DC's September Previews Reviewed

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







And speaking of nice covers...wow.







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

Black Adam. Did I guess right?







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

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





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


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









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

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

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

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








Ha! Nice.








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


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







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


Well, J. Torres says it’s good.

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

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

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








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


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

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








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


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

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








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


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

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






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


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

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








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


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

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








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

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








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







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


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

Tony Stark...

...is in denial.



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

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

Neither is this exchange



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




No, this is the best part:

J. Torres prefers blondes

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

Film Review: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

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

Click on over to DoneWaiting.com for my review.

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

And Galactus? Well, he looked awesome, anyway.

What did you guys think?

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

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

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

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

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



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

Weekly Haul: June 13th

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hated her the instant I saw her.

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

—Inertia doing a body shot off of Mirror Master.

—Mirror Master using the words “Weddin’ Tackle”

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

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

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

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

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



There were some positives, however:

—A demon made out of babies

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

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




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




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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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

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

Well at least she's not doing laundry...

Whew! Just in time! The comics blogosphere had juuuusst about exhausted its last bit of rage over the "Heroes for Hentai" cover, when Marvel released an image from the upcoming fifth printing of the hardcover collection of Marvel Zombies, a rather clever (and phenomenally successful) series which posits a world in which the Marvel heroes have become zombies.

It was Mark Millar's idea originally, in the pages of his brief Ultimate Fantastic Four run, and it was a great one: Marvel Superheroes + Zombies = A License To Print Money.

Part of the fun for fans was that each issue that sold out necessitated another printing, which sent the cover artist Arthur Suydam back to his drawing board, to come up with a zombified version of a classic Marvel cover.

I can't believe they're using this one though.

The fact that it depicts the corpse of a 15-year-old girl, or that it takes its cover image from a series targeted at young girls aside, I find it hard to believe that the cover of Mary Jane #2, from way back when the ongoing Mary Jane was downgraded into a miniseries (and, if I remember correctly, was later upgraded to a series of miniseries, and then relaunched as a new ongoing under the new title of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane), is a classic Marvel cover. I imagine most of the customers of Marvel's superhero line of comics don't read the Mary Jane books, which occur in thier own little pocket universe, one that's neither "616" nor Ultimate nor Marvel Adventures, nor would they even recognize the source material.

So, why use it at all?

Is Marvel seriously out of classic cover images already? Or is this an attempt to capitalize on what I imagine must be the very, very, very small audience of zombie fetishists out there? Hell, they did a cover just for the tentacle porn fans, so maybe they'd do one for the zombie fetishists as well.

So, anyone want to place bets on what the inevitable next zombified cover image will be? Something from Power Pack or something from Franklin Richards?

If they used a zombified version of the "comiquette" or of the Heroes for Hire #13 cover on the sixth printing, or a future printing of the trade paper back, that would would actually be pretty cool. That would show that Marvel has a sense of humor about its own decadence, and would acknowledge said decadence's existence. "Oh, this image of Mary Jane washing laundry offends you girls? Well, what do you think of this image of a zombified Mary Jane washing laundry? Ha ha, even death is no escape from laundry and pleasuring a man! Ha ha!"

I'd certainly welcome that sort of reaction over another, "Oh, this image of the rotting corpse of a 15-year-old girl we culled from the cover of a series we commissioned specifically to attract young women to our products offends you ladies? What, seriously? Gosh, we never thought of that. You're probably just reading too much into it."

You Know Who Should Write Wonder Woman? Adam Warren

I am not, nor have I ever been, a DC Comics editor. But I do have a lot of opinions about DC Comics, and I do have a blog, two things that, in combination, inevitably leads to a lot of armchair editing of DC Comics, which is practically the same thing, only I don’t get paid and my opinions and decisions are never reflected in the actual comics.

But other than that? Pretty much the same thing.

With my credentials thus established, please, take it from me—one of the hardest decisions DC editors have to make is which creators to hire to work on their characters, and these decisions become all the more difficult when it comes to a character like Wonder Woman, which is one of the company’s (and comics’) most recognizable and important characters, but lacks the resiliency of, say, Batman or Superman, characters who can support a dozen simultaneous titles.

For example, say you’ve just done away with your multiverse in a year-long series, and you’re going to completely reboot Wonder Woman’s fictional history, divorcing her from her World War II roots in an attempt to make her character as timeless as that of Batman, Superman or Spider-Man. Who do you trust with this monumental task? Whoever it was that said, “Why not let George Perez handle it?” seems to have chosen wisely; Perez lost a bit of the good stuff—Steve Trevor as love interest and Etta Candy as sidekick—but otherwise did a pretty perfect job.

Or say you’re relaunching your entire line of universe comic books with a reader-friendly event (Like “One Year Later”) flowing out of a soft(er) continuity reboot (The Infinite Crisis multiverse re-creation), who do you trust to make sense out of these various shuffles between what’s canon and what’s not, while simultaneously redefining the character for a new generation of readers? Maybe that guy who writes for TV, and did a 12 issue delay-plagued Marvel maxiseries once?

You see how simply choosing the wrong writer can lead to a real mess, like the one the Wonder Woman monthly is currently in (Relaunching with a new number one in June of last year, only three issues shipped in 2006, and an accelerated publishing schedule is just now catching the title up to where it should be—#12—although sales have fallen from over 130,000 with #1 to about 59,000 with #8).

Fortunately, there’s an easier way for DC editors to make these decisions. They could just ask me who should write their titles, and I’ll tell them.

For example, who should write Wonder Woman?

Adam Warren, that’s who.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Gail Simone has already been announced as the next regular writer of the series, a state of affairs I’m eagerly looking forward to, and doing these Wonder Woman Wednesdays posts as a means of counting down to.

But I still say Adam Warren for Wonder Woman. If not the monthly, then certainly on a one-shot. Or miniseries. Or original graphic novel. Or as the next writer of Wonder Woman, after Simone leaves.

What would make Warren such an ideal Wonder Woman writer? Wait, did I say writer? I did, didn’t I? Well, I didn’t mean he should just write it, he should also pencil the title.

Let’s take Warren’s art first. I’ve always enjoyed Warren’s art style, which is obviously quite heavily influenced by anime and manga (and was decades ago, back when most of America’s biggest digest-devouring Naruto-ites hadn’t yet learned to read). I think it’s safe to say that American readers are now quite ready to embrace such an artistic style en masse, and that Warren’s manga-esque look is a style that is probably even more likely to appeal to more people than even the work of such popular past Wonder Woman artists as Perez, Phil Jimenez and John Byrne.

And it’s worth noting that, with Warren, it’s not just an affectation, a cynically adopted surface gloss to his work—the man understands the speed line, the big eye, the dewy eye and the reversion to super-deformity, but he also understands how to build a page, how to progress a story from panel to panel and how to lead a reader's eyes through his pages. He can draw the way manga artists draw, not just draw images that resemble those drawn by manga artists (If that makes sense).

What would a Adam Warren Wonder Woman look like?

I have no idea; I couldn’t find any images of a Warren Wonder Woman on the world wide web, but I did find these, all from his deviantART gallery, and they at least give us a good idea of how cool a Warren drawn Wonder Woman comic would likely be:



(There you have a drawing of a super-strong, flying DC superheroine who likes wearing red, white and blue.)




(Here’s Marvel’s Valkyrie, who wears a bathing suit and bracelets, not unlike Wondy.)




(And there’s a convention sketch of Medusa, a mythological character who has come to blows with Wonder Woman on more than one occasion.)


But let’s focus on writing for a second.

Warren’s latest non-Iron Man work has been Empowered, which stars a superheroine with an unfortunate habit of getting tied up and gagged during almost every adventure. In other words, her adventures tend to involve an awful lot of bondage, as do Wonder Woman’s. Or, at least, as Wonder Woman’s adventures used to—the innocent bondage of the Golden Age Wonder Woman was one of the elements Perez ditched in his relaunch, and which never seemed to return to the post-Crisis Wonder Woman’s adventures to the same extent that it was present in the Marston/Peters stories.

As anyone who’s read Empowered—and if you haven’t, you should; how many times do I have to recommend the damn book before you read it?—can attest, Warren has a fairly unique ability to be both sexually exploitive and respectful at the exact same time. His characters are in on the joke, and he lets us in on the joke, and his bondage and other sexual imagery is thus almost always of the sort that works on several levels simultaneously.

For example, there's this cover, from a Warren-written, Warren-illustrated Gen 13 story:

(Better drawn than Turner's Power Girl, less icky than that "Heroes For Hentai" cover)

Look, it's a sexy drawing of sexy ladies, naked, and tied up in what appears to be Hot Wheel tracks. That's hawt. And totally ridiculous. And isn't it ridiculous that people—inculding us—find it hot? And it's all a fantasy of that dunderhead in the foreground's anyway, inspired by exploitation films. And he's being punched in the face, and thus being punished for the sordid Hollywood-fueled fantasty. And look, there's Lucky Charms swimmng around his head, so this is like a cartoon, and thus not to be taken too seriously anyway.

Warren did the having-your-cheesecake-and-eating-it-too trick that he pulls off on almost every page of Empowered throughout his too-brief, 18-issue run on Gen 13. Which includes, for the completists out there, not only Gen 13 #60-#77, but also a two-issue fill-in (#43 and #44), Gen 13 Bootleg #8-#10 (the must-red “Grunge: The Movie” arc, available in trade, and the source of the above cover) and miniseries Gen 13: Magical Drama Queen Roxy. (All of which would add up to a swell omnibus, wouldn't it?).

He also repeatedly examined stereotypical tropes of various genres, particularly the superhero genre, but also manga, anime, and kung fu movies, as well as comic books in general, pop music and technology. It was a rib-tickling, navel-gazing comic book narrative about comic book narrative. All the while featuring sexy women, always scantily clad, and often in states of undress (That was kind of Fairchild's whole deal, wasn't it?). Warren may pack his stories with fan service, but it's the thinking man's fan service, and that makes all the difference.

I for one would love to see what Warren could do with the weird sexual politics—both overt and naïve—within the Wonder Woman mythos, as well as wacky Amazon technology and the DC Universe in general. (Is that single Titans Elseworlds special really Warren’s only DC work to date?)

And I'm willing to bet so would a lot of other readers, beyond the 20-30,000 people who will read Wonder Woman every month no matter who's writing and drawing it.

Finally, on a more superficial (and thus easier to communicate) level, there’s the fact that Empowered is by far the single best superheroine bondage narrative going, and doesn’t Wonder Woman deserve to have the creator of the best superheroine bondage narrative telling her story?

Similarly, Gen 13 featured an Amazonian bombshell with super-strength and super-smarts in Fairchild. And isn’t Fairchild but an off-brand version of Wonder Woman?

And, finally, if Warren could write so many well-realized female leads—Empowered, Fairchild and the other Gen 13 girls, the Dirty Pair—throughout his career, then certainly he could handle comics’ number one female lead, right?

Some thoughts on two upcoming collections I'm not going to buy anyway

Two upcoming books that should have appeal far beyond the normal direct market readers. Two best-selling authors who have achieved popularity in prose and comics. Two remarkably similar and remarkably bad cover designs.

Let’s take an overly-, perhaps even obsessively-, detailed look at the trade dress for Justice League of America Vol. 1: The Tornado’s Path and Eternals. These images are both from the Baker & Taylor online catalog, which is where many libraries and retailers buy their books, so the trade dress and cover design may vary from what will be in your local comic shop (Marvel.com, for exmaple, lists' a "book market version," which seems to indicate the existence of an non-book market version.)

So this is what the cover of the first trade collection of Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes’ brief run on the newly relaunched Justice League of America series will look like:

It’s a hardcover that will be available in comic shops tomorrow, and, according to dccomics.com, it’s subtitled “The Tornado’s Path” and will contain “the first six issues” of the series. That seems a rather arbitrary number of issues, considering the first story arc was eight issues long, running from #0 through #7.

It’s an interesting to see the priority assigned to various elements of the series based just on the cover. Clearly, the selling point here is the creators, and not the team—their names are at least twice as big as that of the title (the volume number and actual title of the story doesn’t even appear on the cover).

I’m assuming that it’s the name of the writer here that is the actual selling point (Despite some well-received previous work, this is essentially Benes’ breakthrough title, and probably the first collection of a title he’s worked on that will be receiving this kind of big bookstore push), and that it would just look too silly if they blew up “Meltzer” to giant proportions, and had the pencil artist’s name as small as poor Sandra Hope’s there; a case in which not being on the cover at all would probably be better than the fine print listing she gets there.

Now, I’m not terribly familiar with Meltzer’s prose output, having never read any of it, nor ever having heard of him before he was announced as the writer of Identity Crisis (By the extremely subjective criteria of Prose Writers Who Caleb Has Personally Heard Of Prior To Their Comics Work, Michael Chabon, Jodi Picoult and Jonathan Lethem seem like bigger “gets” than Meltzer to me). But clearly DC thinks he’s a huge deal, and that’s the element of this collection that is going to best move it from bookstore shelves into the hands of browsers.

Presuming it’s true that the name “Meltzer” is more recognizable and attractive than the (admittedly clumsy and awkward to say) name “Justice League of America,” than it seems indicative of a major failing on DC’s part.

How is it that the Justice League of America, a team that includes Superman, one of the most recognizable characters in the world, along with Batman and Wonder Woman would have a lower Q Rating than a single author?

What really drew my attention to this cover in the first place, however, was the image. Considering the visual nature of comics—they don’t shelve these things under the title “Graphic Novels” for nothing—it’s strange to see one in which the imagery component is played down to such a degree in favor of the credits and text.

And why is that? Could it be that those at DC realize that cover artist Michael Turner is a terrible, terrible artist, but the direct market seems to like his stuff anyway, so they keep slapping it on their product to feed to fanboys, but, when the time comes to show their product off to the rest of the world, they’re a little hesitant to put Turner out front?

Remember, there have been two to three covers for each and every single issue of this series, meaning DC had plenty to choose from when it came time to put an image on this. They went with the Turner version of JLoA #2, removing the figures from that background-less image and reassigning it to another background-free space (which actually looks much better), and shrinking the team down so they are no longer the focus, and one’s eyes aren’t drawn to the lack of feet, or that weird toddler-who-has-to-pee pose that Vixen, Black Lightning and Red Arrow are all striking.

I probably would have went with the Benes image as a wraparound cover, as it features not only the whole team, but also a large swathe of DC heroes with which to dazzle newcomers (“Hey, it’s that Bat-Lesbian from the New York Times! And there’s Shazam from that shitty show I used to watch as a kid! And Supergirl!”), and the cheesy hand holding the membership cards reflects the cheesy (though affectionate) usage of nostalgia for 1960’s and ‘70’s Justice League protocol that permeates JLoA #7, the conclusion of “The Tornado’s Path” story (Although I guess that issue’s not even included in this collection…? For some reason…?)

And, most importantly, it’s by Benes, whose name is gigantic on the cover at the moment. Why not let browsers know what the interior art will actually look like on the cover?

I also find myself wondering about what the next collection, the inevitable volume 2, will look like.

The next story arc in JLoA is “The Lightning Saga,” which is one of those irritating crossovers that jumps from book to book, like “The Insiders” from Teen Titans and The Outsiders or “Checkout” from Outsiders and Checkmate. Since the two books it jumps back and forth between, JLoA and Justice Society of America, have will be collected in their own series of graphic novels, will “Lightning Saga” be JLoA Vol. 2, or JSoA Vol. 2, or a standalone, volume-less trade, simply entitled Lightning Saga or, perhaps, Justice League of America/Justice Society of America: The Lightning Saga (Jesus, let’s seem them fill all of that on a cover, and still have room for Meltzer and Geoff Johns’ names).

Does that mean the next volume, JLoA Vol. 2 will include #7, #11 and #12 and…that’s it?

Well, let’s turn our attention to Marvel’s upcoming trade of a series by a famous novelist, The Eternals. Here’s the cover for that:

Marvel does give top-billing to the stars of the series here, although seeing as it’s The Eternals, known primarily as the group of pseudo-mythic cosmic characters created by Jack Kirby who weren’t the The Mighty Thor’s Asgardians, the Inhumans or the New Gods. Considering that nobody outside of fandom knows who the hell the Eternals are—and an awful lot of people within fandom didn’t until this project was announced—it seems a little needless to give them top-billing, but then, the characters are what the company owns and trades in, so shouldn’t they always come first?

Marvel also makes the author’s name gigantic…even bigger than DC made Meltzer’s, choosing to accentuate his full name, not just his surname. This certainly makes sense; Gaiman’s name is probably equally well-known and appreciated equally among graphic novel readers and fantasy/science fiction readers, and it stands to reason bookstore browsers who may not have even read Sandman would see a big, bright gold “Neil Gaiman” and pick the book up just to see what this new work from the writer of Coraline is all about.

And poor John Romita Jr. Here’s a name that carries a ton of weight in the direct market, and, in the market in general, a lot more weight than, say, Ed Benes, and it’s like an afterthought on the cover, a disclaimer present just to let readers know that Gaiman did not, in fact, illustrate the thing himself). (If nothing else, most big bookstores will have all of JRjr’s issues of Amazing Spider-Man with JMS, as well as his The Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther? and maybe the trades of his 12-issue Wolverine run with Mark Millar).

Like the JLoA cover, this one is curious in that it comes from a series in which every single issue has two-to-three covers to choose from, and Marvel ultimately decided to downplay the imagery as much as possible, coming up with a cover that is more than half text. In this case, I doubt it was any kind of embarrassment over the quality of the images, so much as a desire to accentuate Gaiman’s name as much as possible.

Personally, I find this a really unattractive cover, one that makes the whole package look really unappealing. If I didn’t know the name of the author, I wouldn’t look twice at this.

I didn’t care for the standard covers on this thing, the painted ones by Rick Berry. They not only weren’t representative of the interiors (it’s not like JRjr is a bad cover artist or anything), but they have a completely different aesthetic—JRjr is one of the industry’s more comic book-y comic book artists, and one who has at least a hint of Jack Kirby in his line and figure work. Berry is working in paint and in a highly representational style that is about as far from Kirby as you can get.

This image is a particularly generic one, and it looks like it could appear on just about anything in the science-fiction section. It doesn’t look like a graphic novel cover, it doesn’t look like a Marvel cover, it doesn’t look like the cover of a Gaiman trade or novel (that is, it’s not by Dave McKean), and it doesn’t look anything like 1602’s highly distinctive cover.

Based solely on these two covers, I wouldn’t read either of these trades. From DC and Marvel’s perspective, that’s a bad thing, but from a readers’ perspective, there’s nothing wrong with that. Neither of them are the best works from the company or the creators involved, nor are they the best stories featuring those characters.

Both have their bright spots, of course. JLoA has… Okay, well, there’s not much to like there, but Meltzer does finally put “Black Vulcan” in the Justice League, for which I’ll forgive him just about every other poor story choice he’s made in the process.

And Eternals is chockfull of beautiful, beautiful art and strong character work (even if it all adds to nothing).

And both will likely read much, much better in trade. “Tornado’s Path” was turgid beyond belief in a monthly format, and was clearly written to be read as a trade, and well, now’s your chance!

Eternals was likewise slow and written for the trade, more forgivable since it took place in a corner of the Marvel Universe and had little to do with the rest of the line (although the Civil War business that intrudes in the later portions will likely stand out awkwardly to newcomers here for the Gaiman, not the Marvel). There were also some odd, momentum killing delays in the release schedule.

Monthly-ish Manga Reviews

Empowered Vol. 1
Dark Horse Comics

Yes, I realize that Adam Warren is not a Japanese person, and that this book was not produced in Japan, and is thus not a Japanese comic, and thus is not really manga. But I’m including it here because Warren draws as well as writes this, and his is a heavily influenced manga style. Additionally, Dark Horse is publishing this closer to manga-size and format, and I’m assuming it’s going to be shelved with manga in most comic shops and book stores, so for the purposes of this post, we’re just going to go ahead and call this manga, cool?

Anyway, Empowered is an ironically named superheroine who comes across as a more shapely version of Ally McBeal. She’s a got a superhero physique, but tragically low self-esteem, almost pathological neurosis and trouble being taken seriously by her peers in the Superhomeys (Probably the second best superhero team name of all time, right behind James Kochalka’s Superfuckers). Like Ms. McBeal, she’s pretty pathetic most of the time, but it’s played for laughs of the laughing-along-with rather than laughing-at variety.

Her powers come from her costume, a body stocking that gives her super strength and the ability to shoot lasers from her hands, but also tears very, very easily, and the smaller her costume gets, the weaker her powers get.
So 75-percent of her adventures end with her barely clad in a badly Swiss-cheesed costume, bound and gagged by the bad guys, awaiting rescue from some other superhero.

It should come as no real surprise that she got her start in a series of fetish sketches by Warren, who, in addition to being one of the first U.S. artists to fully embrace Japanese animation and comics storytelling styles and techniques, is also one of the sharper writers when it comes to integrating sci-fi technology and fourth-wall-abusing metatextual meaning into comics.
Over the course of 240 pages, Empowered quickly grows from three-page parody stories to a much more complex narrative involving Emp, her semi-reformed villain/boyfriend Thug Boy, her villainess-turned-best friend Ninjette and an interdimensional Lovecraftian monster god that they’ve trapped in a set of “Cosmichains” and made their prisoner/slacker roommate.

A sort of R-rated sitcom exploring geek culture from the inside out, Empowered has its cake and eats it too—it’s full of exploitative, titillating imagery, but it also features the healthiest and most realistic romantic relationship ever featured in any comic book also featuring capes and masks.




Gothic Sports Vol. 1
Tokyopop

Sixteen-year-old Anya has just transferred to Lucrece High Scooh, for one simple reason—they have the best sports teams in the city, and she dreams of playing for one of them. Unfortunately, she has more heart than experience, as she’s never actually played on a sports team. Of any kind.

After washing out at basketball try-outs and learning the school’s soccer team won’t let girls play, she rallies the school’s other misfits and outcasts to form her own soccer team. But to gain official recognition, they must first defeat the school’s real soccer team in a match.

German writer/artist Anike Hage’s geeks vs. jocks high school comedy isn’t terribly gothic in its storytelling or aesthetic, and gets its name instead from the team’s uniforms, stylish black and red creations designed by the team’s Gothic Lolita (and fashion fan) Filiz.

It’s a charming enough series, even if this first volume of the story fails to live up to the promise of the intriguingly mismatched words that make up the title. And let’s face it, that is an incredible title. Unfortunately, it plants in my head a comic story that is much, much cooler than the one Hage gives us here (Is it possible that a title can be too good?).

It also ends on something of a cliffhanger, just before the real soccer team and the goth one are set to square off against one another, which leaves me balancing on a fence; I do want to see how it turns out, but I’m not so enamored of the book that I’m sure I want to pick up volume two.



Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes Vol. 1
Del Rey Manga

I honestly have a hard time imagining how this particular graphic novel even came to be. Artist Camilla D’Errico’s concept sketches included in the back of the volume seem to indicate that she was working on a story called “Iku and Oni” at some point, using these character designs and basic concepts.

The story she tells along with scripter Joshua Dysart seems like it could have been told perfectly well without Lavigne’s involvement.

And what exactly is Lavigne’s involvement? Well, the credits bill her as “starring” in the book, and she writes the introduction and ... that seems to be about it. (When Tokyopop published Courtney Love-related manga Princess Ai, Love at least got credit for co-creating the character).

So the cynical reading is that they just kinda slapped Lavigne’s name on the thing to boost sales, a move that worked, as Del Rey issued a press release saying the first printing sold out within four days, forcing them to go back to press for a second printing.

But it’s hard to stay cynical about a book this charming for too long. Forget what the credits say, Lavigne actually only co-stars. The real star is troubled high-schooler Hana, a friendless, lonely and unnoticed girl who amuses herself by pretending to be different people online and striking up friendships with people she knows in real life but never speaks to, listening to Lavigne’s music in her headphones to drown out the sound of her parents fighting and talking to Lavigne, a sort of imaginary friend who also acts like her conscience (I’m not up on what high school kids are listening to any more, but one would think Hana would be attracted to a musician with a darker and more melancholy sound than Lavigne; if this were set back when I was in high school, I would imagine Hana listening to Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson, or, if she had a cooler older sibling or cousing to introduce her to their music, maybe The Smiths or The Cure).

When Hana stumbles upon the website make5wishes.com (go check it out; it’s there), she places an order and receives an adorable but scary little red demon, one which looks like something of a combination between Disney’s Stitch and a Chinese lion—in a box, and it promises to grant her five wishes. It does so, but monkey’s paw-style.

While the titular pop star’s presence will likely scare away some regular comics readers (though far fewer readers than it will attract), if you take Lavigne out of the equation completely, it’s still a beautifully constructed book, with D’Errico’s rough, manga-inspired pencils colored without any ink laid on top of them. There’s also a pretty interesting story about the redemptive power of pop music in here as well, if you’re willing to look for it. Even pop music that comes courtesy of the singer who gave us “Sk8er Boi.”

The book’s color art and somewhat higher-than-usual production values (nice cover and paper stock, etc.) makes it’ a bit pricey for those of us used to the $9.99 price point for manga, but it’s definitely worth a read while loitering in a big box bookstore, or a check out form the library.



To Terra… Vol. 1
Vertical

I was really looking forward to this nice-looking, 350-page volume from Vertical, having immensely enjoyed the last release from the company I had read. The book design is perfect; it’s the sort of book that serves as a sort of little rectangular paper sculpture all by itself, the kind of book I might buy just because I like the way it looks sitting on a shelf or strewn on a coffee table (Okay, I’m not rich enough to actually buy books based on how well designed the spines and covers are, but sometimes it is a factor, and if I were rich enough to do that, I would have done it with To Terra…)

The interiors are just as beautiful. Keiko Takemiya’s art is pretty dated—a glance says late-‘70s Japan—but that’s hardly a bad thing in my book. The ‘70s-ishness of the design might have made it look cutting edge upon original publication, and out-of-date in the ‘80s or ‘90s, but now it’s old enough that it looks unusual again. As a member of a generation who considered the first two Star Wars flicks, G-Force/Battle of the Planets and Voltron the pinnacle of science fiction entertainment, this look seems perfectly space opera to me personally.

Designs aside, Takemiya’s pages are all wonderfully constructed; packed with panels and visual information, but easy to read.

While the age of the book contributed to its otherworldly, sci-fi feel, I think it may also have hurt the specifics of the story, as what might have seemed forward-looking in the late seventies now seems rather played out. In fact, several elements of the book seemed to echo ones I’d just read a few months ago in Phoenix, a superior manga.

It’s sometime in the far future—“the year XXXX”—and mankind’s unchecked over-development lead Terra to the edge of a man-made apocalypse, the environment buckling under the weight of humanity and its abuses.

Luckily, our descendants have developed space travel and had begun colonizing space before they’d killed themselves off, and so they took off. But there’s a deep connection between a species and their home planet, and the goal was always to return. To help them get there, humanity developed the sinister sounding era of Superior Domination, also known by the less sinister sounding acronym of S.D., in which children are born of a god-like computer, which places them in foster homes until they’re 14, and rigorously programs all aspects of their life.

Only the best and brightest are allowed to return to Terra.

This dystopian utopia future is not without strife; a result of the weird computer-lead breeding is the rise of Mu, a mutant race who have psychic abilities. Their powers are activated around the time they hit puberty, and they’ve been persecuted historically; by the time the story opens, they are eliminated from human society (Marvel readers have seen this all before…ad nauseum).

This first volume does quite a bit of world-building. Though the broad strokes are overly familiar, I’m pretty intrigued by where things are going. We open with Soldier Blue and Physis, members of a Mu revolutionary group hiding out from the humans and plotting their people’s destiny. Then we spend a lot of time with Jomy Marcus Shin, an unusual child who has the powers of the Mu but the rugged constitution of a human, who is reluctantly forced into the role of the leader of the Mu.

Then we flash forward some years to meet Keith Anywan, a young human on a track to become one of the Elite and return to Terra, who has a strange origin he’s not quite aware of, and a rebellious streak that worries some of his compatriots.

The scope of the book is pretty incredibly. These 350 pages all read like set-up, making for a first act in a navel-gazing space opera that is actually quite operatic. At only $13.95, it’s a hell of a page-per-dollar value, even if it’s not quite as mindblowing as Phoenix.



Yakitate!! Japan Vol. 3
Tokyopop

I know I’ve sung praises for Yakitate!! Japan before, and, for the most part, this third volume offers more of the same. That’s a good thing, in that Takashi Hashiguichi’s art is incredible, the characters are well designed, well-defined and well-realized, and that the concept is a lot of fun.

It’s also a bad thing in that in this volume, it becomes clear that the book is hitting the wall that all competition manga does, in which the stories become repetitive. At this point in the narrative, it’s clear that Kazuma is going to repeatedly find himself in baking battles of different varieties, seem to be up against impossible odds, and somehow cook his way out of them.

It’s the details, the little tweaks to these competitions, that can save the book, and Hashiguichi throws enough new characters into the mix here that the book still works for me, but I find myself less excited than I was when I first discovered it.