Four noteworthy images from Superman #6 (three of which feature his dog)

Given that Superman and Action Comics share the same editor in Eddie Berganza, it's not a coincidence that both titles began their new, "Rebirth" era runs by telling pretty much the exact same stories. In the pages of Superman, Superman has been battling against a threat made popular during the "Death of Superman" era of the franchise that is bound and determined to do harm to his wife Lois and son Jonathan. In the pages of Action, Superman has been battling against a threat made popular during the "Death of Superman" era of the franchise that is bound and determined to do harm to his wife Lois and son Jonathan. In the former, it's The Eradicator, in the latter, it's Doomsday.

It's not a coincidence, but it is a decision I can't really understand.

Of the two books, Superman has told that story in a far better fashion, and it helps that creators Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason have determined goals they accomplish in their too-long, six-issue arc. That is, they want to demonstrate that through his feats here, the new (old) Superman has convinced the public that he is indeed the "real" Superman, and, further, to introduce Jonathan as the new Superboy. (In Action, meanwhile, writer Dan Jurgens has been teasing a mystery, as both the new/old Superman and a Clark Kent are present in the same place at the same time throughout much of the story, and the Mr. Oz character lurks in the background, talking cryptically to himself).

The art in Superman is just really, really good too. That in the sixth issue comes courtesy of pencil artist Patrick Gleason, inker Mick Gray and colorist John Kalisz. I thought there were four extremely striking images in the book.

First, there's this bit of body horror. The deal with this version of The Eradicator is that he has sucked in the souls of all the dead Kryptonians, and now wants to "eradicate" Jonathan, whose Kryptonian DNA is tainted by Lois Lane's contribution to his genetic make-up. Superman wants to stop him from eradicating his son. So they've been fighting for like 100 pages or so.

At various points, Superman is able to convince the Kryptonian ghosts to stop power-ing up The Eradicator and help him and, as their fight reaches it's climax, Superman opens The Eradicator's mouth and shouts into it, calling for his dog. In the next panel, Krypto starts to emerge...as a giant fucking st of canine mouth pushing up through The Eradicator's S-shield.

I don't mind telling you I found this image to be deeply terrifying, as well as just plain weird (Why didn't Krypto just come out of his mouth? Burst through his chest? Why is his gaping maw so gigantic as he tries to push his way out? Why does it look more like The Eradicator's chest is turning into Krypto's snout and mouth than that the super-dog is trying to force his way out?)

Then there's this rather delightful image. Superman encourages to Krypto to bite down on his arm through the stretched skin of The Eradicator, and then just pulls him through. I've stared at this panel for long minutes on several different occasions, and there's no way around it: Gleason drew Krypto upside down, as a comparison to the position of his jaws on the previous page makes clear.

No matter. I love the fact that Krypto is upside down here. It's every bit as weird as the previous image, but not as scary. I just imagine Krypto rotating around Superman's forearm there.

After man and dog team up to finish The Eradicator, Superman takes his fallen foes cape and ties it around his dog. Huzzah, a more "classic" conception of Krypto has returned to the DC Universe, after the saber-toothed dire wolf version seen early in the New 52.

Finally, there's this perfect ending splash page, in which Superman introduces his son to the other two points of the trinity.

I love this page so much. The expressions on all four characters' faces are all perfect and, at least in the case of the three I know best, perfectly suited to what one might expect their faces to look like in that situation.

If you read just one six-issue story arc about Superman battling against a threat made popular during the "Death of Superman" era of the franchise that is bound and determined to do harm to his wife Lois and son Jonathan this year, I'd recommend you make it the first six issues of Superman.

Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initiative, week 15

Cyborg: Rebirth #1 by John Semper Jr., Paul Pelletier, Sandra Hope, Tony Kordos and Guy Major

Like most of the (in-story) third generation of DC superheroes, Marv Wolfman and George Perez's character Cyborg suffered from the 2011 continuity-scrambling Flashpoint/New 52 initiative, but he did so in a rather unique way. He survived the purge that affected much of that generation of heroes, and while his history (i.e. that which made him him) was completely erased, he was promoted (or re-promoted, I guess) from a Titan/Teen Titan to a member of the Justice League in the new continuity.

And so he ascended to number seven in the overall ranking of all DC superheroes (above Martian Manhunter, who traditionally held that spot for decades), but he was now a blank slate, nothing more than a name and set of kind of generic computer-related powers. For much of the last five years in the pages of Justice League, Cyborg was little more than a receptionist and transportation system for the other six Leaguers.

DC awarded him his own ongoing monthly series–his first since his 1980 creation–in 2015, and it lasted the same 12-ish issues as the other series DC launched around that time, just enough to fill two trades. Did it get canceled due to poor sales, or simply because DC canceled everything around that time, in order to relaunch many of the books as part of the "Rebirth" initiative...?

I don't know, but I would imagine from the fact that Cyborg is one of the latest of the "Rebirth" relaunches, followed only by low-selling (but good!) Gotham Academy, that it was a combination of the two.

Cyborg 2.0 has an entirely new creative team, in writer John Semper Jr. (David F. Walker wrote the majority fo the previous volume, followed briefly by Wolfman) and pencil artist Paul Pelletier, here inked by Sandra Hope and Tony Kordos. I would like to say they have an entirely new story to tell, but they don't seem to have anything to say about the new, New 52 version of the character that hasn't already been said in the previous volume, Justice League and related comics.

An unseen narrator, who isn't revealed until the surprise ending, tells Cyborg Victor Stone's origin story, starting with the meeting of his parents and ending in his joining of the Justice League, while the superhero battles against a big, monstrous artificially intelligent threat with self-repair powers and its own dialogue bubble style. The bad guy, named "Malware" (If I were texting you this review, I would hear include the eye-roll emoji), is trying to get to and through the Red Room in S.T.A.R. Labs, which is either where the little, backwards talking, funny-dancing guy from Twin Peaks hangs out or where Doctor Silas Stone and Doctor T.O. Morrow keep all the alien technology, I forget which.

Then he reaches a secret room, where Stone keeps a secret about his son's recreation as a cyborg. Are you ready for the big revelation? Get this. What if Cyborg, being mostly mechanical, doesn't have a soul? What if he is more machine than man? What if–hey, did you pass out? Wake up, wake up! Yes, I know this is like, Robot Guy Plot 101, and DC and Marvel have been writing various versions about this since before Cyborg was even created, and yeah, you can probably think of a dozen different manga and anime series with the same conflict, and while I don't read prose science fiction because of all the words, something tells me someone or eighty authors have covered that ground pretty thoroughly as well, but, well, that's what they're going with here, I guess. Maybe the series will last 12 issues...?

(Why is it only androids and cyborgs who worry about that stuff, by the way? In real life, don't we all wonder if we have souls or not? Why isn't there a Batman series premised on his philosophical questions?)

The one aspect of the book I did find interesting was the second-to-last page,where we see the surprise-ish bad guy looking at a huge bank of monitors on which we sell a whole mess of various robot and cyborg characters from throughout the current DCU–The Metal Men, OMAC, Robotman, Red Tornado, The Brain, Cyborg Superman,  Steel (for some reason), some characters I don't recognize–and intimates that they are all part of some bigger plan.

The artwork is fine. I've always like Pelletier's pencil work, which is well-suited to classic super-heroics, but here he's inked in such a way that it all looks a little too New 52 to me. It's the same visual white noise that makes so many of the DC comics of this area (although they are steadily improving!) boring to look at, which is something a superhero comic book should never be.

I'll read the first issue of the series proper, for the purposes of this feature on my blog, but I'm not looking forward to it, and can't imagine I'll be reading #2. (Well, maybe I'll play "The Night Begins To Shine" on repeat while I read the Cyborg #1. Perhaps that will improve it. It certainly can't hurt it!)

...

You know, while I'm on the subject of a Wolfman/Perez-era Titans creation, it may be worth considering how DC has made use of that group of characters since their reboot. While DC kept Cyborg's basic origin–suffering what should have been a fatal accident, Victor Stone's super-scientist father saves him with robot parts-–itt was now attached to Jack Kirby's Fourth World characters, and occurred in the pages of Justice League, where he was the team's sole teenage member.

Starfire hung out with Robin II-turned-The Red Hood Jason Todd and Arsenal Roy Harper in the pages of Red Hood and The Outlaws, briefly earned her own ongoing series and is now poised to join the next iteration of the Teen Titans, as its sole adult member (the membership of this line-up will reflect that of the recent Justice League Vs. Teen Titans movie, and Geoff Johns' basic conception of a post-Young Justice Teen Titans series in which Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy served as mentors to the fourth generation of heroes.)

And Beast Boy and Raven? They're a good five years younger than their two former peers, and have been appearing in the pages of Teen Titans, where they have been peers of characters who used to be among the fourth generation of DC's heroes, like (Red) Robin Tim Drake and Wonder Girl Cassandra Sandsmark.

None of the four are involved in the new Titans series, which features the grown-up sidekicks who were the original Teen Titans which...I actually can't make sense of following Flashpoint/The New 52/Convergence/DC Universe: Rebirth. From what I've read of it so far, it seems to me a more appropriate title might be Nightwing and The Donna Troys.

...

Oh! One more thing, and then I'll move on, I swear. The narrator is extremely specific about how long Cyborg has been Cyborg in this comic, even counting the seconds. But the years he places at five, and then a few months, suggesting only five years and a few months have passed since Justice League #1-6. That's fine...except time seems to move faster in Gotham City than anywhere else in the world. At least twice Scott Snyder's scripts have suggested a year has passed (between The Joker having his face flayed off and "Death of The Family," and then again between "Death of The Family" and "Endgame"). And, of course, in DC Universe: Rebirth we saw 10-year-old Damian Wayne blow out the candles on his birthday cake which indicated he was now 13.

So a few months in Detroit is three years in Gotham City, I guess...? Man, Alan Moore and Doctor Manhattan must have really did a number on the DC Universe!

Supergirl #1 by Steve Orlando, Brian Chin and Michael Atiyeh

It may be in large part because the Rebirth special braced me for the many ways in which the new Supergirl series will cover very similar territory to the television series, but do so by veering in different directions, but I found this issue a lot easier to parse. And a large part of that is also definitely the art by Brian Chin, which features more distinct character designs, so that for example, the four blonde women all look like different people.

Writer Steve Orlando attempts an All-Star Superman homage on the first page, attempting to boil Supergirl's origin down to just four panels and short phrases just as Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely managed to do with Superman's origin in their book, but it doesn't really work here. That's partly because Superman's origin, for all the tinkering it's gone through over 75+ years, has had enough commonality in all of those versions that Morrison and Quitely could pick the phrases and images that repeated in all of them. No such luck with Supergirl, whose origin changes so greatly from version to version, and even having read the Rebirth special, I'm still not entirely sure of the specifics as presented here (I think Supergirl is from Argo City, a floating city in a forcefield above Krypton, that was destroyed along with Krypton...?).

It's rather unfortunate, because the homage attempt is so obvious, the fact that it doesn't quite land is sort of embarrassing to watch, like a basketball player on a fast break going for a three-pointer and getting an air ball, rather than going for the easy lay-up (Sports metaphor!).

Things improve on pages two and three, and remain strong after that. While a relatively large part of the Rebirth special was devoted to info-dumping, here Orlando re-states the new book's premise by showing rather than telling: Because adolescent Supergirl didn't grow up an Earthling the way her cousin Superman did, the government doesn't trust her as much. So Department of Extranormal Operations head Cameron Chase has made a deal with S-girl. In exchange for restoring her lost super-powers, they've assigned her foster parents who are DEO agents and the secret identity of Kara Danvers, via which she will attend high school in National City and continue to acclimate to Earth. As in the TV show, Supergirl and the DEO will work together to fight super-threats (I hope Orlando's DEO better-resembles the version from D. Curtis Johnson's Chase, John Ostrander's Martian Manhunter and other comics of that era, rather than the version on the TV show, which consists of a base with four rooms and like a dozen not particularly bright agents in matching black uniforms.)

This issue is mostly devoted to demonstrating Kara's difficulties in acclimating to her new world, as Orlando and Ching continually flip-flop back and forth between daily life on Krypton to that on Earth. In this issue we also meet Cat Grant, who appears to be characterized more closely to how she is on the TV show than how she has been previously in the comics (that is, she scans here more like a particularly bitchy Lois Lane than anything else). We also meet a new supporting character (the guy in the glasses in the lower left-hand corner). And Kara comes face-to-face with the same villain introduced in the epilogue of the special, The New 52 Cyborg Superman, who is apparently her father and whom I know absolutely nothing about (I think his presence here is particularly wonky, though, given that the television show has used "Hank Henshaw," the secret identity of the original, pre-Flashpoint/New 52 Cyborg Superman as the director of the D.E.O. who never, ever turns into a cyborg of any kind).

I liked this a lot better than the special, as I've already mentioned, and actually think it makes for a better starting point, particularly since it also demonstrates the visual style of the series (the special was drawn by several different artists, none of whom were Ching). I think it will take a few issues before we can really get a sense of how good it may or may not be, and if DC has finally gotten around to giving fans of the show a solid, in-universe comic to enjoy, but so far so good.

Comic Shop Comics: September 7

Jughead #9 (Archie Comics) First, let me just note that this review will contain a spoiler which may or may not ruin your experience of reading this comic, so, if you have not yet read it and think that the surprise ending will impact your enjoyment of the comic, then maybe don't read any farther than this particular paragraph. For those of you about to leave, just allow me to say that this particular issue is excellent, and even if you're not a huge fan of Jughead and/or Archie Comics in general but are at least somewhat interested in what the publisher has been doing lately and were wondering a good place to check out one of their "New Look" Archie books, than I would recommend this one, which starts a new run by a new writer (Note that while the upper left-hand corner of the cover has a little "#9" on it, the upper right-hand corner reads "(It's kinda like a) BRAND NEW #1 except it's issue #9."

The first eight (excellent) issues of the series were written by Chip Zdarsky, and he is gone now, but he's been replaced by Ryan North, of Dinosaur Comics, Adventure Time, Midas Flesh* and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Fame (North also brings the "alt-text" style gags to the bottom of the pages, noting that it gives us "extra jokes...FOR THE SAME LOW< LOW PRICE!!" and that, of course, "Chip was RIPPING YOU OFF.". If you're teen comedy comic must lose the writer of Marvel's current, excellent Howard The Duck, who better to replace him with than the writer of Marvel's Squirrel Girl...?

Derek Charm, who drew the previous two issues, remains on as the artist, and that is good news, because that guy is excellent. I think he may be my favorite of the half-dozen or so artists who have drawn the new Archie comics, and that is saying something, because that is some strong company (Fiona Staples, Veronica Fish, Erica Henderson, etc).

So in this issue, Jughead, famous among the Archie characters for his complete and total lack of any and all interest in romance of any kind, meets a girl who is is interested in. She is a burger mascot working outside of Pop's, who appears to be a giant hamburger with only her clearly feminine arms and legs sticking out. Jughead's brain, which has long ago learned how to access burgers and ladies, can't deal with a "burger lady," and shuts down.

Gradually, the two strike up something of a friendship, since he does go and eat a burger or 50 there a day, and, eventually, she confesses to be new in town and not knowing anyone, and, since he seems normal, she asks if perhaps she would like to hang out. He agrees, to which she replies "It's a date," which would make this...Jughead's first date?

When he, and we, finally meet her on the second to last page, he has no idea who she is. You'll recognize her though, and, if not, she introduce herself on the last page. Guy, it's Sabrina The Teenage Witch. WHO IS ON THE COVER OF THIS VERY COMIC BOOK. And also on all of its variants. And now that I look at the back cover, I see there's a paragraph summary of the contents that actually says that Sabrina The Teenage Witch is the Burger Lady. And yet somehow, somehow, I was still shocked when it was revealed that she was the Burger Lady in the story.

This means either one of two things. First, I am dumb. Or second, North and Charm did such an excellent job on this comic, so thoroughly drawing me in to this particular version of Riverdale that I had forgotten what I had seen on the cover. Or, I suppose, some combination of the two. Anyway, that's why I wanted to spoil this, although it looks like Archie Comics kinda went ahead and tried its best to spoil it anyway, for some reason. The central mystery of this issue was so strong that it still shocked me with its reveal, even with the answer having been waved in front of my face for weeks and weeks now.

North makes excellent use of the supporting cast, as they react to Jughead's disinterest in the opposite sex and then the prospect of him actually having a date and he gets advice from each of their unique perspectives. Archie's is, in particular, rather delightful, to the extent that I found myself wondering how great a North/Charm Archie might be (not that that book needs a new creative team or anything).

In all of the cases of character interaction, it's Charm's art that sells the gags. Archie's conspiratorial face when he explains his one drink, two straw plan, or Sabrina's elbow to Jughead's chest shortly after she first means him sans hamburger costume--the "acting" is just superb.

Anyone worried about the fate of Jughead once Zdarsky left need worry no longer. It remains just as good as it was previously.

Paper Girls #9 (Image Comics) If I could travel through time like the third Erin who enters the narrative at this point, I would--well, there's a lot I would do I guess, and none of it would have anything to do with Paper Girls. But if I could travel through time solely for the purposes of adjusting my pull-file at my local comics shop, I probably would use that very limited if fantastical power to tell my past self to not read Paper Girls monthly, but instead trade-wait it.

My past self might not listen to my future, time-travelling self. Paper Girls is by a writer we both like, it's by an artist we both like and it's ony $2.99--why wouldn't we read it serially?

Well, because it doesn't read particularly well serially. Brian K. Vaughan fills it with the big, perfectly timed beats of his best books, but unlike, say, Saga, because the mysterious goings-on of the book are the focus, rather than the characters, it can sometimes read a little like "And then this crazy thing happens," and, read 20-ish pages every 30 days or so, with hundreds of pages of other comics read between each installment, it can be a little overwhelming to the point of confusing, and I feel like I would appreciate the overall package a lot more if I were reading it in trade paperback-sized chunks, instead of monthly story slivers.



*Did you guys read Midas Flesh? It is sooo good! You should totally read it. It's funny, in that it's got some jokes in it and the characters are fun to hang around, but it's also serious science fiction and fantasy with a tone unlike any of the other things in that list of North-written comics, except maybe some of the more sober Dinosaur Comics strips. Also, it too has a dinosaur in it.

Wait, that worked?

But Wonder Woman didn't even say "Clear!" first! Wonder Woman defibrillates Superman's heart with one of Zeus' thunderbolts in JLA #9 by Bryan Hitch and Daniel Henriques. He survives...but only to die for real in Superman #52, which came out...in May, three months prior to when this scene was published.

Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initiative, week 14

There were five Wednesdays in August, so on the fifth week of August–and the fourteenth week of DC's "Rebirth" rollout–no Rebirth-branded specials or new series launched.

Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initiative, week 13

Blue Beetle: Rebirth #1 by Keith Giffen, Scott Kolins and Romulo Fajaroo Jr

This is the Blue Beetle relaunch at least some DC readers have been anticipating since at least 2013, when writer Geoff Johns introduced Ted Kord into the post-Flashpoint DCU in the pages of Forever Evil. As promised in the pages of the Johns-written DC Universe: Rebirth #1 special, however, this book isn't about the old universe's Blue Beetle II becoming this universe's Blue Beetle II, nor is it a third volume of Blue Beetle starring the old universe's Blue Beetle III, Jaime Reyes. Rather, this is going to co-star Kord and Reyes as different parts of Team Beetle, with Reyes using the scarab-generated suit and Kord working behind-the-scenes as a sort of advisor and engineer.

It's at least something different, which means maybe this will last longer than the last Blue Beetle series. Just to recap, Reyes was introduced as the new, third Blue Beetle during Infinite Crisis, a series that was the climax of a chain of events originally investigated by Kord, who was killed off in a scene that no one anywhere on Earth liked at all. Infinite Crisis was followed by a Blue Beetle series that lasted 36 issues, from 2006-2009. Giffen co-wrote the series at the outset.

After the 2011 line-wide reboot "The New 52," Blue Beetle was relaunched, but this short-lived incarnation lasted just 16 issues. It was written by Tony Bedard, which I point out only because this volume was Giffen-less. I don't think that's the reason it was canceled, so much as that it was competing against 51 other DC super-comics, and a five-year-old character wasn't exactly ripe for a reboot.

So now we start a third volume, with original co-writer Giffen back. He shares a "story by" credit with artist Kolins, while he scripts the dialogue (unfortunately).

The premise seems something like a compromise one meant to appeal to fans of both Beetles, but it's pretty shaky. Reyes goes to Kord, a brilliant billionaire genius with a reputation for having a heart, in order to have him help remove the alien scarab that has attached itself to his spine (and thus transformed him into Blue Beetle). Instead, Kord builds a mobile, blue beetle-themed headquarters (The Bug) and wants to become part of a dynamic duo with Jaime, who hates that idea.

It can't sustain itself like that for very long, as Jaime has no reason to agree to the arrangement, so hopefully Giffen and Kolins write a change-of-heart for the title character into the story STAT. Otherwise, the plot of this issue reads like a weird cover version of Giffen's original series: There's Jaime's big family, his two bickering best friends and there's local super-crime boss, the aunt and guardian of one of those friends.

In this issue, Jaime suits up to fight weird villains Rack and Ruin, who are holding up a Starbucks Sundollars just to pick a fight with him, and a Doctor Fate shows up (I think there's two, possibly three at the moment).

Because I've read much of the 2006-2009 series, much of Jaimie's non-superhero life seemed repetitive to me, and the fact that Giffen gave his friends such annoying, mean-spirited dialogue as they argued made me think of them as I did Giffen's Sugar and Spike in Legends of Tomorrow–I don't really want to be around them at all. (Similarly, Jaime seemed so belligerent with Ted that it only made it harder to suspend one's disbelief regarding the new direction).

As with the Sugar and Spike feature, however, Blue Beetle: Rebirth has some excellent art work...if only the story was half as fun and intriguing as installments of the Sugar and Spike strip.

I really like Kolins' re-design and rendering of the Blue Beetle costume. He looks very close to his previous incarnations, but with a much more expressive face and dynamic body. The eyes and mouth are great, the scarab's antennae are great, the fingers, the toes...I really love the way Kolins draws the title character.

That is easily my favorite part of this issue, and the thing that would most likely make me want to read Blue Beetle #1 and beyond.

Deathstroke #1 by Priest, Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz and Jeromy Cox

This issue made me curious about the rationale that went into choosing which books received Colon Rebirth #1 specials and which did not. In some of the cases, where the more popular characters were involved and the events of those specials would spin out in to multiple books (or storylines, in the case of Wonder Woman), it seems obvious that the specials functioned as deck-clearing exercises, jumping-on points for new and lapsed readers that simultaneously served as bridges to regular readers.

Other books featuring characters in transition from one status quo to another–like, say, Dick Grayson, whose Grayson book ended and who was being relaunched into another volume of Nightwing–similarly make sense.

I'm not so sure about Deathstroke, though. Certainly it's writer Christopher Priest, who is just going by "Priest" in the first two credit boxes, treated the script for Deathstroke #1 as if it were Deathstroke #2, rather than a second #1, following the Deathstroke: Rebirth #1.

Not that I can say I blame him. Starting any new book with two consecutive #1s is like something of a challenge, and it will be interesting (well, interesting to me at least) to see how the specials are collected. Will Batman: Rebirth #1 appear in the first collection of the new, "Rebirth" era Batman or All-Star Batman....? Will some of the collections read extremely poorly, with narratives that start, stop and star again, all within the first twenty-some pages...?

The first Deathstroke collection by Priest, Pagulayan and Paz won't have that problem, at least, although I can't help but wonder if someone decided to skip Deathstroke: Rebirth #1 and start instead with Deathstroke #1 will be a little lost.

Not only is this the second chapter, but Priest isn't exactly doing any hand-holding in the way he tells his story, stringing together a series of vignettes along two time-lines that interact with one another, and leaving it to the reader to sort out exactly who is who.

This issue seemingly ends a 40-page story, with Deathstroke reuniting with Wintergreen, his family life layed-out and his extremely complex moral code demonstrated in almost byzantine fashion. Priest did some extremely cool stuff with Clock King here, although that seems to be the last we'll be seeing of him for a while; the other villain, the African warlord called "The Red Lion," seems to be sticking around though.

Priest infuses the story with a welcome, and somewhat unexpected, sense of humor, and it's very elaborately plotted in a way that can seem challenging, but also makes for a rewarding read.

Visually, I can't remember a time a Deathstroke book looked better, but I know it was more than five years ago.

This past week there was some online titterings that the villain of the next Batman movie would be Deathstroke, which seems like a terrible idea to me (He's such a...normal character, of the sort that could have appeared in pretty much any action movie of the last 40 years, that seeing him fighting a "realistic" Batman who is also rocking body armor and guns and shit just sounds...boring). If that does turn out to be the case (Sorry, Catman! Maybe next time!), then it's a good thing that DC's Deathstroke is in such solid shape at the moment.

Between collections of this and the original series, DC will certainly have enough material to put together plenty of decent trades to put in the hands of new readers curious about the character from the film.

The Hellblazer #1 by Simon Oliver, Moritat and Andre Szymanowicz

After the The Hellblazer: Rebirth special, writer Simon Oliver and artist Moritat's run on the latest volume of the constantly relaunched John Constantine ongoing series* begins in earnest.

It includes a few flashback panels to the previous series, the short-lived Constantine: The Hellblazer, which only serves to underscore how drastic the changes to the character, at least visually, were between the two series. The Constantine: The Hellblazer version, drawn by Riley Rossmo, had short, well-groomed hair and was dressed in tighter-fitting, more stylish clothes...even an actual coat, rather than a trench coat, which made him look like someone you might actually pass by on the streets of New York City, rather than a television police detective. For this series, the character's third since the cancellation of his 300-issue, 1988-2013 book, he's back to looking like the older, rumpled, ill-groomed, Vertigo-era Constantine, who wears a trench coat the way Superman and Batman wear capes.

The plot hearkens back farther still, to Constantine's original appearances as a supporting character in the pages of Alan Moore and company's Swamp Thing, as the big, green guy with red eyes and orange dialogue bubbles grows himself a body in the greenhouse behind Chas' house asking for a favor. He wants Constantine's help tracking down Abby, who is no longer where he (and we) last saw her.

To help, Constantine makes Swamp Thing ride in a cab, and introduces him to his sorceress friend who helped him get back into London in the Rebirth special.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to a pair of very long-lived supernatural beings who look like men and have differing views about how openly to act in history. In fact, when we first meet them, one of them is about to prevent Archduke Franz Ferdinand from being shot, but his brother stops him before he can stop the assassin. They appear at the end, where they exchange words about escaping the notice of the creator (Interesting point that Oliver puts in one of their mouths).

It's an interesting set-up, and Oliver writes nice Constantine/Swamp Thing banter. Additionally, Moritat's art is pretty excellent, and doesn't look much of anything like what one might expect a Constantine or a Swamp Thing comic to look like. All that said, there's nothing so remarkable about the comic to really justify its existence at this point, or to suggest that this comic will succeed where the last three failed. Rather, I would guess that after a few months of a Rebirth-inspired uptick in sales, this will fall back to the same place as the previous series, meeting the needs of the too-few John Constantine fans out there.

Constantine, like Swamp Thing, could probably both use a couple of years off at this point, and Oliver and Moritat could both use better vehicles for their considerable skills.




*It's likely growing tiresome for you guys to hear me constantly repeating the same point, but this is such a salient example that it's kind of hard to pass up. If the premise of DC Universe: Rebirth #1 and therefore the status quo of the DC Universe, is that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen characters are villains who "ruined" the DC Universe by creating The New 52 (in-story), then the most obvious reading is that Moore is in part responsible for the current sorry state of the DC Universe, relative to the pre-Flashpoint DCU. Naturally then the publisher plans to move forward with a slate of relaunches that includes...an Alan Moore creation. And one once deemed too dark and mature for DC's superhero line, and had to thus be relegated to asomewhat walled-off mature readers imprint.

Comic Shop Comics: August 31

Afterlife With Archie #10 (Archie Comics) Well this wasn't at all what I was expecting, even after more closely studying Francesco Francavilla's awesome cover and seeing all the bats on it. This $5, 33-page issue is a departure from the ongoing story arc, somewhat reminiscent of the sixth issue, which similarly shifted focus from the main cast's battle against the hordes of zombies to devote an issue to another Archie Comics character (Sabrina) and other supernatural elements (witchcraft, Cthulu,other Lovecraftian stuff). The difference between the sixth issue and the tenth, however, is that Sabrina was already an integral part of the narrative, as it was one of her spells that initiated the zombie apocalypse, and, based on the ninth issue, she would play a future role as well.

This issue, which is essentially just writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's riff on Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire (with bits of her later Lestat books and a detour into The Great Gatsby thrown in), barely connects to the ongoing plot at all. On the final page, Josie and The Pussycats' plane is set to land in Riverdale, where they were to be playing a show on Halloween, the same night as the big dance that "Jugdead" interrupted.

The other connections are merely in the way that Aguirre-Sacasa and Francavilla include another Archie Comics property into a sort of alternate horror universe.

On that fateful Halloween, a reporter is interviewing the notoriously reclusive Josie McCoy of the band Josie and The Pussycats, who, we are told are the biggest thing in music at the moment, but about who almost nothing is known. She tells him her entire life story, starting with her birth in 1906 and continuing on to her being turned into a vampire and turning her fellow vaudeville performers Melody and Valerie as well. Each decade or so they would disappear and reinvent themselves as a new band with a new name, keeping up with the changing style of music. Josie and The Pussycats is only their current incarnation; a Riverdale-based garage band six years ago whose songs went viral on YouTube and they became what they are today.

I like the idea of story, particularly the idea of an immortal pop band that's been popular since vaudeville. There's something to that immortality aspect that fits with the idea of these characters, like the other stars of various Archie Comics, as teenagers who never age a day as decades upon decades pass, although Aguirre-Sacasa doesn't really do anything with it.

I can't say I found much to like in the execution, however. Because the bulk of the book is osie narrating her life to a reporter, and because this is a 33-page comic book and not a first-person novel, it doesn't read quite so much like a story as it reads like someone summarizing a story.

Additionally, Josie and The Pussycats doesn't really seem like a 2010-2016 act, and it's weird that they took on their 1960s identity in 2010 or so, rather than in the 1960s (during that time, they were The Velvettes, with Valerie as the lead singer and Josie and Melody back-up. The other characters are basically non-entities. Josie isn't exactly a deeply fleshed out character or anything, but she's on-panel most of the time. Melody and Valerie, by contrast, barely get any dialogue; the former is just a drawing in the background, the latter only really comes up a few times when race is an issue, reducing her (unintentionally) to role of "the black one."

Granted, there are still things in here I would never have expected to see in an Archie comic, as is, ironically, now to be expected from Afterlife With Archie. Here, that would be a cameo from Charles Manson. Aguirre-Sacasa has some neat ideas about vampires, and I suppose there's still the promise that this will connect to the main narrative in the future. There were, after all, a trio of 110-year-old vampires on the ground in Riverdale when the zombie outbreak first occurred, but unlike the previous nine issues, I found this one merely interesting, as opposed to compelling.

Black Panther Vol. 1: A Nation Under Our Feet (Marvel Entertainment) I bought this today, but didn't read it. I look forward to doing so though, and I'm sure I'll tell you all about my thoughts and feelings about it after I do. So far my only comment is that Ta-Nehisi Coates' name is really, really big on the cover, and placed in a way that is unusual for the writers of most Marvel comics. Much bigger than that of his collaborator Brian Stelfreeze, who gets an "Illustrated by" credit, rather than an "and." Which seems wrong, since Coates doesn't get a "written by."

DC Comics Bombshells Annual #1 (DC Comics) Regular Bombshells writer Marguerite Bennett teams with artist Elsa Charretier for this rather excellent side-story of her ongoing "What If A Bunch of Scantily-Clad DC Superhero Women Fought World War II?" story.

The honestly rather unfortunate cover by Terry Dodson shows Bombshell Batgirl (borrowing Hawkeye's mask, apparently), and nothing else, not giving readers a very good idea of what to expect from the interior. What should you expect? A lot. Bennett's story starts in the "present" of 1941, in which Lieutenant Francine Charles, codenamed "Oracle," is given an assignment by Amanda Waller: Find the long-missing Batgirl and bring her back.

Who is Batgirl Barbara Gordoun? Her origin is explained during an 11-page sequence presented as visuals to a song that the Bombshells play for Charles. It's the sort of sequence that would appear in Bennett's monthly series, in which the backstories of various characters are generally presented in interesting ways that ape particular media and/or styles, but here in the annual she and artist Charreteir get plenty of room to make the sequence breathe.

Gordoun was a pilot who fought for the Allies in World War I, and fell in love with a German pilot, Luc "The Flying Fox" Fuchs. It took me a while to realize who he was supposed to be–his red Fokker triplane made me think of Enemy Ace and The Red Baron, in that order–but this is the Bombshells-iverse's Luke Fox, aka Batwing II, who briefly dated Barbara Gordon during the "Burnside" era of the character's solo series (Where Frankie Charles played such a big role< as well; it's interesting that Bennett looked to such recent Babs stories to inform her alternate universe take on the character). When she lost him, she traveled the world, looking for the means to restore the dead to life, and ended up a vampire (Yes, that makes two books about red-headed vampire ladies in this little stack of comics I brought home from the shop tonight). She's forms a coven with the Bombshells versions of Ravager and The Enchantress in a Belle Reeve Manor House in a Louisiana Bayou, which is frequented by Killer Croc.

It's up to the dashing Charles to find, defeat and recruit them all. Spoiler alert, she does, and, in the process, forms the Bomshells-iverse's answer to a particular DC Comics super-team, which is known to be based in a place called Belle Reeve and to include the likes of Enchantress and Croc in its ranks.

The annual was a particular delight, mainly because of how goddam charming Bennetts' fast, flirty, swashbuckling Frankie Charles is and because of how charming Charretier's artwork is. Bombshells generally has pretty great art, but because of the nature of the book, it usually has more than one artist per issue. So it's nice to see Charretier getting a whole 38-pages to herself.

There is so much to like here that I'm tempted to just scan a bunch of panels and say, "Look at this!" over and over, but perhaps I'll just say that I'd highly recommend the book, particularly as an introduction to the Bombshells ongoing, which has to my great surprise turned out to be a consistently high-quality series (And maybe, just maybe, the gayest comic book on the stands...certainly among the mainstream super-books, anyway).

Before moving on to the next book, I would like to point out two things of special note. First, I think this is the first time that Bennett has made it explicit that this alternate history is quite so alternate. In addition to all the superheroes running around, she is apparently not repeating the All-Star Squadron formula of Real WWII History + Superheroes.

There's a scene where Waller asks if Frankie uses a cane because of polio, and she responds "If it's good enough for the president, it's good enough for me." Waller replies, "I'll let her know you feel that way...Eleanor is more dangerous on two wheels than half the German army crawling along on the spiked treads of their panzers."

So apparently it is Eleanor rather than Franklin D. who is the President Roosevelt of the Bombshells-iverse...and she had polio and was confined to a wheelchair instead of him. That firs part may make some sort of sense given how diverse and cosmopolitan the WWII era of this book is compared to that of the real world...and even 2016, if we're being honest.

Second, The Ravager in this book is a prophetess, who speaks her prophecies in snippets of backwards dialogue, all smooshed together with no break between words. There's one point at which she refers to Frankie as "the new Oracle," which was apparently where Brenden Fletcher and Cameron Stewart were going with her in their Batgirl, which spent it's last half-dozen or so issues apparently assembling an awesome new Birds of Prey line-up...only to have it dashed by DC's "Rebirth" plans.

At any rate, I found it interesting that while the Earth-0 Frankie Charles never got to officially be dubbed "Oracle," the Earth-Bombshell Frankie Charles gets called "the new Oracle" here.

Gotham Academy Annual #1 (DC) Like the Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy crossover, this annual should help tide fans over until the new series launches. Regular writers Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher reunite with Adam Archer and two other pencil artists, three inkers and three colorists for an oversized adventure that demonstrates just how weird this series can be.

There's a mystery afoot at the Academy, with many students falling to a mysterious illness. The clues? A caped figure seen from afar, apparently carrying something large, rectangular and wooden. An increase in the rat population. The disappearance of all garlic from the kitchen. Sketchy guest-lecturer Derek Powers.

With Olive sidelined by the sickness, Colton and Pomeline come up wit their own theories, and Detective Club splits into two factions, each operating on their own theory. Colton thinks Powers is somehow poisoning the studnet body, while Pomeline thinks there's a vampire on the scene.

Turns out, they're both right! Powers is a supervillain (Blight from Batman Beyond, here to destroy Terry McGinnis' ancestor, who goes to school with our heroes), but there's also a vampire on campus, Gustav DeCobra (from Detective Comics #455). So yeah, Gotham Academy Annual #1 has as its villains an extremely minor vampire character from a one-off appearance in 1976 and a time-travelling super-villain from a 1999-2001 Batman cartoon. That's just the kind of book this is.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I have many of the individual issues, in large part because the extra page-count allowed for the complete story to be told all at once. One of the problems with Gotham Academy, I've found, is that it doesn't read terribly well serially. The annual, obviously, doesn't have to, as it's a nice, big, done-in-one.

Kuma Miko: Girl Meets Bear Vol. 1 (One Peace Books) I bought this today too, but haven't yet read it. I plan to as soon as I hit "publish" on this post. I just really liked the cover. And the back cover. And the promise of the solicitation copy saying it is the story of a girl raised with a talking bear trying to come to grips with modern society.

The Legend of Wonder Woman #9 (DC) This is the last issue of the series as originally announced, but apparently Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon's series has done well enough that DC has decided to continue it. As a last issue, then, this seems to reflect that a bit, as there are a few passages that seem promise events in the future.

I was pretty surprised that The Titan, the big, world-ending giant monster that Wonder Woman faces at the end of this, is apparently a sort of Manhunter android. De Liz doesn't hit a reader over the head with the allusion to Green Lantern comics, but it's there to recognize is you're familiar with that bit of lore. It's an awfully interesting bit of world-building, actually.

More delightful still is the bit at the end, where Etta manages to track down Wonder Woman after she has saved the world, but fled from her life with Steve, Etta and the Holliday Girls so as not to endanger them. When Wonder Woman, hanging out on an island, is shocked to see Etta sail up and wants to know how she found her, Etta replies:

I triangulated your location from word of your heroics. You know, "Wonder Woman Seen Punching The Lights Out of Thugs In Brazil" or "Nutty Woman Wearing American Flag Saves Kitten From Tree In Africa"...

...Not to mention your team-up with the Justice Society at the end of the war!

Get Hourman's signature for my brother, Mint, okay?

For the most part, this Wonder Woman's existence in the a DC Universe has been confined to the occasional unexpected cameo, like young reporter Perry White or Dickensian street urchin Alfred Pennyworth, but here's a pretty explicit mention of a team full of super-heroes, which should hearten the JSA-starved DC fans of the post-Flashpoint era.

I do hope we get to see that team-up, and, of course, plenty more of Wonder Woman's adventures of this era.

Now that this series...or at least this opening arc is finished, I can say with certitude that De Liz's The Legend of Wonder Woman is a pretty great Wonder Woman comic and is, as I suspected it may beafter the first few issues, finally the sort of standalone, origin story comic starring the character that can be serve as her equivalent to, say, Batman: Year One.

Saga #37 (Image Comics) Hey, ever wonder what goes on in the head of Prince Sir Robot while he masturbates? Well, thanks to his monitor face, all you need to do is look at it while he's masturbating to see, and guess what? This issue contains just such a scene!

It also contains a group of aliens that are essentially just meerkats in clothes, which of course it does.

Suicde Squad Special: War Crimes #1 (DC) This unusual one-shot raises an interesting question: Why didn't DC just invite John Ostrander back to write Suicide Squad when they relaunched it in 2011? The three Suicide Squad series that DC has published since 2011–Suicide Squad, New Suicide Squad and Suicide Squad–have had seven writers, none of whom were John Ostrander (They were, instead, Adam Glass, Dwayne Swierczynski, Ales Kot, Matt Kindt, Sean Ryan, Tim Seeley and Rob Williams.) It's curious to me that somewhere around the fourth writer or the second relaunch in a few years they didn't think to see if Ostrander wanted to come back for a while.

This $5, 38-page special is a curious comic, as it is simply a single and straightforward classic-style Suicide Squad mission with no subplots or dalliance with the inner lives of the characters. It's too short to be a graphic novel, although it's not hard to imagine Ostrander having fleshed it out into being an original graphic novel, or even a miniseries. I...don't really know why this book exists, to be frank, other than to give the guy most responsible for the current incarnation of the Suicide Squad a chance to make a little more money off of it than he's already getting in royalties form the collections...which DC is just now finally getting serious about releasing (Hopefully the less-than-warm reception of the film doesn't torpedo efforts to collect the whole series in trade!).

As Chris Sims said at Comics Alliance today, it does function quite well as a sample of what one could expect from the classic Suicide Squad collections; starring a team of characters from the movies but reflective of the original Ostrander (and, later, Ostrander/Kim Yale) run, this is a pretty good gateway comic...even if at $5, it's like one-fourth the cost of a trade.

You've got the shockingly hardcore Amanda Waller, you've got Deadshot and Captain Boomerang, you've got foreign metahumans adversaries which can only properly be met by some of America's, you've got geo-politics and international intrigue with the flimsiest veneer of fictionalization. There's even the return of the theater-style briefing room that was central to the original run of the series.

The plot here is that a group of European metahumans have kidnapped a fictional composite of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and delivered him to the Hague to be tried for war crimes, and it's up to the Squad to return him safely to the states or die trying.

The Squad, as I said, is movie-viewer friendly: Deadshot, Boomerang, Rick Flag, Harley Quinn, El Diablo and Mad Dog (Guess which one gets killed in action!). The artwork is by Gus Vazquez and Carlos Rodriguez, colored by Gabe Eltaeb, and its among the best Suicide Squad art I've seen of the post-Flashpoint period. The character designs are mostly composites of their original looks, New 52 looks and movie looks, so that pretty much all of them are easily identifiable, no matter where you know them from. The art is overall bright, clear and easy to read: Unlike just all of the Suicide Squad comics I've read in the last five years, it wasn't an unpleasant chore making my way through this.

It is perhaps unfortunate that this is such a standalone book, though, as those are the kinds of books a lot of super-comics readers tend to ignore, or at least not prioritize in the way they do the "main" books. This isn't the current Suicide Squad book, after all, nor does it appear to have anything in it that will impact that book.

It is a pretty damn good, 1980s-style action comic, though, with fine characterization from the guy who re-invented so many of these characters.

These are some of the Marvel collections I've read lately:

All-New Wolverine Vol. 1: The Four Sisters: Thor is a white woman now. Captain America is a black man. The Hulk is a still a big green guy, but now he's a Korean-American teenager when he's de-Hulked. Spider-Man is still a white guy, but there's also a second Spider-Man, who is a half-black, half-Latino teenager (and there are, like, three female Spider-People, each starring in their own comic book series). Pretty soon, Iron Man is going to be a black teenage girl.

While one could argue the merits of the particular method for increasing the diversity of Marvel's heroes–I've personally never thought that simply handing the codenames and costumes of middle-aged white guys to black characters, for example, was the best way to go about creating compelling superheroes of color–but Marvel Comics has clearly been devoted to creating a line-up of heroes far more reflective of the world we live in today, rather than the world of 1960s pop culture, from which all these characters originally sprang (or re-sprang, in Cap's case). As far as I've been able to tell, it's all worked pretty well so far, in large part because so many of those comics have been so good.

The one example of this diversification-through-legacy trend I personally was the most ambivalent about, however, was that of turning Wolverine into a teenage girl.

Marvel killed/"killed" Wolverine quite a while ago, in a sort of temporary death that seems way too easy to come back from to create even the illusion of semi-permanence (He lost his healing factor, and then was encased in molten adamantium, which cooled around him, not unlike a fly in amber. It doesn't take much imagination to think of ways to get him out of that situation and back into circulation when it becomes desirable to do so).

Wolverine may have been popular, but he wasn't the sort of hero who played a big, symbolic role within the Marvel Universe (like Captain America), nor did he have a particular job that couldn't be left vacant (like Doctor Strange, The Sorcerer Supreme), nor did he have a particular turf that needed the protection of a particular superhero (like Daredevil or Spider-Man). In other words, Wolverine is not a character that anyone would need to replace for any reason upon his death.

Marvel replaced him with two Wolverines, though. The first is an alternate universe version of himself from the pages of Old Man Logan, who, given the fact that Wolverine is already an immortal character, is basically just Wolverine with different hair. And then they made Laura Kinney, Wolverine's clone with the always lame codename X-23, Wolverine, giving her Wolvie's blue-and-yellow X-Men costume.

In the broadest sense, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in-universe, and I don't think there was a very convincing rationale ever offered in-story, although in terms of marketing it makes perfect sense. It gives Marvel a literally "all-new" Wolverine to star in All-New Wolverine, it finally gives Laura a superhero name rather than a number (Sorry anyone who was hoping she would eventually take the name Wolverine Girl or Wolverina) and it makes for an interesting juxtaposition with the time-lost, teenage X-Men that Brian Michael Bendis introduced to the modern Marvel Universe during his All-New X-Men/Uncanny X-Men run (Laura appears alongside most of them in the pages of the rebooted second volume of All-New X-Men).

All that said, and given my general apathy towards Marvel's mutants (surpassed only by my apathy for its Inhumans), I was prepared to skip this series entirely–until my friend pretty much insisted that I read it, as it was such a great comic book and, in her words, maybe her favorite comic book of the moment (Of course, she doesn't read Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe, the actual greatest comic book of the moment*).

So writer Tom Taylor is teamed with artists David Lopez and David Navarrot (with Nathan Fairbain on colors) and tasked with turning X-teen X-23 into the new legacy version of Wolverine. The first six issues comprise a rather tidy single story arc, with just the last two pages of cliffhanger providing any kind of loose end. Tear that page out of the trade, and this reads like a complete graphic novel.

Taylor wisely makes this story more about Laura's past than Logan's, and our first, issue-length adventure features her attempts to take down an assassin in Paris, debuting her new Wolverine costume and getting an assist from fellow All-New X-Men and boyfriend Angel (the teenage one from the past, now with fire wings, not the grown-up version who...actually, I lost track of him again. Sorry).

It's a pretty great issue–although it would have annoyed the fuck out of me if I paid $4 for an action scene and had to wait a month for the next scene–detailing Laura's common powers with all-old Wolverine and a major thing that will separate them. This Wolverine, though built to be a weapon just like the original, won't kill. As a hallucination of her clone-daddy tells her, "You're the best there is at what you do...but that doesn't mean you have to do it." It also illustrates the thing that makes the book a worthwhile read: Its sense of humor (The scene where Angel expresses his relief that Laura did not die was pretty priceless, and the point at which I felt the book hook me).

The assassin, it turns out, is a clone of Laura...of sorts. She was part of a series of Laura clones, all of whom look like her, and all of whom were trained to be killers like her, but none of whom have the claws and healing factor. They've also got a fast-approaching expiration date, and they've formed a sort of terrorist cell to lash out at the world before they go.

Meanwhile, the shady company that created them, Alchemax, wants them back, and they want Laura's help in doing so. Naturally, she's torn, but agrees to help, seeing as how her clone sisters are a terrorist cell assassinating folks now.

The rest of the volume then is concerned with Laura's attempts to find and save her sisters, and her trying to figure out who the worse of the two groups of bad guys are, and which she should throw in with. Spoiler alert: She sides with the clones, who have been through the same horrible stuff she has but want to fight back in a proportion greater than that which Laura does at this point in her life.

In a sense, it's almost a cliche sort of Wolverine story, despite the fact that this Wolverine isn't the old one, but Laura's struggles to be better than the weapon she was made to be, than the weapon she's been and than the weapon Wolverine himself all-too willingly was, gives this a somewhat different spin. As does its sense of humor, much of which comes from the very welcome (if early) guest-star appearance of first Dr. Strange and then The Wasp. And the near-constant presence of Gabby, the youngest and most innocent of Laura's clone sisters, who is to this book as Molly was to Runaways. (Taskmaster also makes an appearance, and I've gotta call bullshit on how thoroughly and how quickly Laura kicks his ass. I'll buy his inability to see the foot-claw coming, but the rest? I guess we'll just put that down to Laura having home-book advantage...as well as being a hero fighting a villain).

On the subject of foot-claws, one of the many things I never really liked about the character was that in what seemed to be a rather random differentiation from Logan, she had two rather than three hand claws, and one claw in each of her feet (Similarly, Wolverine's biological son Daken, who I have also lost track of, had two claws in each of his hands, and one in each of his wrists.)

Taylor and company rather consistently make good use of those foot claws throughout, essentially retroactively justifying the character's original design. If you have a super-power, however weird it might seem, than you have to use that super-power pretty regularly, and it has to make sense within that story. In fact, I'm pretty sure Anton Chekov wrote something about foot-claws once...

Captain America: Sam Wilson–Not My Captain America: Remember the last collection Marvel released featuring the newer, Sam Wilson version of the character? The entire six-issue, 2015 run by Rick Remender, Stuart Immonen and company? (Sure you do; we talked about it right here fairly recently.)

Well, you can go ahead and forget about it. That "ongoing" was canceled with the rest of Marvel's line for a few months last year as part of Secret Wars, and then came back with a new number #1 issue–and, in this case, a new creative team, new title and new direction–and is all but ignoring the last comic featuring this character with a big "1" on the spine.

It's not that writer Nick Spencer is contradicting or ignoring the events of Remender's run miniseries All-New Captain America, exactly. Former Falcon Sam Wilson is still the new Captain America. His avian partner Redwing is still ambiguously vampiric (just like Jubilee!). Sam is still working with Misty Knight. Rather, Spencer is ignoring the cliffhangers that Remender's All-New ended with.

Those cliffhangers? First, that Hydra had so thoroughly infiltrated the world that there was now a Hydra agent on every single superhero team. That's a fun idea, and could have had the makings of a fun crossover story, leaving fans to wonder which member of The X-Men, The New Avengers, The Pet Avengers, etc were secretly bad guys working for the Nazi analogues. The other? SHIELD told Sam that Misty Knight, who had claimed to be working for them throughout the entire story arc, was not an agent of SHIELD, implying that OMG she too might be Hydra!

It takes Spencer and Daniel Acuna, who draws the first three issues of the new series, all of two issues to set-up the new status quo which, to be fair, does have Wilson quitting his formal affiliation with SHIELD after they tied up all the Hydra business (Whatever Remender had been planning then seems to either happened off-panel in the months that passed between the end of All-New Captain America and the launch of Captain America: Sam Wilson, or Remender plans to go forward with it somewhere else at some point).

None of that is necessarily a bad thing, just a rather odd thing, and it further makes reading (certain) Marvel comics difficult. Like, Marvel's frequency of reboots have gotten to the point that it's quite possible for a book to leave an interested reader before the reader can even consider dropping the book.

All that said, I really rather liked Spencer's take on the character, which involves not only writing Sam Wilson as a very, very different Captain America, but one who doesn't really struggle with the legacy in a way that too few comics starring (let's face it, temporary) legacy characters ever do.

Spencer also rather boldly has his Captain America, and his Captain America comic book, wade into politics. At least, that seems like a pretty bold move considering Marvel's general reticence when it comes to publishing anything that can be seen as political, and thus offensive to some (I'm thinking especially of the scene in the first issue of Fear Itself in which writer Matt Fraction seemed to be discussing the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" nonsense without actually using any details, just enough to imply that he was writing about it).

Sure, Spencer is still somewhat coy about Sam's specific politics–he never uses the words liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican–but it's not too difficult to see where Wilson stands on many issues, and to figure out what those positions are in contrast to the people who are opposed to him, be they passersby, TV talking heads or villains.

There's a pretty great passage in which Sam narrates the hell out of the dawning realization that America was just as divided as ever, and that even though Steve Rogers may have stayed above the fray, that doesn't mean he has to: "If I really believed I could make a difference–If I really believed I could change some minds, do some good–then wasn't I obligated to try?"

And then there's this great transition from the last panel on one page to the first on another. In one panel, Sam is calling a press conference, and stands at a podium, saying "Good evening, I'm gonna read from a statement–"

And in the next, we see a bunch of headlines reacting to that statement, like "Cap Versus The Constitution?," "Sam Wilson: Captain Anti-America" and so on.

Of course, in other places, it's much more clear exactly what Sam might think about certain issues. His first case is busting The Serpent Society (The Marvel Universe's KKK stand-ins), who are attacking illegal immigrants trying to cross the southern border (although, this being a superhero comic, it's a little more complicated and weird than it at first seems). Later, the major villain of this first volume, a ruthless businessman literally dressed like a snake, expresses a bunch of Randian/Republican economic philosophy, culminating with "someone has to make America marvelous again–"

So yeah, not too subtle. And all the better for the (relative) lack of subtlety.

These six-issues basically constitute one big story arc, establishing the still new-ish Cap's new status quo.

Without SHIELD funding, he's set up shop with a small team that includes Misty Knight, former D-Man Dennis Dunphy (in a new, "cooler" costume with no mask, but a sweet beard; I liked the old look better, and with Wolverine dead and Wolverine II rocking the yellow and gold, this is the perfect time for Dunphy to bring back his Wolverine mask!), what appears to be another comic book analogue to the hacker group Anonymous (here it's The Whisperer**) and...Redwing, sometimes ("Redwing Approval Still Sky High At 93 Perecent" a headline shortly after the panel revealing all Cap's bad press assures us).

Not unlike what he was doing with Luke Cage's Mighty Avengers, this Cap is trying to be a little more of the people, and is fighting crime and injustice via hotline tips. The first takes him to Arizona, where he encounters the Sons of the Serpent.

Turns out they are working with a minor Marvel mad scientist who is splicing people with animal DNA, which will gradually bring about the new Falcon...and, awesomely enough, brings about the return of Capwolf. Even more awesomely, Sam Wilson temporarily being a werewolf is here treated like little more than if he had a head cold. It's nothing to angst about, it's nothing to even worry about, Sam Wilson is just randomly going to finish off the story arc as a giant werewolf, giving Misty something to make fun of him about for the remaining four issues of the book.

And it turns out the mad scientist is working for Serpent Solutions, snake-themed supervillain Viper's reconstitution of The Serpent Society as a slightly-more-evil-than-average corporate entity with a finger in everything, leading to plenty of fun visuals like Viper on the golf course, cartoon golf clothes on over his snake suit, and the line about how America needs someone to make it great marvelous again, "and I say I'm just the super villain in a snake suit to do it."

It is fantastic.

Spencer's script is funny, to the point that I would be tempted to call the book an outright comedy, but when compared to some of the other books Marvel is currently publishing (i.e. most of the rest of those in this post), it has more in common with their traditional fare. Rather, this is a superhero comic book with a sense of humor...as well as a rather unique point of view. It's Spencer's take on the Marvel Universe (previously seen in books like The Superior Foes of Spider-Man and Ant-Man/Astonishing Ant-Man), only here applied to one of the characters at the center of that universe.

The artwork is a bit of a step down from what Stuart Immonen was bringing to Sam Wilson's adventures in the previous Captain America comic. It takes four-to-five artists to draw just six issues; Acuna handling the first three (with a "with" credit on #3 going to Mike Choi), Paul Renaud draws #4 and #5 and Joe Bennett and Belardino Brabo pencil and ink the sixth issue.

Based on their past work, I'm not a huge fan of either Acuna or Bennett, but in both cases this is by far the best work I've seen from either. Surprisingly, it all kind of flows together remarkably well, too. I prefer a comic like this to have a single artist, with a strong "voice" that allows the artist to make the book as much theirs visually as the writer might make it theirs verbally. That's gotten harder and harder to find these days, and sometimes the best we can hope for is a single artist per arc. We don't really get that here either, but, like I said, everyone involved in drawing or coloring this book does a pretty remarkable job, and they all blend together better than expected.

I'd highly recommend this volume...to anyone who likes fun and/or funny superhero comics, regardless of how they might normally feel about Captain American and/or Sam Wilson.

Howard The Duck Vol. 1: Duck Hunt: Because Marvel just can't help but relaunch their books at an alarming frequency, the second collection of writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Joe Quinones' Howard The Duck comic is labeled "Volume 1." Whatever happened to Howard The Duck #1-#5, the first Howard The Duck #1-#5 of the Zdarsky/Quinones run, not the second Howard The Duck #1-#5, which also exist? They are in Howard The Duck Vol. 0: What the Duck. Wouldn't it be easier to label the first volume with "Vol. 1" and the second volume "Vol. 2"? Yes!

But if there's one thing that Marvel, as a publisher, is opposed to, it is the logical use of numbers. If there are two things they are opposed to, the other is making it easy for readers to find and enjoy their comic books.

And so welcome to the second collection of the Zdarsky/Quinones Howard The Duck comic, Howard The Duck Vol. 1.

I'm going to go lie down for a few minutes.

...

Okay, I'm back.

So it's eight months after the events of Secret Wars, and there are several changes in Howard's life, although Zdarsky and Quinones will explain those in the course of this volume. It opens "three months" ago, at the conclusion of the Howard The Duck/Unbeatable Squirrel Girl crossover, which is the last story in this collection.

Not feeling as fulfilled in his new life as a private investigator, even with the help of "Aunt" May Parker as his administrative assistant or Skrull-shape-shifted into a tattoo artist Tara as his friend, Howard decides to try and return to his own dimension. To do this, he consults with Doctor Strange (who really gets around, it seems) and then takes The Abundant Glove to The Nexus of All Realities in Man-Thing's Citrusville swamp.

Things...don't go well, as Howard and Tara encounter first The Wizard and Titania, and then female clones of Howard and Rocket Raccoon (made to be breeding partners for them by The Collector when he briefly had the pair of them in the previous collection) and then they all get involved in a big, weird, epic space adventure that ultimately includes The Silver Surfer, a would-be Herald of Galactus named Scout, Galactus himself, The Guardians of The Galaxy (now up one Thing and down one Peter Quill) and, of course, a fight with The Collector.

It's all as weird and wild as one might expect, especially since all of that takes only about four issues. As he proved so able of doing last issue, Zdarsky manages to fill just about every panel of every page with a joke, deeply embedding Howard in the Marvel Universe without ever really resorting to parody of the characters and the setting as the source of the humor. The Marvel Universe, particularly after so many decades of existence, is such a weird place that one need not make fun of it to find the humor in it. One need only have its characters observe that strangeness as they wander around in it.

Zdarsky also does a fine job of nailing Howard's particularly jaded voice, which makes the character a particularly good guide to the universe (And, as annoying as Marvel's renumbering practices are, Howard, like The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, at least observes that as well; Quinones' variant cover for the first issue replaces the new tag-line "Trapped In A World He's Grown Accustomed To", itself a riff on the original tag-line, with "Trapped In A Renumbering He Never Asked For!" A tiny little "Again" appears beneath the "#1").

Howard's attempt to get home, which takes he and Tara and their allies to a high-stakes battle in outer-space, is interrupted by a one-issue origin story of the new humanoid duck and raccoon characters, drawn by Vernoica Fish. Quinones draws the rest of the book...except for the Erica Henderson-drawn Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #6, which is included herein, as it is one half of the "Animal House" crossover between the two.

It should perhaps prove unsurprising that a crossover between two of Marvel's three best comics at the moment (Patsy Walker, obviously), is pretty great.

Howard is hired to find a missing cat, and since all cats look the same to him, he tries to abduct Nancy Whitehead's cat...but Nancy is the roommate of Doreen Green, AKA Squirrel Girl. Then Kraven the Hunter rolls up in the Kra-Van, tosses Howard in a sack and takes him to the estate of an eccentric, superhero memorabilia-collecting lady who would like to hunt "the most dangerous game."

But since hunting people is illegal, she's decided to hunt potentially-dangerous game that falls into a legal gray area, like people-ish animals or animal-ish people. So when Squirrel Girl goes to rescue Howard, she finds him imprisoned alongside Rocket Raccoon, Beast of the X-Men, a not-even-disguised version of the cat from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's We3 and Weapon II, which is basically Wolverine, if Wolverine were a talking squirrel rather than a mutant (He's got the little Barry Windsor-Smith eye-piece and wires and everything).

Squirrel Girl and Kraven find themselves in the hunt as well, and it is awesome. There's so many great things in this, but probably my favorite part is the gag on the last page, which comes after Kraven has decided to re-think his life, and becomes a hunter-of-hunters. It sure seems easier than hunting Spider-Man!

The crossover spans an issue of each of the titles, and they are each done by their respective creative teams. It's pretty damn weird to see someone other than Henderson drawing Squirrel Girl these days, since her version of the character is so incredibly distinct (especially compared to the Barbie doll figured-version of the older Great Lakes Avengers comics), but I enjoyed seeing the characters in the hands of the other creative teams and, especially, seeing Zdarsky trying to do those weird "alt-text" style jokes that Unbeatable Squirrel Girl writer Ryan North does in his book.

As I read both Howard and Squirrel Girl in trade, I guess that means I'll be paying for the same content twice, but heck, at least the content is good content.

Ms. Marvel Vol. 5: Super Famous: Good news! While Marvel may have idiotically rebooted the Ms. Marvel ongoing after Secret Wars despite the fact that nothing at all about the creative team, the cast or direction of the book had changed, when it came time to collect the second issues of Ms. Marvel numbered 1-6, they kept the number of the collections, meaning that Ms. Marvel's sizable collection-reading audience need not do the mental gymnastic required of readers of, say, Mark Waid's run on Daredevil. Huzzah!

This volume picks up months after the end of Secret Wars, as each of the post-Secret Wars books did. There were two big changes in Kamala Khan's life during that time, one of which took up so much of her time and mental energy that she barely noticed the other. That first is that she joined the Avengers (the All-New, All-Different squad, which was and still is the flagship team at the moment), while the other is that her best friend-with-an-unrequited crush on her went ahead and fell in love with a classmate. That Bruno now had a girlfriend is something that Kamala was literally the last person to know about, which is a neat, somewhat sly way to handle the time-jump Marvel's books were all forced to incorporate, and of illustrating the confused world of teenage relationships (Despite having rebuffed him and all but encouraged him to find someone else, Kamala is nevertheless hurt, annoyed and confused that Bruno actually went ahead and did just that).

These six issues, drawn by regular artists Takeshi Miyazawa and Adrian Alphona, plus Nico Leon, roughly divide into two storylines. In the first, drawn by Miyazawa and Alphona, we are introduced to Kamala's new, Avenging status quo (Tony drops her off at her house after missions, and gives her advice on her physics homework) and her slow-dawning realization that Bruno has a new girlfriend. Meanwhile, she fights the forces of gentrification–quite literally, since this particular case of gentrification includes mind-control and is being carried out by a villainous organization (G. Willow Wilson does a pretty great job on this story, making the driving conflict that is at once both a real-world concern and a silly supervillain plot, in the best tradition of old-school "relevant" comics).

In the second, Kamala gets still more obligations when her older brother seeks to marry, and she decides the best way to try and be in several places at once is to 3D printer clones of herself. It obviously goes completely wrong, but in a rather amusing fashion that can only be sorted out by the intervention of her hero Carol Danvers and a hug from Iron Man. In this story, Wilson gets to simultaneously work Kamala's family dramedy with superhero shenanigans about as hard as she has yet during her run on the title (Er, including the previous volume, not just the first six issues of the new volume).

The artwork is a little more all over the place than I'd like, but all three artists are really great ones. And color artist Ian Herring, who handles all six issues, does as good a job as possible of making it look as if all of the pages herein belong together. I most enjoyed Miyazawa's contributions. Not only do we get to see him draw the whole All-New, All-Different Avengers line-up in his particular style, but he does a fine job of presenting a frazzled Kamala visually; her hair is a mess throughout the first issue, and she looks delightfully out of it.

Leon, however, probably gets the most fun bits, as it's that second half of the book devoted to Kamala's ever-increasing number of dim-witted, barely functioning clones, all of which are drawn with an emoticon-simple expression, gifted with a word or two of vocabulary, and subject to horrifyingly melt at the most inopportune times.

Marvel's got so many high-quality funny books these days, but Wilson and company's is perhaps the best of those that keeps one foot in the serious supehero genre. Ms. Marvel is the Spider-Man of the 21st Century. Which I'm fairly certain I've said about at least one other super-character before, but unlike that character, Ms. Marvel is a Marvel character. So maybe I should say instead that "Ms. Marvel is the publisher's Spider-Man for the 21st Century."

Whatever. It's fun, it's funny, it's melodramatic, it takes superheroics more seriously than the publisher's outright comedic titles, it's always well-drawn–it's pretty much exactly what one would want from a superhero comic book.

Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat! Vol.1: Hooked on a Feline: I think a great deal of the delight I took in this comic book came from the fact that unlike every other book on this list, I had no idea what to suspect from it. I wasn't familiar with the work of either writer Kate Leth or artist Brittney Williams, and while I liked Hellcat because of her weird, real-world origin and her association with various Marvel characters I've liked over the years (Son of Satan, The Defenders and She-Hulk, whose last title she was featured in), the last Hellcat comic I read was the baffling Kathryn Immonen miniseries.

As it turns out, Leth is a hilarious writer, who packs the book with jokes broad and subtle, and takes the same approach to Marvel Univers humor that Chip Zdarsky takes in Howard The Duck. As I said above, the setting is so weird that it's pretty much inherently hilarious; one need only frame it correctly to mine it for comedy. And mine Leth does.

And as for Williams, she is an amazing artist, her style looking akin to a compromise between those of Erica Henderson and Gurihiru, retaining flexibility to be tweaked in either direction as needed, so that the characters can occasionally become even more cute than they are usually designed, or even slip into super-deformity.

And as for Hellcat? Leth incorporates her real-world origin as the star of a pre-Marvel, Archie-like teen gag comic into the present storyline, incorporating characters from those comics into this one (Her rival Hedy Wolfe has control of those comics, and is re-publishing them to great financial success, which Patsy is unable to share in; in a perfect world, Marvel too would be doing so, or at least publishing a story per issue as a back-up, just as Archie Comics has been doing in their rebooted line). The story picks up right where we last saw her, working as a freelance P.I. for She-Hulk's firm...until she's not.

She has a business plan, though, a sort of staffing agency for super-powered people who don't want to use their powers to either fight or commit crime, but, in the meantime, she takes a series of low-paying jobs that she is terribly suited for. Meanwhile, an obscure Asgardian villain is in town, and it's up to Patsy to take her down.

While she reconnects with old friends and makes new ones, She-Hulk, Valkyrie, Doctor Strange (him again!), Howard The Duck and Tara all guest-star, and a bunch of supeheroines put in cameos when Patsy invites them to lunch.

That accounts for the first five issues. The sixth and final one collected here is a done-in-one drawn and colored by Natasha Allegri, who has a perfectly darling, manga-inspired style that makes everyone look simultaneously completely adorable and like they are from modern fan art from some lost 1970s children's cartoon from Japan no one's ever heard of.

In that story, Patsy and her new friends cajole She-Hulk into joining them for a day off at Coney Island, where they run afoul of Arcade, and must best him in various deadly amusement games or forfeit their lives. As darling as Allegri's Pasty and company might be, it's her Arcade and her Jessica Jones that are really mind-bending, given the fact that those aren't characters anyone ever sees in a style anything like this. Also, She-Hulk reverts to her Jen form, which...I can't actually remember the last time I saw her not Hulked out.

The only thing wrong with these first six issues? Williams' cover for the sixth showed Hercules on a float in The Mermaid Parade, and yet Herc is nowhere to be found in the interiors. Something to work into future issues, ladies.

And speaking of covers, the variants filling up the final pages of this collection include variants by some of my favorite artists: Sophe Campbell, Erica Henderson, George Perez, Marguerite Sauvage and Kevin Wada.

If you're a fan of any of the books covered in this post and haven't read Patsy Walker yet, please do so. You'll love it.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now: Despite the cover of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 (Vol. 2), which Marvel also used for the cover of this particular collection of the series, The Avengers team that dominates so much of it don't really appear within the book much.

Squirrel Girl may (rather incongruously) be part of Robert Da Costa's A.I.M./Avengers merger team (the one appearing in New Avengers at the moment), but that is really only acknowledged at the end of the first issue herein, in which Dorreen takes her friends Nancy, Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boy with her to Avengers Island's food court, which is full of restaurants with Avengers pun names (Soup Thor Salad, for example, or Foods That Are Rich In Iron, Man). So if you were hoping to see artist Erica Henderson draw the hell out of all those new New Avengers, sorry. (Speaking of the cover for the second Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1, it bears the words "Only Our Second #1 This Year So Far" on it; again, at least they have a sense of humor about it...and at least Marvel put the numeral "3" on the spine rather than "1," making this an easy book to read in trade.)

The first issue finds Doreen Green getting a new, Nancy-designed costume and a visit from her mom. The last 40-pages are devoted to the "Animal House" crossover with Howard The Duck, which I mentioned above. In between them is a fantastically convoluted time travel story involving Squirrel Girl's first and perhaps greatest enemy: Doctor Doom. Through a series of weird circumstances, Squirrel Girl finds herself marooned in the 1960s. She quickly discovers that she's not the only person from her time period there, and not only must she find away to return to her own era, but she must save the time stream itself from Doom, who is armed with Doomipedia, which tells him exactly how he conquered the world...and, of course, proceeded to name everything after himself.

It's...complicated. But Ryan North sure writes a hell of a Doctor Doom, his arrogance both perfectly, hilariously demonstrated and, here, the key to his defeat. It's buried in one of those computer programming jokes I don't really get, because I am dumb, but unlike every other computer-smart person, Doom never learned a traditional programming language, but rather invented his own, where all of the components are variations of "Doom," meaning a bunch of computer programming students speak a language he can't comprehend.

It is awesome, and there is so much good stuff in the Squirrel Girl Vs. Doctor Doom story arc that it rewards multiple reading. The first time is, after all ,full of some very weird, very unexpected surprises.

I remain convinced that the "Unbeatable" in the title doesn't refer to the character Squirrel Girl herself, but the comic book Squirrel Girl itself, which really can't be beat.


While I'm at it, I suppose I should link to reviews of other recent-ish releases I recently read (and reviewed) that are also Marvel collections. I covered Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Vol. 1: BFF and All-New, All-Different Avengers Vol. 1: Magnificent Seven for School Library Journal's Good Comics For Kids blog. They're both pretty good, the former more so than the latter, as the Avengers book has some slight structural problems. All in all though, Marvel seems to be in a pretty good place creatively these days, at least with books for younger readers and lower-tier characters (Other parts of the line are, of course, a mess).



*Please note that Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe was still being published both at the time my friend said that and at the time I wrote this review, which has been sitting around in a draft for a while now. I suppose that I could change that now that Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe has ended, but why pass up an opportunity to remind everyone that Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe was pretty much the best thing ever?

**Whose true identity was revealed during the "Standoff" crossover story, which I read after I wrote the Captain America review above, but before I posted this post.