memory serves, Supergirl isn't in it much, and not only never dons her costume, but is also in various states of undress throughout.

Jeph Loeb is, of course, Jeph Loeb, and here he pens another jukebox musical of a comic book story, giving his artist the opportunity to draw a large swathe of characters. In addition to those mentioned already, Barda is in this—wearing a towel, having just come out of the shower—as are the Female Furies and, in the last chapter, a whole bunch of heroes, as the JLA, JSA, Titans and Outsiders all gather meet Supergirl for the "first" time. 

The late Turner has a very distinct and appealing style, although I remember reading this and thinking him a better cover artist than interior artist at the time, especially when it came to character design (Barda, for example, looks exactly like Wonder Woman and Kara, and is only distinguished by being a bit taller). 

I think the major criticism of his work as it applied to this Supergirl was how sexualized he drew her. In an attempt to marry her Superman: The Animated Series costume and her classic one, she ends up in a crop top and micro skirt, a costume she would continue to wear into her own 2005-2011 series. (And which, glancing at some of the earlier covers, I see initial series artist Ian Chuchill and cover artistTurner seemed to draw even skimpier there). 

While "The Supergirl From Krypton" might not be a great Supergirl story, there are two strong selling points, one of which is no longer relevant. 

First, it reintroduced a new version of the character and immediately deeply embedded her in the DC Universe at the time (although as this was prior to Infinite Crisis and Flashpoint, and thus some half-dozen continuity-altering events, that universe has been rebooted out of existence over and over again). 

Second, the entire arc and the guest-starred filled Superman/Batman #1-6, by Loeb and artist Ed McGuinness, is now available in Superman/Batman: DC Compact Comics Edition for $9.99, an extraordinary value (This magazine is $16.99, by the way, which means you're paying about $4.25 per comics that originally sold for $4.99, $3.99, $2.99 and $2.99, respectively. Is that a value? For reprints? I don't think so, but then I am very, very cheap...)

Anyway, do you, dear reader, have suggestions for Supergirl comics that might have been better choices for this magazine anthology than those that ended up within it...? 

Bookshelf #34

This week's bookshelf is pretty straightforward, like last week's, and for the same reason. To the left, you have the rest of my Showcase Presents volumes. To the right, most of my Essential volumes. I loved both series for the same reasons and, now that they have been discontinued, I wish I would have bought more of them when they were still available (Of DC's Showcase Presents, I kind of wish I had bought almost all of them; with Marvel's Essentials, I wish I would have at least stuck with Defenders and the various 1970s horror hero series, which, as you can see here, appealed to me).

From DC, we have some superhero team books in Teen Titans Vol. 1, Doom Patrol Vol. 1, Batman and the Outsiders Vol. 1, and then DC's great Hollow Earth barbarian hero comic, Warlord (Like All-Star Squadron, I do wish DC would have published more volumes of this series, as I would have happily snapped them up). 

Those are followed by DC's war comics, and these volumes represented my first real exposure to that once robust genre of comics; prior to these volumes, the only real war comics I had probably ever read were the handful of Garth Ennis-written ones. What I liked about these ones in particular is just how...colorful they were. Like, each had a high concept of one sort or another. Enemy Ace starred a brilliant, brooding and noble faux Red Baron. The War That Time Forgot put G.I.'s on an island populated with dinosaurs, giant monsters and occasionally even weirder stuff. The Haunted Tank followed the adventures of a World War II tank crew, which was often slyly aided by the ghost of a Civil War general...or was it? The Unknown Soldier literalized the term, and presented a mysterious agent whose face was completely wrapped in bandages who was a master of disguise.

And then there's House of Mystery, which was of course fine, but I don't think I took as great delight in it as I did Warlord, the war comics or the super-team books on the shelf. 

As for the Essentials, I guess you can guess which decade of Marvel comics most appealed to me, and that I was a little less interested in the publisher' superheroes than their attempts to Marvel-ize other genres. So here we have The Savage She-Hulk Vol. 1 (Especially interesting as, at the start, She-Hulk was very much a distaff Hulk, and hadn't yet transitioned into the comedic character she would later become), Supervillain Team-Up Vol. 1 (purchased because it had Namor on the cover), Defenders Vol. 1 (They actually published seven volumes of this, and I sorely regret not keeping up with it; Kurt Busiek and Erik Larsen's short-lived 2001 revival initially interested me in the team, and I was quite enamored of the book's apparent original conception as a misfit, B-list answer to The Avengers*) and then we get into the monsters and horror books.

The crown jewel here is, of course, the complete collection of Marvel's Godzilla series, a very weird comic that plopped a redesigned King of the Monsters into the Marvel Universe, and which, due to licensing agreements, wasn't available in trade until this book came out in 2006 (It's much more recently been re-released as the Godzilla: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus, in full color, although, as I mentioned last week, I actually prefer the black-and-white presentation of these old comics). 

Then we have both volumes of Man-Thing, Tomb of Dracula Vol. 2 (No, I don't have volume 1, nor volumes 3 and 4; I believe I bought volume 2 during a sale, and assumed I would pick up the rest of them at some later point and then read them, but, alas...) and, finally, Werewolf By Night.  

Perusing this list of Essential volumes, the ones I most regret missing out on were the future Defenders volumes, Howard the Duck, Ghost Rider (the first volume of which I found from the library and then wrote about relatively recently), Marvel Horror Vol. 2 (I'm particularly interested in The Scarecrow character, which I believe Marvel has since renamed The Straw Man, so as not to confuse him with their other Scarecrow), Monster of Frankenstein and the rest of Tomb of Dracula. I suppose copies of those books are probably out there somewhere though, so I suppose I'll be able to find them at some point...

*You know what? Given that we've already had a JLA/Avengers crossover, and it was very much the ultimate such book, and un-toppable epic, if DC and Marvel continue producing crossovers, maybe they should forego another JLA/Avengers team-up and instead do a Justice League/Defenders one...

¡Vamos! Let's go read Raúl The Third's El Toro & Friends series!

Do you like art? Comics? Wrestling? Superheroes and villains? Monsters? Then you're probably going to like writer/artist Raúl The Third's early reader books from his "El Toro & Friends" series, which, if you're a comics reader, will look like something of a hybrid of a picture book and a comic in terms of format.

Short bursts of prose appear over an image on each page, which, like those of most picture books, can be read like "splash" pages in a comic, while some pages are broken into two panels. Additionally, while the narration is in prose, dialogue usually appears in comics-like dialogue balloons. In fact, if Raúl drew boxes around that narration, each entry in the series would read exactly like a comic book, albeit one for kids.

In 2019, Raúl The Third published ¡Vamos! Let's Go to Market, a picture book that was similarly comic book-y. In it, anthropomorphic wolf Little Lobo and his normal dog Bernabe make deliveries to the market in a bustling, Richard Scarry-like world of similarly anthropomorphic animals*. Various things are labeled throughout in Spanish, which appears in red cursive, and the signs and characters' dialogue feature Spanish as well. The setting of the book would eventually be referred to and branded as "The World of ¡Vamos!"

¡Vamos! was successful enough of a book that it led to a whole series, the title of each of which begins with the words ¡Vamos! Let's Go.... These include Let's Go Eat, Let's Cross the Bridge, Let's Go Read and Let's Celebrate Halloween and Día de los Muertos.

Meanwhile, El Toro, a bull man luchadore who appears in ¡Vamos!, got his own spin-off series, "El Toro & Friends," also from "The World of ¡Vamos!". While both of Raúl The Third's series are charming, and both are set in border towns where Mexican and American cultures blend (and both sprinkle Spanish into their stories), it is the El Toro books that I think will be most appealing to comics readers, especially fans of superhero comics, as there is, obviously, more than a touch of the superhero comic book to professional wrestling in general, and especially to luchadores, who occasionally starred in movies as heroes and crimefighters. 

I'd definite recommend looking for them during your next trip to the library. 

In the meantime, here's what's in the series so far...

Training Day (2021) El Toro, the humanoid bull and luchador hero of the "El Toro & Friends" series, wants to become Champion of the World ("¡El Campeón del Mundo!") and number one ("¡Numero uno!"). But to do so, he has to break through the wall in his career. 

And by "the wall" I mean "The Wall", the undefeated champion of the world who, like so many of the wrestling characters in the colorful world of Raúl the Third's hybrid picture book/comics, looks like he could have stepped out of a superhero comic: He is a huge, anthropomorphic brick wall.

(Are you thinking about The Fantstic Four's Thing right now...? Maybe the villain Brick from Judd Winick's Green Arrow comics...?) 

El Toro will have to train hard to do it, and that's where El Toro's trainer, a humanoid rooster named Kooky Dooky comes in. (Like El Toro, Kooky Dooky first appeared in the first ¡Vamos! book).

We see Kooky Dooky approach El Toro's house—a perfectly square building that says "Casa Toro" on it, with a "Beware of Luchador" sign on the fence and a wrestling ring with three ropes the colors of the Mexican flag on the roof.

El Toro is feeling lazy and doesn't want to get out of bed, but Kooky expresses the necessity of training—"This guy is made out of bricks!"—and he has a whole long list of, well, kooky forms of training, ranging from swinging at pinatas to train his senses, to crushing cars over his head to make his arms strong to helping abuelas cross the teach him patience. 

El Toro has objections to each, which Raul draws in big, two-page spreads that appear within thought clouds emanating from the prone wrestler's head, but eventually he is prevailed upon to start training, and once he's out, jogging in the streets, and sees his many adoring fans cheering for him, he feels inspired to train harder and harder.

The book ends with El Toro facing The Wall in the ring, and while it's not clear who wins the match, the advantage seems to be El Toro's, as the book ends with a two-page spread of him drop-kicking The Wall, sending bricks flying in every direction as he drives his opponent into the turnbuckle with a "POW!" 

On the last page of the book, where the small print that you usually see on the first page appears, there's a little image of El Toro holding a frightened looking Wall aloft in one hand and winding up the fist of his other hand, while bricks continue to drop from the (former?) champion's body.  

Tag Team (2021) The wrestling action in the second book is only a prelude to the real conflict facing El Toro and La Oink Oink, a humanoid pig woman.

In the first pages, the pair took on Donny Dollars and Bald Aguila at El Coliseo, a big building shaped a bit like a sombrero. Bald Aguila looks more vulture than eagle, and the bald top of his head, the long blonde hair on the sides and back and the headband suggested Hulk Hogan to me.

Meanwhile, Donny Dollars is a little guy with green suit, diamond-tipped cane and a money bag for a head. His "rich guy" theme reminded me of Ted DiBiase, The Million Dollar Man, from back when I was a little kid with some interest in professional wrestling. Is "rich guy" a common theme for a heel...?

"The match lasted for hours," the narration tells us, over a spectacular image of La Oink Oink airplane-spinning The Bald Aquila above her head, one of his long, curving limbs stretching out to tag his partner outside the ropes.

The next day, we see El Toro on his knees in the middle of a busted-up looking ring, crying to the heavens, "I cannot believe my eyes! ¡No puedo creer mis ojos!". El Coliseo is a mess, and some eight pages are devoted to detailing the mess. 

El Toro calls Mal Burro and Peeky Pequeno, who are apparently responsible for cleaning up, but the latter speaks into the receiver of a red phone marked "Beach Phone," saying, "We are not feeling well." This despite the fact that they are at the beach. El Toro, speaking into "El Toro Telefono Watch-o" on his wrist, is dismayed by the news, and calls his partner, La Oink Oink.

She speeds to the coliseum in big fancy car decorated by a smiling pig head on the bumper and which seems to go "oink oink oink" as she drives, while El Toro details the nature of the mess to the readers.

"And to top it all off, the training chickens got loose," the narration says. Training chickens, you ask? Well, these seem to be chicken-sized chicken men, far smaller than Kooky Dooky (who we see surfing at the beach on one page). They have the heads of chickens, bare featherless human-looking torsos and arms and wear pants. They were introduced in the first book, when Kooky Dooky told El Toro that, "To keep you quick on your feet, you will chase the chickens." 

Once she arrives, La Oink Oink is able to cheer El Toro up. She points out their teamwork from the night before, and they apply the same principle to cleaning up. Together, the pair manage to get the coliseum back in shape. (The hardest part, which takes four pages, a cartoon fight cloud and a "2 hours later!" tag, is catching the training chickens.)

The lesson is, of course, that even the most daunting tasks are doable when you have help and practice good teamwork. 

That, and that listening to music helps make cleaning less tedious. 

Team Up (2022) This is the first of the El Toro & Friends books set in the past, when El Toro and La Oink Oink were still little kids, just training to be luchadores. As you can see, they look pretty much the same, but smaller; El Toro's head is very round and he hasn't yet developed a bull-like snout, and he had floppy little ears below his horns, while La Oink Oink similarly has a rounder head and...well, that's about the only difference between aside from her size, really.

The story begins and ends in the present, where the kids are all "¡Un equipo fabuloso!", but flashes back to show how they got that way. As ninos, they all trained at Ricky Raton's School of Lucha, chasing chickens, training to be strong and patient and acquire various other virtues.

Each of the half-dozen little wrestlers develops a signature move, from Lizarda's whip-like tongue attack to Jack A. Lopze's super-speed. La Oink Oink and El Toro, who seem to be the least "super" of the group, have "over the top kicks" that "never missed their mark" and a "Super Charge!" attack, respectively.

When it comes time for their final test, it would seem that the kids are faced with the impossible: To defeat Ricky Raton himself!

The great wrestler, who were previously told was "THE BEST!" and "THE BIG CHEESE!" is able to defeat all six of them one-on-one, countering each of their special moves. 

Does that mean the young heroes will never graduate to become professional luchadores? Obviously not. But how can they defeat Ricky Raton? Well, it's right there in the title, isn't it? Joining forces, they layer one attack upon another and manage to counter his counters, ultimately knocking him out of the ring, into a tree with a big, yellow, block-lettered "BONK" and forcing him to wave a white flag. 

As in Tag Team, Team Up champions the efficacy of teamwork, and demonstrates that what may be impossible to do alone becomes possible when everyone works together.

A valuable lesson, taught in the most entertaining fashion: Battles full of super wrestling attacks.

Tacos Today (2023)  Another story set when El Toro and La Oink Oink were little kids studying at Ricky Raton's School of Lucha, among a student body that are so colorful and diverse looking that they looks as much like a kid superhero team as a bunch of wrestlers in training (Not least of all because most of them seem to have some sort of power or super ability).

(I get a real Captain Carrot vibe from this panel, personally.)

We met all of these guys, and learned their various abilities, in the last book, and they are here gradually reintroduced. In addition to El Toro and La Oink Oink, they are Armor Dillo, Jack A. Lopez, Lizarda and Croak (And there's a training chicken in the background of the image above).

When they get let out of school for lunch, they quickly decide what they want: Tacos, as there is a variety for each taste, including tongue tacos ("That's a food that can taste you back!" Croak tells El Toro). (As a vegetarian who leans vegan, all of those mentioned here sound awful to me...also, is it...right for anthropomorphic bull El Toro to eat a tacos made with cow tongues...?)

Unfortunately, the kids realize that they don't actually have enough money for tacos. But fortunately, they are picked up by The Party Bus, where all of the passengers dance in their seats. Their fellow pasajeros are so impressed by Armor Dillo and La Oink Oink's dance moves that they throw coins at them.

This gives La Oink Oink an idea and, once they all arrive at Taco Square, the kids demonstrate the wrestling skills they have learned from Ricky Raton. The crowd goes wild and tosses money at them...paper money, this time. They would now easily have enough to buy all the tacos they wanted...if they had to. But, because the taco vendors are so happy that the impromptu wrestling demo brought so many customers, they give the kids free tacos!

As with the previous books, there's a little, last-page "stinger" cartoon. In this one, Ricky Raton looks at his watch and remarks to a training chicken, which I see here has nipples, "Those ninos sure are taking a long lunch!"

The last page of each book also contains a little dedication from Raúl and Elaine Bay, who colors the books. Here, Raul's dedication is, "To J. Wellington Wimpy," who the late, great Tom Spurgeon has eloquently argued is "The Greatest Comics Character of All Time."

Tough Times (2026) Finally, there's Tough Times, the latest entry in the series (At least for now). I recently reviewed this one for Good Comics for Kids (you can read my review here), and this is the one that made me think I should probably write about the series here, as the gauntlet of colorful opponents that El Toro faces in this book all seem like crosses between monsters and supervillains as much as wrestlers. 

If one likes superhero comics, I realized while reading Tough Times, one is going to like this series. 

This is another one that starts in the present with the adult El Toro and then flashes back to his childhood. Still a rookie, he keeps losing his matches, against opponents Al "The Crane" Scorpio, Thunderbird Mountain, Burrobot, El Desierto and Huevo Ranchero. Honestly, the book is worth picking up just to check out the designs of these characters. Some are pretty silly, and some of them are very cool; it's not hard to imagine some of these guys chasing Scooby and Shaggy around or fighting Spider-Man in New York City. I had to resist the temptation to just scan an image of each and point at the image and say, "Look! Look how cool this is!"

Down in the dumps at always losing, Kid Toro gets a pep talk from Ricky Raton, and after a training montage, he has a rematch with The Crane, and this time he wins.

If you pick up only one of these books at my recommendation, I would make it this one.

Now, vamos! Let's go read Raúl The Third books...!

*I especially like the snakes. There's one in the El Toro & Friends book Tag Team wearing a shirt and jeans, both of which are just tubes of fabric, with turquoise jewelry and belt-buckle, a cowboy hat on his head and a single cowboy boot on the tip of his tail. 

Review: Blue Flag Vol. 1

You know what they say about judging books by their covers, right? Well, it holds true here. The painted image on the cover of the first volume of one-name manga-ka Kaito is a lovely image. The composition is nice, the tree blossoms and the sky are beautiful, and they play off of one another nicely. But the characters here lack the dynamism and life of those within the book. So, if that cover doesn't seem all that appealing, don't let that scare you away.

I also had some concerns about the back cover...specifically the text. That's because the first of the four sentences lays out the premise of the series, but a little too thoroughly, as it contains information that is presented within as a dramatic, climactic reveal. In other words, the back cover copy contains a major spoiler of the story within.

(On the other hand, this volume came out in 2020, and the series wrapped up seven volumes later, so I suppose there's a good chance that pretty much everyone interested in it have already ready it. Why am I coming to it six years late? Well, I only just heard of it. I was ordering a volume of Skip and Loafer through my library's online catalog, and it has this feature that, when you place a hold, it suggests three other supposedly similar items to check out "while you're waiting." As I'm so enamored of Skip and Loafer, I thought I'd give this a chance.)

The book, at least for most of this volume, looks like a rather classic love triangle involving three classmates in their third and final year of high school. 

Our protagonist is Taichi Ichinose, a short kid with messy, black, very manga-looking hair. When he was in grade school, he was friends with Toma Mita...or, as one of his current friends call him, "The Toma Mita." Here's how that same friend describes Mita, for the benefit of readers:

Starter on the baseball team. Athletically gifted. Surprisingly intelligent. 

Talented and above average at anything he does.

Add to that the fact that he's 6'2", conventionally attractive...

...well-built, friendly, popular and funny—it's no surprise all the girls in school are obsessed with him.

He's effectively school royalty. The king of our class. 

No one here has a better life than him. 

Taichi and his three best friends, Mon-chan, Yokki and Omega, are...not that. In fact, Yokki, the friend who gave the above little monologue about Mita, says that "he's like a different species than us," and while that seems pretty melodramatic, the way Kaito draws Taichi's three friends, they do seem to be a different species than Mita...and the rest of the school. They seem to belong to an entirely different manga and, visually at least, Taichi seems to have more in common with Mita than them.

Despite their vastly different social standings, Mita continues to be super-friendly with Taichi, calling him "Tai-chan," and always taking an interest in him. This new school year is the first time they have been in the same class for years though.

The third point of the love triangle is Futaba Kuze, a short, cute, painfully shy and clumsy girl. One of Ichinose's friends compares her to a hamster, and Ichinose himself narrates that he tries not to look at her, suggesting that she reminds him too much of himself. 

A chance encounter in a bookstore between Ichinose and Kuze gradually leads to the latter sharing a secret with the former: She has a crush on Mita and wants to pursue him. Since Ichinose was his childhood friend, perhaps he could help her...?

Quite reluctantly at first—Ichinose feels uncomfortable around both Mita and Kuze—he finds himself helping Kuze, and then coaching her and then, ultimately, hatching an elaborate plan to set them up on a kinda sorta date, in which he asks Mita to go to the movies with him, and then they will "accidentally" run into Kuze, and then he will make an excuse to leave the two of them alone.

Now, if you've watched TV or movies before, or read any romance books or manga, you can probably see where this is going, with Ichinose starting to develop feelings for Kuze, and Kuze soon regarding him as much more than just a guy trying to help her win her unattainable crush. 

But there's a twist. Actually, two or three. 

First, the date plan is spoiled when Kuze brings her heretofore never mentioned best friend, Masumi Itachi with her, as she was too scared to go alone. Interestingly, Itachi meets the exact description of Mita's dream girl that Ichinose had related to Kuze, and is very much not on board with the fake date plan...and gets extremely pissed off about Ichinose trying to set Kuze up with Mita, as she knows the two are incompatible.

After plenty of comedy and drama, we get to the big reveal at the end, which I will now spoil, just like the back cover copy did. After what turned into a group date, in which the four all went to the movies together as friends, Itachi confronts Mita, telling her that she knows that Mita is really in love with Ichinose, which freaks him out, and he demands to know if she told him.

"I haven't told him, no," she replies. "But I figured as much. You and I... ...are the same."

She, apparently, is also secretly in love with her same-sex best friend, Kuze. 

So, what began as a love triangle of sorts is complicated further, becoming a love...square, I guess. Kuzu likes Mita, Mita like Ichinose, Ichinose is starting to develop feelings for Kuzu...who Itachi also likes. And not everybody knows who everyone else likes. Just us, the readers, really.

As a realistic—"slice-of-life", I guess they call these—teenage romance/comedy, Blue Flag is a lot of fun, and Kaito's last-scene reveal is such a curveball that it scrambles what began as a perfectly predictable story, so that I can't imagine what might come next, and am eager to see. Especially since, unlike, say, Skip and Loafer, I can't imagine a happy ending for all of the players, and yet, because they are all so likable, I want them all to get a happily ever after. 

My one real quibble with the first volume was the rather awkward way in which Itachi enters the story. Looking back at the first scenes, I see that she does appear in one panel and gets a single line of dialogue—asking Kuze if she's okay when she drops her lunch—but she could have been rather easily better introduced then.

Because Kuzue decides to confide in Ichinose, it's sort of implied that she doesn't have any other friends and, oddly, when Ichinose tells Kuzue that Mita had previously described his ideal girl as tall and slim with long black hair and a big chest, she didn't remark that her apparent best friend looks exactly like that. 

Anyway, I liked this one a lot and am glad I found it when I did. It will indeed give me another high school slice-of-life romantic comedy manga to read while I wait for the next volume of Skip and Loafer (which actually comes out next month). 

Oh, and like Skip and Loafer, I have no idea why it is entitled as it is...