Weekly Haul: January 10th

52 #36 (DC Comics) Penciller Jamal Igle and inker Keith Champagne make this a nice-looking issue, and good thing too, since it’s a big one. One of the principal characters in the series, the space hero with the most potential for good stories in the future and, incidentally, one of my favorite DC superheroes, apparently dies this issue, going up to that big Justice League International Embassy in the sky (Conspiracy theorists take note: Animal Man did indeed serve in Giffen and DeMatteis’ JLI; he was on the initial Justice League Europe line-up for a few months). He has died and has come back to life before, of course, and any death is these pages should be taken with a grain of salt until time is fixed. Meanwhile, Lady Styx tells Lobo off in a nice scene that pushes the Main Man past his limit, Sobek tries to comfort the angst-ridden Osiris, we learn where Rip Hunter has been hiding and that he’s actually in cahoots with Supernova and there’s a terribly poorly-written four-page sequence involving Montoya (I know this is, like, my thirty-sixth review mentioning this, but why is Montoya the only character who narrates her own scenes in this whole series? And why is the narration so damn bad? “He’s going to die because that’s what people do. It’s humanity’s shared super-power. We die.” Ugh.) The back-up feature is the origin of Power Girl by Adam Hughes, whom DC does no favors by inserting an advertisement in between the two pages of the story, the first time they’ve fucked up ad-placement on the series. Hughes’ art shows him at his exploitive best, as he gives us an up-skirt shot of the apparently panty-less teenage Supergirl and is sure to highlight Power Girl’s face and clevage in the, um, bust of her at the bottom of the page.

Agents of Atlas #6 (Marvel Comics) When we last left Jimmy Woo and Marvel’s pre-Marvel super-characters, they were about to storm the lair of the Yellow Claw and the Atlas Foundation. This is the final issue of the excellent miniseries so...big fight scene? What, you expected writer Jeff Parker to give us the obvious ending to this weird-ass series? Not on your life. Things end very, very differently than one might expect, but also oh so satisfyingly, giving a perfect ending to the characters and their story, while simultaneously relating all of their beginnings and setting the A.O.A. up for a bold new future in the Marvel Universe. And, of course, if they don’t get that future, there’s a built-in reason for why we don’t see them front and center in future Marvel goings-on either. More please, Marvel. Don’t make me beg.

Are We Feeling Safer Yet?: A (Th)ink Anthology (Keith Knight Press) This 121-page collection offers up 121 of Keith Knight’s mostly one-panel (Th)ink cartoons, most of which lean toward the political, attacking the Bush administration and addressing issues of race in American culture. I love Knight’s simultaneously relaxed and kinetic art style, which is nothing short of cartoon perfection. Even his hand-writing has a loose, fun energy about it. I’ve always personally preferred his multi-panel K Chronicles strip to his (Th)ink, but having just set this book down, now I’m not so sure why. He gets an awful lot of mileage out of an allusion to a news story, a half-bad pun and some dramatic curves with a bulbous nose and beady eyes. Confidential to Joe Quesada: Check out page 95, and then get in touch with Knight at keef@kchronicles.com. Like, pronto. I can’t speak for all of comicdom or anything but, man, I’d buy the hell out of that comic.

Blade #5 (Marvel) Cover artist Marko Djurdjevic contributes one bad-ass cover to this month’s issue of Blade (a text-less version of which is above). And in case you don’t see the special guest-star's face reflected in the title character’s shades or recognize the claws impaling our hero’s skull, there’s plenty of cover text letting you know that this issue is indeed “A Civil War Tie-In Featuring Wolverine.” Okay, so it’s crass and a bit of a hard sell—so what? It’s still an awesome issue of an awesome comic book. Writer Marc Guggeneim once again splits the narrative, so half focuses on Blade’s early years and half focus on the present, and Wolvie guests in both. In the present narrative, we see Wolvie piss off SHIELD Director Maria Hill and jump out a helicarrier window for, what, the nineteenth time this year? Hill enlists Blade to bring Wolverine in, and they fight. Guggenheim gives all three some nice, sharp dialogue, and artist Howard Chaykin knocks this issue out of the park. I know Chaykin’s art tends to be of the love it or hate it variety, particularly on his more recent mainstream work like this and Hawkgirl, but credit where credit’s due—he’s one of the few (two?) artists who can draw Wolverine in his stupid spandex suit and still have him come across as moderately cool (at least in close-up or profile; there’s still a panel or two where Wolverine looks like a complete jackass). I especially dug Chaykin’s version of the un-masked Wolverine, in which he resembles a wild-haired Ogami Ito. This was probably the most enjoyable issue of an already enjoyable series.

Justice Society of America #2 (DC) Jesus, this issue is every bit as good as the last one was. I don’t know what’s gotten Geoff Johns so goddamned pumped up all of a sudden (JSoA is easily head and shoulders above his Green Lantern and Teen Titans; especially his Teen Titans), nor what led to Dale Eaglesham’s quantam leap in quality of late, but here’s hoping both of them hang on to it. The first two pages, set in “Franklin County, Ohio” (Hey, that’s my county…awesome!) took as long to read as an average issue of New Avengers and, unlike the wordy JLoA, made for interesting reading. There’s also a very nicely handled scene between Wildcat and his son Tom ‘cat (groan), the big reveal of Starman’s identity (it’s exactly whom the clues pointed to, apparently) and the introduction of some more characters from the Kingdom Come-iverse. (Given the recent appearances of Batman and Talia’s son, Offspring, Zatara II and the new Starman, the Kingdom Come timeline has apparently merged with the DCU when “New Earth” was formed during Infinite Crisis).

Runaways #23 (Marvel) It’s Brian K. Vaughan’s penultimate issue before he hands the reigns of the title he created over to some guy named Joss Whedon. While you’d think the middle chapter of the last arc of a run would make for a lame duck story, big things seem to be in the works, and one Runaway looks like they may not be long for this world. I’ll be sorry to see this creative team go, but it’s good to know that the title and the characters aren’t going anywhere. Except for that one character. Who might die. Next issue. (Confidential to Karolina: You fool! You have a shape-changing significant other! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, no matter how wrong and creepy that gift horse might be!)

Thunderbolts #110 (Marvel) I had absolutely no intention of buying this book today, given that it’s written by Warren Ellis, and I typically regret any Ellis purchase I make that isn’t a trade paperback. But it was a slow week for new releases, and a flip-through assured me that there actually did seem to be a lot going on in this issue, and that Ellis wasn’t simply writing this bad boy for the trades. Three different ‘bolts get significant focus this issue, as we see the team leader Norman Osborne interviewing Bullseye and Moonstone, and all three seem like pretty scary pscycopaths. The superheroics—the time devoted to Thunderbolts mountain, the suiting up, et cetera—show that not only has Ellis thought this thing through pretty well, but also that he’s managed to recapture some of that old, pre-Authority Stormwatch magic here. The team’s first target seems to be Jack Flag, who’s currently living with his girlfriend in Cleveland, Ohio. For reals? Man, it’s a big week for Ohio in mainstream comics, isn’t it? What this means, for those of us keeping abreast of Civil War tie-ins, is that if the Howard the Duck story in Civil War: Choosing Sides went down differently and Howard would have been labled an enemy combatant, we might have seen Howard the Duck vs. the New Thunderbolts next issue. The one aspect of the book that I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief about was the very public nature of the new team of Thunderbolts, what with the news broadcasts of their plane lifting off and the ads for Thunderbolt toys of Venom. If SHIELD and the U.S. Government were going to pardon mass-murderers and turn them into Captain America-hunting, publicly sanctioned superheroes, why didn’t they at least invent new identities and design new costumes for them? Wouldn’t that have been a hell of a lot easier than trying to convince the world that Venom’s suddenly a good guy? I know thinking too seriously about superhero comics is the first step on a road to mental ruin, but the “Civil War” story this title is spinning out of is built around parallels to the real world, and Marvel can’t have it’s cake and eat it too, can they? Although they’ve already got my $2.99 for this issue, so maybe they can. (Confidential to Tommy Lee Jones: I’m no lawyer and you probably don’t need the money, but you should be able to build a fairly strong case, should you choose to sue Marvel Comics over using your likeness repeatedly in this comic book).