Marvel's April previews reviewed

All-New Marvel Now! Price Watch: I counted fourteen comics at the $2.99 price point in the publisher's April 2014 solicitations—Hawkeye, Loki: Agent of Asgard, Ms. Marvel, Nightcrawler, She-Hulk, double-shipping Avengers A.I., Avengers Undercover and Thunderbolts, the first issue of a two-issue miniseries entitled Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Prelude, and the two Marvel Universe titles adapted from the cartoon adaptations (and not set in the Marvel Universe).

I suppose that's enough that someone like me who refuses to buy $3.99 comics could still find a pretty wide variety of comics to purchase from the publisher in any given month, but of those, only Hawkeye and maybe She-Hulk (depending on its quality) are ones that will be on my pull-list, and there are a whole mess of comics I would happily, enthusiastically, excitedly buy for $3-to-$3.50 in this month's solicitations that I will instead end up reading in a trade from the library in about six months to a year instead.

Ah well. For the complete solicitations, this is a fine place to click. For me droning on about those solicitations, you're already at the ideal place.

All-New DOOP #1 (of 5)
Peter Milligan (W)
INTERIOR ART BY DAVID LAFUENTE WITH LAURA ALLRED (A)
Cover by Michael Allred
...
Living in the margins of the X-Men, Doop has freaked out X-Men and readers alike. However, when he gets deeply involved in X-Men business (and in the personal life of Kitty Pryde!), Doop will be thrust into the spotlight. This adventure will prove that Doop is, in fact, the most powerful X-Man! Written by co-creator Peter Milligan (X-FORCE), covers by co-creator Mike Allred (X-FORCE, FF) and innovative interior art by David Lafuente (AVENGERS, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN)!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Maybe the perfect example of a comic book that should not be $3.99.

That said, I like this character and all of the creators—right down to the colorist—enough that this is a trade I'll wait for and probably actually buy, rather than just borrow from the library, so Marvel will still make some money off me. Eventually. I would really rather read it once a month on a Wednesday evening for five months though...

ALL-NEW GHOST RIDER #2
FELIPE SMITH (W) • TRADD MOORE (A/C)
...
“ENGINES OF VENGEANCE” PART 2
• ROBBIE REYES has been given a new awesome power but can the teen handle it or will it drive him to a path of destruction?
• Who owns the HAUNTED RACE CAR and what will they do to get it back?
• What are the PINK PILLS and who is behind their creation?
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

That cover—and the knowledge that the person who drew it is drawing all the art under it, too—plus the words "HAUNTED RACE CAR" are really all it would have taken to get me to buy this for $3.

Hey, I wonder if Robbie is related to Jaime...?

ALL-NEW ULTIMATES #1
MICHEL FIFFE (W) • AMILCAR PINNA (A)
Cover BY DAVID NAKAYAMA
...
THE NEXT GENERATION OF ULTIMATES IS HERE!!!
• SPIDER-MAN, BLACK WIDOW, KITTY PRYDE, BOMBSHELL, CLOAK & DAGGER officially unite to tackle the vicious, rampant crime wave overtaking Hell’s Kitchen!
• DIAMONDBACK leads the teen gang, the SERPENT SKULLS, as they run West Midtown’s drug and weapons trade & deal in murderous citywide terror!
• Detective Brigid O’Reilly and her anti-gang unit are on the hunt for a serial mask killer called SCOURGE; they get close but not without some casualties!
• Written by Michel Fiffe, the creator of the acclaimed indie series COPRA
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

While this looks a lot more like Ultimate Young Avengers, it also looks and sounds pretty awesome, and I would really be interested in checking this series out. That said, I am soooo lost when it comes to the Ultimate Marvel Universe, I wouldn't know where to begin.

I stropped reading Ultimate Spider-Man, the last of the Ultimate books I was still reading regularly, shortly after the storyline in which Magneto flooded Manhattan in another comic book. I figured I would start reading it in in trades with The World According to Peter Parker, but the only trades I've read since were a few out-of-order Ultimates things by Mark Millar and the first volume of the Miles Morales Spider-Man book. At this point, I would need an extremely detailed checklist to catch up...and I wouldn't buy this in single issues anyway, because come on, $4?  Who can afford to read these damn things? Certainly not comics critics...

DAREDEVIL #1.50
MARK WAID (W) JAVIER RODRIGUEZ (A)
Cover by PAOLO RIVERA
• Celebrate Daredevil’s fiftieth anniversary with a look at the future!
• A special standalone story that takes place on Matt Murdock’s 50th birthday. How has his life changed? Who lives? Who dies? See if you can spot all the clues the Daredevil creative team has planted for the year 2014!
• Plus: Stories by special guest creators from Murdock’s murky past! Fifty years without fear have all lead up to this!
40 PGS./ONE SHOT/Rated T+ …4.99

Mathematically speaking, there's no real difference between 1.50 and 1.5 or 1.500, is there...?

This looks potentially fun; I hope all of those names in graffiti are contributing the stories by special guest creators from Murdock's murky past. And I hope Bendis is drawing his own story.

I imagine this book's contents will end up in a Daredevil trade...if the creative team of Daredevil isn't changing though, I wonder if they will renumber the trades when they start collecting these stories of Matt Murdock moving from New York City back to San Francisco, with a new Daredevil By Mark Waid Vol. 1, or keep the numbering they've already established...?

Wow, that Deadpool #27 cover sure is something to behold. This is apparently an anniversary issue of some sort, taking the piss out of DC's TEC #27, but also accomplishing the remarkable feat of rounding up every writer who has ever written Deadpool, including Christopher Priest, whose name I unfortunately never see in these solicitations anymore.


ELEKTRA #1
Haden Blackman (W)
Michael Del Mundo (A/C)
...
Witness the beautifully violent return of the world’s deadliest assassin. A life spent in silent pain has led Elektra to the precipice of despair. As she prepares to shed her past and take her next step, everything you know about her will change! Death is no escape, but she will find her way as a new option opens up that will take Elektra to places no other Marvel character can go.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

The latest go at an Elektra solo series is notable for its creative team: Former Batgirl co-writer Haden Blackman and cover artist extraordinare Michael Del Mundo. I'm not terribly interested in the character at all, but this could turn out to be one of those interesting, "Hawkeyzed" types of comics Andrew Wheeler was talking about recently.

Maggie Simpson, I think.

IRON FIST #1
KAARE ANDREWS (W)
KAARE ANDREWS (A/C)
...
Animal VARIANT COVER BY MIKE DEL MUNDO
Young Variant by Skottie Young
Blank Cover Variant Also Available
High above the city, in a multi-million dollar penthouse, Danny Rand, a.k.a. Iron Fist, “The Living Weapon,” is haunted by the consequences of choosing death over life. A message from Iron Fist’s mystical homeland of K’un-Lun brings Danny back to his blood soaked origin of betrayal and vengeance! Revenge is a weapon that cuts both ways.... Will Danny survive the bloodletting? A one-of-a-kind kung fu action epic directed by the inimitable Kaare Andrews!
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99

Like here's a prime example of a Marvel comic book I can't wait to read, but $4...? Given the creator and the character, I have to assume that this is something of a limited series being packaged (or sold, I guess) as an ongoing series, similar to the just-concluded Young Avengers, and thus trade-waiting probably is the way to go with it anyway.


INHUMAN #1
CHARLES SOULE (W)
JOE MADUREIRA (A/C)
...
RESOLICITATION!
The newest super heroes of the Marvel Universe are born! A cloud of Terrigen mist is moving around the world turning regular people into Inhumans with amazing powers. But not everyone thinks this is a good thing. Discover the secret history of the Marvel Universe and get in at the ground floor of the next big Marvel franchise!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Joe Madureira...? Are you sure?

MIGHTY AVENGERS #9
AL EWING (W) • GREG LAND (A/C)
Captain America Variant by TBA
• The Blue Marvel faces a nightmare from the depths of the Neutral Zone - and the depths of his past!
• Meanwhile, Ronin can’t hide from the Deathwalkers any longer...
• ...or from the readers! This ish - the mask comes off!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …3.99

If it's Snake Eyes, I promise I'll start reading this book.

MOON KNIGHT #2
WARREN ELLIS (W) • Declan Shalvey (A/C)
...
• The best new comic of 2014 continues with a story that has to be experienced to be believed!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Based on the creative team and what I've seen of Ellis' Moon Knight recently in that Secret Avengers trade, I have no doubt this will be one of the better Marvel launches of the year. But I think you have to at least wait until your first issue is out and someone's read it before you can declare a series "the best new comic of 2014."

NIGHTCRAWLER #1
CHRIS CLAREMONT (W) • TODD NAUCK (A)
Cover by CHRIS SAMNEE
...
Animal Variant by TBA
NIGHTCRAWLER IS BACK!
Newly-returned from the afterlife, veteran X-Man Kurt Wagner finds himself in a world that’s a far cry from the one he left: Professor Xavier is dead, Cyclops is on the run, and the X-Men are divided. But determined not to let his new lease on life go to waste, Nightcrawler hits the road alongside Wolverine, eager to right some wrongs and safeguard the future mutantkind…and he’s going to do it by the means he loves most: swashbuckling, lady-charming and—of course—BAMFing!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …2.99

I could not have come up with a less likely creative team if you asked me to imagine one, despite the fact that Claremont has written Nightcrawler for something like 89 years and Todd Nauck probably draws a pretty good Nightcrawler. Neither of those guys would have been on my radar for a new Marvel comic in 2014, let alone working together on this book.

It's worth noting that the similarity between this solicitation copy and that of Amazing Spider-Man (below); I suppose a team-up with those two will happen sooner rather than later.

That's a pretty cute cover Samnee put together; I do hope the Animal Variant features an actual worm in a Nightcrawler costume.

ORIGINAL SIN #0
MARK WAID (W) • JIM CHEUNG (A/C)
IT’S THE PROLOGUE TO THE BIGGEST MARVEL SERIES OF THE SUMMER!
WHO IS THE WATCHER? That’s what Nova is wondering after his latest brush with the moon-dwelling enigma he’s encountered before! But what he discovers will have a profound effect on the young hero, as well as priming the pump for the most cataclysmic event in Marvel history! WHAT DID HE SEE?
40 PGS./ONE SHOT/Rated T+ …3.99

Well, is it the biggest Marvel series of the summer or the most cataclysmic event in Marvel history? Make up your mind, solicitation!

I'm not sure how effective "Who is The Wathcher?" is as a tagline—maybe something like, I don't know, "Who Watches The Watcher?" would be better...?—because the last time I saw him, it was in a comic where he had a name known to everyone to just about everyone, a house on the moon that Ant-Man and the Future Foundation were crashing in, and a wife or girlfriend. Aside from being giant and living on the moon, there didn't seem to be anything particularly mysterious about him.

Since I complain so much about Marvel's pricing, do note that at 40 pages (at least eight of which are likely ads), this is a rare example of the publisher offering more than 22 pages of content for the higher, $3.99 price. Unless there's just like eight pages of Marvel Saga prose pages, Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe write-ups of Uatu and Nova, and black and white reprints of Golden Age Marvelman comics in the back to pad it out...

SHE-HULK #3
CHARLES SOULE (W) • JAVIER PULIDO (A)
Cover by KEVIN P. WADA
...
• We the people find you DOOM!
• When the son of Victor Von Doom seeks extradition, Jen Walters will go to the ends of the earth for Justice!
• All this, and Matt Murdock too as Charles Soule (THUNDERBOLTS) and Javier Pulido (HAWKEYE) continue 2014’s sleeper hit!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$2.99

Again, you can't call something a "hit" before you've released it and have some information by which to assess its performance. You certainly can't tell what kind of hit it's going to be, although in this case Marvel is fairly certain this will be a comic book that sells surprisingly well despite the fact that it receives no real promotion and no one talks about it at all. Weird.

I'm oddly split between loving and hating the new costume.

THE SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN #12
NICK SPENCER (W) • STEVE LIEBER (A)
Cover by RON WIMBERLY
Voted one the best mainstream superhero comicS of 2013 by THE ONION A.V. CLUB!
• Only Five villains stand between New York and total chaos.
• The problem? Those villains are the Superior Foes.
• Spencer, Lieber, and utter chaos on the streets of Manhattan. Buy it.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Peculiar strategy. The book is already at cancellation level, so to help save it—and they should; it's their best book at the moment, which is saying a lot, considering the relatively high quality of the line, which publishes books like Hawkeye and FF—they're telling readers in a solicitation to "Buy it," while raising the price to $3.99, which will make it 33% less inviting to new readers, and push away some current readers.

SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #31
Dan Slott (W) • Giuseppe Camuncoli (A/C)
• SERIES FINALE! The end of an era! A tale of triumph and tragedy! The GREEN GOBLIN unmasked! A hero reborn! But what does this mean for OTTO OCTAVIUS?!
• There’s only one man who can save us from the Goblin Nation… PETER PARKER: The one, true SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN!
64 PGS./Rated T …5.99

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1
Dan Slott (W) • Humberto Ramos (A/C)
The Greatest Super Hero of All Time RETURNS!
The world may have changed since Spidey’s been gone, but so has Peter Parker. This is a man with a second chance at life, and he’s not wasting a moment of it. Same Parker Luck, new Parker attitude. Putting the “friendly” back in the neighborhood, the “hero” back into “super hero,” and the “amazing” back into “Spider-Man!” Also returning: The recharged and reenergized ELECTRO!
64 PGS./Rated T+ …$5.99

What's this? Peter Parker? Returning as Spider-Man? I am shocked! Shocked, I say!

I do hope to read this whole Freaky Friday(...with a twist!) storyline someday, if I can figure out the reading order (I imagine it will start in a trade of Amazing Spider-Man, and then continue into all of the ones labeled "Superior Spider-Man"...?).

"Greatest Super Hero of All Time"...? Pfft. Get in line behind Batman and Superman, Spidey. "The Third Greatest Super Hero of All Time RETURNS!" lacks the zing, I know, so maybe the solicitation copywriter shoulda just stuck with "One of the Greatest Superheroes of All Time" or "Marvel's Greatest Super Hero..."

(Say, I wonder if this means they'll be relaunching The Superior Foes of Spider-Man as The Amazing Foes of Spider-Man...? Provided it lasts another month of four, of course.)

ULTIMATE FF #1
JOSHUA HALE FIALKOV (W) • MARIO GUEVARA (A)
Cover BY MIKE McKONE
...
• The Future Foundation is all that stands between us and COMPLETE AND UTTER DOOM.
• Sue Storm, Tony Stark, Machine Man and Sam Wilson face the ONCOMING DESTRUCTION.
• A mysterious new member will join their ranks, whether they like it or not. Hint: They will not.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Mainly interesting for the weird-ass line-up, this is another book I'd be interested in checking out in trade someday...if I had any idea how to catch up prior to its release. I have to assume its follows rather closely on events from the various Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimates comics and the miniseries set in that universe...

I don't care for the costumes. The colors I could maybe get used to, but the facing Fs just look like a stylized A.

Hey, Dr. Doom looks pretty good in blue...

What are you so worried about, Doom?

His crotch is now the perfect height for a metal-encased headbutt or a well-placed uppercut!

And if you want to fight a little less dirty—and why would you?—you could always go for one of the ankles on those ungainly legs; I'd go for the Captain America on on his right leg, rather than the Hulk one on his left.

Comic shop comics (all three of 'em!): January 15

Daredevil #35 (Marvel Entertainment): This is the penultimate issue of the Mark Waid run on Daredevil, much of which has seen the writer collaborating with artist Chris Samnee, before Marvel cancels the book and replace it on their schedule with...Daredevil, by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, the main difference being a lower number (#1, instead of #37) and a higher cost ($3.99, instead of $2.99).

As such, it seems to be the beginning of Daredevil's last battle with the Sons of The Serpent over the New York justice system, as well as the possible climax of Foggy Nelson's cancer battle. The Sons have temporarily saved Foggy by giving him illegal drugs and treatment, and have blackmailed both Daredevil and Matt Murdock into doing something he finds extremely unsavory: Defending the innocent son of a Son of the Serpent (I think Jimmy Buffet sang a song about this) in court from charges he wasn't guilty of...but other Sons were.

Should Ol' Horn Head do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the wrong thing for the right reason? This is the dilemma he's struggling with when he asks Elektra to spar with him to help him think, and they run into two snake-themed villains to beat up instead (I really like Samnee's redesign of Constrictor, if he's the one who re-designed that not very good looking costume into the scary and formidable, more serpentine armor seen here).

Please note: Zatanna does not appear anywhere within the pages of this comic. 

DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe #4 (DC Comics): Since I've been devoting full posts to reviewing each new issue of this title as they come out, I suppose I should do the same with the fourth issue, even though I bought so few comics this week that this particular installment of "Comic Shop Comics" is marshmallow-light.  Suffice it to say that in this issue, the Justice League of America fight some Masters until the Justice League Dark stops them from doing so (via more fighting, of course), and most everyone gets on the same page regarding who the real villain is—Orko, of all people—and decide that they should probably start fighting him for what's left of the series, rather than one another.

As for the quality, it remains extremely, shockingly low; probably closer to "dismal" than "terrible."

Forever Evil: Arkham War #4 (DC): Yes, this actually came out last week, but I didn't get it until this week (my copy of Scooby-Doo Team-Up #2 from last week hadn't arrived yet, though, nor did this week's copy of Classic Popeye. Woe is me).

I'm afraid I don't have anything nice to say about it, as it sort of stopped making sense to me the minute Bane started dressing up like Batman. In this issue, he's still wearing a make-shift Batman costume, despite not really looking much of anything like Batman, given his titanic size and the fact that his Batman costume consists of a helmet with bat ears, a cap and an anvil-sized metal bat-symbol on his chest. He looks as much like Batman as The Hulk looks like She-Hulk, really, although pencil artist Scott Eaton does have him strike a vaguely Batman-like pose here and there.

Bane looks a little like Batman in one of these four panels.

So, in this issue, Bane wakes up his last remaining Talon, William Cobb (The Talons are the Court of Owls' undead assassins, which were being stored frozen beneath Blackgate Prison, and which both Bane and the Arkhamites want to use as weapons against each other; just in case you haven't been reading Batman comics of late or this series so far). Cobb recognizes Bane instantly as Bane, despite Bane's Batman costume, and together the two run off to fine the same goddam fight between villains that's been going on for four issues still going on.

While Bane and the Talon are both accomplished killers, and while pretty much everyone on either side of the "Arkham War" are killers with high body-counts, it doesn't really look like anyone ever kills anyone in this war. Like, Firefly—whose New 52 design is barely legible; he just looks like coloring effects now—sets The Reaper on fire, but then the Reaper stabs Firefly in the chest with a scythe, and they both seem to live.

When Bane and the master assassin Cobb appear, they don't seem able to actually kill anyone either. Cobb sets someone named Sumo on fire and says, "One down... ...an entire asylum to go!", but Sumo is still upright and clutching his face, so presumably he's not down-down. Cobb then fights Black Mask, The Cavalier and a characters I think are meant to be Nocturna and The Key, although I think it's a pretty safe bet he doesn't kill any of them either. He's a pretty shitty killer, really, which makes one wonder why everyone wants Talons on their side.

Mr. Zsasz, after discovering mustache wax.

Bat-Bane and Cobb eventually make off with Mr. Zsasz, who Eaton draws pretty far off-model, in
order to torture information regarding Scarecrow's whereabouts out of him (I'm 100% positive these two ruthless, cold-blooded killers won't kill Zsasz either), and then we see what The Scarecrow is up to: Pumping the remaining Talons full of fear gas and installing Mad Hatter mind-control gizmos in their cowls (sadly, they're not wearing top hats and sombreros and derbies atop their owl costumes) so that they will serve the Arkhamites, and he sets them off to fight Bat-Bane...next issue!

I'm afraid I can't make heads-or-tails of anyone's motivations in this series, the stake-less action is the equivalent of a cartoon fight cloud of gray dust, with fists and stars and curse words emanating from it, and the drawings are mostly goofily terrible.

I did like this single image of The Mad Hatter fighting a guy who looks like Major Bludd on venom, all dropping what I assume are weaponized hats...

Review: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1: Revolution

Shortly after launching All-New X-Men, the Brian Michael Bendis/Stuart Immonen series in which the modern day Beast used a time machine to bring the original, teenage X-Men into the present in an attempt to confront the radicalized modern Cyclops, Marvel relaunched Uncanny X-Men, with Bendis writing that book as well. The two Bendis books essentially became co-flagships for the moribund franchise—i.e. the important books, where the current X-Men story was actually occurring—with All-New following the time-displaced X-Men and the main X-Men team at their Jean Grey School headquarters, while Uncanny followed Cyclops, Magneto, Magik, Emma Frost and the few students they were so far able to recruit for their rival New Xavier School.

The set-up, it occurred to me while reading this, is nearly identical to that of Bendis' writing of the Avengers franchise shortly after Marvel's Civil War event, with New Avengers featuring a rebel, outlaw team of superheroes, and Mighty Avengers featuring the "establishment" team, supposedly bent on bringing the former team to justice (although I lost count of how many times the two teams met, exchanged argumentative words, and went their separate ways without anyone ever actually fighting or arresting anyone).

Here things are reversed though, as the establishment team of Wolverine, Beast, Storm and the Jean Grey School representing Charles Xavier's philosophy of peaceful coexistence with humanity, while Cyclops team includes the former leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and, during Avengers Vs. X-Men, Cyclops, Emma and Magik were essentially supervillains, and are now preparing for an inevitable race/species war with homo sapiens.

This time around, then, the rebel super-people are the bad guys—but not so bad that, like Bendis' Mighty Avengers, they can't also star as protagonists in their own book.

This volume contains the first five issues of the series—and 20-pages of backmatter, including costume designs and variant covers—four of which are drawn by longtime X-Men artist Chris Bachalo and the fifth of which is drawn by Frazier Irving. No complaints on the artistic talent involved then, although the pair are each so highly stylized and individual to their approach to comics art that their stories don't exactly match very well.

The book opens with the "Uncanny" team in their new costumes, which we previously saw in All-New X-Men Vol. 2, including Magik and Emma "The White Queen" Frost's black costumes, with matching tiny black booty shorts and thigh-high boots, Cyclops' super-busy new X-faced costume (which coulda been much worse; see above) and Magneto's new "summer" costume, all-white with short sleeves. There's no indication or explanation as to why they changed clothes, which is fine, I suppose, but these mutants are so damn busy, it seems an odd thing to devote time too.

Not only are they recruiting the new mutants that are emerging all over the world (Here adding another, codename-less mutant to their freshman class of codename-less Benjamin Deeds, healer Triage and time-stopper Tempus, all introduced in All-New), they're secretly building a school in the ruins of the old Weapon X facility and they're also dealing with their newly wonky powers, which were damaged by exposure to the Phoenix Force (in Avengers Vs. X-Men; this isn't terribly new-reader friendly, really. Not only does it build on the plot of that crossover/event series and the first issues of All-New, it also assumes a degree of familiarity with some of the characters, like Magik, whom I could tell you almost nothing about other than that she spells her name wrong and that she apparently also turns into a demon whose name is also spelled wrong. Oh, and she's Colossus' little sister, which I only know because I distinctly remember the voice actor who played Colossus shouting her name in Russian-accented English in that shitty-but-awesomely-so '90s cartoon).

Cyclops and Magik seem more powerful than before and are, in fact, more powerful than they are able to control. Magneto and Emma, meanwhile, are less powerful—the latter having lost her psychic abilities.

The new mutants serve as our point of view characters, as Bendis and Bachalo walk us through a variety of melodramatic plotlines, including the trust issues between the various Uncanny teammates, relationship issues and, finally, in the Irving issue, an A-plot involving Magik and a Dr. Strange villain.

They also fight The Avengers (And win! Sorta!), in one of those Mighty/New Avengers confrontations that is essentially just a bunch of talking, capped off with an almost-fight (Tempus freezes the Avengers in a time bubble and the X-Men scramble).

And we see the same actions from an issue of All-New, in which Cyclops travels to the Jean Grey school to ask if any of the students want to join them (this issue, we focus mainly on Emma's psychic conversation with her former star pupils, the Stepford Cuckoos, while the action of All-New occurs in the background, often in black and white, which is a neat touch).

I was happy to see this volume spoils the cliffhanger from All-New Vol. 2, revealing which member of the original, time-displaced X-teens leaves his teammates to sign up with Cyclops team.

This book so far seems to be closer to stereotypical Bendis than All-New, with several long passages of conversation dominating issues, with Magento giving Maria Hill a long spiel, Captain America having a speech off, Tempus reminiscing at length about a school presentation she gave about admiring Capt, Emma and Cyclops talking about their relationship, and Emma arguing with the Cuckoos.

Bachalo

Immonen

The art is strong, and it's worth noting that Bachalo manages to de-emphasize the sexuality of the rebel characters much more than in Immonen's All-New (Compare the two images of the Cyclops' team appearing at the Jean Grey School above).  How, exactly, did Bachalo pull that off? I keep looking back and forth between the images. Part of it seems to be that Immonen's Emma and Magik show slightly more skin, although the costumes are the same (Bachaclo leaves less space between boots and shorts, his Emma has less torso exposed). Part of it seems to be the poses and positions of the two X-ladies. I think part of it too simply has to do with the fact that Bachalo's costumes look more like material, like cloth or armor fitted over a human body, than paint applied to a nude form. (Compare their drawings of Cyclops; Bachalo's looks like a man in a costume, whereas Immonen's is wearing a material tight enough to fit around the differring contours over every bulging muscle). This surprised me mainly because I consider Bachalo the more "cartoony" of the two, with Immonen's figures hewing closer to representational than Bachalo's, but, at least when it comes to clothing on super-people, I guess Bachalo actually draws more realistically.

He also does a pretty good job of differentiating the characters' faces, particularly the male characters, and I do prefer his tall, skinny version of Scott "Slim" Summers to the more generic ripped guy in Immonen's image.

Both Immonen and Bachalo have their strengths and weaknesses of course, and both are pretty incredible artists, so I've got to asssume that Bendis, Marvel and X-Men fans are all pretty happy with the way the franchise's core books are looking these days.

A few thoughts on Batman and Owlman, in light of Batman Vol. 2: City of Owls and Forever Evil

In 1964, the Justice League of America creative team of writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky introduced The Crime Syndicate of America, villainous counterparts to the JLA from the parallel earth of Earth-3, where the events of history were reversed in more-or-less random ways (In Earth-3's version of the Revolutionary War, for example, British colonists declared their independence from America, and so on). Therefore rather than having a team of superheroes, like the League's Earth-1 had, Earth-3 had a supervillains, who were a lot like their Justice League counterparts, but not quite (Ultraman instead of Superman, Superwoman instead of Wonder Woman, and so on).

Batman's opposite number was Owlman, who wore a blue and gray costume somewhat similar to Batman's costume, but instead of a cowl he wore what looked like a toupee made out of an owl's head.

In 1999, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely reintroduced a new version of the "Crime Syndicate of Amerika," this one hailing from a parallel earth within the Anti-Matter Universe in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. The team roster was the same, but the characters were a little more thoughtfully designed, tweaked to more closely parallel their JLA counterparts, and some of them were given fuller back stories.

One of these was, of course, Owlman, who was now revealed to be Thomas Wayne Jr., older brother to Bruce Wayne. On their world, Bruce and his mother Martha Wayne were killed in that alley, while Thomas and his father, Thomas Wayne Sr., the police commissioner, survived. Blaming his father for the death of his mother, Thomas grew up to become the criminal mastermind of Gotham City, Owlman, and went to war with his father.

Morrison, who always showed a zeal for in-story allusions and/or Easter eggs, was in fact referencing an old, Crisis On Infinite Earths-rendered apocryphal story from a 1974 issue of World's Finest by Bob Haney, Dick Dillin and Vince Colletta.

In "Wipe The Blood Off My Name!", Batman pursues "The Boomerang Killer," only to discover it is actually his older brother Thomas Wayne Jr, who was severely and permanently brain-damaged in a childhood car accident, and confined to an asylum (I guess it was a very specific type of brain damage, which causes those who suffer from it to eventually grow up to become killers?). Bruce's parents had every intention of telling him about his criminally insane older brother they put in an asylum when he was old enough to understand, of course, but then there was that whole murder in an alley thing.

Fast forward to 2011, when Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo take over the relaunched Batman. Their first year's worth of stories is dedicated to The Court of Owls, a sort of semi-legendary Illuminati pulling the strings behind everything going on in Gotham City, a secret organization so secret that even Batman didn't know they were real. In addition to naming themselves after owls, wearing ceremonial owl masks and using a lot of owl themes in their decor, they also command a small army of elite, undead assassins in owl costumes that they refer to as "Talons."

At the climax, it is revealed that among their more prominent members is mayoral candidate Lincoln March, who Capullo draws to look a lot like Bruce Wayne. And with good reason!

March claims to be Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne's younger brother, who was still in Martha Wayne's womb when she was in a terrible car accident. Born early and severely brain-damaged, he was put in the "Willowood Home For Children" (In Haney's story, Thomas Wayne Jr. was in the "Willowood Asylum;" like Morrison then, Snyder was heavily referencing the now non-canonical early '70s story). Feeling abandoned by his parents and older brother, Wayne/March was raised by the Court of Owls to inherit the Wayne empire. That didn't quite work out, nor did his run for mayor, so he ultimately makes a play to seize control of the Court of Owls, even going so far as to give himself the Court's undead-making super-secret super-serum, the one reserved for the virtually un-killable Talons. Then he puts on a fancy new Talon suit; "Something tough and modern," he says of it, " Something to rival the Batman."

While he never goes by that name, Snyder and Capullo's March/Wayne dons a fancy owl costume and essentially becomes an owl man. (As to whether or not he actually is Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth are certain that he is not, that Bruce's brother actually died from the wounds sustained in that crash, but Bruce says he can't know with 100% certitude until he gets a DNA sample, and March/Wayne disappears during their climactic battle, in the fashion of many supervillains—presumably killed, but with no body discovered).

Then, in 2013, writer Geoff Johns re-introduced the new, New 52 version of The Crime Syndicate, who are once again from Earth-3, a parallel world where many aspects of the DC Universe is "reversed," including the fact that the heroes are villains and the villains are heroes. This Syndicate also has an Owlman, and as Johns reveals in issues of his Justice League of America, the new Owlman of Earth-3 is still Thomas Wayne Jr., now once again Bruce Wayne's older brother.

In Johns' origin story, the two Wayne children—Thomas and Bruce—conspired to kill their own parents, and, on the night when they were shot to death in the alley, Bruce had last-minute, second thoughts, so Thomas Jr., conspiring with Alfred Pennyworth, kills his mother, father and little brother. He then grows up to be Owlman.

So this is strange.

On the "real" Earth of the DC Universe, which I'll call Earth-New 52, there is a heroic Bruce Wayne defending Gotham City as the superhero Batman, and a villainous "Owlman" who is—or at least claims to be and presents a pretty good case for being—Thomas Wayne Jr.

And on Earth-3, the reversed world where good is evil and evil is good, Bruce Wayne was good (well, he was a spoiled brat who considered killing his parents, but he wasn't as evil as his brother), and a villanous Owlman who is really Thomas Wayne Jr.

In that respect, at least, the worlds aren't opposite at all. Thomas Wayne Jr./Owlman is a bad guy on both worlds, just as Bruce Wayne/Batman is a good guy (or at least not a bad guy) on both worlds.

Hey, look! Here's a rare example of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo sucking!

The Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo creative team has enjoyed enormous, even remarkable popularity since they started producing DC's Batman title on a monthly basis in late 2011, as part of the publisher's "New 52" line revamp. Sales of the title are still higher than they've been in a long time, and it's the publisher's best-selling book, month in and month out. It's also garnered a lot of praise, which may not mean as much to a Big Two bookkeeper, but is generally a good sign of how popular and how good a book actually is: For the most part, fans love the Snyder/Capullo Batman, and comics critics seem to like it as well.

I'm no different. As a fan and as a critic, I have to confess that it's generally a very good, very well-made comic book. Snyder's Batman hasn't been as full of big ideas as Grant Morrison's, but then, few writers inject ideas into their superhero scripts the way Morrison does; Snyder's has read the most like the "real" Batman for a long, long time now, and the writer obviously gets, likes and thinks through the character and the character's cast.

Capullo does good work, too. He's not my favorite Batman artist of all-time, nor was he even the best drawing the character in the few years since he assumed the role on the flagship (Batman, Inc's Chris Burnham and Batman and Robin's Pat Gleason are both hard pencillers to beat; hell, I think Becky Cloonan's short contributions to the trade paperback I scanned the above pages from is likely superior to Burnham's on a technical level and, subjectively, more aesthetically pleasing to me personally).

But he's definitely a good artist, and were we sitting in judgement of DC's current creative stable, dividing the goats from the lambs (to use a blasphemous metaphor), then Capullo goes with the lambs.

But the Snyder/Capullo team isn't perfect. I've been following their run primarily through trade collections, and this week I read Batman Vol. 2: The City of Owls, which is actually the second time I saw the above sequence (much of this particular trade was previously collected in Batman: Night of the Owls, a massive collection including key chapters from Batman and the many Batman spin-off comics).

There were a few examples in their first trade collection, The Court of Owls, that seemed a little off to me, but the above sequence, inked by Jonathan Glapion, is an all-around, downright poorly executed sequence. It comes from Batman #9.

Go ahead and reread it, and then we'll talk about it.

For context, Batman has just fought off a full-scale invasion of Wayne Manor and the Batcave by the undead assassins from The Court of Owls, who now know he and Bruce Wayne are the same person. The Court's assassins were meanwhile attacking prominent Gothamites all over the city, and Batman has just raced to the office of mayoral candidate Lincoln March to try and save him.

That first page has just two big, overlapping panels. In the first, we see a flying shell casing and a cloud of smoke, suggesting a gun has been fire in that panel, in that moment...but it's actually fired in the next panel, in the next moment. Capullo simply drew the cloud of gunsmoke and the shell casing fired in the second panel overlapping the first panel. In other words, the two panels overlap one another, the artwork blending together to confuse when exactly a pretty important action—March firing a gun in Batman's direction while saying "You...Bruce Wayne..."—is actually occurring.

The second page doesn't have anything quite as egregious as the first panel being slid between two planes of the second panel, but it's still not told particularly well. As is revealed in the first tier of panels, there was actually a Court assassin hiding behind the door that Batman just opened, and March was shooting at the owl, not Batman, but, if you compare the two pages (and they were on facing pages within the book), the mechanics of it don't really work out, as Batman's holding the door open, covering the assassin, up until the point at which the assassin hits the ground (and there's no hole in the door indicating March, who wouldn't have really been aiming quite correctly, shot the assassin through the door).

Oh, and he's also got a huge knife stuck in his chest, something that is mean to surprise the reader, who can't see that part of March until that reveal panel, but the only reason we can't is because on the first of those pages, Capullo covered the knife wound with another panel. It's not clear why Batman doesn't notice immediately, as he is looking directly at March when he walks in the door, and doesn't seem to be surprised by anything until he hears his secret identity spoken and a gun goes off.

Anyway, that's a terrible two pages of an otherwise good comic in an otherwise good story arc in an otherwise good run on an ongoing title.

Chris Bachalo did not give up on that one costume design

I've been catching up on some recent-ish X-Men comics via trade lately, and saw the above image in a trade paperback collection of Wolverine and The X-Men Vol. 1. The back of the book contains about three pages of character and costume designs by primary artist Chris Bachalo, including the above variations on costume designs for the character Idie (In the issues contained within this collection though, she's never shown in a superhero outfit, just the Jean Grey School's school uniform, so I'm not yet sure what her superhero costume will end up looking like).

Note the design on the far right. Wolverine and The X-Men launched in late 2011, so these were drawn sometime that year, or perhaps even a little before.

So does that costume look at all familiar?

It's the costume that new mutant Tempus from Bachalo and Brian Michael Bendis' Uncanny X-Men, seen on the far left of this image from the cover page of Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1, is now wearing. Only the slightest adjustments (the straps are a different color, and Tempus is usually wearing war paint) differentiate the costume Tempus started wearing in 2013 from the one Bachalo designed for Idie a few years previous. (It's also perhaps worth noting that Tempus is the third female mutant to join Cyclops team in Uncanny X-Men and, like Magik and The White Queen, she also wears tiny black shorts, often partially concealed under the little white skirt there, rather than pants. The ladies on Cyclops' team are forbidden from wearing pants, apparently, while Cyke and Magneto keep their legs covered at all times).

Review: Secret Avengers: Run the Mission, Don't Get Seen, Save the World

This book is one of the many books I fully intended to buy in trade form, that I saw when the component issues were being released serially and thought to myself, "I'm going to write that down on my To Buy list and get it when it's in trade," and then, as the months passed, my interest waned and I saw that I can read it for free from the library, and do I really need to own it? Wouldn't I be just as happy reading it once? And if it does turn out to be the sort of thing I want to read over and over again for the rest of my life, well, I suppose I can buy it at some point in the future (Or, actually, I guess I can keep borrowing it from the libraries).

I've found this happens an awful lot with Marvel trades, as so many of their comic books are so expensive I see little point in reading them serially, and it's always going to be easier to buy a new comic on a Wednesday afternoon when you see it there looking at you then six months later, when you have to remember and order it, you know?

Anyway, Run the Mission, Don't Get Seen, Save The World collects a nice, short, economical run on the title Secret Avengers—the espionage-oriented book of the ever-growing Avengers line, essentially taking the Ed Brubaker corner and established tone of the Marvel Universe and having Captain America Steve Rogers and hand-picked teams run missions, each of which is a done-in-one adventure, and each of which is drawn by a different artists, many of whom aren't artists one would expect to find on a monthly Avengers title.

The six issues are from 2011, and pair Ellis with Jamie McKelvie, Kev Walker, David Aja, Michael Lark and Stefano Gaudiano, Alex Maleev and Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger. Each features the sort of high-concept, pseudo-science based on real science plotting that Ellis is known for, as well as generally clever plot construction and execution. Characterization is, for the most part, kept to a minimum, and most of the characters involved talk in brusque, professional and interchangeable dialogue, with notable exceptions being the X-Men's Beast, Hank McCoy, and the unstable, crazy Batman of the Marvel Universe, Moon Knight.

This was from a time in the ongoing Marvel Universe saga in which Steve Rogers had come back to life after his assassination via time bullets or whatever, and his former sidekick Bucky was still serving as the official Cap, while Rogers was wearing a mask-less costume, using an energy shield and going by either Commander Rogers or The Commander, having taken over the role of SHIELD Commander and Boss Of All Superheroes (this being from the period in which who held that role defined much of the Marvel Univere's ongoing story, as it changed hands from Maria Hill to Tony Stark to Norman Osborne to Rogers).

If there's an ongoing storyline here, it involves Rogers and his agents fighting The Shadow Council, I think it was, one of the many, basically interchangeable anti-SHIELDs of the Marvel Universe.

In the first issue, Rogers, Black Widow, Moon Knight and Beast infiltrate an abandoned secret city hidden underneath Cincinnati, only to find that it's been reoccupied and put to an awesomely ambitious and bizarre usage. This is probably the strongest of the issues, in part because of McKelvie's clean, smooth, expressive artwork (although his Beast is kind of lame, looking a little too much like a dude wearing a cat-mask; I don't think model sheets for Beast have existed at all in the 21st Century, given the fact that every artists draws him differently; in this volume alone, he looks like at least three different characters entirely), but in larger part because of the scale and stakes of the plot, and the amount of characterization and interaction Ellis manages to pack into this one. Only Rogers comes out as a basically blank slate.

McKelvie draws Commander Rogers' flechette gun, which shoots three little shields.

It also features some really goofy "flechette" guns that shoot non-lethal icon-shaped projectiles. Rogers' shoots out little Captain America badges, while Moon Knight's shoots out little crescent moons.

Next up, Rogers, Sharon Carter, War Machine and Valkyrie seek to solve the mystery of a villager-abducting ghost truck, featuring nice expressive art by Walker; then Rogers, Carter and Shang-Chi attempt to stop a version of Captain America's most visually-interesting foes from importing and weaponizing transmatter from a bad continuity (explained by Beast in flashback), as drawn by Aja, who does some rather magnificent, Escher-like lay-outs, in which the characters savagely battle in panels with no gravity or sense of up and down.

Lark and Gaudiano's Moon Knight, in his formal wear.

As for the second half of the book, Rogers, Carter, Black Widow and Moon Knight (wearing his mask with a white suit, for a nice formal variation of his costume) infiltrate a hotel where a drug dealer is selling powdered Lovecraft creature bones as a power-up drug (this is the Lark/Gaudiano ish; sadly, Lark only does breakdowns); there's an incredibly complicated story in which Black Widow must jump back in time to save her dead teammates without letting anyone know (drawn by Maleev, whose Beast looks like the Kelsey Grammer one from the third X-Men movie),

Maleev

and, finally, a pretty cool story in which Rogers, Carter, Widow, Valkyrie, War Machine, Moon Knight and Beast infiltrate and ultimately destroy a building with some terrible, world-ending secret creatures in the basement, the day being saved with some inspired uses of Marvel Universe techonology (including War Machine flying an elevator car with his rocket boots and Beast creating a fake, building-engulfing inferno to empty the building).

Immonen

That's the Immonen-penciled story, making this issue something of a Nextwave reunion and a perfect note for Ellis' short run to end on. I'd rather highly recommend this as a continuity-light introduction to Ellis at his work-for-hire best and/or a handful of some of Marvel's less-prominent super-characters and/or the work of a half-dozen creators or so who have bodies of work well worth tracking down if you like what you see of them here.

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

In their annual re-examination of the year that was in Big Two super-comics and media tie-ins, Robot 6's DC Comics expert Tom Bondurant and Marvel Comics expert Carla Hoffman touched on Tom Brevoort's arguments that numbers don't matter when it comes to comics.

I beg to differ with Brevoort, personally. So I just read this book, right? Say I liked the whole Secret Avengers concept, and wanted to read more Secret Avengers comics. Where would I go from here? I plugged this title into Amazon, and found it listed both as Secret Avengers: Run the Mission... and as Secret Avengers Vol. 3: Run the Mission... (the "Premiere Edition" hardcover I got from the library didn't have a volume number attached, for whatever that's worth).

So then I just typed "Secret Avengers" in, and found three different Secret Avengers Vol. 1s, listed thusly:

Secret Avengers Vol. 1: Reverie (Marvel NOW)

Secret Avengers by Rick Remender Vol. 1

Secret Avengers Vol. 1: Mission to Mars

There seem to be three different Secret Avengers comic book series released in the course of the last few years—oh, and there's an unnumbered Fear Itself: Secret Avengers in there too, just to make things more confusing—each with their own volumes 1, 2 and/or 3. A comic shop with a knowledgeable seller of comics could no doubt help walk a curious reader through, but if I were looking to buy these online or borrow them from the library (and thus looking at an online library catalog), it would be fucking murder making sure I read them in the proper order, which is apparently something like Volumes 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, with Run The Mission... and Fear Itself somewhere amid all those repeating volume numbers.

Surely numbering the damn things 1-10 would be a lot easier.

Worse still is when they change the titles along with the numbers. Like, I'm enjoying Mark Waid's Indestructible Hulk, having just finished Indestructible Hulk Vol. 2. But I understand they're relaunching the Waid-written Hulk title with a new title, just plain Hulk, which means Waid's run will like include something like three or four numerically consecutive volumes of Indestructible Hulk, followed by Hulk Vol. 1...?

I still haven't finished the Hercules run by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente, because I started reading it in singles and wanted to switch to trades, but got lost as they kept changing the titles of the book they were writing and their Hercules was appearing in...

Comic shop comics: December 24-January 8

Slightly disappointing day at the comic shop today, if only because a box got left out of their shipment, and thus I missed two books on my shopping list, Forever Evil: Arkham War #4 and Scooby-Doo Team-Up #2, which features Ace the Bat-Hound and The Scarecrow. Still, some pretty good stuff in the little pile I did take home though...

"And in jodhpurs!"

Adventures of Superman # 8 (DC Comics) Only one story this issue, by writer Marc Guggenheim, artist Joe Bennett and inker Belardino Brabo. It's about what happens when Superman discovers that Krypton never really blew up after all, and what life might be like were Superman able to fly there and visit his planet, his people and his father, and if it seems like it might owe a little bit of its inspiration to Alan Moore's "For The Man Who Has Everything," Mongul does make a one-panel cameo, perhaps by way of a nod, although the real reason everything Superman thought he knew is wrong (or is it?) is completely different.

Titano and Brainiac both appear as well, and bennett, an artist whose work I've never been all that crazy about, does pretty awesome versions of both of them, and I even rather liked his big, hulking Superman, but then, I've lately enjoyed seeing this "real" Superman, with his tights and shorts, each month in this book.

The early pages of this issue are awfully odd looking, as they seem split completely in half, with very wide gutters between the top two tiers and the bottom two tiers, which I imagine has something to do with this being a digital-first book, but a few pages in they seem to have corrected that, thinning the gutters and occasionally overlapping the panels in the second and third tiers.


Afterlife with Archie #3 (Archie Comics) Oh man, I used to think Hiram Lodge looked a lot like Commissioner Gordon before I saw former Detective Comics artist Francesco Francavilla draw him as a younger man!

In this issue, two more of Archie's classmates succumb to the zombie infection, Veronica tries to cheer herself up with a pool party and our ginger title character sneaks out of the safety of the Lodges' mansion to check on his and Betty's parents.

As with the previous issues, this comic features fantastic art, a surprisingly adult and effective horror drama and to give off a palpable aura of "Can you believe this book even actually exists?"

And as with issue #2, there's a "From The Vault" reprint of an old black-and-white horror comic by a comics master, this one by Dick Giordano.


Aquaman #26 (DC) I'm sad to say that I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, given that I like Aquaman, I like writer Jeff Parker (who is making his debut as the new Aquaman writer with this issue) and i like Paul Pelleteir (although Pelleteir is only one of the two pencillers drawing this issue; Netho Diaz being the other).

I haven't read past "Throne of Atlantis," so I'm a little behind on the goings-on of Aquaman, but this issue finds he and Mera in Atlantis, trying to rule as king and queen (not sure how she gets to be queen if she's just dating the king, but whatever DC), although many of the people are still opposed to him and even more are opposed to her.

Than a giant monster called the Karaqan, which I believe is Atlantean for Kraken, starts attacking the surface world, and Aquaman goes off to fight it by having Mera use her water powers to fling him through the air from Atlantis to Iceland (?!). The monster and the questions of Aquaman's legitimacy to rule are tied together.

It's a decent enough comic, and I plan on giving it a few more issues, but I guess I was expecting to be wowed, and wasn't.

Detective Comics #27 (DC) I plan on having an actual review of this tomorrow afternoon at Robot 6, but this is probably a more appropriate forum for some stray, random thoughts on the book, like, for example, Holy shit, look at Frank Miller's variant cover!

I like to imagine DC asking him for a contribution, even if only a pin-up or a cover, and Miller thinking, Okay, you want a cover? I'll give you a cover! and then drawing what looks awfully close to his design for Catwoman from that Holy Terror, Batman! comic that turned into Holy Terror. I really love that cover in how it is just so goddam Frank Miller and so clearly unattached to anything vaguely Batman-related at all, aside from the fact that it has a woman wearing a cat-mask. Seriously, that's not the New 52 Catwoman, it's not any version of a previous Catwoman, it's not a possible future Catwoman, it's just a Frank Miller drawing of something vaguely, tangentially Batman-related.

Ian Bertram should be drawing, and Sal Cipriano lettering, a Batman comic. Bertram's is the best and most interesting looking story in the whole book. I'm posting the above panels simply because in the background of the Batcave, Bertram has drawn a dinosaur, but not the expected dinosaur.

I was kinda disappointed by Kelley Jones' pin-up (Well, the background is amazing)...

...but then, I was disappointed in all the pin-up art, none of which looked as good as the wort of work many of these same artists produce regularly. Only Jock's pin-up seemed to be of the same caliber as his regular cover work (Also, I'm trying really hard to decide if colorist John Rauch mis-colored Robin's boots in that Jones pin-up or not. They're the wrong color for Tim Drake's boots—and why is he wearing a shoulder pad on his right arm, exactly...?—but all the other characters are clearly pre-New 52 versions, so that shouldn't be one of those retconned, New 52 Robin costumes, right...?)

I liked Graham Nolan's Scarecrow. Did he get to draw a Scarecrow during his run on TEC...? His pin-up features a mix of classic Batman foes and characters he drew during his run (The above image is, obviously, just a portion of Nolan's pin-up. It also includes a big, brooding figure of Batman inspired by that of TEC #31 in the background, Batman and Robin III swinging before the figure, the floating villain heads, and the "Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot..." speech on paper-like narration boxes, and a giant "BATMAN").

I don't even know what to say about "Gothtopia." The idea seems sturdy enough, but the costume designs and codenames are so fucking ridiculous I can't believe this was an instance where DC's now-notorious for interfering editors didn't interfere. Or maybe Layman and Fabok had a blue-and-gray costumed Bat-Man working with The Huntress Selina Kyle and various bird-themed Gotham heroes and editorial was like, "No, no, no, make it stupider! Stupider!" and Layman was like, "But 'stupid-er' isn't even a word; I think you mean I should make it 'more stupid,' but, why--" and they're like "Stupider! Stupider STUPID-ERRRRR!!!!"

(But yeah, I can't believe that got printed).

Sean Murphy so crowded his panels with awesome shit, he apparently got away with drawing a nipple. Sure, it's a nipple on a horse-headed cyborg woman, but that's a nipple nonetheless.

And, finally, in an alternate future, there will eventually be a black Robin and, I was amused to note, he will be riding a flying skateboard, which, of course, reminded me of the late, great Dwayne McDuffie's sarcastic pitch to Marvel for Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers.

SpongeBob Comics #28 (United Plankton Pictures) The lead story—a whopping 22-pages, huge for a SpongeBob strip—evokes the old duck work of Carl Barks, and not simply because near the climax Mr. Krabs goes for a swim in a sea of gold coins (unlike Scrooge McDuck, Krabs strips naked before doing so). Rather, it features our heroes going to a far off land in search for treasure, and finding it, among various old-school adventure story conventions. That strip, written by Derek Drymon and drawn by Jacob Chabot, is followed by various shorts by various artists: A one-page strip by Maris Wicks about ocean life in the arctic; a two-page strip about what Squidward was up to during most of the events of the first story, drawn as well as written by Drymon; and a six-page story about a trio of pirates stuck in the arctic ice that has almost nothing at all to do with SpongeBob, written and drawn by Kevin Cannon; and another page of James Kochalka funnies.

So let's see, that's 32 pages of comics content, a single ad for the next issue of SpongeBob and a price tag of just $2.99. Huh.


The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #7 (Marvel Entertainment) So who exactly is the new Beetle, and how did she come to be? Well, now that we know who her dad is, regular writer Nick Spencer and fill-in artist Rich Ellis (not regular artists Lieber, as the cover states) tell us of her origin, from her very first heist to her suiting up.

As a Beetle solo story, with a trio of Marvel villain guest-stars, I wasn't sure what to expect—particularly given how eager I am to see what happens next in "the present" after the events of issue #6—but this turned out to be just as funny as the issues starring all five of The Sinister Six.

Not sure what the best line was, though. It was either "I'm gona be the Hillary Clinton-- --but you know... of drug lords" or "The Nazis were a long time ago."

Great, great stuff as usual. I'm going to miss this book when they raise the price by 33%...


Young Avengers #15 (Marvel) It's interesting that this final issue of the series, featuring artwork by Beckey Cloonan and Jordie Bellaire, Ming Doyle and Maris Wicks, Joe Quinones and Wicks (but no Wicks pencils! Waaaah!) and Jamie McKelvie and Matthew Wilson in various character-centric sections (ala the previous issue, the first half of the epilogue for the series), gives no real indication that this is the end of the Young Avengers as a team, other than Loki leaving the line-up. I don't know if writer Kieron Gillen wanted to leave things like this so that whoever does the next Young Avengers book will be able to pick up where he left off if they so chose, or if Marvel wanted a Young Avengers team in place to use for tie-in one-shots or miniseries to future event stories (the way they previously used Young Avengers and The Runaways when they were ongoing-less), but Miss America, Hawkeye, Wiccan, Hulkling, Marvel Boy and Speed all go out to breakfast together at the end of the issue, with no indication that this is their final comic book together.

Oh, and Gillen also makes it clear that his is the gayest superhero team of all time. "Am I the only person on the team who's straight?" Kate Bishop asks when Miss America and Marvel Boy both say things about their sexual identities, to which Miss America responds, "I've seen the way you look at me...You're not that straight."