Comic Shop Comics: November 16th

Archie #14 (Archie Comics) I've been able to justify shelling out $4 a pop for all of Archie Comics' new line of comics because each 20-page issue is generally followed by a classic reprint of some kind that adds to the page count, and often these are introduced by a prose piece by the writer, adding one more page of content. Not so this issue!

After Mark Waid and Joe Eisma's 20-page story comes...six pages of Jughead #10, which has already been released and which I have therefore already read. It's a really good comic and all, but I'm not entirely sure of the wisdom of reprinting so much of it (about a third of it) in the back of Archie as a sort of super-sized ad. I mean, even if it is effective and gets those who are reading Archie but not reading Jughead to start reading Jughead (Do such readers exist? The fools! Jughead is far superior to Archie!), it doesn't exactly add any value to the book.

Here's hoping it was a one-off thing, and next issue (and all future issues) will include reprints of classic Archie comics that are somehow relevant to the story that preceded them. Otherwise, I'll likely switch to reading Archie's line in trade and I'd really rather not. I like the comic book format, although it's getting increasingly difficult to find comics I feel comfortable reading in this format.

As for this issue, it is divided between Veronica and Cheryl's battle for social supremacy at their all-girls boarding school in Switzerland and the action back in Riverdale, wherein Archie has become Jughead-like and to save him, Jughead must become Archie-like.

Die Kitty Die! #2 (Chapter House Comics) And hey, speaking of Archie Comics...!

Archie Comics creators Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz continue their story about an Archie Comics-like publishing company that wants to goose the sales on their Sabrina The Teenage Witch-like character's books by killing her off...and since she's a real person, that means murdering her. Here the Sabrina-like character battles the Casper-like ghost character and analogue's to Casper's supporting cast, ultimately winning the day by calling in a favor from the Lil' Hot Stuff-like character.

This book's weird as hell, despite it's super-simple premise. A lot of the jokes don't quite land for me, but I like these sorts of analogue comics, and while I've read what feels like a couple million high-concept comics using analogues to the most famous superhero characters, I don't recall ever reading one devoted to Archie and Harvey Comics characters like this. It certainly helps that the creators are ones whose work is so closely associated with one of those publishers, and while the subversive qualities are mainly relegated to a PG-13 level of naughtiness, the sexual stuff all works.

I'm not crazy about Chapter House's lay-out–I wish, for example, they relegated their many house ads to the back of the book like Archie does, which I think would help J. Bone's fashion spreads pop a bit more, so that they could serve either as centerfolds or back matter; right now they just kind of get lost among the comics content and the ads for other Chapter House books.

Suicide Squad #6 (DC) The Black Vault prison which had encased the giant General Zod has started driving everyone at Belle Reeve insane with murderous rage, which makes Harley Quinn...sane? "They've all gone insane, and it's had the opposite effect on me," as she tells it. I'm not entirely sure that's how mental illness works, but then, superhero comics have never been the best place for realistic depictions of mental illness, have they? I mean, Batman's devotes much of his life to fighting a bunch of domestic terrorists that are kept in something between a zoo and a Victorian insane asylum, after all.

I'm not entirely sure I'm ever going to quite get used to the weird pacing of this book, which is still divided into a 12-page main story penciled by Jim Lee and a 10-page back-up story featuring a guest artist and spotlighting the origin of a particular member of the Squad. This month the artist is Carlos D'Anda and the character is Killer Croc, given yet another origin story that differs slightly from his last origin story from the New 52 (His previous post-Flashpoint origin story had him born and growing up in Gotham City; here he's born and grows up in Florida, as he always had pre-Flashpoint).

I wonder how long they're going to be able to keep this format up, given that they're just about out of characters to tell the origin stories of, but then, the upcoming Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad crossover event, which is advertised in this issue, looks like it will swallow up Suicide Squad #8-#10, the content of which will presumably be by a completely different creative team and thus, one assumes, feature a different format.

In this issue, everyone in Belle Reve goes crazy and tries to kill everyone else. Of interest? El Diablo is apparently still around, as we see him in the mess hall with Deadshot and Harley (his tattoos look weird, like Lee and the other artists weren't sure what tattoos to give him, but then, there are four different inkers involved here, and consistent character designs haven't exactly been a strong suit of the publisher since the New 52 reboot, especially on this franchise). And Captain Boomerang appears, looking like a zombie and exploding into confetti; he's in the ad for the Justice League crossover, so one assumes he gets better eventually.

The back-up tells of an incident from Waylon Jones' childhood, in which he encounters a Lake Placid-sized salt water crocodile hanging out in the swamps of Florida, having apparently nibbled a kid to death and left him leaned up against a tree, awaiting Waylon and a friend of his to come find and fight him.

Super Powers Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2 (DC Comics) The new Doom Patrol is a pretty interesting, very well-drawn Grant Morrison tribute comic attempting to serve as a grand fusion of all Doom Patrol comics. Shade, The Changing Girl is just this side of unintelligible, and, if you ask me, extremely uninteresting. Mother Panic is a Batman comic with swear words, the most compelling aspect being how the design of the vigilante character's superhero costume clashes so violently with artist Tommy Lee Edwards' realistic art style. And then there's Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, which is by far the best of the new Vertigo DC's Young Animal books, in large part because of its three-page back-up feature, Super Powers by Tom Scioli.

Out of curiosity, I counted panels, and there are 48 panels in Scioli's back-up which, remember, is just three pages long. The title feature, meanwhile, has 95 panels, but they are stretched out over 22 pages. Can you imagine what Scioli could do in 22 pages? Could you imagine him on a new volume of Wednesday Comics, filling those giant newspaper pages with his postage stamp-sized panels? The mind reels.

I honestly would not have expected Scioli to find the DC Universe such a fertile setting, particularly given what a reader might assume would be covered in a strip taking its name and logo from the 1980s cartoon and toy line (which was, essentially, just the Justice League vs. Darkseid). And yet in the first third of this installment, "Wonder Twins Part Two," he shows a Morrisonian ability to view all of DC's publishing history as a single universe, and to draw obviously if unlikely connections, like teaming Flipper Dipper from Jack Kirby's Newsboy Legion with the Sea-Devils, wherein they discover a temple of Darkseid's...and Captain Marvel Jr., Shazam and the original Mister Miracle also all make appearances...in that one single page.

I nodded furiously at the appearance of Thaddeus "Mister Miracle" Brown, who is the bearded fellow who gave Scott Free the moniker and costume after he escaped Apokolips scott-free and came to Earth (and shown here, during World War II, as Thaddeus Braun). After first encountering him in the collection of Kirby's Mister Miracle comics, I often imagined him adventuring in the post-WWII, Cold War era of DC history, during which the DCU was temporarily superhero-less (a time when, as per Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier, teams of adventurers like The Sea Devils from a few panels previous filled the gap left by the retired Golden Age heroes), or perhaps even being one of the masters that a young Bruce Wayne sought out to help train him during his time wandering the world.

Aside from the sheer variety of characters squeezed into this page, what most impressed me was the middle section, above, in which we see Captain Marvel Jr., identified only as "Junior." Remember, DC has forbidden the use of the name "Captain Marvel," apparently, renaming Captain Marvel "Shazam," and thus making it really fucking hard to use the rest of the Marvel Family, consisting as it does of characters named Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr, the latter of whom transforms by saying the magic words "Captain Marvel!" (Mary Shazam and Shazam Jr. just don't quite sound right, do they?).

I kind of love how Scioli has Captain Marvel Jr. simply say "Captain Marvel" and then have a big, black mark over the offending word, preemptively censoring or redacting it. It's both true to the concept and sensitive to whatever the current editorial thinking on the matter is, while also reading and feeling subversive in its execution. I'm glad he did it, and I'm glad DC let him do it.

As for the preceding 23 pages? Cave rebels against the evil corporation, steals his mole machine and teams up with Wild Dog. They kill so many people, and man, you don't really think about how well-suited drill machines are to car chases until you see one in action. Props to co-writers Gerard Way and Jon Rivera for turning out the one Young Animal book that feels most like a first generation Vertigo book, rather than a tribute to those books, which, with a swear word or two less, could fit rather neatly into the DCU just fine. Michael Avon Oeming's artwork makes it sing, although there's at least one passage where I have no idea what was supposed to have happened. Nick Filardi does some pretty great stuff with the coloring, too, particularly in the attempted abduction scene.

Meanwhile, at Good Comics For Kids...

I have a review of the recently-released trade collection of Abigail and The Snowman. It is written and drawn by Roger Langridge, which is, of course, another way of saying "It is a very good comic book." The above panels are perhaps my favorite passage of the book, in which the snowman explains the difference between yeti and bigfoot to Abigail, and draws two completely identical pictures to help illustrate the differences between the two.

If you haven't read it yet, either as it was serially published or in its present collected form, you probably should. If you'd like to read a few hundred words of me saying so, you can do so at the GC4K blog.

Review: Deadshot: Bulletproof

In 2005 DC published a five-issue Deadshot solo mini-series. This was well after the character's hey-day as a regular member of the 1987-1992 Suicide Squad cast, and just as writer Gail Simone was beginning to use him as a member of her Secret Six, a Suicide Squad-inspired villain team that began in the pages of a Villains United miniseries and eventually lead to an ongoing monthly.

Perhaps because of the higher-profile nature of the Villains United/Secret Six comics, which began as a lead-in to DC's big Infinite Crisis crossover event series, that Deadshot miniseries tends to get overlooked. Which is a damn shame, as it is pretty excellent, and writer Christos Gage found a way to use a character that was always best-suited as either a villain or a member of an ensemble of such characters as a solo protagonist.

Deadshot: Bulletproof includes that entire miniseries, a story entitled "Urban Renewal" in the table of contents, as well as a one-issue story tied to those events that Gage penned at the time for the still extant Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight.

In retrsopect--that is, read in 2016--there's an aura of the unfortunate about the book. Not only did it offer a viable take on the character as anti-hero and solo protagonist that didn't quite catch on (although it certainly influenced the portrayal of the character in this year's live-action film), and not only did it present a nice, clean "more realistic" redesign of his costume that is pretty much infinitely better than the one he was given in the publisher's 2011 "New 52" initiative (and still wears today), but this was apparently Gage's first comics work. After working for DC's long-suffering WildStorm imprint, on one of its many re-focusings, Gage went on to do a bunch of pretty good stuff for Marvel and other publishers, but nothing else for DC.

For the miniseries that fills most of the trade, he was paired with the art team of pencil artist Steve Cummings and inker Jimmy Palmiotti, and, while serviceable, clear and easy to read, the art is the weakest part of the package. Mike Zeck penciled and Jerry Ordway inked all of the cover though, which surely didn't help Cummings and Palmiotti look good; it's hard to turn the page from one of those great covers to find work that lacks the heft and tension of those images.

Gage opens with Deadshot Floyd Lawton in a familiar situation, working with a group of supervillains--Killer Frost, a new version of minor Gotham villain Firebug and new character The Closer--only this time as a mercenary, rather than as part of a government task force. During the opening action scene and its aftermath, we learn some relevant information about Deadshot regarding his late child, and establish a few character dynamics that will payoff later in the series.

When Lawton finds out he actually has a young daughter, conceived with a prostitute without his knowledge, he attempts to play the role of a father in some fashion. The mother refuses his duffel bag full of blood money, and so he instead tries to clean up the poor, crime-ridden neighborhood that his daughter and her mother live in. He is essentially forced into the role of a hero, or at least anti-hero, a Punisher-like criminal-killing vigilante doing bad things for a basically good reason.

That neighborhood is located in Star City rather than Deadshot's original stomping grounds of Gotham, which accomplishes two important things. First, it means Gage doesn't have to worry about introducing Batman into the narrative, which can be problematic, given that character's track record with taking down villains and his unbending, uncompromising moral stances and the fact that Deadshot is supposed to be a cold-blooded killer that never misses. When Batman encounters Deadshot, one of them has to lose, which usually means Deadshot, which kinda makes a Deadshot comic book difficult to continue too long after Batman enters the picture.

The other thing is that it allows for an easy introduction of a different Batman-lite like character, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, who has the additional benefit of being a preternaturally gifted super-marksman not unlike Deadshot. They have a pretty spectacular battle, which basically involves blocking one another's shots with shots of their own, so that Deadshot shoots Green Arrow's arrows out of the air just as fast as he can fire them, and so on. This is just one of several mini-boss fights though; the big showdown is the one alluded to on the cover of the collection, in which Deadshot must take on a whole host of supervillains he's worked with in the past who all want him dead.

The story ends as it must, but certainly serves as a rejuvenation of the character, one that offers a particularly appealing take on him that obviously attracted and influenced the movie makers, if not most of those working on the characters since 2011's New 52 revamp.

There's also that pretty great costume, which is basically a 21st century update of his rather '80s look. Sure, it's still busy, and does still look a little goofy when Floyd "hides" it under a trench coat, but compared to all other possible Deadshot costumes? Not bad; not bad at all. Note too that here the mask is more of a helmet than the silvery fabric ski mask that it was usually drawn as previously.

As for the Legends of The Dark Knight story, for that Gage is joined by artist Phil Winslade, and he puts Deadshot back in his classic costume and back in Gotham City, where he does face Batman this time. Deadshot's been hired to kill a criminal before that criminal can testify, and Batman wants to prevent the assassination so that the testimony can go forward. The two fight a little and circle one another, but Batman is unable to go full-force at Deadshot, and Deadshot either won't or can't kill Batman, who here Gage has repeat something from an older encounter in which Batman explains Deadshot unconsciously pulls his shot around Batman because, deep down, he doesn't really want to kill him.

It's a nice exploration of the two characters' peculiar characterizations, and how they relate to one another. It's a done-in-one, and a rare one that does a pretty exemplary job of defining both of them equally well. I know I just said previously Batman and Deadshot don't always work well together, as the fact that one must lose puts and end to their conflicts pretty quickly, but they do work in small doses like this; if you read it, you'll see their stand-off works, but it's not the sort of standoff that would work indefinitely.

The story is definitely one for any sort of greatest hits collection of Deadshot stories, though (and, for fans of the Suicide Squad movie, likely one that served as inspiration, given the nature of Deadshot's assignment here and in the opening scenes of the film).

Comic Shop Comics: November 9th

All-Star Batman #4 (DC Comics) So exactly how dark is the day after America elected its 45th president–and first president with no experience at all in either government or the military–which may or may not end up being known forever more as Black Wednesday, depending on badly things go during the course of the next four years?

Dark enough that reading a comic book drawn by John Romita Jr. in which Batman uses heavy metal music to defeat undead ninjas underwater failed to cheer me up.

Scott Snyder and JRJR's "My Own Worst Enemy" story arc seems to be nearing a conclusion as, at the very least, no new villains are introduced or pass through the story, which was the main joy of the previous three issues (Those ninjas, by the way, turned out to be Court of Owls Talons, dressed in costumes designed to appeal to Two-Face's aesthetic sensibility). Snyder is doing something very, very different with Two-Face's origin and relationship with Bruce Wayne, so different, in fact, that I'm tempted to reread the Peter Tomasi-written "Big Burn" story arc from Batman and Robin, which gave Two-Face a new, post-Flashpoint origin story. I'm not sure how or if these two stories even line up, although I'm not terribly bothered. Two-Face regularly gets origin tweaks.

The Declan Shalvey-drawn back-up starring Duke Thomas seems to have reached its conclusion here, as Duke figures everything out, and then is about to be murdered by Zsasz when Batman intervenes. I know I've said this before, but each installment of this reminds me of the fact that Snyder seems to be writing Duke with Tim Drake's origin story and general portrayal...right down to Duke being smart enough to solve crimes, but not yet good enough to take on supervillains hand-to-hand like Batman can.

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #1 (IDW Publishing) I did a lot of complaining around the first Batman/TMNT crossover comic, much of which came from the same place–the belief that these sorts of inter-company crossover stories should be regarded as, and created as if they were, real once-in-a-lifetime events, and thus ambitiously attempt to accomplish absolutely everything anyone could ever want from such a pairing of franchises (JLA/Avengers is probably the best example of such a crossover). The first Batman/TMNT pairing certainly didn't do that, and wasn't exactly anything at all like what I, as a lifelong fan of both, would have wanted, although it was well-made enough.

The fact that there is a second crossover between the two coming just a few weeks after the first was released as a trade collection is comforting, though, because if they are going to do more than one of these things, then it certainly relieves the pressure on each of them to be amazing. It helps too that this second one has such a particular focus: This isn't Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it is the Batman from Batman: The Animated Series and the TMNT from the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.

At first, that seems an odd pairing, if only because of the timing. New episodes of Batman: The Animated Series was on-air from 1992-1995, whereas TMNT debuted in 2012 and is still ongoing. I suppose pairing a TAS Batman with the Turtles from the original 1987 cartoon, or the Batman from Beware The Batman with the 2012 Turtles would make more sense in terms of timing, but it depends on how one wants to look at it. The TAS Batman is the best animated Batman, and the current cartoon's TMNT are the best animated TMNT, so there's your commonality.

(And I hope they keep doing these; it increases the likelihood of them producing one I really, really want like, say, an Alan Grant/Kevin Eastman/Eric Talbot black and white comic featuring late-era Mirage TMNT teaming with early 1990s Batman, for example.)

I'm honestly not familiar with the creative team here, although two-thirds of the names are familiar. It's written by Matrthew K. Manning, and drawn by Jon Sommariva (credited as "artist") and inked by Sean Parsons.

It's set in two different worlds, the Gotham of TAS and the New York City of TMNT. A bunch of inmates have escaped from Arkham Asylum at once, under extremely mysterious circumstances, and Batman is trying to track them down. He gets Two-Face, but a few others have appeared in TMNT's NYC: Clayface and, on the last page, The Joker and Harley Quinn.

Manning seems to write everyone well, and they all seem in character (There's a particularly sweet Alfred burn in here, too). The title characters have yet to meet, and the exact nature of the setting-swapping hasn't been explained yet, but so far, so good.

The artwork by Sommariva is a little awkward to my eye, and may take some getting used to. He does a fine job of using the designs of the source material, and drawing "neutral" things like civilians, settings and objects in a way that fits both shows' aesthetics. There's a certain fidelity lacking, though; scenes in Gotham look a little too detailed (And Two-Face is watching Pretty Pretty Pegasus from Teen Titans Go! on TV? Not Tiny Toons?), and those characters all look a bit more dynamic and stylized than they probably should.

Additionally, I'm not used to seeing these TMNT characters on the drawn page at all, so they always look weird to me.

Of course, maybe I'm operating under the wrong assumptions. Maybe this comic isn't meant to be a crossover of the two TV shows in comic book form, but a crossover of the two comic books based on those two TV shows...?

I don't know. It may take me a few issues to just get used to what is admittedly a pretty peculiar but fun crossover story.

There were two or three covers available at my shop, and I chose the one above (by Ciro Nieli). There's a two-page spread in the back showing all 20 different variants for the issues (20!), and the two probably worth noting are the one by Ty Templeton (who drew plenty of issues of the original Batman Adventures comic book) and another by Mirage's Steve Lavigne, inked by Peter Laird. Kevin Eastman also provides a cover, but he did so for the original series too; whenever he draws ninja turtles with pupils in their masks it really freaks me out.

Betty & Veronica #2 (Archie Comics) Pairing long-time pin-up style cover artist Adam Hughes with the subject matter of teenage girls–let alone Riverdale's teenage girls–still feels awkward, even when compared to all of the other publishing choices of the new Riverdale line of comics Archie has been publishing over the last few years (up to and including Afterlife With Archie, really).

It should be noted that there's little here that feels inappropriately oversexualized, and most of that awkwardness comes from what a reader might bring to the book regarding Hughes' oeuvre and Archie Comics' characters. Well, that and, perhaps, the fact that Hughes draws in such a realistic style that his teen girls look so much more like real teen girls than the flatter, coloring-book look that has been Archie's house style for so long. For example, there are a few classic pin-ups in the back of this issue, in which the girls wear bathing suits and are otherwise much more scantily-clad than they are at any point in the Hughes story, and they still look somehow more innocent than a Hughes drawing of Betty in a sweatshirt and jeans.

It's not the comic, though; it's us. (Well, me, I guess, but I'm extrapolating here).

I mean, there's a bikini car wash in this issue, and yet we don't really see any girls in bikinis–just in extreme long-shot, and then off-panel. (The top tier of panels on page 15 could prove objectionable, I suppose).

There's a little of that weirdness I noted in the first issue here, where it seems like maybe Hughes is filling space, but the story continues apace, and the dialogue is still surprisingly funny, with a quick clip to the number of jokes per panels.

Betty is trying to raise the $60,000 necessary to save Pop's from being turned into a Starbucks (er, a "Kweekwegs"), and Veronica, whose father owns the Kweekwegs chain, is trying to thwart her by simultaneously raising money for charity in more attractive ways, sucking up everyone's would-be donations.

I didn't understand the ending, and I remain confused over whether that's supposed to be Kevin Keller standing with Veronica throughout, or just a generic blonde guy.

Otherwise, pretty solid stuff.

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #6 (Boom Studios) This is it! The conclusion of the six-issue miniseries teaming Gotham Academy's Detective Club with The Lumberjanes' Roanoke Cabin to combat a weird magical threat involving time-twisting and teenage emotions!

Most of the action occurred in the penultimate issue, with Rosie and April wrestling the amalgamated bone monster and then everyone tying it up constituting the biggest action scene in this issue (I'm surprised writer Chynna Clugston Flores failed to make any jokes or references to knot-tying when the 'Janes tied it up; surely one of the benefits of being a Lumberjane tying up supernatural threats is that you know your way around knots, right? I'm pretty sure they've all got badges in that).

Otherwise, the climax is all about talking, understanding and realization...a pretty nice conclusion that is in keeping with the spirit of the home comics. Overall, I liked Rosemary Valero-O'Connell's art work, but her style didn't serve the resolution particularly well, as I was unclear if the girl at the center of the spell aged into adulthood like the rest of the kidnapped grown-ups upon the spell breaking, or if she retained her youth. Valero-O'Connell's artwork was so abstracted and smoothed that her forty-somethings don't look any different than her teenagers, for the most part.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #3 (DC) It's Detective Club vs. Witch Club! The Withes go down remarkably easily, considering that they are just other students wearing witch hats (with mind-control circuitry on the inside; The Mad Hatter is never evoked, but it looks just like Jervis Tetch's tech). So, basically, in order to stop the witches, all the good guys need to do is to knock their hats off. This is somehow still presented as seriously dramatic, rather than ironically so.

As to what the weird plot, which involves stealing and burning books is all about, it's never really revealed, but it clearly has something to do with the witch and school librarian Mister Scarlet. The bigger events happen around the margins, however, as we learn that Colton is apparently gay (and has a crush on Kyle) and that he's to be expelled from Gotham Academy.

Wonder Woman #10 (DC) Back to "Year One" with Nicola Scott. In this issue, Steve, Etta and Barbara take Diana to the mall in an attemnpt to acclimate her to American culture, and they get her a margarita--a strong departure from the ice cream she has so previously expressed joy and wonderment in during other first trips into Man's world (like Geoff Johns' first Justice League arc, the direct-to-DVD animated adaptation of that arc Justice League: War and that awesome James Tynion/Noelle Stevenson short from Sensation Comics). Naturally, terrorists attack the mall with machine guns and grenades, and Wonder Woman discovers her new gods-given superpowers during the melee, including her ability to block bullets with her bracelets, in what writer Greg Rucka and artist Scott present as a big, important moment.

And to think, Wednesdays used to be my favorite day of the week.

Review: All-New, All-Different Avengers Vol. 2: Family Business

This second collection of the Mark Waid-written A-title of the Avengers franchise contains six issues and an out-of-order interruption from a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, and it takes a while to get going, as the first two issues are tie-ins to the "Standoff" crossover storyline. These first two issues, both drawn by Adam Kubert, don't quite work on their own, particularly as the second of these ends with Winter Solider and the Captain Americas Captains America rallying all of the various Avengers teams for a big battle that...happens elsewhere.

If you're a trade-reader and have already read Avengers: Standoff, then you can skip these two issues here. If you haven't yet read Avengers: Standoff and want to know the specifics of what's going on and how it gets revolved, you'll want to read Standoff.

That's followed immediately by a short story drawn by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer in which the All-New, All-Different Wasp narrates her infiltration of The Vision's body and her planting of bombs within it, which blows him up; it originally appeared in Free Comic Book Day 2016 [Civil War II] #1.

And then the volume starts for real and, yeah, 50 pages or so into a 140-ish page collection isn't the ideal place for a story to start for real. Mahmud Asrar takes over the art chores for the rest of the book.

The Vision starts malfunctioning very strangely, attacking the other Avengers in their hangar base, and then a new Wasp shows up, helping them deal with The Vision problem...which we already read about, as that what was happening in the Alan Davis-drawn short (an asterisk in the bottom of a panel of the issue refers readers to the FCBD special). This new Wasp is Nadia Pym, daughter of the currently dead Hank Pym and his late first wife, who was being raised by bad Russians and used her knowledge of Pym particles to escape, break into her late father's lab and build herself a Wasp suit.

Given that there are now two Captains America, Spider-Men, Hawkeyes, Hulks, Thors and Iron Men, it's not so unusual that Marvel would introduce a second Wasp, although it is somewhat unusual that a) The original Wasp is still around, in full possession of her powers and still actively super heroing, and b) As the daughter of Pym and his Silver Age wife, Nadia is a white-skinned woman of European descent, just as Janet Van Dyne is; in every other case of Marvel introducing a second version of a character it was to bring some diversity to their universe, either in terms of race or gender or both.

Because of that, I have to assume Waid (or someone else) has longer-term plot reasons for introducing a new, second Wasp...unless Marvel Comics just wanted to have a daughter of Hank Pym be their current Wasp, in order to more closely reflect the status quo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but if that's the case Nadia is pretty different than Ant-Man's Hope Van Dyne in a couple ways. Starting with her name.

Jarvis, who is particularly sensitive about Janet Van Dyne's legacy, decides to take Nadia to meet her namesake and kinda sorta but not really step-mom Janet, and the pair hang out together. Meanwhile, the rest of these Avengers all go out into outer space in order to help Nova look for his father. They don't find him, but they do find a curious space trap that embroils them in a battle with a particularly formidable classic Marvel villain. Waid uses a pair of items from Marvel lore in a rather inventive way to have our heroes triumph over him.

All in all, it's a pretty messy package, and not one that is particularly well-suited to casual, trade-only readers. Of course, if you missed the single issues, there isn't really any other way to read it.

Review: Superman and The Justice League of America Vol. 2

As I had previously noted, packaging writer/artist Dan Jurgens' brief 18-ish issue 1992-1993 run on the era's main Justice League book as "Superman and Justice League America" made a lot of sense if you're trying to sell these comics in trade form in 2016...at least until you get to volume two, as Superman dies in the first of the monthly issues collected here (his Justice League encounters Doomsday before Superman does), is mourned in the next one and then is completely absent for the rest of the run.

I was a little surprised by the actual contents of this collection though, as it opens not with Justice League America #66 (the League vs. Doomsday issue that tied into the "Death of Superman" storyline in the Superman books of the time), but with Justice League America Annual #6. That gives us another 58-pages of the Justice League America comics featuring a still-living Superman.

That annual is from the "Eclipso: The Darkness Within" crossover event storyline that ran through all of DC's annuals that year. As with similar events of the time, the relevance of each tie-in varied considerably from instance to instance, but this one is a great deal more relevant than, say, any of the Batman-related ones.

Jurgens is merely credited with "Dark Design," which I suppose could mean either plotting, or lay-outs or both, although it doesn't look like he designed the pages themselves. Dan Mishkin writes, while Dave Cockrum pencils and Jose Marzan Jr. inks. Dr. Bruce Gordon and a few other heroes join Superman and the League at their headquarters–including Wonder Woman and Metamorpho–as they strategize about the threat of Eclipso. This is relatively early in the villain's attack, but he manages to possess Maxima and send her to Nevada to cause destruction on a scale that draws the League there, while he himself stalks and battles Blue Beetle throughout the team's headquarters. In the end, his plan is only advanced a step or so, as he gets another "eclipsed" soldier for his army, but it's pretty remarkable how much action the longer page-count offers. These days, an annual is generally only slightly longer than a regular issues, maybe twice as long if you're lucky, but this is just shy of three times the length of an ordinary issue, allowing the scenes to be drawn out much longer. You sure got a lot more punching and blasting back in the day!

Of course, there's no real resolution to the story, as this was just one of the 20 parts of the storyline, and the collection jumps ahead to JLA #66 from there. I personally missed this annual the first time around, as I was a teenager with little money to waste on comics, cheap as they were, back in 1992. Looking now, I see that I've actually only read about a half-dozen of the 20 discrete chapters of the story. It was designed so one need only read the first and last chapters Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 and #2, with few of the issues in-between being all that relevant, but there sure was some cool stuff in there, as when pretty much all of the un-eclipsed heroes had to fight an eclipsed Superman. I wouldn't mind reading a collection of this entire storyline, but like similar annual events Armageddon 2001 and Bloodlines, collecting it into trade would prove challenging, based on its size alone.

The next issue is also one that occurs mid-storyline. Doomsday takes on Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Bloodwynd, Maxima, Fire and Ice and has pretty much torn them apart by the time Superman arrives on the last page. And that's that issue (Spoiler alert: Superman and Doomsday kill one another in a brawl that continues all the way into downtown Metropolis. They both get better and come back to life about a year later though).

And then it's time for the "Funeral for a Friend" tie-in issue, where the superhero community convenes at New York City's JLA HQ to mourn Superman, and Oberon passes out the black arm-bands with the S-shield on them. From here on, the collection tells a cohesive ongoing story...albeit a rather rocky one that must have seemed entirely unexpected at the start of Jurgens' run.

In the "Funeral for a Friend" issue, the League takes stock after their battle with Doomsday: Fire is powerless, Ice decides to quit, Booster Gold's costume was destroyed rendering him powerless and Blue Beetle is still in a coma. These characters are still the focus of the issue, but Jurgens lavishes attention on the many guest-stars, each of whom get a few lines about Superman and/or death, and each of whom is introduced in a dramatic action pose. Reading it now, it's actually a bit of a surprise that DC resisted the temptation to just launch a new team of their biggest heroes right then and there. With Superman dead, there was certainly an in-story rationale and motivation for the "old" Justice Leaguers, who the publisher was for whatever reasons resistant to use more than one or two of at a time on a League roster, to form a new, all-star League of the sort we wouldn't get into Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA.

The first to arrive? The Flash, Aquaman, Batman and Robin, Green Lantern and Hawkman–that's six right there. They are followed immediately by Starfire and Nightwing, then Green Lantern Alan Scott, The Flash Jay Garrick, Power Girl, Elongated Man, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Black Canary.

The actual make-up of the League that follows the Doomsday-damaged one is a little more interesting, and they are formed by the end of the next issue: Maxima, Guy Gardner and Bloodwynd are joined by new recruits Agent Liberty, The Ray, Black Condor and new leader Wonder Woman. They...don't last long. At that point, there are only two story arcs left in Jurgens' run: The fairly epic five-part "Destiny's Hand," and then a two-parter finally resolving the issue of Bloodwynd.

With "Destiny's Hand," Jurgens at least gets to use many of the classic Justice Leaguers that merely cameo-ed in the "Funeral" issue. Classic Justice League villain Doctor Destiny returns, and essentially merges a nightmare version of a fascist, world-ruling, near-future version of the Satellite Era Justice League, with the "real world" of the real Justice League.

And so Jurgens' League finds itself up against evil versions of The Flash (in black!), Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Black Canary and The Atom. It's a precursor of sorts to the "Justice Lords" episodes of Justice League Unlimited and the video game/comics of Injustice: Gods Among Us, which gives Jurgens the opportunity to draw the Satellite Era league, his League, some classic villains and bring his apparent favorite character The Atom Ray Palmer into the pages of his Justice League America.

The ending of this book, and thus of Jurgens' run, seems pretty abrupt, and some of the characters introduced seem to have barely been there at all. Agent Liberty, for example, has few lines after he's officially recruited to the team. Looking ahead, this was the start of a pretty chaotic period for the franchise. Dan Vado takes over as writer for a little bit, adding a few characters to the extant line-up (Captain Atom and Garrick), then there's the controversial "Judgement Day" crossover story with the other Justice League titles of the day, the "Zero Hour" crossover that introduced Triumph and, finally, Gerard Jones takes over for an almost-two-year run that brings the series to its conclusion, making way for the previously mentioned Morrison, Porter and Dell JLA.

I will be curious to see if what follows gets collected at all and, if so, how (Maybe as Wonder Woman and The Justice League of America...?). The "Judgement Day" and "Zero Hour" are easily collectible as standalone trades (the former can have Mark Waid's name splashed across it, the latter, which is a three-part story and might need paired with other material, can have Christopher Priest and Phil Jimenez's names highlighted), but given that the Vado and Jones runs aren't terribly well remembered as anything other than the stuff between the Giffen/Jones JLI era and the Morrison JLA era, demand is probably limited only to committed fans like me who would rather own trades that back-issues at this point.

They are still a lot better than a bunch of other Justice League comics that have been collected though! Like, almost everything since Identity Crisis, maybe...?

Comic Shop Comics: November 2nd

DC Comics Bombshells #19 (DC Comics) It's back to the home front, which means another issue featuring Gotham City's way too many Batgirls (a few of whom are boys). It's reading such issues that I really wish the book would provide an old-school Justice League style roll call with headshots, so I can remember who is who (there's about a baseball team's worth of Batgirls, all of whom just go by their first, civilian names, and many of whom aren't as immediately identifiable as, say, Harper Row or Tim Drake).

This issue also picks up on the plots from earlier Batgirls issues, which means we get paper girl Lois Lane, compromised politician Harvey Dent (whose face gets marred in this issue), The Penguin, Killer Frost and Hugo Strange. And introducing The Reaper. That's right; the series has been going on long enough that they've introduced The Reaper!

It's fine, but a rather unremarkable issue of the series, particularly after some of the bigger goings-on overseas of late. Marguerite Bennett is of course still writing (Hey, I just realized I bought exactly two comic book-format comics this week at the shop, and both were by Bennett!) and the art chores are split between Mirka Andolfo, Laura Braga, Sandy Jarrell and Pasquale Quanlo. As usual, each of the artists is a good one, but there are still too many of them for a single story.

DC Super Hero Girls: Hits and Myths (DC) I'll discuss this second graphic novel based on the titular toy line and cartoon at greater length elsewhere in the near future, but for now I just wanted to note a couple of fannish things. First of all, above is artist Yancey Labat's Raven, who is apparently being introduced to the kids from Super Hero High School for the first time. I like the design, which is a nice compromise between her classic design (at least as familiar from the Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go cartoons) and her current "Rebirth" design, with some extra reds to highlight her new red highlights.

This volume actually includes a lot more characters I was surprised to see, including Lobo, Trigon, Etrigan (SHHS's poetry teacher, whose ID read's "not just A Demon, The Demon") and the members of Black Canary's band "Black Canary and The Birds of Prey."

These are Magpie (a really great redesign) and Black Condor (the design most closely resembling that of Black Condor III), and they are all played as bad guys–even Black Canary, who steals the Batplane after a battle of the bands and requires being chased down, fought and captured by our heroines. Interesting to see Black Canary in such a role.

Oh! And Lion Mane is in this. Lion Mane!

Made for kids, obviously, but a blast for DC fans of any age.

JLA Presents: Aztek The Ultimate Man (DC) It was a light week, so I finally purchased this 2008 collection of the 10-issue 1996-1997 series. This is one of the most fascinating books from that creatively fruitful period at DC Comics, not only being one of several great high-concept comics that didn't last that long, but because it was a book featuring a brand-new character created and written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar and it only lasted 10 issues. Granted, this was pre-Authority, pre-Ultimate X-Men Mark Millar, when he was writing whatever minor DC gigs he could get, often in a style much like that of Morrison, rather than adjusting his old DC and Marvel superhero pitches to write for the Hollywood adaptations, but man, crazy to think two writers DC would publish just about anything from at this point couldn't sustain a series back then, huh?

I was never able to read the tenth and final issue, during which Aztek joins the JLA, so I've been meaning to buy this (which will also clear up some space in my longboxes). I just read that issue tonight. It's set during and around JLA #5, when the new "Magnificent 7" line-up held their first recruitment drive (during which they chose new character Tomorrow Woman; Aztek wouldn't show up until "Rock of Ages" in #10-15).

Looking at these pages now, I imagine that artists N. Steven Harris and Keith Champagne may have been at least one factor in the book's swift demise. The lay-outs are messy and hard to read, even when compared to say, Howard Porter's JLA, and Morrison at least doesn't seem like a writer who writes to his artist's strengths or weaknesses, apparently leaving it to his editors to make sure he and the artist are on the same page (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't; his Batman run is a perfect example of how quality fluctuates from arc to arc and issue to issue based on who he's paired with).

It made me awfully nostalgic for the era of Justice League stories, though, and a time period where the League seemed to make sense and the characters and their histories still felt genuine (that is, before all the reboots). Me, I like the table with the symbol chairs, Martian Manhunter referring to himself as the chairman, rookie Green Lantern Kyle Rayner with a clipboard giving prospective Leaguers tests and, especially, the intimaion of an initiation ritual at the end, involving the costume of the Crimson Avenger and a Bible "written by the Justice Society" (?).

The plot of this particular issue, oddly enough, involves Professor Ivo, one of the villains of Morrison's JLA #5, and Amazo, the villain for Millar's eventual JLA fill-in, 1999's #27. It's pretty clear that the pair had a lot more plans for the series, as there is a two-page sequence that features little one-panel epilogues for various characters, each suggesting future plots...which don't come to fruition. The final, romantic sub-plot resolution is pretty funny and, as we saw in JLA, Aztek gets a pretty big, heroic send-off at the climax of Morrison's run.


But, for the most part, this felt a little like finding a "lost" issue of Morrison's JLA, still one of my favorite comic book series.

I hope to re-read the whole of Aztek now that I have it between a single set of covers in the near future, and will perhaps to discuss it here later.

Josie and The Pussycats #2 (Archie Comics) Co-writers Marguerite Bennett and Cameron Deordio have mostly reintroduced and set-up the cast. Alan only had a panel or two last issue, and just gets mentioned in this issue, while Alexander has yet to appear (he only does so in the back-up reprint this issue), but with this second issue the curiosity factor of how the creators will reboot the series has begun to subside, and a reader can begin to appreciate what they're doing with the characters and the comic instead of just noting and beginning to process the choices.

The key word here seems to be clever. Bennett and Deorido's script is relentlessly clever, with more wordplay and meta-gags than any of the other Archie Comics relaunches. The girls refer to themselves as comic book characters aware that they are in a comic book (generally in passing though; it's the dialogue and not the plot that makes note of this), and the climax involves the sound effect "COMIC BOOK SCIENCE" and a dare for Neil DeGrasse Tyson to "come at" the Pussycats for it).

Bad puns, awkward incorporation of song lyrics, Melody's non-sequiturs (they continue to play her as more weird than dumb, which is working out quite well) and an all-around steady stream of witty dialogue makes this the most verbally ambitious of Archie's new line of rebooted humor comics, and maybe it's most rewarding.

The plot involves the band, which has only been a band for a few hours, off on tour in a big, fancy tour bus that stretches credibility (something Valerie notes) heading out on tour. Their first stop could also be their last, thanks to the ill-advised signing of autographs on the signature lines of contracts forcing them to be the houseband and a sketchy biker bar full of decidely cool, young, good-looking bikers. Their only hope to escape? A motorcycle race, obviously.

Audrey Mok's art is great. It took me an issue to adjust my expectations from the Josie that exists in my head (That is, Dan DeCarlo's) to the one on these pages, but Mok's artwork is a great compromise between emotive and cartoony and more realistic, blending the looks of the new Archie Comics series into an aesthetic that synthesizes the styles. It looks like part of the line, and to be a superior part of that line, visually (Derke Charm's art on Jughead is still my favorite though, and I'm not thinking about Adam Hughes' work on Betty and Veronica, which is the real aesthetic outlier so far...of course, he's only done the one issue, so it's hard to assess it in relation to the rest of the artists who have worked on the line so far).

Review: Invincible Iron Man Vol. 2: The War Machines

I really liked the first volume of Brian Michael Bendis' new Iron Man title, much to my own surprise. But few of the nice things I said about that first collection can be transferred to this second collection, which is, admittedly, a little weird, but it seems to be a pattern with some of Marvel's post-Secret Wars relaunches. For example, I also really enjoyed the first volume of the new Daredevil, and the second volume? Not so much.

Here the major problem is that artist David Marquez is gone, replaced by frequent Bendis collaborator Michael Deodato. I'm not a fan of Deodato's style for several reasons. The most immediate in this particular instance, however, is that it looks absolutely nothing like that of Marquez, so there's a real sense of aesthetic whiplash between the two Invincible Iron Man collections Bendis has written so far, despite the fact that the characterization, the plotting and the sense of humor remain unchanged. Simply put, as all of you and Bendis himself and surely the people at charge at Marvel know, comics is a visual medium, and it hardly matters if the writer stays the same but the artist changes–and changes so drastically–because the scripting may be the same underneath, but this looks, reads and feels like an entirely different book.

The single most distracting thing about Deodato's artwork here, aside from the fact that Deodato is suddenly drawing the book in a completely different style, is his reliance on celebrity likenesses throughout. His Tony Stark, his Mary Jane Watson, his James Rhodes and his Amara Perera may all very well be based on actual actors, but, if so, I couldn't place them; Stark doesn't look like he's being "played" by Robert Downey Jr. in Deodato's artwork, which is actually kind of unusual, given that Bendis is so clearly inspired by RDJ's performance of the character.

Doctor Victor Von Doom, however, is given such a particular, even peculiar face (remember, he's got his face back and is no longer rocking the metal mask, thanks to the events of Secret Wars) as opposed to the sort of generically handsome one Marquez drew that it was driving me crazy trying to place him while I was reading this volume. I eventually Googled the guy from the last Fantastic Four movie and, it turns out, Deodato is in fact drawing Von Doom as the actor who played him in it, Toby Kebbell (UPDATE: Or is he? Please see Lee Carey's comment below, which suggests that Deodato is actually drawing Doom as Vincent Cassel, which looks right to me now that it's been pointed out to me. Feel free to ignore the rest of this paragraph then!). This is so weird on so many levels; if you were for whatever reason determined to base all of your drawings of a fictional character on a particular actor instead of just drawing him in whatever way you think might be most fun to draw, or might best convey the spirit of the character or might best tell that story, and you could fan-cast anyone as Doctor Doom, why on earth would you choose the guy who played him poorly in the worst Fantastic Four movie ever made (yes, I did see the Roger Corman one), or that could conceivably have been made?

Worse still, in the second half of the volume, Tony Stark adopts a high-tech disguise that gives him a different head while he's going deep undercover, and Deodato chooses to draw him as Luke Perry, circa Beverly Hills, 90210. I don't know if that was meant to be a joke on Deodato's part (there are no moments where any of Tony's American friends say he looks vaguely familiar, or ask why he chose that particular face), but it sure is weird and frustrating to see Luke Perry's face traced into various panels.

(And I say that as maybe the biggest Luke Perry fan in what remains of the comics blogosphere; there is no one who would rather read a comic book about Luke Perry fighting ninjas with laser swords than I would.)

It boggles my mind that this stuff still happens, and that it happens in one of the major comic book publisher's premier books with its premier writers attached. I'm not a lawyer, but can Kebbel or Perry sue for having their likenesses appropriated like that? They should. Even if they don't personally care, even if they don't need or want the money, they should do so if only to discourage artist like Deodato and Greg Land (does he still do that? I gave up on him a long time ago) borrowing their likenesses to draw into comics.

(While we're on the subject, I have a question. Is it really easier to trace or draw particular actors from particular frames of particular TV shows or films into a comic book panel? To do it right, it seems like you would have to spend a hell of a lot of time searching for the right images to parrot for a particular panel. Even if you keep pretty extensive files of reference material, down to "Toby Kebbel smiling" or "Luke Perry raising his eyebrows quizzically," I can't imagine the amount of work saved by not just drawing characters' freehand to suit the panel is worth what goes into the research. Now, to do it wrong, as Land used to do, you don't even bother with a consistent source of inspiration, but draw characters as different actors, professional wrestlers or models from panel to panel. I haven't seen his work in a long time, so I don't know if he still does that or not, but he didn't even bother "casting" real people into his art as particular characters, but seemed to simply change the reference material from panel to panel based on the pose he wanted.)

As for the story of the six issues collected herein, Tony Stark is still interested in figuring out what the hell Madame Masque was up to in the previous volume, and just what is up with those ninjas with the laser katanas. Rather than investigating a break-in that occurred at a Stark facility in Japan personally, he sends his pal Rhodey to scope it out for him for...reasons. There's no real logical reason to delegate the task provided in the book, but I suspect I know the real rationale, which is to remind readers that Rhodey exists and that he is pals with Tony Stark, given that they and their relationship apparently play a role in Civil War II (the text on the back of the collection makes repeated references to Civil War, alluding to the fact that this somehow sets the stage for the series, although it's not terribly clear how any of this plotting will lead to that conflict).

When Rhodey gets in trouble, Iron Man and Spider-Man Peter Parker investigate, and also get in trouble. Stark's answer is to fake his own death, disguise himself as an ex-SHIELD agent that looks exactly like a young Luke Perry and then try to infiltrate the ninjas-with-laser-swords organization. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence girl friday Friday and his reluctant recruit Mary Jane Watson try to keep his company afloat while his board of directors thinks he's dead. Finally  Rhodey has enough of Tony's spy game, and he  brings the All-New, All-Different Avengers and SHIELD in to help extract Tony...against his will.

I liked this panel:

I guess Bendis doesn't get the glowing spider-symbol, either. So we totally agree on that.

But Bendis, man, quit running around with this Deodato character, and maybe give a little thought to how the comics you write look, issue to issue and collection to collection, huh?

This collection is also notable for introducing Riri Williams, the 15-year-old girl who is going to become the new "Iron Man"...under a less male codename, of course.  She only gets three scenes spanning about seven pages, and so far hasn't connected to Tony or the wider plot at all yet. She's just a young girl who builds a flying suit of super-armor that looks a bit like a homemade Optimus Prime and decides to try her hand at being a superhero, since she's about to get kicked out of M.I.T. anyway.

I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the near future.

Review: Midnighter Vol. 2: Hard

First of all, get your mind out of the gutter, or at least out of Midnighter's tight-fitting leather pants. The sub-title of the second and final volume of writer Steve Orlando's Midnighter ongoing, the last vestige of the 2011 merging of the WildStorm "universe" with the DC Universe, refers not to the title character's sexual excitement, but how tough he is. "You think you're something? Think you're hard?" Deadshot taunts a temporarily captured Midnighter at one point. Which is rather silly, really, given that this is Midnighter we're talking about. Of course he's something. Of course he's hard.

One has to imagine the double meaning of that sub-title is intentional, however, given that Orlando's Midnighter is one of the few DC superheroes we ever see in a sex scene...and one of still fewer that it doesn't seem weird and gross to see in a sex scene. Like, whenever I saw New 52 Superman and Wonder Woman in bed together, it felt a little like walking in on my parents or something. Midnighter was a superhero character created for grown-ups from the start though.

Hard is actually sort of a mixed bag of a trade collection, including as it does the final five issues of Orlando's Midnighter, and then what could charitably referred to as filler material...albeit high-quality filler. These are the first two issues that followed Garth Ennis' six-issue run on the 2007 Midnighter series, back in simpler times when the character was merely an artificially created Batman analogue, part of a madman's designer Justice League that eventually joined up with some similarly morally uncomplicated superheroes and formed The Authority, a team of super-bastards intent on protecting the world their way, and fuck you if you didn't like it.

The first is a semi-clever issue by Brian K. Vaughan and Darick Robertson that riffs on Midnighter's ability to see into the future by telling the story backwards; it's a pretty straightforward 22-page story, only with the pages re-ordered so it reads 22-1, rather than 1-22. That's followed by a Christos Gage/John Paul Leon issue in which Hawksmoor challenges Midnighter to do something simple and traditionally superheroic, rather than horrifically violent. They settle on helping a little girl find her lost cat, but, luckily for Midnighter, it involves fighting over-the-top cyborgs.

These are both great, even though they don't really line up with the preceding issues of the new series, and really only underscore that Midnighter doesn't really fit into the DCU (surely the Justice League would have gone after him, power rings and eye beams blazing, in an attempt to shut him down by this point), and how needlessly complicated he and his fellows are at this point. For the life of me, I can't imagine why DC decided to launch a StormWatch book starring a mixture of Authority characters, DC characters and all-new characters at the outset of the New 52 rather than an Authority book, given how much more popular that latter concept was in the recent-ish past.

The final bit of filler is the Midnighter and Apollo short from the 2013 Young Romance: A New 52 Valentine's Day Special, which, if I recall, was the highlight of that anthology. It's by Peter Milligan and Simon Bisley, and features the characters in their initial New 52 redesigns, which, in the case of Midnighter, meant the loss of his signature trench coat and the addition of a bunch of spikes, for some reason.

As for Orlando's story, the lead-in is something of a team-up with Freedom Beast–although he's never called by that name, nor by B'wanna Beast, which might be weird given the color of skin. He simply introduces himself as "Dominic Mndawe." When weird hybrid animals start rampaging through Rochester, New York, Midnighter encounters Mdnawe, who tells him he's on the trail of twisted big game hunters using a formula similar to that he uses to create the exotic animals, which they hunt for sport. Not a bad idea, but I'm uncertain why they are doing so in a city, rather than somewhere more remote, like their own personal island, where they might conceivably get away with it.

The rest of Orlando's run concerns itself with a Suicide Squad story. Midnighter allies himself with Spyral to deal with something missing from "The God Garden," which brings the wrath of Amanda Waller and her Squad–Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Parasite, Captain Boomerang and new character Afterthought–on Midnighter. Then Waller allies herself with Henry Bendix and his latest superhuman creation and Apollo gets involved.

It's a pretty big, crazy action/espionage story, and it was kind of fun to see Midnighter trading blows and barbs with the Squad, but I would have preferred clearer, less-detailed artwork...something driven home by the bigger, bolder and brighter artwork that Robertson provides in his issue in the back. Aco remains the top credited artist, and had at least a hand in most of the issues from the current series, but he also usually has several different artists help finish the issues. Given the tendency to break scenes into many little panels, artfully littered across the ones telling the thrust of the story, as a way to visualize Midnighter's powers, the pages generally look crowded, and all those lines and realistic coloring effects don't help any.

Leon's art looks similar to that Aco and company's, but is crisper, while Robertson's looks like very well-drawn superhero comics, which suits the character best, I think, as it draws a greater contrast between Midnighter and other, similar heroes.

The character is already back with Orlando writing him, in a six-issue miniseries entitled Midnighter and Apollo. That's a good thing. Orlando seems to get the character and have a lot of fun with him, and there's certainly a great deal of potential to Midnighter and Orlando's particular take, it just isn't always apparent on the page.

Comic shop comics: October 26th

Jughead #10 (Archie Comics) Jughead Jones and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch go on a date and it does not go well. This is mainly because Jughead isn't really interested in dating, and he had developed a crush on Sabrina when she was dressed like a giant hamburger (in the previous issue). But he also doesn't want to be a jerk and hurt her feelings, so he tries to awkwardly pretend not to be awkward about being on a date that he does not want to be on. Sabrina, as is her wont, attempts to salvage things via magic. And Archie attempts to help, making things even worse.

It ends, as only the most disastrous of dates could, with Sabrina flipping the table, and then seeking revenge against Jughead by a variety of curses that continually backfire.

It is the best.

Writer Ryan North gets Archie's cluelessness just so perfectly. Mark Waid is killing it on Archie, particularly with the teen drama stuff, but if Waid ever needs a break and/or they want to do a more comedy-focused Archie story, North is definitely the man for it. His alt-text-esque notes are particularly appreciated, as they allow for the underlining of Archie's cluelessness (The bit with the group message? Fantastic!).

At this point, Derek Charm has definitely cemented his status as my favorite of the rebooted Riverdale artists. His Salem is perhaps the best Salem ever, and if Sabrina should get her own title again, similar to these titles rather than the old-timey horror comic she's currently starring in whenever Archie actually publishes an issue of the apparently schedule-less book, Charm should definitely get to draw it. Or at least guest-draw all of the Salems. He looks both darling and evil at the exact same time.

Lumberjanes # (Boom Studios) Monster birds with a petrifying gaze are fought, and families are discussed, with Gorgon Ligo mentioning her several monstrous cousins–Pegasus, Cerberus, Ladon–and Diane getting a pretty good crude gag about the birth of Athena. Otherwise, a rather slow-moving issue, one that may prove to be the one in this arc that demonstrates the title's shagginess, in which stories are never quite as tight as they should be.

...

You know, it is not until I was writing that first sentence that I realized Lumberjanes would be pretty well-suited for adaptation into a tabletop role-playing game. Do people still play those in our post-computer age? The woods are full of monsters to encounter, you could design your own scout, your campaign party would essentially be your cabin-mates, experience points would earn you badges...Yeah, someone should get on that.

Prince of Cats (Image Comics) I haven't read this yet, but I did buy it at the shop today, so in the column it goes.

Saga #39 (Image Comics) I'm with The March's male head: I want to see how the monitor-faced Robots drink too, especially since the last few pages feature a dying robot who was asking for a bottle, and the last image to flash before his eyes/on his monitor was that of mother's milk.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #19 (DC Comics) So regularly do a I praise the work of Scooby Doo Team-Up artist Dario Brizuela, who always manages to marry the diverse aesthetic styles of first-generation Scooby-Doo cartoons with those of various DC super-characters of different eras and from different artists, that I suppose I should point out a particularly egregious art mistake in the opening gag of this latest issue.

As you can see above, he gave Scooby two pairs of forepaws, so that both Shaggy and Scooby have Scoob's forepaws. This makes Shaggy into a scary Scooby centaur rather than just having the bottom half of Scooby, and suggest some kind of scary, bent, six-limbed Scooby centaur as well, if the Scooby halves drawn in this panel were reunited.

This issue is a Halloween issue, and congratulations guys, it took you just four panels to completely horrify me.

While it's Zatanna who gets the cover, this is one of those issue's like the Deadman/Spectre/Phantom Stranger issue or the super-dogs issue where writer Sholly Fisch and Brizuela apparently just pick a category–magic-using DC comics characters–and stick as many of them in here as possible.

Go ahead; try to think of an obscure magic-user. Chances are they are in here. Ibis the Invincible? Please. Page six. One of "The Turban Triplets", as Zatanna calls he, Sargon the Sorcerer and El Carim (Sargon's comedy sidekick Max is there). The Warlock of Ys? Warlock The Wizard? Yes. They're all here. Hell, even chain-smoking, Vertigo emigree John Constantine gets alluded to. "You were right about them being snappy dressers," Fred cheerfully says after they've interviewed all of the magician heroes that could be fit in a montage, "Except that British guy in the rumpbled trenchcoat."

By the time that Fisch and Brizuela finish their run on this series, I fully expect that they will have included at least a cameo, namecheck or allusion to every single character in DC's massive character catalog.

As for the story this issue, Zatanna invites the gang to a show at the Mystery Mansion to help her find her missing (and still alive here, obviously) father Zatara, who went missing around the same time as several magical items of extreme potency. They interview every magic-using hero and every magic-using villain they can think of before ultimately solving the mystery. Before it's all over, Scobby trees Klarion The Witch Boy's familiar Teekl and dons the helm of Fate, Cerberus is fed Scooby Snacks (hey, this is the second appearance of Cerberus in a comic book in my short stack this week!) and the words "hypnotic monocle" are used as a punchline.

So, you know, an all-around great comic.

Sixpack and Dogwelder: Hard Travelin' Heroz #3 (DC) Well, seeing this issue show up this week was quite a bit sadder than usual, given the fact that the cover image is the work of the artist Steve Dillon, who collaborated with writer Garth Ennis on both Preacher and The Punisher and is reportedly responsible for the creation of Section Eight's most bizarre loser superhero, Dogwelder, the focal point of this miniseries. As you've likely already heard, Dillon passed away this week.

The title of this miniseries seems less and less apropos as it proceeds, as Sixpack and Dogwelder are joined by their surviving teammates–El Bueno, Guts and Baytor–as well as Ennis and artist Russ Braun's peculiar version of a rebooted, superhero universe John Connstantine (Who rides atop a flying surfboard, wears a space helmet and carries a ray gun labeled "The Hellblazer." So maybe "Section Eight: Hard Travelin' Heroz" or "Section Eight: The Dogwelder Saga" or "Section Eight: The Magnificent Six or Seven" would have been a better title?

At any rate, in this issue, Dogwelder II–recently given the power of speech in maybe the most disturbing way possible–tries to check in on his family, and it does not go well. From there, Constantine takes the team to the pyramids of Egypt where they quite naturally have to fight mummies. This leads to Sixpack smashing a bottle, brandishing the jagged edge and shouting, "Come on, mummy*******!", which, providing the asterisks are there in place of the letters F,U,C,K,E,R and S, is something I have a hard time believing no one ever thought of before.

This is the second Constantine appearance of the week among the books I purchased and, like the first, it's a particularly oddball one.

Wonder Woman #9 (DC) Not content to re-introduce his Sasha Bordeaux, no matter how confusing the character and her continuity might be a good three reboots or so since she was first introduced as Bruce Wayne's bodyguard, Greg Rucka also reintroduces his Veronica Cale character from the pages of his first run on Wonder Woman.

There's nothing wrong with that per se, I suppose, but it seems a little...uninspired, I guess. I want to see new characters, or fresh takes on old, classic ones, I suppose, rather than Rucka recycling his personal favorite creations. (Cale wasn't that great a character the first time around, either; she's basically a blond Lex Luthor who opposes Wonder Woman instead of Superman, but maybe we'll get something different from her this go-round).

After last month's fill-in starring a pre-Cheetah Barbara Minerva, this issue is part of "The Lies" story arc, which means it is set in the present and drawn by Liam Sharp. Wonder Woman, Steve and Barbara are all back in the U.S. after their African adventure, and enjoying some downtime of sorts as sub-plots move forward. Steve and Diana rekindle their romance–she's not pregnant though, despite the posing on the cover that evokes that of pregnancy announcement photo.

Speaking of that cover, it's Sharp, although there's such a Gary Frank-ness about it, I had to double check. The wall made out of a robot lady doesn't really get explained in the interior of the comic at all, but the symbol on the monitor is relevant. Finally, I know it's different, but Steve's tattoo is close enough to the symbol of the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars-iverse that I keep thinking that's what it is when I glance at it, and have to keep reminding myself that Steve Trevor is not, in fact, a huge Star Wars nerd, and that is the symbol of his team or whatever.

Wonder Woman 75th Anniversary Special #1 (DC) This 74-page, $7.99 special contains a strange mix of short stories, pin-ups, page-filling content and what amounts to an ad...I got the sense that it was, in part, assembled out of leftover stories that never got used in Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman before that anthology series was sadly, tragically canceled. I enjoyed much of it nevertheless, and would definitely recommend it to any fans of the characters, or perhaps as a sort of sampler platter for someone interested in the character, but not sure where to go or start with her.

First, the filler. There's a six-page "interview" with Wonder Woman conducted by Lois Lane, and printed in enormous font, with a couple of spot illustrations by Liam Sharp. The first "photo" is a giant one not of Wonder Woman, but of Lois, as, like, no magazine in the world ever does. This is all "Transcribed" by Greg Rucka. It is immediately followed by a two-page, five-panel "story" written and drawn by Sharp that is, well, there's not much to it.

There's a six-page preview from Jill Thompson's Wonder Woman: The True Amazon, which shows off Thompson's art nicely, but is otherwise little more than an ad fro a graphic novel.

And then there's a four-page sequence devoted to Brian Bolland's work as a cover artist on a previous volume of the title. There's a paragraph of introduction followed by four small reproductions of four favorite covers, and then three pages showing "rarely seen, unused pencil studies" for covers that were never published.

Next, the pin-ups, some of which, it occurs to me now, could have been images originally solicited as covers for Sensation. These are by Jenny Frison, Yanick Paquette, Claire Roe, Phil Jimenez, Marco Takara and Annie Wu.

The stories are kind of all over the place. The shortest is something between a double-page spread pin-up and a comic; that's regular DC Comics Bombshells writer Marguerite Bennett and early Bombshells artist Marguerite Sauvage, which tells Wonder Woman's origin story beneath an image of the Bombshell Wonder Woman (this origin is probably technically hers, but since Bombshell Wonder Woman is basically just Golden Age Wonder Woman in a different outfit, it works as a Wonder Woman origin in general).

As for the others, there's an eight-pager drawn and co-written by Rafael Albuquerque telling a WWII-era story equating the character to Joan of Arc; there's a great four-pager by Brenden Fletcher and Karl Kerschl in which Wonder Woman takes on a poacher; an eight-pager written by Mairghread Scott and darwn by Riley Rossmo in which a very big, muscular version of the character battles Giganta; a neat three-page story by Fabio Moon in which a few Wonder Woman fans watch their hero take on a three-headed dragon; an eight-page story written and drawn by The Legend of Wonder Woman's Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon set in that particular continuity (introducing a cool new version of Red Panzer); a kinda dumb six-page story in which Rebirth Wonder Woman and a peculiar version of Etta (Rebirth era, but with different hair) visit an Ikea dialogue which is more about Ikea jokes than anything else; and, finally, a neat, kinda sorta Wonder Woman/Superman team-up in which Wonder Woman helps fight a new version of Titano and meets new, little girl superhero The Sensational Star-Blossom. That one is also eight pages long, and it is written by Gail Simone and drawn by Colleen Doran.