Friday Night Fights: It's all in the forearms

The respite is over, and Bahlactus hungers for more beatdowns in the blogosphere.

For the first round, EDILW turns to the prince of panel-bound pugilism: Popeye. Shh, I think the announcer's about to get things started...

"In this corner, in the red shorts, weighing in at 140 pounds give or take a couple pounds, is the challenger, the Demon of the Docks, the Thug From Thimble Theater, the Captain of the Good Ship Punchyouintheface, Pop-e-e-e-e-e-y-e the Sailor!

"And in this corner, in the green shorts, weighin in at 215 pounds, is the champion, the King of Conking, the Vizier of Violence, the Count of Monte Fist-o, K-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-id (>inhale!<) J-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-olt!

"Gentleman, go to your corners and when you hear the bell, come out swinging..."





DING DING DING!





"It's a surprise right hook right to the kisser!"




"Followed by some antiquated trash talk, and a devastating, leaping uppercut! And, well blow me down... it looks like we have a new champion!"



(Stargirl image from short story "The Ropes" by David Goyer, James Robinson, David Ross and Andrew Hennessy, part of of 1999's All Star Comics 80-Page Giant #1, published by DC Comics. The Popeye vs. Kid Jolt panels are by E. C. Segar and are taken from 2006's Popeye Vol. 1: I Yam What I Yam collection, published by Fantagraphics Books. Be sure to buy a copy; I'm hoping that thing sells well enough to guarantee the rest of Segar's strip gets likewise collected.)

June 21st's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

In this week's Las Vegas Weekly column I cover the following:





You're probably gonna want to read all three, just so at the end of the year, when two of 'em are popping up on everyone's Best of 2007 lists, you'll know what they're talking about.

I don't think The Aviary is the guaranteed critical darling and sure-fire success that the other two books are, as the sense of humor might be something of an acquired taste, but it is a hell of a lot of weird, weird fun.

Weekly Haul: June 20th

Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #53 (DC Comics) Poor Black Manta. He went from being a scuba diver with an awesome helmet to a pretty cool looking man/manta monster during the Underworld Unleashed crossover, to a half-monsterized guy in his old scuba suit (in first Green Arrow, and then Wonder Woman and Aquaman), back to a normal dude (and good guy) in a scuba suit during the beginning of the latest volume of Aquaman, to a guy who could breathe underwater unaided and now it looks like he’s about to get yet another look, after the conclusion of this story.

I really like what Tad Williams and Shawn McManus did with Manta in this issue; it’s probably the coolest Manta has been in the DCU that I can remember (Alex Ross and company’s Justice version? The best he’s ever been anywhere). His fight chatter comparing Manta, Inc.’s survivor benefits to the life insurance plan of the Aquamen is great, as is his dis of young Arthur “Aquaman II” Curry: “I imagine being an apprentice Aquaman is your summer job while you struggle with junior college, right?” Ha ha, you tell him, Manta!

McManus tricks out Black Manta and his underlings to look pretty cool, with his henchpeople looking like black-colored underwater Iron Men, and he lends a welcome cartooniness to many of the characters, particularly his gigantic King Shark, crazy angry de-helmed Manta and the highly expressive Topo (it’s all in the eyes). The new team’s run has been something of a roller coaster in terms of quality, rising and falling unpredictably each issue, but this issue is definitely a hill rather than a valley. The sense that this is all just a tangent before a return to normalcy (i.e. the real Aquaman returning to reclaim his comic book from the pretender) haunts the proceedings, but Williams at least integrates the supporting casts from the last few directions of the book smoothly, and gives everybody something to do. It even seems like a new iteration of one of Peter David’s greatest Aqua-villains is joining the cast, and Orin gets one step closer to resurrection.





The Brave and the Bold #4 (DC) Another predictably pretty much perfect issue. Reading this on the very same day as the rushed and sparsely populated Countdown and the everybody-looks-the-same-but-with-different-costumes JLoA, penciller George Perez’s deft character design, full backgrounds and precise details seem even greater, and with all those pages that have more than four panels all them, reading this comic is kinda like Christmas. Writer Mark Waid does a nice job with the characters as well; I’m not terribly fond of Blue Beetle III, this Supergirl, Lobo or the Fatal Five, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t make them all seem like distinct and likable individuals (well, except the Fatal Five, but then, they’re the villains). This is an all-around fantastic comic book, maybe DC’s very best at the moment (at least among the DCU books). Now the bad news: The Waid/Perez run is only twelve-issues long, meaning we’re already a third of the way there.





Countdown #45 (DC) Okay, remember last week when I said that as much as I’ve come to loathe Countdown I’d probably continue to buy and read it because with a weekly series, it’s almost easier to keep doing so then going to the trouble of actually dropping it? (I said much the same thing in this week’s “Best Shots” col, to the disapproval of many of the posters, some of whom seem to genuinely enjoy the series).

Well, I take it back.

Apparently I just needed to suffer through one more bad issue to push me off the fence and, make no mistake, this is yet another bad issue, with hints that the thing I am kind of interested in seeing play out—the story itself—is about to get much, much worse (How can a story teaming Jason Todd up with Donna Troy get worse? How about we throw in a Monitor and Monarch…or Captain Atom in Monarch’s armor…or whatever the hell is up with Monarch post-Battle of Bludhaven).

So this week’s exciting Ed Benes cover, which features Karate Kid front and center among the assembled Justice League of America? Well, don’t get too excited about it. The only one of those characters who actually appears within this issue is K.K., as he just kinda mills around the League satellite, apparently waiting for the last chapter of “The Lightning Saga” to ship, so the Countdown creative consortium can get on with his story.

The rest of the book is devoted to two scenes. One is Jimmy Olsen talking into his tape recorder summarizing things, a speech that seems a little off, with Jimmy forgetting his own post-Crisis(on Infinite Earths) time as an “elastic lad,” and referring to Lois as “Miss Lane.” (Even if you’re suddenly on a last name basis with Lois again Jim, it’s the 21st century and you work for a newspaper; how about you call her Ms., huh?) The other is Donna Troy vs. Forerunner. As Jason (2scoops, not Todd) mentioned in last week’s comments section, the problem with Countdown is that it’s a matter of “a death by a thousand cuts,” and #45 features a few more, from tiny little things like the lack of Amazons attacking or Donna’s super-speed creating a streak effect of completely static stars to bigger problems, like the completely confusing and seemingly random Monitor storyline to the wasted space of the dull retelling of every Multiverse crossover ever in the back-up feature.

So, Countdown? I wash my hands of you. I’ll endure next week’s issue of you (which will be waiting for me to pick up next time I’m in the shop), and that’s it. If you do turn out to be worthwhile later in your run, well, I’ll see you in trades borrowed form the library in a year or so.





Justice League of America #10 (DC)
Oh, wow. I was not expecting this at all. I thought I’d successfully lowered my expectations for this title enough that I couldn’t possibly be surprised by how bad a particular issue might prove to be, but apparently Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes have managed to find a way to limbo below my lowered expectations—this was just plain god awful, among the very worst DC comics I can remember reading. Almost Teen Titans #46 bad, but not quite (This issue counts as improvement over TT in that the art doesn’t look quite as rushed, and it does compare Brainiac-5 to Hitler, in a roundabout, implied way, and that’s gotta be worth something, right?).

We start off on the wrong foot with that infamous Michael Turner/Power Girl cover, which is exactly as bad as the preview version to the right, despite the fact that some of it gets covered up by the UPC symbol and the “The Lightning Saga Concludes!” blurb. The interior is no better, although it’s worth noting that Benes is a better illustrator than Turner; yeah, sure he only draws two different figures, the anatomy is ridiculously exaggerated, and Canary and Wonder Woman might as well be bare-assed, it’s still not Turner-bad.

The main problem is that the story makes absolutely no sense. Seriously, I just could not follow what was happening in this issue at all, to the point where I spent an awful lot of time flipping back to reread pages, in case it was a matter of my just being so distracted by the little things, like why Powergirl calls Superman “Clark” on one page and “Kal” on another (Pick a first name and stick with it, huh “Karen?”) or how Black Canary knows the Legion were “Clark’”s best childhood friends, or how he’d react when his best childhood friends betrayed him since, presumably, she’s never seen him betrayed by his best childhood friends, since this is the first time he’d been betrayed by his best childhood friends, to follow the color-coding on the narration boxes and keep the universes and timelines straight in my head.

The thrust of the story is that the Bronze Age Legion Which Shouldn’t Even Exist As Far As We Know manage to complete their little resurrection ritual, despite the best efforts of the Justice teams, but it wasn’t a Legionnaire they were really there to resurrect at all, it was a Flash, and not the one you’d expect a pre-Crisis(on Infinite Earths) Legion to want to resurrect. No, the other one, and his family…although they weren’t really dead anyway. (Were they? I haven’t been reading Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, but I thought the West clan had just disappeared into the Speed Force or time stream or something like that?). Or wait, did they capture another Flash during the ritual somehow? Is that a face in Brainy’s lightning rod there in the last panel, the one in which he says “But for this universe, all I really care about-- --is that we got who we wanted.” I don’t know, I didn’t really get it. But then, I haven’t read the late-70’s stories being referenced here. Personally, I’m not really a fan of any story that requires me to spend a half hour on Wikipedia, read a post-game interview with the creators and editors, and post a bunch of questions on message boards to older fans more versed in Legion lore than I just to come up with a few alternate theories about what might have happened in the story I just read. (My own, perhaps peculiar, definition of a good comic book story is one that you can enjoy all on its own without extensive research).

The confusing badness wasn’t all that I found shocking about the “concluding” chapter of “The Lightning Saga.” I was also surprised how little was actually explained or resolved at the end; it ended with just as many questions as it began. There was no real explanation for what was up with the Legion here. Brainiac’s dialogue at the end seems to indicate they’re from a different universe than the one the Legion just visited, but, if that’s the case, then how are they still that universe’s Superman’s friends (and how is Wildfire made out of Red Tornado’s body, how is that universe’s history in their records, etc). And why are the West twins hitting puberty, rather than babies, like the last time we saw them? And what was up with those panels involving the Ultra-Humanite, Per Degaton and the 90-pound weakling version of Despero? Weren’t they supposed to be involved in this somehow?

Fun fact: Brad Meltzer has exactly two issues left in this run on the title, which means he has about 44 pages to address those questions, plus the mystery with Geo-Force’s powers, and that business about the immortals in “Tornado’s Path”, and the identity of Dr. Impossible. Why do I get the feeling that’s going to another Meltzer-made mess for some other writer to clean up somewhere else?

It wasn’t all bad though. I did like a few things. In addition to the implication that Brainiac was worse than Hitler (Oh Dreamgirl, you just lost the debate!), I liked Brainiac’s extreme dickishness (“That’s a truly inspiring and useless speech, Drake Burroughs.”), and Superman’s threatening Sensor Girl with, “You’ve got a femto-second to put that-") and the smooth, computer-aided juxtaposition of scenes from COIE and old Legion and Flash Silver Age stories into the artwork as memories or (in one case) things in Brainiac’s monitors.

Still, a few cool moments nestled among many more horrible ones, as part of a story that makes absolutely no sense at all isn’t the sort of thing that inspires confidence about the rest of Meltzer’s run. It’s way too short to actually finish any of the stories he’s started in the previous eleven issues, but at the same time, it’s still two issues too many. Dropped until #13, when Dwayne McDuffie swoops in to hopefully save what used to be my favorite DC title.





Shadowpact #14 (DC) I bought my first issue of this series last month with #13 (behold the power of the Zauriel cover appearance!), and the amount of Zauriel within this issue prompted me to pick this one up too. Z. is under heavenly orders to kill Blue Devil, whose continued existence as a superhero is apparently glamorizing selling one’s soul to the devil, but the two former Justice Leaguers decide on another course of action. B.D. hires a lawyer to take on hell for him (nice), and Zauriel is forced to replace him in the Shadowpact line-up, despite the fact that the ‘pact all seem to hate him. I don’t much care for writer Bill Willingham’s portrayal of Zauriel as a henchman for Heaven (which continues the portrayal Steve Gerber initiated in Helmet of Fate: Zauriel); I preferred the character as the rebel, fallen angel who became a superhero to do the right thing, no matter what Heaven’s opinion of creation and/or humanity was (They decided to scrap it and start over when Mageddon had Earth on the ropes). But I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. The rest of the team barely appears here, but the Blue Devil storyline is a pretty interesting one, as is this weird sun god waiting in the wings. New penciller Tom Derenick is something of a personal favorite, and it’s nice to see there’s a place to get a monthly does of him in the DCU now (Although his Detective Chimp can use some work, and his Oblivion patrons don’t seem as cameo-tastic as usual).





Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #3 (Marvel Comics)
Oh Jeff Parker, Mike Wieringo and Wade von Grawbadger, how did you know exactly what I’d need to read the Wednesday after seeing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? Your Doctor Doom appearance, in his classic green house dress and cape combo over full body armor, spouting lines like “Fah!” and “The Four! Wretched curs!”, is exactly what I needed to cleanse my mind of Tim Story and Julian Sands’ portayal of Victor Von Doom as just another jackass who isn’t much fun to work with.

In the penultimate chapter, Spidey and three of the FF head to first the High Evolutionary’s Beast Men and then good old Doc Doom for help with a whattayacallit that might halt the silver aliens’ invasion of earth. It’s good old-fashioned, old-school Marvel Comics fun, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all; Parker hits all the character notes that made these Marvels so well-loved back in the day, but he uses the characters in a story that is just as sophisticated as anything else being published today. As for Wieringo’s pencils, I admit it took a big to get used to his more loose-limbed, gorilla-like version of the Thing, but I’m used to it now, and I like it. The rest of the characters are all well designed and rendered, and I especially like his thin, regular guy like version of Spidey, which recalls John Romita Jr.’s in terms of build.





The Spirit #7 (DC) Now this is a fill-in! Few could actually successfully fill in for writer/artist Darwyn Cooke, a fact DC seems aware of, which might explain why in this first Cooke-less issue of the series, they brought in a half-dozen creators to make us miss Cooke less. Three shorts make up this “Summer Special,” each by a different creative team. Walter Simonson, Chris Sprouse and Karl Story present “Harder Than Diamonds,” in which an Eisner-esque femme fatale leads the CCPD and the Spirit on a series of fals trails after a diamond heist. Jimmy Palmiotti and Jordi Bernet offer up an even more Eisner-esque story featuring an entire tenement apartment building worth of characters with their own plotlines, all of which are elegantly solved when the Spirit chases a crook up the stairs and onto the roof. The least Eisner-esque is probably Kyle Baker’s, a rather complicated murder mystery packed with gags, the punchlines of which are most often expressed via Ellen’s oversized, rolling eyes. My favorite Baker joke comes early, when Spirit answers the phone, “Murder? In a filthy alley? I’ll be right there,” although the Sin City panel and Dolan and Spirit’s meat dinner come close. I’m really glad to see Baker doing a Spirit story, because that means now he’s done both Plastic Man and The Spirit, which makes him a good candidate for creating a story along these lines:








Ultimate Spider-Man #110 (Marvel) Is this still the most consistently best written, best illustrated and most entertaining Spider-Man monthly on the shelves? Yes, yes it is. Is this still one of the best superhero monthlies from any company on the shelves? Yes, yes it is. This issue features the conclusion of the guest star-packed “Ultimate Knights” story arc, and, if you watch the backgrounds, the first appearance of Ultimate Cloak and Dagger.

Dear Dwayne McDuffie,

Congratulations on your new gig!

Even a few years ago, I probably would have greeted the news that Dwayne McDuffie was going to be writing JL(o)A with a "Who?" instead of "Woo hoo!" (despite having enjoyed so much of your past Milestone work, back when I didn’t pay much attention to the credit boxes).

But is it just me, or have you seriously stepped up your game lately?

As someone who doesn't really pay much attention to the names of television writers on shows I watch (I have no idea if you were the genius who had Flash-in-Luthor's-body not wash his hands after going to the bathroom because he was evil or not, for example), I'm not even referring to any work you may have done on the generally excellent Justice League Unlimited. I mean instead the last few issues of Firestorm (including the sublime Orion vs. Stompa fight), the wonderfully old-school Beyond! (which took a handful of characters I didn't care the least for and weaved a highly entertaining story around them), the tons of fun Fantastic Four and, hell, even last week's Avengers Classic back-up.

Now, from what Dan Didio has said, it sounds like you'll be whittling the cast of JLoA down somewhat, as it's rather large for your (or his?) taste. Which I was surprised to hear, seeing as there are only ten people in the League at the moment, eleven if you count Geo-Force, and the best runs on the team have been those with the largest casts (Giffen/DeMatteis had two teams spread over two books and a quarterly; Morrison’s team swelled to around a dozen).

While everyone has their own ideal League line-ups, I'll try my hardest not to bore you with mine here. I did want to share some advice with you, though. Not that you need it, but rather because if there's one thing we at EDILW like doing, it's sharing advice about Justice League comics that no one ever listens to.

So, regarding that line-up: It's integral to remember that the Justice League formula that works the very best is “The Big Seven” plus a few more. The Leagues that have worked the best financially and critically without that foundation of the Big Seven (i.e. the Giffen/DeMatteis run) did so despite rather than because of the deviation from the Big Seven plus more formula, and they did have the advantage of Batman going for them (If you're only going to use one of the Seven, that's the one you want, especially around the early '90s).

The argument is often made that it's hard to tell League stories with these seven characters because so many of them have their own books, or, in Superman and Batman's cases, whole lines of books, and will thus not only remain static but, if they're to change/develop at all, it will be in those books, not JLoA. To that I say: “So what?” JLoA doesn't need to focus on the superheroes as characters, but rather on the interaction between them. There are a lot of books about Batman, and one about Wonder Woman, but this is the only book about the Batman and Wonder Woman's relationship to one another.

Now, I understand the line-up you'll be inheriting is devoid of three of the traditional Big Seven (again, the fact that this is DC's bestselling book is despite rather than because the variation of the formula; I don't think anyone believes Geo-Force, Roy Harper and Red Tornado are more popular than Flash, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter, and the current line-up still has the three biggest of the Big Seven on it). Ideally, you'll want to add the Flash, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter as soon as possible, but that might take a while. We don't know who the Flash will be (Wally's an immediate in; Bart and Barry might want to wait a bit), Aquaman's dead for the moment and Martian Manhunter is more unlikable in his current costume and characterization than he's ever been.

So that gives us the Big Seven Minus Three, meaning you can add at least three. Roy Harper is a must-keep, if only because Meltzer made such a big deal about it, changing his name and costume to get him there. Black Lightning is also a must-keep; some of us have been waiting forever to get him there and, again, he just joined. Hawkgirl and Vixen both seem like good candidates for sticking around, in part because they just re-upped; the former is more iconic, but the latter is more unique. Tough call.

As for trimming, no one would mind if Geo-Force decided he didn't want to stick around after all. Seriously, I can't think of a single person in Internetland who likes Geo-Force, or at least hasn't made fun of him repeatedly. (Here are some of my favorite jokes at Geo-Force's expense).

Red Tornado is similarly annoying, particularly as Meltzer has written him, although he has a larger fan base (that is, he has some fans). I could take or leave him, personally; if he sticks around, I do hope you'll find an interesting way to write him. The whole Pinocchio Syndrome Android-with-human-emotions-who-wishes-he-was-real plotline has been something pretty much anyone who's ever touched Red Tornado and Marvel’s Vision has hammered on over the last, what, 30 years now? That’s kind of…tired.

Black Canary has fans and certainly belongs in the League more than Geo-Force, but, at the same time, I don't think she brings much of anything to the team. If they need someone to beat someone up without using superpowers for some reason, they could just have Batman do it. He loves beating people up. Her upcoming nuptials will give her a good excuse to step down for a while too, or put herself on reserve status, or maybe just be like the Phantom Stranger, and just show up when she feels like it or is really needed.

Which is the advantage of a gigantic line-up. The more people on the League, the better, even if we don't see them all the time. For example, I love Steel and, in a DCU that operates on a sort of logic beyond "That Which the Person Writing Likes Is What Is," I don't know why he would have quit the League after Morrison’s “World War III” or why no one's asked him to rejoin. How many brilliant inventors and super-engineers who can also catch falling jetliners and knock giant robots' heads off with their big ass hammers are there in the talent pool? And while the Trinity are all scientists, I think the League needs a dedicated tech guy. I'd be happy to see Steel on the team, even if he's only there doing tech support, monitor duty and joining them for, like, one out of every fifteen fights. I think that's how a lot of fans feel; they want their favorites in the League, even if those favorites don’t actually star in every single issue.

So big rosters are great, and, barring that, a large number of official reservists who occasionally guest-star and/or just check in is definitely the next best thing.

Other add-ins to consider, beyond Aquaman, a Flash and J'onn? Well, obviously Plastic Man and Captain Marvel, once the Judd Winick experiment is scrapped and things get back to normal with him. I know those two superheroes belong among any gathering of The World's Greatest Heroes just as much as any of the Big Seven, you know they belong among any gathering of the World's Greatest Heroes just as much as any of the Big Seven, so why not finally officially make it so?

Oh hey, and the Green Lantern situation? Who should be the Green Lantern? It's Hal currently, which never made much sense to me. Though a founder, he was on the League less than Kyle and Guy. He was also evil for a long stint, so evil that he actually destroyed the universe temporarily, and even killed Batman temporarily before undoing all of creation (yeah, yeah a space bug did it; whatever) and he was a member of "The Power Pact" which was less than ethical (another strike against Canary, come to think of it), and his coming on seemed a little unnatural. I mean, they were just working with John, who was place-holding for Kyle, when Hal came in. Did they just fire John? Stop returning his calls? Was he so deep undercover as Hunger Dog that he couldn't join the new Meltzer-ized League? It should have been John, as we all know (Kyle's life seems even more complicated now then when he asked John to replace him, and the League needs a Lantern in it's line-up, not an, um, Ion…whatever that is exactly).

Of course, now the problem is that Hal's there, and they'd have to kick him out to make room for John. I'm not sure how to handle this, or how quickly it should happen, but I have faith that you'll find a smart, believable way to do it. John is currently the only book-less Lantern, and JLoA is the ideal place for him now. If Hal gets the monthly, Guy the Corps book and Kyle all the stupid Countdown spin-offs, then let's get John back in the League, huh?

Thanks for your time, and good luck.

Sincerely,
Caleb

P.S. Zauriel! Scott "Mister Miracle" Free! Steel! J'onn! Aquaman! Plastic Man! De-Winick-ified Captain Marvel! Moon Maiden! Janissary! Maybe even Cyborg!

Marvel's September previews reviewed

AVENGERS CLASSIC #4 Written by STAN LEE & DWAYNE MCDUFFIE. Penciled by JACK KIRBY & MICHAEL AVON OEMING. Cover by ART ADAMS. Captain America may be dead, but witness his classic rebirth into the Marvel Universe in "Captain America Joins…the Avengers!" -- a tale destined to become a magnificent milestone in the Marvel Age of Comics! Witness the tragic death of Bucky and the triumphant return of the Golden Age’s greatest hero in an instant classic that could only be told by legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby! Plus: take a new look at the ultimate man out of time, as writer Dwayne McDuffie (FANTASTIC FOUR) and artist Michael Avon Oeming (POWERS) craft an all-new 9-page story starring the one-and-only Captain America!

I’m curious to see how long Marvel will let McDuffie write these Avengers back ups (not to mention Fantastic Four). If he doesn’t leave the book, under whatever circumstances, would that make him the first writer to handle both the Avengers and the Justice League simultaneously?






CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN #1 & 2 (of 6) Written by David Morrell. Pencils & 50/50 Cover by Mitch Breitweiser.50/50 Cover by TRAVIS CHAREST. New York Times best-selling novelist and creator of Rambo, David Morrell, takes on Captain America in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN—a six-issue Marvel Knights limited series in the tradition of SPIDER-MAN: REIGN! Super-star-to-be Mitch Breitweiser provides the finest art of his career as he chronicles the last days of Captain America.

“In the tradition of Spider-Man: Regin,” huh? Does that mean we can expect Cap’s super soldier serum tainted semen to have an unexpected effect on Sharon Carter?







I like Skottie Young’s “Capool” a lot better than Ariel Olivetti’s “Capunisher.”








I love Marko Djurdjevic’s artwork. I hate his version of the Daredevil costume though.








Sill no feet or backgrounds, but Michael Turner’s FF is definitely improving. Thing’s jaw looks like it belongs on his face now, for example, and the elongated torsos he so loves actually works pretty well for someone whose powers include the ability to elongate his torso to inhuman proportions.







I won’t buy this series, not caring that much about Iron Man, but that is a really nice cover, isn’t it?






IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #12 Written by ROBERT KIRKMAN. Art by PHIL HESTER & ANDRE PARKS. Cover by PHIL HESTER. FINAL ISSUE! The story of Eric O'Grady comes to an end--or does it? Who lives, who dies, who gets double-crossed? The answers to these questions and many more in this final issue of the series everyone who read loved! So get your 'Save Irredeemable Ant-Man' campaigns ready. Hey, it worked for Runaways and She-Hulk. Why not Ant-Man?


Nooooooooooooo! Well, the writing’s been on the wall for a while, and, as the clever solicitation copy itself notes, there’s always hope that this book’s cancellation will be more She-Hulk than The Thing. At the very least, I hope Eric O’ Grady sticks around the Marvel Universe, complete with his ant-suit. It’s the best Ant-Man costume design yet (I know that’s not saying a whole lot) and he certainly makes crowd scenes look cooler.







MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #31Written by PETER DAVID. Penciled by POP MHAN. Cover by PATRICK SCHERBERGER. HOT HOT HEAT!!! Spidey gets caught in the crossfire of the Human Torch AND Pyro! ONE hothead would be rough enough…but TWO? It’s Spidey flambé, brought to you by the one-two punch of David and Mhan!!!


Don’t worry about Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man being cancelled Peter David fans. PAD’s still got one Spider-Man monthly, and this one’s guaranteed to be completely alternate universe Uncle Ben and bonde claw free! Nice to see the Spyboy creative team reunited, and I do so love me some Spidey/Torch crossover action.







MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS #16Written by JEFF PARKER. Penciled by CAFU. Cover by TOM GRUMMETT. Look, sorry pal- ow- but this isn't Robin Hood and the Merry Men- ow-ow-, this is The Avengers- ow! Hey, watch it with those thi- ow, ow, OW! Fine. What did you say your name was, Hawk-something?


How many times have I said this is the best and/or my favorite Avengers title? Fourteen? Fifteen? Well, I’m saying it again. I love this book. Heck, even the solicitation copy is fun.






MARVEL ZOMBIES: THE BOOK OF ANGELS, DEMONS & VARIOUS MONSTROSITIES Written by JEFF CHRISTIANSEN, MICHAEL HOSKIN, STUART VANDAL, CHAD ANDERSON, MADISON CARTER, DAVID WILTFONG, RONALD BYRD, ERIC J. MOREELS, ANTHONY FLAMINI & AL SJOERDSMA. Cover by GREG LAND. Think you know everything there is to know about the things that go bump in the night? Think again! Discover the events that led to the infectious Marvel Zombies. What does Belasco have in store for the X-Men? What is lurking in the unknown? Is it the Lurking Unknown or something worse? Think Set and Seth are one and the same? What is the most powerful black magic tome on Earth? What are the Azazel, Brain, Lord of Death and Voyager? Find out all of this and more as we explore the dark depths of the Marvel Universe and beyond – featuring Demons (a massive eight-page profile), Angels, Werewolves, Vampires, death gods Damballah and Pluto, and much more! Oh yeah, and did we mention Marvel Zombies?

Okay, I don’t get it. What the hell is this exactly? An Official Guide to the Marvel Universe style book of profile pieces, with the “Marvel Zombies” shoehorned in and added to the title to cash in on their unlikely popularity? Did I get that right?







PENANCE: RELENTLESS #1 (of 5)Written by PAUL JENKINS. Pencils and Cover by PAUL GULACY. From the pages of Civil War: Front Line and Thunderbolts! Once he was a hero, now only a shell of Robbie Baldwin remains. As Penance, he begins a slow descent into madness: the most hated man in America, blamed for the disaster at Stamford, tortured by visions of his failure and obsessed with strange, seemingly meaningless numbers. A relentless pursuit begins...

Because no one demanded it!







THUNDERBOLTS #117
Written by WARREN ELLIS
Penciled by MIKE DEODATO
Cover by MARKO DJURDJEVIC
"Caged Angels" continues as we delve into the psyche of the Thunderbolts’ most elusive member, Penance, the man formerly known as Speedball. While Thunderbolts Mountain remains in a perpetual state of discord, the greater chaos might be within Robbie Baldwin’s own mind!

Crave more brooding melodrama starring Robbie Baldwin? Then heads-up, Dark Speedball fans! Guess who takes center stage in September's issue of Thunderbolts!










I’m trade-waiting the Sub-Mariner series, but that cover is going to be hard to pass up on the stands.







As much as I dislike Greg Land’s art, and I dislike it a little more every time I see it, do you know what I’d totally buy? A collection of Land covers and sequential pages, complete with the official photoreference he used in the creation of it. Kind of a behind-the-scenes book about Land’s process. I have a feeling it would have to be a Max book though.

DC's September Previews Reviewed

I've been referring to the current direction of this book as "swordfish and sorcery," and it looks like someone at DC decided to make it officially, by including Arthur Curry swordfighting a swordfish. A perfect cover.







And speaking of nice covers...wow.







52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN #2
Written by Keith Giffen
Art by Pat Olliffe & John Stanisci
Cover by Ethan Van Sciver
The dead walk as the 6-issue miniseries continues! Azraeuz, the pale rider (Death, to the uninitiated) raises Bialya's dead to serve the Four Horsemen's deadly agenda. And when Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman find themselves facing down an entire nation of the living dead while the world watches, you'll never guess who shows up to lend a helping hand.

Black Adam. Did I guess right?







J. G. Jones was able to pull off 52 good to excellent covers in the span of one year for DC’s last weekly series. For Countdown, they switch cover artists every month, so none of them are responsible for any more than four images. So why have they all been so bad? And could this particular image be the very worst of them all? Yeesh.

Things aren’t exactly looking up yet, and now it looks like Nat is going to keep the name “Starlight,” huh? Mmn. Better than “Forerunner,” I guess. But not by much.





COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1Written by Steve Gerber and Matt Sturges. Art by Justiniano & Walden Wong and Stephen Segovia. Cover by Justiniano. Get ready for two incredible features in new stories that shine a light on the dark places in the DCU! The Helmet of Fate has landed…on Kent Nelson — a man so far down on his luck, he doesn’t know what luck is! The transformative nature of the helmet grants him powers he can’t begin to comprehend…but will they make his life better, or even worse? Plus, Eclipso becomes the temptress of the DCU, bribing its heroes to the dark side in more ways than one! She succeeds…and the results will shock you!


Wow, that Eclipso story sounds really, really, really awful. Like, “Hey, what if we took this character Eclipso, made him into a woman, changed his powers and raison d’ etre, and make him like Neron?” awful.









COUNTDOWN PRESENTS THE SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER: WILDSTORM #1Written by Ron Marz. Art by Paco Herrera. Cover by Arthur Adams. The Search for Ray Palmer truly kicks into high gear, as Kyle Rayner, Donna Troy and Jason Todd scour the Multiverse for the former Atom, who just might hold the key to saving reality from a crisis of unparalleled proportions. The trio's first stop: the Wildstorm Universe, where they come face-to-face with an entirely different -- and entirely more lethal -- brand of heroes. Wildstorm's finest are all here, including The Authority and Gen13, and they don't prepare a warm welcome for their visitors! The tour of the new DC Multiverse begins here!

Okay, so the name sounds terrible, and nothing says “Do Not Buy!” like a Jason Todd appearance (So, is Kyle Rayner cool with brutal murderers now too, just like Superman, Donna and Jimmy Olsen apparently are?).

On the other hand, that’s going to be one hell of a cover by the looks of it, with Arthur Adams riffing on Frank Quitely’s brilliant covers for JLA: Earth-2.

I haven’t kept up with Kyle Rayner after Ion #1, but it sure looks like he’s back in a Green Lantern uniform in that sketch, doesn’t it?








Ha! Nice.








INFINITY INC. #1 Written by Peter Milligan. Art and cover by Max Fiumara. From the twisted mind of Lex Luthor comes the 52 spin-off that will change everything you know about the members of Infinity Inc. When Lex Luthor and his Everyman project was taken down by John (Steele) Henry Irons, it appeared the story of Infinity Inc was over. But one year-plus later, it seems that life hasn't been kind to Starlight, Fury, and Nuklon. John suspects the problems may lead back to their experience as on the Everyman Project, opening doors that can never be shut! Written by Peter Milligan (X-Statix, HUMAN TARGET) and illustrated by Max Fiumara (Black Gas), INFINITY INC. #1 will take readers on a tortured trip to the dark side of the superhero dream.


As much as I love Steel, this new status quo and new direction doesn’t exactly sound very interesting. I’ll give it an issue for Steel and Peter Milligan at the least but, man, this is another book that just seems entirely randomly put together.







THE GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL #1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti
Cover by Conner
Everyone will have seen Black Canary's response to Green Arrow's proposal from GREEN ARROW #75 and the BLACK CANARY miniseries…now see why that response may have been the biggest mistake for both of them in this landmark special issue!


Well, J. Torres says it’s good.

I’m going to reverse my policy of not buying DC Comics written by Judd Winick for at least this issue, as this looks like an event too good to pass up just because almost every other DCU story the writer has previously produced is pretty awful.

Particularly with Conner handling the art inside and out. I love Canary’s wedding version of her costume there on the cover too.

Based on Newsarama's weekend con coverage, it looks like Winick will be handling the Black Canary/Green Arrow ongoing too, with the fantastic Cliff Chiang handling artwork. I suppose it was too much to hope that Gail Simone would be writing that, but, well, that's what I was hoping.








JLA CLASSIFIED #42-43 Written by Justin Gray. Art by Rick Leonardi & Sean Phillips. Covers by Walter Simonson. JLA CLASSIFIED ships twice in September, kicking off “The Ghosts of Mars!” The Martian Manhunter struggles with the memories of his long dead family…but when the memories fight back, the Manhunter’s position among the Justice League of America is shaken!


Any title that makes me think of this is immediately suspect. Still, nice to see good, old no-pants-wearing J’onn again, and is that Malefic in the back ground? Awesome! (I'm not being sarcastic. I really liked the Ostrander/Mandrake run, and as out-of-left-feild as a never-before-mentioned evil twin was, that was still a heck of a story arc).

I do wonder when the hell this is supposed to be set though. I wish they’d start making better use of the title’s ability to check in with the League at any point in it’s history, particularly now that it’s history has changed again.








JLA/HITMAN #1 Written by Garth Ennis. Art and Cover by John McCrea.Tommy Monaghan, the long-lost hero of HITMAN, returns in part one of this two-issue miniseries! There's a problem on the JLA moonbase, and not even the World's Greatest Heroes can cope by themselves. Can Tommy help them out? Will he? Unpleasant secrets from the past return...on the Darkside.


My two favorite DC titles of all time? Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman and Grant Morrison and company’s JLA. So yes, needless to say, I’m quite excited about this one.

It should probably be part of JLA:C instead of a stand alone mini though, if only to improve that dying title’s prestige a bit (Ennis has a name closer to that of Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis’, who handled two of the first three arcs in JLA:C, then pretty much anyone else who’s been on the book since.








JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13 …
Retailers please note: this issue features two covers that may be ordered separately. Cover A features the left half of the art above; Cover B features the right half of the art above. Please see the Previews order form for more details.


As bad as variant covers are, there is one cover-related sales incentive scheme that is even more annoying, and that’s this. Rather than giving consumers the option of two different cover images, giving them their option of which half of a single image they want.

What’s worse? This is the third time this particular title has had this particular scheme.






OUTSIDERS #50 Written by Tony Bedard. Art by Matthew Clark. Cover by Manuel Garcia. A new era dawns for the Outsiders! Batman makes a stunning last-minute change to the Outsiders’ new roster — but there’s a bigger surprise in store as the team uncovers a worldwide upheaval within the supervillain community! On sale September 5 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • FINAL ISSUE


It’s the last two word up there that intrigue me. “Final issue.” I knew sales have long been sliding, but they’re still a lot higher than a great deal of other DC books (Aquaman, Catwoman, Blue Beetle, All-New Atom, etc), so it doesn’t seem like it’s a sales motivated cancellation (Plus, isn’t August Outsiders month, with all those weird team-up issues?)

That leaves only other possibility—they’re going to relaunch the title, possible with a new name. Like (groan) Batman and the Outsiders.








SUICIDE SQUAD: RAISE THE FLAG #1 Written by John Ostrander. Art by Javier Pina & Robin Riggs. Cover by John K. Snyder. When original Suicide Squad member Rick Flag Jr. returned from the dead in the pages of CHECKMATE, it blew open a brand-new espionage mystery for the DC Universe! In this eagerly awaited miniseries by legendary Squad writer John Ostrander (WORLD WAR III), it’s revealed how Flag survived a nuclear blast while battling terrorism in Qurac — as his hard path home takes him from Skartaris to Dubai and into the hands of dueling commanders Amanda Waller and General Wade Eiling. Their power struggle reveals surprising secrets from their pasts — even as a new Suicide Squad is created to play a key role in the DCU’s ever-evolving future!


Aw, poor John Ostrander. All the excellent work the guy’s done in comics over the decades, and now when his name appears in solicitation comics, it’s followed by the worst work of his career, World War III, as if that association is supposed to recommend the book or not.

No matter. That part where it says “eagerly awaited?” They’re talking about me.








TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS PRESENTS PARALLAX #1 Written by Ron Marz. Art by Adriana Melo & Marlo Alquiza. Cover by Mike McKone & Andy Lanning. Get ready for a new series of specials focusing on members of the Sinestro Corps and tying into the “Sinestro Corps War” crossover! In this initial installment, the writer who introduced Kyle, Ron Marz, dissects what led Kyle to his downfall and explains the Parallax entity.

Wait, what? Kyle’s downfall? What the hell are they talking about, and why is the Parallax-possessed figure on the cover blanked out? Is Kyle Parallax now?








Dave Johnson is a great cover artist. Maybe DC shoulda hired him to handle all the Countdown covers…







WONDER WOMAN: LOVE AND MURDER HC Written by Jodi Picoult. Art by Terry Dodson, Drew Johnson and others. Cover by Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson. Best-selling author Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes, The Tenth Circle, My Sister's Keeper), takes Wonder Woman on a collision course with the Amazons in this hardcover volume collecting WONDER WOMAN #6-10! The action begins when Wonder Woman, in her disguise as Special Agent Diana Prince of the Department of Metahuman affairs, is assigned to capture Wonder Woman. How can she accomplish this impossible job without revealing her secret identity? This is just the start of the Amazon Warrior’s problems as Diana must relearn how to exist as a human being while a deadly foe begins to close a net on her, leading to a catastrophic outcome!


I think this right here might be DC’s biggest dropped ball in recent memory. They score Jodi freakin’ Picoult for a five-issue run, enough to fill up a graphic novel they can have shelved in book stores right along with the Picoult books, and instead of letting her do something continuity-free (like an Elseworlds or All-Star book) or even just standalone, they force her to clean up after Allen Heinberg and connect some dots to match the title up to the editor-driven Amazons Attack mini. I can’t imagine anyone who picks this thing up simply because of Picoult’s name getting through it without regretting the purchase. Heck, I’m a Wonder Woman fan and I couldn’t stand it. It seems to me that Picoult should have been able to relaunch the book instead of Heinberg, but whatever. The moment has passed, and the ball has dropped. Now all that’s left is to watch it sitting there on the shelves and wonder why no one outside the Direct Market seems to be buying it.

Tony Stark...

...is in denial.



That’s from this week’s Avengers Classic #1, from a story by Stan “The Man” Lee and Kevin “Kevin” Maguire.

And you know what? It’s not even the best part of the issue.

Neither is this exchange



from a story by Dwayne McDuffie and Michael Avon Oeming (But that is pretty awesome).




No, this is the best part:

J. Torres prefers blondes

I probably don't need to post links to Newsarama.com here, since 'rama has slightly better traffic than EDILW, but what the hell, it makes for easy content.

I've got two interviews with J. Torres up at the moment, including a brief chat about his upcoming Wonder Girl: Champion miniseries and a talk with both he and editor Jann Jones about the Black Canary Wedding Planner special. Both look and sound pretty interesting, particularly the latter, which will feature Christine Norrie work. (I think the Amanda Conner image above is actually from the Wedding Special itself, but it is a really nice image.)

There's a ton of superhero news up from all the convention announcements today. So much so, in fact, it's hard to even keep up.

But the two big ones for DC readers seemed to be:

1) The Flash shenanigans, which seem to hint very, very, very strongly that Barry Allen is coming back to life to star in the book, which I think is The Second Worst Thing DC Could Possibly Do (They've already done the first, which was resurrect Jason Todd)

and

2) Brad Meltzer's replacement of JLoA is Dwayne McDuffie. I'm enormously excited about this, and look forward to really enjoying what used to be my favorite title again. It does cast Meltzer's run in an even worse light. There was an awful lot of leeway given to him to basically do whatever he wanted with the team—cancelling the last volume of the book and launching with a new number one, changing the title, changing the line-up, changing the headquarters, a fold-out showing the bold new line-up in all their glory— all of which seemed to signal the start of a new Era for the League, something to follow such easily identifiable ones as the Satellite Era, the JLI, and the Big Seven leagues. I honestly expected an announcement that Geoff Johns would be taking over, with Meltzer to return for another brief stint next year.

Instead, we got all that build up for what amounts to only three or four stories. Spending eight issues putting a team line-up together seems kind of excessive no matter what the length of a run is, but when the run amounts to 14 issues, after which the line-up is going to change anyway, it sounds downright ridiculous. That's from a reader's perspective though; from a business perspective, it doesn't matter how bad Meltzer's run has been, only that it's super-popular, and I hope DC isn't going to fire McDuffie if he's unable to keep the book over 100,000 each month.

The big Marvel news, at least the news that struck me with the most impact, was folding all the Spider-Man titles into one, single almost-weekly series. I think it's smart, and not as radical a move as it sounds (the Superman titles were all essentially one big weekly during the old "Triangle" numbering, and most of the franchises switch to that format during crossovers periodically). I'm not sure why it's three times a month and not four though. "Tri-monthly" seems kind of arbitrary. The downside? I was really, really, really, really hoping to see an announcement about Dan Slott being named the new Amazing Spider-Man writer. While it's possible he could be writing all three issues that come out each month (Hell, you know Brian Michael Bendis could do it), I have a feeling that it's going to end up being closer to the 52 or Countdown model, with a team of writers and artists switching off far too regularly.

Oh, and this sounds pretty peculiar. The origin of the Ultimate Universe? Is it, like, different from the origin of, say, our universe? Was there a younger, hipper, possibly minority version of the Big Bang in the Ultimate Universe?

I like Bendis' UU work quite a bit though, and have always liked Jackson Guice's art, so I'd probably check this out if it were Ultimate This One Guy Bendis Knew In College. I'm not sure what to make of Bendis' description of Guice's art as "a mix of Bryan Hitch and Greg Land." What does that mean exactly? It's very detailed, almost photoreaslitic pencil art, but it looks like traced-over photo reference poorly integrated into the page design?

Anyway, actual original content returns to EDILW tomorrow. And by "actual original content" I mean, of course, out-of-context panels paired with bad jokes and/or complaining about superhero comics.

Film Review: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Okay, so this weekend's big comic book superhero movie— How was it?

Click on over to DoneWaiting.com for my review.

I'll say this much here: It's much better than the last Tim Story-directed Fantastic Four (mostly on account of the Silver Surfer's awesomeness), it's not quite as good a story as the Roger Corman-produced and unreleased Fantastic Four (which managed to get all of the characters better, particularly Dr. Doom, even if the cast was lame and the special effects even worse), and it's nowhere near as good as The Incredibles which, oddly enough, remains the best Fantastic Four movie ever made.

And Galactus? Well, he looked awesome, anyway.

What did you guys think?

June 14th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas... (a day late)

This week's LVW column features reviews of Black Diamond Detective Agency, Black Summer #0 and Death and the Man Who Would Not Die #1.

While you're at lasvegasweekly.com, you may also be interested in checking out Jeffrey M. Anderson's "web-exclusive" review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Why's it web-exclusive? I imagine it's because they didn't screen the film until after the paper went to press, which is exactly what they did here in Columbus (the only local critic invited to a Tuesday morning screening was the critic forThe Columbus Dispatch, the local big, dumb daily paper; the rest of us had to make do with a Thursday night screening, which ended all of two hours before opening day).

So if you're wondering where my review is, or why this week's "Meanwhile" is posted on Friday instead of Thursday, it's because last night I was in a movie theater, slowly shaking my head while watching FF:RotSS, instead of infront of my computer reviewing and updating. I'll post a link later tonight.

Real quick on the Stupid Marvel PR Move of The Week: I didn't notice until Dirk Deppey posted the Suydam version right next to the original over at Journalista, but they did sex it up a bit, whether it was Suydam's initiative to remove a layer or two of MJ's shirts or Marvel editorial's request that he do so. Note the extra skin (of the non-decomposed variety) on the Suydam's version's hip.



I have a hard time imagining the thought process that goes into these sorts of things. Like, I honselty just can't comprehend an editor firing off an email asking Suydam to zombify the MJ digest cover, but make it as sexy as possible. I know there are fetishes of all kinds of crazy varieties out there, but man, I always assumed the ones revolving around corpses were among the rarest, and the least likely to be catered to by a major comic book company.

Weekly Haul: June 13th

Countdown #46 (DC) I think Graig Kent at Rack Raids summed it up perfectly, in his review of last week’s #47:

For the DC die-hard it’s like adopting a schizophrenic cat: you want to love it, but it keeps biting and scratching you and it shows you no affection at all… and yet setting it free, for some reason, is the hardest thing to do. But it’s for the best if you just let it go. You may miss it, you may wonder how it’s doing, but you’re really better off without it.

I wanted to stick around for at least the first five issues, to make sure I read the Sean McKeever written, Tom Derenick penciled issue before deciding if I wanted to shell out $2.99 each week for a book that’s not really very good. While last week’s issue was an improvement over the first four, this sixth issue is right back in not very good territory. I don’t mind throwing $2.99 away each week on a frustrating read, but, at the same time, I don’t want to encourage DC to keep at it, either.

The thing about a weekly series though is that it’s awfully hard to drop. Literally. I mean, it's there waiting for me to pick it up every single time I go into the comics shop. I have it in my pull, right? So when I showed up at the shop today to get my books, if I wanted to cancel it, I’d still have this week’s issue in my pull, so even if I did cancel it, I’d have one more issue to read. And what if that one’s good? Then I have to add it back in my pull the next week. I guess I could just make a special trip between Wednesdays to cancel Countdown, but that seems like an awful lot of work, doesn’t it?

I hate to say this, because I realize it’s everything wrong with the direct market, but man, it’s almost easier to keep buying a title I’m not crazy about than to cancel it.

Anyway, this issue features the sensational character find of 2007, Forerunner. That’s her on the cover, knocking Jason Todd off the roof of a quaint cottage that’s in the middle of Washington D.C. for some reason.

I hated her the instant I saw her.

I think it’s her crappy, ‘90s X-Men name, which is clunkily obvious, descriptive and unimaginative, but, unlike DC characters with similarly obvious, descriptive and unimaginative names—like, say, Fatale, Bane or Doomsday—the word she’s named for isn’t very interesting or cool-sounding.

It also reminds me of the character Harbinger, since the word is a synonym for the word Harbinger has taken for her name



But, again, “Harbinger” sounds a lot cooler than “Forerunner,” doesn’t it?

And, for some reason, she also reminds me of Access,



that character co-owned by DC and Marvel, which they created for that silly Marvel vs. DC crossover series in which fans could vote for who would win predetermined character match-ups (regardless of whether or not it made any sense or not).

Also, she has a stupid Jedi padwan braid. How could you not instantly hate a character that has one of those?

Aside from Forerunner, here’s what else that wasn’t very good in this week’s issue of Countdown:

—The Rogues’ version of the diner scene from Pulp Fiction.

—Inertia doing a body shot off of Mirror Master.

—Mirror Master using the words “Weddin’ Tackle”

—A piece of the Rock of Eternity still in Gotham. Didn’t, like, every single magical hero in the whole DC Universe, including know-it-all Phantom Stranger, scour Gotham and collect every single shard to reassemble the Rock, as seen in Day of Vengeance Infinite Crisis Special #1?

—Mary Marvel willing to kill already. Come on, it’s only been a week since she went to the dark side

—Donna Troy just kinda sitting there while the Amazons attack Washington D.C., killing folks left and right

—Donna Troy and Jason Todd having the conversation you would assume they already had the last time they talked

—More Cliffs Notes versions of the JLA/JSA team-ups collected in Crisis on Multiple-Earths. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read the trades, how about we use that space for something mildly interesting, like some more secret origins by stellar artists?



There were some positives, however:

—A demon made out of babies

—The demon saying he was going to eat Mary's flesh and “suck the digested waste” from her intestines. Yeah, it’s super-gross, but it’s original. I mean, how many times can comic book demons threaten to suck the marrow from the hero's bones?

—The return of Sleez, the agent of Apokolips who once forced Superman and Big Barda to make porn together. Seriously.




JLA: Classified #39 (DC) The next installment of Peter Milligan’s long-delayed “Kid Amazo” story, which reads like the middle chapter of a sort of interesting story which isn’t really a Justice Leaguer story at all. It might make for a better read in a trade, which is obviously what it was intended to be (And I don’t mean to imply that this book is a case of decompressed storytelling; since this story was originally announced as an original graphic novel, this is one instance in which everybody knows the writer is literally writing for the trade. Carlos D’Anda’s art continues to suffer from a lack of clarity and connection to the DCU as we know it, and this issue seems to be the worst of the lot. The Justice League seems to be based in their old Happy Harbor cave headquarters for some reason, Professor Ivo looks like neither his human self or his deformed self (he’s drawn to resemble Amazo’s almost exactly, from the point ears and black nails to his physique), and there is one panel that I can’t make heads or tails out of. On page 11, the fifth panel. The one with the red, Carnage-y looking things. What the hell is that supposed to be exactly? On the first few counts, some better art reference would have cleared that problem right up.




Justice #12 (DC) And thus ends Alex Ross, Jim Krueger and Doug Braithwaite’s slick, 12-part, nostalgia-driven paean to Alex Ross’ personal favorite DC superheroes and their villains. It occurs to me that the impulses behind this series, which I quite enjoyed, are remarkably similar to the ones behind Brad Meltzer’s JLoA, which I despise. Both are the results of a grown-up fan reshaping the DC-owned, created-by-committee shared setting to suit their own personal tastes. So why does JLoA bug me so much, while Justice doesn’t? I think it’s because when Ross plays with DC’s toys, he goes off and does it in his own little corner, which I’ve taken to calling the Ross-iverse, and thus the stories aren’t canon, they are simply meant to be enjoyed and then their events forgotten. But Meltzer’s been playing within the DC Universe proper, and his changes are all taken as canon, which forces the rest of the universe to conform to them. Also, Ross and company seem to be able to hit upon that which makes the various Justice Leaguers cool in the first place; Ross “gets” Plastic Man, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter and Captain Marvel, even if he refuses to play by the bits of their history he doesn’t like (Aquaman’s son having been killed, for example), while Meltzer’s understanding of the Justice League characters is limited to a smaller circle (none of the above are even in JLoA, for example), and is radically idiosyncratic (Few fans seem to agree that the Leaguers call each other by their first names constantly, or that half the Satellite League would be cool with brainwashing the other half, for example).

Krueger and Ross also use multiple color-coded first-person narration boxes per issue, just like Meltzer, and they’re just as pointless here as they are in JLoA.

But as for this particular issue, it’s the winding-down of the epic more than the climax, which I think occurred a few months back, when the League first donned their action figure-ready suits and stormed the Legion of Doom’s headquarters. Little of it is terribly original—the bad guys betray one another, the good guys don’t and thus win; the Joker is so crazy no one wants to work with him, and then he kills his fellow villains in revenge for not being allowed to team-up with them; and so on. The one original twist seems to be Batman’s optimistic speech that maybe this time really will be different, that maybe this really will be the last battle between supervillains and superheroes for the betterment of humanity, rather than simply another round in an endless cycle of conflict (Given that this isn’t continuity, the speech has more weight than it would in a DCU story, where we could immediately snicker at the sentiments).

Otherwise, this has been one, big, long, beautiful and ultimately kind of shallow tour of the awesomeness of the late ‘70s DC Universe, if Plastic Man and Captain Marvel were incorporated into it a little earlier, and if it were being painted. On one hand, it’s the sort of story that seems beneath Ross’ talent, but, on the other hand, he and his collaborators were so incredibly thorough in their inclusion of every element of the DCU they liked that it seems like they were approaching the project as the ultimate one dealing with Ross’ nostalgia as its subject matter. Like it was JLA: Liberty and Justice to the hundredth power, which makes it seem forgivable. (How thorough are they in including everything Ross likes about the DC characters? There’s even a Legion of Superheroes appearance, one that, given the costumes and make-up, offers a new possibility for what’s going on in “The Lightning Saga.” I’m actually kinda surprised they didn’t think of a way to include a flashback to the JSA in action).

So, now what? I wouldn’t mind this team doing some super-comics in JLA: Classified (with Ross co-plotting and doing design work, not painting; I’d honestly prefer to see Ross devote his painting time to more worthy endeavors, like Kingdom Come or U.S.), or perhaps even JLoA, when Meltzer leaves. Over and over while reading this series, I’d come to an image of the whole Ross League standing there—the Big Seven, the Hawks, Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, Satellite Era Leaguers—and thinking now that’s a Justice League.

And, of course, no one's had much luck with an Aquaman or Captain Marvel ongoing to date...




New Avengers #31 (Marvel Comics)
In case you forgot, the solicitation copy for this particular issue of New Avengers went like this: “No hype! No BS! The most important last page of any Marvel comic this year! Do not miss it!” I’ve got to admit, I was intrigued about this bold claim, and had a hard time imagining what it could possibly be. I mean, Marvel has already brought Bucky Barnes back to life, retroactively impregnated Gwen Stacy with the Green Goblin’s kids, turned Iron Man and Reed Richards into their most hiss-able villains, publicly unmasked Spider-Man, brought their original Captain Marvel back to life and killed off Captain America. There ain’t a whole lot left to do with their characters that would be even remotely shocking, certainly not anything that could trump the things they’ve already done this year (i.e. killed Captain America). Short of Spider-Man and Wolverine making out on that last page, I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly be exciting or shocking.

Well, I was wrong. It is shocking. It was shockingly uneventful. Want to know what happens on that last page? I’ll tell you. Back in Dr. Strange’s house, Wong, Jessica Jones and Baby Cage are all sitting around, waiting to find out if the New Avengers were all killed by the Hand Ninja in Japan or not. Then they find out that they weren’t. Then Baby Cage opens it’s eyes really wide, as if surprised about something. The end.

If that page is somehow important, I’ve got to admit, I don’t get it. Even in relation to the one genuinely shocking reveal in this issue, which actually occurs on pages 19-21. (If this were the sort of blog where I believed in “spoiler warnings,” this is probably where I’d put one; I’m assuming that, since you’re reading a review of the issue in question, however, you’ve either already read it or aren’t the sort to get bent out of shape about spoilers). Elektra really wasn’t Elektra all along. She was a Skrull.

I’m with Iron Fist on this one, when he asks “What-- What does this mean?” Yeah, I don’t get it. Elektra’s a Skrull—so what? And what does it have to do with Baby Cage opening its eyes on page 22? And why is this supposed to be important?

I suppose it could be that if she’s a Skrull, then maybe some of the other Marvels are Skrulls, like Reed Richards, Hank Pym and Iron Man, but that seems like an enormous cop-out. I mean, people were half-seriously guessing “They all turn out to be Skrulls” by the time Civil War #2 dropped. How ridiculous would it be if we find out that, yes, indeed, they were all Skrulls all along? It’s all a little too “Clone Saga” for me.

As for the previous 18 pages, it’s more of the New Avengers fighting ninjas, which apparently never gets old. Oh, and “Elektra” sets Cage on fire. I’m not entire sure why, but, as Graeme McMillian pointed out at Savage Critics, it’s an incredibly odd scene, one which (coincidentally, I hope) presages an upcoming cover image in which The Falcon, another prominent black Marvel hero, is set on fire.




Tank Girl: The Gifting #1 (IDW) This is a…curious book. While T.G. co-creator and writer Alan Martin is on board, handling the script, it’s awfully hard to think of a Tank Girl story as a Tank Girl story if it’s not drawn by Jamie Hewlett (or, in the case of the Vertigo mini Tank Girl: Apocalypse, an artists who draws sort of similar to Hewlett, like Phillip Bond). And Ashley Wood is about as far from Hewlett, aesthetically, as one can get. Not that there’ s anything wrong with Wood’s art—it’s actually quite good—it’s just so atmospheric and abstracted in a more realistic than cartoony sense that the characters just don’t look like Tank Girl, Booga and the gang, and thus don’t feel like them (Tank Girl, after all, isn’t a character like Superman or Batman, who has a history of various interpretations; it’s pretty much been either Hewlett, or the live-action film version, or nothing).

Wood’s sense of design doesn’t seem particularly Tank Girl-esque either, as she and her mates seem to spend most of their time in party dresses rather than post-apocalyptic punk get-ups. Maybe that’s merely a matter of trying to update the fashions for 2007, but if Tank Girl doesn’t have a mostly-shaven head with random offshoots of hair, if her clothes don’t look like they were pulled out of a closet that recently suffered a bomb attack, if there aren’t some prominently placed bandages about her person, I have a hard time even recognizing her (Hell, there aren’t even any tanks in the issue).

The story still reads like classic Tank Girl—that is, fairly random gags that aren’t as funny as they are weird—but the disconnect between the same-old writing paired with radical new art left me a cold to the whole endeavor. It’s interesting from the outside looking in, but it’s not very entertaining, certainly not as an immersive, comics-reading experience.




World War Hulk #1 (Marvel) Ah, that’s much better. Unlike the last big Marvel Universe crossover (and, come to think of it, the one before that), this story has a very simple hook that anyone can grasp pretty much immediately (Outside of the short in the Giant-Size Hulk special, I haven’t been reading any of the “Planet Hulk” story, or any of the various prologues and lead-ins to this story, and the first two pages were more than enough to know what’s up with this story), a writer I have no preconceived notions of (positive or negative), and an artist whose work I love and who I regard as the quintessential Marvel artist. And since Marvel has spent the last year or so completely vilifying Tony Stark and (to a lesser extent) Reed Richards and (to an even lesser extent), the Illuminati as a group (I mean, they totally slaughtered those Skrulls in #1, right?), I found myself actively excited to see Hulk beat the hell out of them.

And, unlike Civil War, there doesn’t seem to be any gray areas here, or even black and white areas that the writer is telling us are supposed to be gray. Iron Man and his cabal exiled the Hulk, then destroyed his planet, inflicting mass casualties. Hulk is nice enough to give an evacuation order before attacking Manhattan. Go Hulk, go!

I was not without reservations, here. This is a version of the Smart Hulk, and I prefer some version of the Dumb Hulk, one that doesn’t speak in complete sentences (At least he continues to use the word “smash” as a catch-all verb to denote any kind of offensive action, as in “I’ve come to smash”) and I’m not too fond of the tiara, armor (which, on the Hulk, seems redundant) and Hercules-like leggings look, but I stopped noticing either rather quickly. There’s also a pretty cheap reconciliation of the post-Civil War status quo, in which Iron Man essentially tells bitter enemies like Dr. Strange, Spider-Man and She-Hulk (hulked out again, for some reason…?) that it’s all cool now, which seems a rather anticlimactic resolution—even if it proves temporary—to months of built up, interpersonal conflict.

But back to the smashing. Holy crap, is there some awesome stuff in here. Hulk standing on the prow of a spaceship punching asteroids out of the way, Hulk calling out Blackbolt, Hulk hitting Iron Man so hard that he takes all of Avengers Tower down with them. Wow. This series is off to a great start, and I’m pretty excited about the remaining four issues. But then, I really dug Civil War #1, and that really excited me for the rest of that series, and it didn’t turn out so well. So perhaps I should temper that excitement with caution. At the very least, I learned my lesson during Civil War and now know to avoid the tie-ins, particularly any written by Paul Jenkins which also happen to involve Sally Floyd.