This robot has a lot to say...

...and only one panel to say it in.



(Panel from Dreamwave Productions' 2004 comic Transformers: Generation One #3 [Vol. 3], written by Brad Mick, penciled by Don Figueroa and inked by Elaine To)

These movies actually exist.

(NSFW, and watching these might make you dumber and/or destroy a small piece of your soul)







I'm both relieved and disappointed that searching for "WatchBabes" and "trailer" on youtube didn't have similar results.

Weekly Haul: July 8th

Booster Gold #22 (DC Comics) Last issue, Booster Gold went to visit the Batcave just as someone tried to assassinate the new Batman, Dick Grayson. In this issue, Booster Gold has to go back in time—and thus to another point in DC continuity—in order to stop the assassin from killing Dick Grayson when he was still Robin and hanging out with the Marv Wolfman/George Perez.

I think that’s what this book does best; sends it’s titular hero to team up with, fight against or otherwise interact with the characters from old DC comics. Here decades worth of continuity isn't baggage to be burdened with or a pitfall to be skillfully avoided, but the very premise of the book.

Unfortunately I think that means this will probably always be a book with extremely limited appeal, unless some out-and-out ingenious motherfuckers start scripting it for Dan Jurgens. There’s nothing wrong with the scripts as is, it’s just that nothing terribly fresh or inspired is done with the premise to elevate it above competent DC super-comic that a reader of any age could probably read and enjoy without risking mental scarring.

Anyway, in this issue Booster Gold and Skeets team-up with Cyborg and the gang to protect them from the original Ravager, Deathstroke the Terminator and the mysterious Black Beetle. In one panel, Booster Gold smashes his fist into Ravager’s face and says, “Ravage this, Pal” which has got to be the worst pick-up line ever.

In the back-up, Blue Beetle, Paco and Brenda continue to deal with robots and their makers. The robots’ makers, not Blue Beetle, Paco and Brenda’s makers.


Green Lantern #43 (DC) Given the fact that this is Geoff Johns forty-third consecutive issue of the series, and a prologue to the “Blackest Night” storyline he’s been slowly building to ever since Green Lantern: Rebirth, this probably shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise, but this is one hell of a Geoff Johnsy comic.

Check it out. Scar, the female Guardian of the Galaxy that cries black tears, recaps the history of the Guardians and their prophecy regarding the “War of Light” and “Blackest Night” during six very full panels.

Cut to the Black Hand, cuddling with one of the four skeletons in the bottom of an open grave, at which point it transitions for a while into something similar to the sorts of "Rogue profile" issues Johns would often do during his Flash. The Black Hand then tells his life story, from one of his earliest memories (telling his undertaker father that a female corpse he’s working on is pretty), to his childhood obsession with death and taxidermy, to his encounter with Atrocitus, Hal Jordan and Sinestro during Johns’ “Secret Origin” arc, to his making his costume out of a body bag, to his Silver Age career, to “Emerald Twilight,” to Green Lantern: Rebirth, to the Gremlins arc.

Then it’s back to the present, where he wanders through a graveyard, thinking of every DC hero who died and came back to life or didn’t since Superman’s “death.” Then he kills his whole family. Then he kills himself, blowing his brains out with his little cosmic rod thing. Then Scar shows up, pukes up a Black Lantern ring, which then resurrects Black Hand zombie. The end.

It’s really, really, really gory, by far gorier than any other Johns comics I can remember reading in a while. It’s not the sort of thing I really like to wallow in, personally, nor it is the type of material that comes to mind when I think of superhero comics, but it’s executed well enough and, from this point on, it’s not like goriness is inappropriate in a story about an army of reanimated corpses or anything.

This issue is drawn by the Doug Mahnke/Christian Alamy art team, and it is great looking stuff. They do an incredible job. They cover a lot of ground from throughout DC history, including Hal Jordan at various eras, the death scenes of about 16 DC characters from throughout the course of the last 15 years so, and a great deal of subtle work involving Black Hand and his family.

The level of detail they work in makes the goriness extra icky, but it’s also well drawn, which is always preferably to sloppy, poorly drawn goriness.


Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #13 (Marvel Comics) With Paul Tobin writing, and a story that starts in Avengers Tower and features a couple of the MA version of the Avengers, this reads an awful lot like an issue of Tobin’s MA Avengers, which isn’t a bad thing in my book.

A bull dog dives off a SHIELD helicarrier and smashes to the ground in New York City, completely unharmed. Meanwhile, She-Hulk shows up at Avengers Tower to pick up Tigra, and Spider-Man joins them for a puppet theater presentation of “Hamlet, using X-Men puppets.” (?) Sadly, before they arrive at that, they encounter the bulldog which, it turns out, is a SHEILD L.M.D. (Life Model Doggie) programmed by Hulk villain The Leader to fetch some sensitive SHEILD data for him.

Hilarity—well, some mildly amusing scenes featuring robot pigeons and horses—ensue. Marcelo Dichiara’s art is pretty good—his Spider-Man bears an uncanny resemblance to the one I grew up watching cartoons of—but there seems to be something a little rough about many of the lines. I wonder if someone else inking Dichiara’s art, or a different colorist might have helped?

One question though: Where did Shulkie put her jacket between pages 11 and 12? And where did Tigra’s street clothes go?


Wednesday Comics #1 (DC) I don’t normally review super-comics at Blog@Newsarama, since the gang at “Best Shots @ Newsarama” covers thoroughly, but this was such an unusual project that I reviewed the hell out of it on Blog@. So click here for a billion words, some goofy pictures and some mathematical facts about Wednesday Comics.

Short version? I was really, really, really looking forward to this one, I wasn’t in the least bit disappointed, and it was well worth the $3.99 price point in terms of quantity as well as quality. Do give it a shot.

The series is only one-twelfth over, but I’m already pretty sure that I’d like to see this become an annual summer event.

Sometimes my commenters think of much better jokes than I do.

Last night I posted the above image and noted that the cover credits seemed to indicate that Paul Dini was the only creator involved, instead of being one of the two writers whose work is within (not to mention the four pencil artists and three inkers).

Reader Heather's comment was actually better than the post of mine that she was responding to: "By looking at the cover we can clearly see Paul Dini collaborated with Batman on this run of Detective."

Damn, I wish I thought of that...

Why did Palin resign? Only Palin—and political cartoonists—can know for sure

It's common knowledge that if you have bad news of national interest to report, the best time to do it is on a Friday afternoon, as most reporters and editors are on their way out of their offices for the weekend, and it's extra-hard for any news organization to throw together the sort of thorough coverage they'd be able to manage on a weekday morning. And if you really want to downplay that bad news you have to give, better make it the Friday before a holiday weekend, as the major media types are likely to already have called it a week, and the general public will be less likely to pay attention, since they'll be busy celebrating their holiday.

That's why Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's decision to announce her resignation 4:30-ish last Friday, July 3 seemed so suspect. Well, that and the fact that despite talking for about ten minutes, she never actually explained the rationale for her decision, at least not in a way that made any sense. And that the announcement runs counter to all of here stated (and conceivable) goals. And that the announcement seemed hastily thrown together, with her performance being closer to the cringe-worthy Palin-during-an-interview than the Palin-delivering-a-well-rehearsed speech (and her press secretary was in New York City at the time of the event).

Of course, none of that really means anything, as Palin has repeatedly demonstrated that she won't be forced to follow the rules of politics, either because she doesn't know/understand them, or because she doesn't agree/believe in them, or she just likes doing so to cultivate an outsider image.

So the Friday afternoon before a holiday announcement may not have actually been some sort of preemptive damage control, it may have just been the latest Weird Sarah Palin Action in a long line of them. It certainly didn't really do a whole lot to diminish coverage, as the way she went about it—i.e. not giving a real reason—simply invited more speculation then a "So yeah you guys, I think I'm going to just start going on a speaking tour because it's tons more lucrative and I've got mouths to feed" would have.

You know who the true victim's of Palin's announcement are? No, not the people of Alaska who voted for her, or the English language, or political rhetoric, although those are all some good guesses. No, it's America's political cartoonists, who had to attempt to make some sort of statement accompanied by a funny drawing about Sarah Palin resigning, despite having no idea why she did so.

What did the poor wretches come up with on such short notice? Let's take a look, shall we?


These similar images are both by Taylor Jones. Both seem to play off of her phrase regarding dead fish in her remarks, which I'll quote here in context...for whatever the context is worth:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow".

Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".

Jones' first image plays up the incoherence of Palin's announcement, while also managing to imbue his caricature with the animalistic characteristics so often associated with Palin, on account of her outdoorsy reputation and her state's wilderness environment. What it's actual message is, well, that's a little more cryptic, but who can blame Jones for being cryptic about a cryptic statement? Maybe this is just a funny drawing to go alongside someone else's opinion piece.

I'm not sure I get the point of the second one either; it's basically another variation of the first, only with one of her strange metaphors quoted.


Monte Wolverton's was one of the first cartoons I saw after the announcement, and he did certainly capture my own immediate reaction, of, "Okay, why is this lady doing this and why is she doing it now?" Unfortunately, it's not much of a cartoon is it? It's simply an illustrated metaphor, with everything labeled, including "The Other Shoe," with those words, despite the fact that we can tell it's another shoe, on account of it being the, um, other shoe in the cartoon.

Was there really no more clever way to convey "Oh ho, I bet there's more to this! When will the other shoe drop?" than to draw this?

But maybe Wolverton had to turn it around in ten minutes to have it ready for the following morning's paper, I don't know.


Lisa Benson ties her cartoon into the timing of the Palin's resignation in this multi-panel piece, and effectively demonstrates the Republican Party's fascination with Palin, as well as their confusion at her latest move.

It also works well as a metaphor for someone who burns brightly only to be more quickly extinguished, which works well if this is the end of Palin's political career. In that case, this is a particularly good metaphor. I don't know that it is of course; Palin did say she at least planned to campaign on behalf of other politicians in her July 3 speech.

Too bad about the "Palin" label there, though. I think Benson could have probably communicated that the rocket was Palin without having to write the word "Palin" on its side. But otherwise, not bad at all!


Jim Morin of the Miami Herald also ties his cartoon into the timing, but his implies the opposite of Benson's—not only is Palin not done with politics, but this is actually the start of her run for the presidency in 2012.

I personally doubt that is the case, for the simple fact that being the governor of a large state for at least a term looks much better on a resume than quitting being governor of a large state because it was too hard or there wasn't enough money to be made in it or one felt ineffectual in the job.



Tony Auth sees Palin's move as the death of her political career. Is that the case? I don't know, but I really like this cartoon. Again, the labeling seems superfluous (obviously that's a fortune teller, obviously that's Palin), but I think trying-to-read-a-skeleton-hand is a pretty funny gag. Has that been done before, in a different context? If not, then this is definitely one of those jokes that falls under the so-obvious-in-retrospect category.


Wait, she didn't say this in her speech at all. What is the point of this nonsense? There's no need to paraphrase or put goofy rationales in her mouth; her mouth was full of readymades last Friday!


I actually like this one, by R.J. Matson, even less. The tangled cord is kinda clever I guess, but how old is the ipod advertising campaign it's riffing on? Old enough that I can't remember seeing one recently, which means ancient by today's accounting for time. Keep up, newspapers!


Here are a couple of straightforward "Hey, this crazy lady is being crazy" entries...




And, finally, here's one by Jeff "Mister" Darcy, of my favorite newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer: He gives a pretty good reason, one I could definitely buy. If you're getting paid so-so to do an extremely hard job when you could be getting paid insanely well for doing an easy-ass job, why not cash-in while the cashing-in's good? Especially if you have no intention of running for president in three years. And whether Palin has any intention of running for president in three years, I don't think she has a chance in hell of winning that race, and, if she feels the same, then why bother running at all?

Paul Dini, one man band

I noticed copy of 2007's Batman: Detective at the library today, and was bemused by the presentation of the title and credits on the cover:
Who is the author of this book? Why it's none other than famed writer/artist Paul Dini, apparently.

Actually, if you've read any of these comics before, then you know Dini's just a writer, so he had to have at least one other guy helping him create the contents of this trade paperback, even if you ignore the inkers, colorists and letterers, as cover credits so often do.

This slim, 144-page trade includes six issues of Detective Comics, only five of which are written by Dini. It also includes a fill-in issue written by Royal McGraw, which kind of misses the point of fill-in issues—it's a story published specifically to meet a particular deadline to make sure that a monthly comic is actually on sale during a particular month, there's no reason to re-publish it in a trade collection. Particularly if it's a throwaway story about a minor villain from a Batman comic published over 20 years ago (which another writer already wrote fifteen years ago anyway), a villain who was killed off in the pages of another comic and especially if the organizing principle of your trade collection is the work of a particular writer, who is being given co-billing with freaking Batman on the cover.

Four different pencil artists have a hand in these stories by Dini and McGraw: J.H. Williams III, Don Kramer, Joe Benitez and Marcos Marz. And there are three different inkers. I note that not because it effects the quality of the book—each of these are one-off, done-in-one stories, so the book reads like an anthology anyway—but because that's an awful lot of people contributing to the creation of this book that aren't Paul Dini.

And yet the cover just says Dini. Not Dini and others or Dini and friends or Dini and McGraw, Williams, Kramer, Benitez and Marz in teensy-tiny font. Ditto the spine, which just has the words "Batman: Detective", "Paul Dini" and "DC Comics" on it.

Oh wait, here we go, in the lower right corner of the back cover, above the UPC symbol:

Can't write about comics tonight—

—too busy reading comics. Steve Mannion's Fearless Dawn #1, Kevin Cannon's Far Arden and Peter Bagge's Everyone Is Stupid Except for Me And Other Astute Observations are all at the top of my reading pile, and I can't tear my self away. Two posts tomorrow...maybe...?

More manga from Udon Kids

No one can accuse Udon’s new-ish Udon Kids line of false advertising—these aren’t comics for teenagers, they’re not all ages comics, they’re unequivocally, one-hundred percent, no-fooling kids comics, to the extent that I felt an overwhelming feeling of These Are Not Meant For Me while reading the next two offerings of the initial four books in the line.

I had no problem appreciating the level of craft that went into creating them, and the cute, bright and beautifully colored covers attracted me the way a well-designed box of kids cereal would have grabbled my eye in a grocery store when I was a kid, but getting into these books was something of a struggle.

Particularly Fairy Idol Kanon Vol. 1, which took me a half-dozen reads to get through, and it was only by the last few chapters that I started to feel a teensy bit invested in the plot.

And that plot sure sounds cool. Check out the back cover copy: “Kanon is an ordinary fourth grader who loves to sing more than anything else. When a magical fairy princess named Alto meets Kanon and decides to help start her singing career, their journey for fame takes off!”

Sounds cool, right?

So here’s the premise: Kanon and her classmates Kodama, a bespectacled, wishy-washy best friend type, and Marika, an arrogant Type-A type are the best singers in their school, and one day when they sing in harmony they’re visited by the pint-sized fairy Alto. Apparently, the fairies of Alto’s world are nourished by the beautiful singing of the human world, but are in trouble now because singing’s not so common.

Kanon and friends figure the best way to help the fairy world is to sing for as many people as possible, and the best way to do that is to become a group of idols (pop stars, I guess…?). Alto helps by magically dressing them in cute, frilly costumes and getting then little microphones that look like girly dragon balls mounted on sticks.

They must meet a series of not terribly interesting challenges in their quest to become idols, and usually triumph through some combination of teamwork, friendship and willpower. It wasn’t until the end, where they encounter an evil fourth-grade idol with her own evil fairy, and a boy idol starts flirting with Kanon that the conflicts became a bit more interesting. Good and evil’s something I can connect with much more easily than singing in harmony is better than singing solo or whatever.

But then, I am a 32-year-old man, and not exactly the target audience here (A library co-worker made fun of me when she saw me checking this out). I imagine middle school girls—and even younger girls—will have a much easier time connecting.

Fairy Idol Kanon is the work of Mera Hakamada, and her art is great. Everyone an everything looks cute, even the adults, and I enjoyed spending time in a setting where everyone was a little bobble-headed, stubby-bodied fourth-grader, if only because the cast is so different than most others I encounter. Hakamada is a pretty great clothes designer too, particularly when it comes to Kanon’s casual, tomboy wear (Although there are a lot of magic girl, princess-y looking costumes, most appearing in multi-panel transformation sequences).

Also of interest was the fact that this is a comic about music, and I know we’ve talked before about the difficulty of capturing music in a completely visual medium like comics, a medium which has an even harder time describing music than prose might, as the number of words permissible to attempt and describe the music are more limited than they might be in prose, where words need not be balanced by images.

So I’m always somewhat fascinated with how different comics-makers attempt to deal with that. Here the singing and music is left entirely to the imagination, and there are only a few instances where even the lyrics are presented. For the most part, the characters just close their eyes and open their mouths, and the only indication of the nature of and quality of the music comes from the other characters’ reaction to it, noting how it makes them feel happier or more energetic or whatever.

The Big Adventures of Majoko Vol. 1 also features little girl protagonists, but there’s a more prevalent magic/fantasy hook to the series which gives it a somewhat wider appeal, and the premise is a bit more wide open. While Kanon and friends have a more or less straight line to follow on a quest to superstardom, the girls in Majoko find different sorts of adventures awaiting them in each chapter.

The title character is a cute little witch (that’s her on the cover) who pops out of a strange, blank book that our heroine Nana finds in her room while looking for a lost necklace.

“I sent my diary into your world in order to find an adventuring partner,” Majoko explains, after expressing disappointment that Nana isn’t a strong and handsome guy. “The first person who opens my diary gets to be my partner!”

She promptly invites Nana to sit on the back of her flying broom, and they travel to The Land of Magic, where Nana’s street clothes transform into RPG video game-looking gear, and there they travel to a magic cave to find Nana’s missing necklace (But to do so, Nana must defeat a Cyclops…in a staring contest).

In successive adventures, they travel to the Good Grade Apple Orchard, which grows magic apples that allow you to get good grades on your tests, help poor little werewolf Ururu transform to compete in the Werewolf Race, go shopping for rainbows at the magic mall and encounter a dashing thief with a heart of gold, and go to Magic School, among other exploits.

Tomomi Mizuna’s art is also incredibly strong, and the ever shifting fantasy settings and magic land characters that come and go provide plenty of opportunities for neat design work. Majoko’s a rather winning character too, loud, boisterous and boastful, although usually falling short of living up to her boasts, which gives Mizuna plenty of opportunities for rapidly shifting facial expressions.

Of the two, I think Big Adventures of Majoko is the closer to being truly all-ages, and I could definitely see myself reading a second volume of it without much difficulty. There’s a bit of a pedantic streak to many of these stories as well, but there’s so much humor that it’s hardly irritating—rather than sugar to help medicine go down, it’s more like something pretty sweet that just so happens to be good for you.

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

RELATED: If you're interested I previously covered another Udon Kids book, Ninja Baseball Kyuma Vol. 1, here.

I celebrate the Fourth of July by watching this clip over and over again:

I can't think of anything more patriotic than those three minutes of film.

Hal Jordan's got something to say.

Miscellany

This week former Massachusetts governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was on Meet The Press to discuss the state of the Republican Party with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and host David Gregory. Looking at Romney, I couldn't decide whom he reminded me of more:

HAL JORDAN...



...or REED RICHARDS?

These are the types of things I think about while watching Sunday morning political talk shows.


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

If you don't already make a point of reading Tucker Stone's This Ship Is Totally Sinking columns over at Comixology already, don't miss this week's column, in which he interviews Comics Journal blogger Dirk Deppey. That's right, it's one of my favorite comics bloggers, interviewing another of my favorite comics bloggers!

I think I found it particularly interesting because while I spend some time with Deppey five days a week, I don't actually know anything about him beyond his opinions on a lot of comics-related stuff, and the way he sounds in writing. Like, I know his voice really well, but I don't actually know a damn thing about him.

Now I do!

I really liked this passage, in which Deppey answers a question about whether he would like to do more frequent longer-form reporting and/or op-ed pieces:

On the one hand, I love writing and can't seem to keep from knocking out long essays when a short note would often do just as well. (Maybe you've noticed.) On the other hand, there's always the danger of turning into a Keith Olbermann-style blowhard – or worse, a Dave Sim-style crank – if you feel obliged to keep churning out 14,000-word essays three or four times a week. This became clear to me through the course of that Mary Jane Statue fiasco a while back; the more I wrote, the more I found myself circling around to points that I'd already made. Now, in a certain sense this is inevitable in blogging. Since almost everything I write is a mildly edited first draft, I find myself narrowing in on cogent points over the course of several days, refining my arguments as I read responses and get the chance to think more about a given subject. Still, it's a gateway to intellectual stratification as well, since the further you go in defending a point, the more you feel in your bones that You Are Inarguably Correct in whatever it is you're talking about. The longer I do this, the less I trust in such positions.

There's also the fact that I only have so many things to say in a given period. The comic-book industry tends to be very conservative, insofar as it cruises along on the same set of business practices until circumstances force it from its collective lethargy. While it stands still, there's only so many ways you can describe it, and I strongly suspect that repeating yourself too often can bore a readership to tears.

Deppey expresses my own worry about blogging almost exactly. Right now I write about 14 posts about comics a week, at least a couple of which are long essays, and plenty of which are reviews, and while I love writing and like the way blogging offers a way to do it almost constantly, I do worry that I spend way too much time saying the same things over and over. Part of that is because blogging requires daily or at least daily-ish posting, and I have a tendency to resist or reject doing short, punch posts in favor of blabbing on and on for paragraphs.

Anyway, go read that interview. If you want. Sorry, that sounded bossy. If I were you, and I haven't read it yet, I would go read it.

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

David Brothers at 4thletter.net has an extremely depressing post linking to an extremely depressing post of Dwayne McDuffie's in which the outgoing Justice League of America writer rounds up some of the "Insightful Racial Commentary" he found in the comments section below a preview of JLoA #34 that Newsarama.com ran.

It's pretty sad stuff, particularly coming from what I assume are superhero fans. I mean, I'm not under any illusions that a lot of superhero fans don't fall into the categories of "babymen" (to use Mike Manley's phrase) or "kidults" (to use Deppey's), but for some reason I always expect better from people who spend so much time, energy and money following the exploits of paragons of justice and virtue, you know?

Like, secretly wish Hal Jordan was your boyfriend if you want, rend your garments at plot developments you hate, and by all means, feel free to mention a comics creator, editor or company raping your childhood—fine. But complaining about the fact that there are too many black people on the fucking Justice League? And using the sorts of words and language that some of these posters do?

It makes me ashamed I even share a hobby with some of these assholes.

As someone who spends a significant amount of time at Newsarama.com and Blog@Newsarama.com, I advise reading the content and steering clear of the comments sections all together, as no good ever comes from reading the comments sections. At least on the main site; do read the comment threads over Blog@. And feel free to comment. About how much you love me.

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To end on an up note...

This week's DC Nation column features Wednesday Comics, DC's fascinating comics-as-your-grandfather's-newspaper-Sunday-funnies experiment. I like the newspaper-like logo, and I was really intrigued by the individual logos of some of the characters/features (Follow the link above for a bigger, better look at 'em all).

Many of them match the logos of the characters' current or more recent books (Superman, Supergirl,Hawkman, The Demon and Catwoman), while others feature classic logos (Metamorpho, Metal Men. Several of the characters have new logos (Deadman), but a couple of those with new logos are characters who are currently starring in ongoings with very different looking logos.

For example, for the Teen Titans strip/feature uses the Teen Titans logo from the television cartoon, not the logo from the current Teen Titans ongoing. Does that reflect the content or the spirit of the feature? (The character line-up is one from recent comics, not the cartoon).

And check out the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern logos; both are extremely different from what you see on the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern comics. I wonder if and/or how these might reflect how different the stories are? The Green Lantern logo definitely has a '50s-ish, Vegas feel to it, which calls to mind Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, probably my favorite Hal Jordan story. The Wonder Woman logo looks completely unfamiliar to me, but then her logo has changed so much over the years it's quite possible that's simply an old version I've never seen before. But then, that looks more like a young Wonder Woman than the current busty, muscley one, so maybe it's the adventures of Wonder Woman when she's a girl...?

Anyway, I guess we'll find out in six more days...

Weekly Haul: July 1st

Agents of Atlas #7 (Marvel Comics) Damn it Jeff Parker, why you gotta be so damn consistent every month? You make it hard to review your comics! This issue is pretty much the same in quality and subject matter as AoA #6, which I liked an awful lot. This one does feature a dragon fighting a genie, which is pretty cool, and almost makes up for Parker’s decision to use Namor in a comic and have him neither a) Punch anyone (with the exception of a huge shark in a flashback) nor b) Be a real prick to anyone. I know there was punching and prick-being in the previous half of this particular story, but that was last issue.


Batman and Robin #2 (DC Comics) You know what I don’t encounter nearly often enough? A perfect superhero comic book. That’s what this was. A new Batman, a new Robin, new interpersonal conflicts, colorful new villains and it all worked perfectly. After reading this particular issue, I have a hard time imagining how this book is going to work without artist Frank Quitely using his visual skills to interpret the action an emotional content of Grant Morrison’s scripts.


Justice League: Cry For Justice #1 (DC) I made a joke about the title of this miniseries in the weekly poorly-drawn cartoon I do at the top of my weekly column about new releases over at Blog@, specifically regarding whether the “cry” meant crying as in weeping, or crying as in shouting.

As it turns out, both!

There’s some actual crying-crying, when Congorilla cries over the bodies of the score of dead mountain gorillas he lived with, because really, what other motivation does a giant golden gorilla have for being a superhero other than the slaughter of his loved ones? (Please go see Douglas Wolk now).

He eventually pulls it together enough to shout, “I WANT JUSTICE!” in a big red scream-y font. He’s not the only one to similarly yell for justice. Alien Starman Mikaal Tomas “cries out in his native tongue” words that don’t translate directly into any human language, “But their meaning does--Justice!” Also shouting “Justice!” out loud rather nonsensically is Ray “The Atom II” Palmer, in the aftermath of a bar fight. Cool fan fetish object Hal Jordan doesn’t cry, weep, shout or yell for Justice, but he does want it, and he says so. “You want a League,” he tells his old teammates before floating off the JLA Satellite in a green bubble, “I want justice.”

So there you have it. The “cry” has a double meaning—characters weeping and yelling for justice—and even the “for justice” bit is meant to be taken literally, as they are actually shouting for it by name.

Yow.

It’s a fairly stupid comic book, but it’s not necessarily poorly written at all, and Mauro Cascioli’s fully-painted artwork is fairly accomplished, although I think it’s presence ultimately damages the work, as superhero comics readers have been trained to think painted = important, and the painted artwork here is merely in service of a straightforward, unremarkable super-team comic, then not only will readers be let down, but they’ll be let down rather far. In other words, I think fully-painted art raises readers’ expectations, which increases the likelihood for disappointment.

Now, I say it’s a fairly stupid comic book (and if you’re someone following the DC Universe as a whole from any sort of distance, probably a pretty frustrating one, as this is set before big events like Flash: Rebirth, the march toward Blackest Night, the goings on of the Superman books, and the last few months worth of the Justice League of America title it spins out of, and I’m not entirely sure how well it links up to those other stories/events). But James Robinson has written a very particular sort of “fairly stupid,” a Geoff Johns-like sort of fairly stupid, the kind where sections of my brain, the critical sections, light up at the ham-handedness of it all, while other sections of my brain, the sections that like things that are bad-good or good-bad, light up with a sort of appreciation.

If it’s a bad comic, it’s a gleefully bad one, the sort that is extremely entertaining. It's a superhero comic book as professionally made B-Movie.

So, here’s the plot: Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan had had it with all this heavy-on-the-“League”-and-“Society,” light-on-the-"Justice” stuff in the group (Which he, um, founded), and so he acts a bit like a petulant teenager for six-pages, whining to Superman, Wonder Woman, the Meltzer line-up and a few random characters I was surprised to see in the background (Plastic Man, Huntress) about wanting the League to be more pro-active. He really wants to get Libra and make him pay for his crimes during Final Crisis, particularly killing J'onn J'onnz and Batman.

Everyone thinks Hal is being a baby, and Superman is probably quietly scanning him for signs of possession by the Parallax bug (the last time Hal got like this, he did destroy the universe). Everyone except Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen who, when Hal asks if he’s against him, replies with—and this is actual dialogue from the actual book—“No, Baby. I’m with you. You and me. Old times, new times, all the time.”

Hearing that, Hal forms a green bubble and says, “This is right!” and the two float off to make out (off-panel, of course).

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, Palmer and Ryan “The Atom III” Choi beat up some guys in a bar while narrating about each-other in color-coded narration boxes, and then Palmer tortures Killer Moth to get a name out of him.

The name is "Prometheus," and Palmer non-sequiturs into saying, “Yeah…Justice!

In Opal City, Mikaal “Starman II or III” Tomas sees the body of a person I think was his boyfriend, and then blows up a car and shouts about justice.

And in the Congo, Congorilla mourns the loss of his clan of gorillas, some torn completely in half, and then the death of his friend, who is probably the most popular hero in DC’s Africa. And then he screams about justice.

The end!

That, by the way, only takes 22 pages, and yet this comic book costs $3.99. What gives? Well, in an extremely Marvel-like move, DC upped the price of the book a $1 and, in exchange, give readers a bunch of space-filling back matter. Not cool, DC!

That back matter includes two more pages of comics, a Congorilla origin re-cap story like those that ran in the back of 52 and Countdown, only minus an inspired artist’s involvement (It’s written by Len Wein and penciled by Adrian Syaf).

The rest of that material consists of six pages of heavily illustrated, space-wasting prose from Robinson, announcing that he’d be taking over JLoA, explaining how excited he is to be working on the project, how much he enjoys working with Cascioli, how much he admires Len Wein and then a bit about the history of Congo Bill/Congorilla.

I don’t mind this sort of thing in the back of a trade paperback, or even in the back of a comic book, provided it’s free, but DC jacked the price of this book up a whole dollar and only gave us two pages worth of comics in return, which is exactly what Marvel’s been doing for a while now. I thought DC’s strategy was to use back-ups to justify the higher price point, thus looking like the less evil of the two Big Two?

At any rate, it would have been nice if the book matched the solicitation, which promises 40 pages. For their 22-page comics, the solicits usually say 32 pages, but ten of those are ads. Even if you subtract the ten pages for ads from the solicit for this book, you’re still at 30 pages, not 24, which is what the book is.

Kinda hard to not feel cheated in such circumstances.

I would hope this was simply for the first issue, and I can’t actually tell by looking at the solicits for the next two issues. August’s #2 is billed as 32 pages for $2.99, while September’s #3 is back up to 40 pages for $3.99…?


Secret Six #11 (DC) I generally really enjoy this title, but this particularly cover by Daniel Luuisi had me considering whether I even wanted to buy it for the first time. Do I really want to pay for a book that has a chained, soaking yet, bloodied woman in a skull-shaped bathing suit on the cover? Do I want that stupid thing in my apartment? I caved and bought it anyway.


USA Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1 (Marvel) Hey, it’s another one of these things! This one features The Destroyer, a Golden Age hero with a sweet costume consisting of striped pants, a blue face mask, a skull symbol and a schtick that involves destruction.

The lead, Golden Age-set story is written by John Arcudi and drawn by Steve Ellis, and it’s a fast-moving, nicely-drawn story about a good German struggling between with whether he should continue to be a good German or a “Good German.” Destroyer helps him make up his mind—after destroying a couple of trains and killing a mess of Nazis. Also, it’s the sobering secret origin of Destroyer’s pants.

The back-up story is a Stan Lee-written gem from 1942’s All Winners #3. It’s pretty cool, even though Destroyer never actually fights this awesome-looking dragon depicted on the title page:
(Rather, he fights a Nazi agent known as Doctor Dragon or, in German, “Herr Doktor Dragon,” so I guess that’s a symbolic monster there).

It’s a typically breathless catalog of events that run right up until Lee and the unknown artist/s run out of space.

Destroyer is going about the destruction of some trains when he learns the Nazis are building an underground tunnel to attack England, so then he beats up a bunch of Nazis (including punching two out by sticking his fist out the passenger-side window of a speeding truck he’s driving and SSPLAT!-ing them as he passes), goes home to shave, is attacked by more Nazis that he then beats up, then he attacks an airplane factory and steals a plane and flies to England to warn them of the attack plan, gets captured by the British, learns his girlfriend is being held hostage by the Nazis, escapes, swims to Germany, rescues his girlfriend from a concentration camp, blows up the tunnel, takes Dragon prisoner, steals a Nazi plane, and flies back to England. Whew!

And that’s all in just twelve pages, including a full-page title splash page, and a two-page splash of the tunnel detonating.


Wolverine First Class #16 (Marvel) I took this title off my pull-list a few months ago, but I couldn’t not buy this one off the rack after seeing that Dazzler vs. Wolverine cover and getting a few glances at Gurihiru’s interior artwork. The latter is heavily manga-influenced, and yet it’s refreshingly flat, sharply drawn, somewhat airy and wonderfully arranged. It’s great stuff, and I could look at it all day. I wish more of Marvel’s books looked as good as this particular issue did.

Peter David’s script is amusing, although he does try a little too hard here and there. Disco artist Dazzler, in her original, mirror ball medallion look, is scheduled to perform at “The Mega Bowl” (is the term “Super Bowl” copyrighted or something? Do I owe someone money for just typing it?) half-time show, but someone has recently threatened her life. Professor X assigns Wolvie, Kitty and Siryn to serve as her super-powered bodyguards, and amusement ensues.

Did you know that in the Marvel Universe disco music remained popular much, much, much longer than it did in our universe? Or was camcorder technology developed much, much, much earlier in the Marvel Universe than it was in ours? One, as seventies style, pre-death disco and a twenty-first century looking camcorder co-exist in this story.