Comic shop comics: May 26th

Archie #609 (Archie Comics) I don’t read very many Archie comics (In fact, I haven’t read one since the last time I noticed Josie and the Pussycats were guest-starring in an issue), so I was surprised to learn that apparently Betty and Veronica are such possessive psychos that they can never learn that Archie actually loves someone other than them or all hell will break loose?

This issue, which follows Archie and Valerie’s kiss on the eve of the Archies/Pussycats tour, consists of the young lovers trying to keep their romance on the DL so Archie’s warring would-be-lovers don’t destroy the tour itself, and everyone in Riverdale eventually finding out on their own, but vowing to themselves to keep it a secret, less Veronica and/or Betty wreak terrible vengeance upon Archie.

That’s kind of weird.


Batman: The Brave and the Bold #17 (DC) I loved this comic book so much that when I saw it on the shelf earlier today, my hand automatically grabbed it and added it to my stack, despite the fact that I bought it the last time I was in a comics shop. I guess my love for Batman: The Brave and the Bold #17 so deeply impressed itself on my unconscious mind that I just grab at it whenever I see it now? Well, I’m not going to re-review it. If you’d like to re-read a review of it, you can do so here.


Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2 (DC) The first issue of this Grant Morrison-written, six-issue miniseries about Batman recovering from having been “killed” by Darkseid in Final Crisis seemed to promise a pretty straightforward premise—Batman was sent to the past, and would end up in the present by fighting his way through his own family tree, stopping in various time-periods to briefly Batman* there. That first issue was very well-executed, and an awful lot of fun.

With this issue, though, it becomes clear that this isn’t going to be a comic book series that’s just about Batman fighting crime in period costumes for six issues. Instead, it’s shaping up to be the single most cosmic Batman story ever told, more cosmic than Morrison’s own JLA stories (which usually featured Batman quite prominently), or Cosmic Odyssey, and ensemble series featuring Batman that had the word “Cosmic” right there in the title.

It seems that Darkseid’s plans to create an army of Batman clones during Final Crisis wasn’t the DC god of evil’s only plans for Batman. He also managed to weaponize Batman, or, in Superman’s words, Darkseid turned Batman into a doomsday weapon and aimed him directly at the 21st century!

Can Batman out maneuver the god of evil and Superman, Rip Hunter and their posse and return to the present? Yeah, I assume so, but holy crap that’s a big, huge Batman story, one that necessitates him fighting “crime” on a colossal scale, as we see him here doing his thing in pilgrim times and at the end of time itself.

There is a lot going on in this issue, beyond the main course, which involves Batman sword-fighting a Lovecraftian monster and using his detective skills to bust witches while dressed like Solomon Kane. I have no idea how it’s all going to shake out, but the history of Gotham, the Wayne bloodline, Batman’s relationship with bats and the sigils of the superheroes are apparently part of the story.

Frazer Irving is the artist for this issue, and having previously illustrated a Morrison-written comic book featuring people in pilgrim clothes (Seven Soldiers: Klarion The Witch Boy), he’s a pretty good choice for the issue. I’m not terribly enamored with his art, although it is technically quite good. Irving seems better at atmosphere than place, which occasionally results in panels or pages that err on the side of expressive, sacrificing clarity.

He draws wonderfully grim visages though, and the scenes at Vanishing Point, the high-tech headquarters at the end of time, where a 64th century bio-organic archivist explains the nature of time to Superman’s search party are quite effectively alien.


Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam (DC) Four issues of Black Adam and Captain Marvel punching one another is probably a bit excessive Art Baltazar and Franco, no matter how cool the new style Mike Norton has adopted for this series may be. I suppose it’s a byproduct of DC’s kid-friendly comics always being done-in-ones, but this multi-issue story arc has seemed interminable.

On the other hand: Ha! I love the ankh-clamation point!


Ghost Rider: Hell Bent & Heaven Bound (Marvel Comics) This trade paperback did not come out last Wednesday, but I did purchase it at the shop during this shopping trip, so by the rules of this feature I’ve set up for myself, that means I should discuss it here.

The shop I currently shop at does this swell thing where they give you a coupon for your birthday that gives you a 25% discount on any trade. Mine was about to expire, and they didn’t have my first two choices for trades I’d like to buy, so I figured now might be a good time to try out the Jason Aaron run of Ghost Rider that the Internet was so enamored with.

It is every bit as good as I heard it was.

This six-issue collection contains two different stories—the title story, illustrated by Roland Boschi, and “God Doesn’t Live on Cell Block D,” illustrated by Tan Eng Huat.

Ghost Rider Johnny Blaze, a kinda sorta superhero whose power is the ability to turn into a flaming skeleton on a flaming motorcycle, wants to find a way to get to heaven in order to wreak revenge on the rebel angel that cursed him with his flaming skeleton powers.

In the first story, he travels to the town of New Beulah to find someone who had a near death experience and might be able to help Blaze get to heaven. That town is home to a hospital full of armed-to-the-teeth killer nurses. And a mortician who also happens to be a cannibal. And a stretch of highway haunted by the hungry ghosts of cannibal frontiersmen.

In other words, Aaron thinks up some really crazy plates, sets them all spinning and then just smashes them all together at the climax. Actually smashing them all together is the plot of the final issue, as the characters from those various subplots all participate in a horrible accident at a four-way intersection that could really use some stop signs.

It’s a trashy heavy metal horror western with some Garth Ennis-style touches of dark absurdity and some awesomely over-the-top deadpan nonsense (I’m thinking, for example, Ghost Rider with a flaming sword, saying “Suck it!” to his foes).

The two-issue follow-up is a much calmer, quieter story, one that benefits from Huat’s extremely weird cartoony art, which evokes a little Sam Kieth here, a little Judge Dredd there. It was Huat’s byline that attracted me to the collection (well, that and all the rave reviews I’ve read of these comics from bloggers whose opinions I often agree with), but I ended up liking Boschi’s art better, as it’s far closer in style to that which I think of when I think of Marvel Comics art I want to read (John Romita Jr., Marcos Martin, etc).

Like Aaron’s Wolverine comics then, his Ghost Rider seems to be pretty great. I look forward to reading the rest of it, hopefully sooner rather than later.


Green Lantern #54 (DC) This comic book has a scene where someone has all of their flesh and tissue burned right off their skeleton. It’s written by Geoff Johns. Is that redundant to mention both of those facts?

The extreme gross-out gore sits surprisingly well with me here because a) it’s drawn by Doug Mahnke, whose such a great artist that he packs detail into a crumbling human skeleton and makes it look like an object of beauty rather than something merely disgusting and b) the agency which melts the human being is the burning napalm-like blood-puke puked up on him by a house cat wearing a Red Lantern uniform with a Red Lantern ring on its tail, and that’s the exact brand of stupid awesome that I read Geoff Johns comics for.

This issue doesn’t move all that quickly from where we left off last time. It was clear that the White Lantern was going to ask Hal, Carol and Sinestro to get the band back together for a quest, and here they join up with the main Red Lantern. Apparently, they’re reassembling the, um, “rainbow rodeo,” I believe Hal Jordan called it, to find the Pokemon-like hero-gods of Earth evolution before they little flying mummy midget in chains can get ‘em all—and he/she/it already has two of ‘em!

Before they get to all that though, it looks like they’re going to have to fight Lobo, according to the last-page splash. After having just recently read Reign in Hell, I’m not sure exactly how Lobo got from that Point A to Point Green Lantern #54, but I don’t really care because a) Doug Mahnke draws a hell of a Lobo and b) he has his space bulldog on the back of his space bike, which makes a burning blood-puking space cat vs. super space bulldog fight inevitable, and that’s exactly what I’d like to read about in a Green Lantern comic book.


Justice League: Generation Lost #2 (DC) So far, so good! Writers Keith Giffen and Judd Winick explain the lingering question of how Max Lord could erase all clues of himself from the Internet and libraries of the world right out of the gate, and rather cleverly (the evidence all exists, but he was able to alter everyone’s memories enough that when they see the evidence, they perceive something else). That makes two Judd Winick comics in a row that I’ve read and not hated!

The other thing I was little concerned about was the presence of pencil artist Joe Bennett this issue, whose work I haven’t really enjoyed in the past, but it looks far better here than in any of the previous books of his I’ve seen. I’m not crazy about his style—he was a tendency to draw very small faces, and it’s sort of irritating that Fire and Ice have the exact same body, right down to their height—but it seems slightly simplified, with inker Jack Jadson providing a lot of nice lines to sell almost every panel.

I don’t love the look of the art, but it’s not bad, and it really pops. So that takes care of my concerns; I’m down for Generation Lost #3, I guess.

If I have any complaints to make here, it’s more of a nitpick of an omission. I know we’re only two issues in, but it seems strange that Booster and the others haven’t yet looked up J’onn J’onnz, since he’s the A-List superhero they all know the best, and who happens to be an expert in the sort of psychic mind-messing with that Max Lord, who J’onnz also knows super-well, is engaging in. The Martian Manhunter being MIA is made noticeable only because the first half of this issue deals with the heroes formerly known as the Justice League checking in with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and, in a sequence of cameos, nine different heroes, including Plastic man and Captain Shazam (or whatever Winick is calling the superhero formerly known as Captain Marvel Jr. these days).

That aside, this is a boatload of DC Universe heroes bouncing around a bi-weekly book. The writing isn’t bad, and the art isn’t bad either. In other words, this book’s good enough.


Super Friends #27 (DC) This is another J. Bone-drawn issue of the series, which automatically makes it a must-buy for me, because every image J. Bone draws for this comic book is a great one, his Super Friends characters always having silly, emoticon-simple faces that crack me up no matter what else is going on in the story.

This ish, written by Sholly Fisch (who also wrote that swell issue of the Brave and the Bold I accidentally bought twice, and the Scooby/Geoff Johns team-up I blogged about last night), has plenty of other things going for it, of course.

Green Lantern John Stewart and Flash Wally West both have birthdays the same week, and both want to throw the other a surprise party for the other in the same place and on the same day. What are the other Super Friends going to do? Well, the point is moot, since Sinestro and Professor Zoom, The Reverse Flash have a surprise of their own for their archenemies.

This one’s got it all. Sinestro and Zoom in disguise as GL and Flash, giving each other daps...

...a make-your-own Green Lantern Corps mobile craft project...

...guest stars galore...

...and, most amusingly, Superman making this face: It's those expressions that make me love all of Bone's Super Friends comics.

The least essential Blackest Night tie-in of them all

The cover of Scooby-Doo #150 features the tag line, “Darkness Falls On Scooby-Doo…As Mystery, Inc Face Their Blackest Knight Yet!” It was released in November of 2009, when the phrase “Blackest Night” would have invariably evoked the Geoff Johns-written, Green Lantern-starring event series Blackest Night, which at that point was as much as a DC Universe line-wide branding term as it was the title of a particular story.

Scooby-Doo is, of course, part of DC’s unofficial Johnny DC imprint, and as such never subject to what’s going on in the DC Universe proper, but if not a Blackest Night tie-in proper, DC was at least going for a joking allusion to the biggest DCU story at the time.

Note what Scooby-Doo is holding in his right paw on artist Vincent Deporter’s cover, after all.

The contents are split between two short stories. In the first, Scooby and the gang investigate a host of pampered black cats that inherited their eccentric late master’s fortune and now run riot all over town, seemingly plaguing it with bad luck. Hence all the cats on the cover. The green lantern on the cover references the events of the second story in the issue, “The Blackest Knight” by writer Sholly Fisch and artist Fabio Laguna (Laguna is one of the artists I mentioned in yesterday's post as being one of the better Scooby-Doo artists).

Lest one think the Geoff Johns’ Blackest Night references are a coincidence, check out the first two panels of the story, in which the gang arrives at a castle in England:
And now let’s meet Lord Geoffrey himself:I’m not familiar enough with Geoff Johns' personal appearance to know whether or not that’s supposed to be his likeness or not (I do know that he's probably rich and successful enough now that he can probably afford to live in his own castle and dress as ridiculously fancy as he wants now). The amount of detail Laguna draws into it suggests that Lord Geoffrey is modeled on a real person though, as opposed to cut from the same cartoon cloth as the Mystery Inc. characters and the other supporting ones that appear throughout the short story.

If Lord Geoffrey is Geoff Johns, then who is Sir John? The fact that he’s colored slightly darker than Lord Geoffrey and has a goatee makes me think he’s simply supposed to be an evil Geoff Johns. Er, not to ruin the mystery or anything!

(And hey, while you’re scrutinizing that panel, check out Fred’s face. What’s that expression all about? Is there something…unnatural going on with his face? He looks sort of sick or possessed or injected with Joker venom).

As introductions are made and snacks devoured by Shaggy and Scooby, the ghost suddenly appears……demanding a ring!

Like the others, Lord Geoffrey runs for his life when the ghost appears.
(Wow, did you ever think about Fred’s footwear? I mean, really think about it?)

As Lord Geoff barricades them all in the study, we get some more subtle Green Lantern allusions: Are they overdoing it at this point? No. They overdo it on the next page, after Lord Geoff explains that the Black Knight is looking for a lost emerald ring, carved in the shape of the eagle from his family crest:Get it?! Eagle? Evil? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Ah.

But wait, there’s more! When everyone splits up to search, Shaggy and Scooby volunteer to start with the kitchen and—wouldn’t you know it?—the ghost finds them. He chases them back to the crest in the study, and just as he’s about to stab our cowardly heroes, the crest falls from the wall, clobbering the knight and allowing Daphne to unmask him.Will power! Green Lantern has that!

Finally, Velma puts two and two together and realizes the emerald ring must be hidden in the lantern, which is what caused it to glow green all this time, and sow Lord Geoffrey gets his green ring back:
The end.

Maybe DC should have done a free plastic ring giveaway with this issue? It couldn’t have hurt.

Now let’s look at some more awesomely weird little kid art from the letters page of this issue.

Here’s a piece entitled “Scooby-Doo Scares Mummy,”and here’s one from the perspective of someone totally tripping:Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa! The strange special relations, Daphne’s tiny plum-sized head atop a long neck stalk and her horrifying, claw-tipped paws! This is much scarier than a bunch of black cats or a sword-wielding black knight ghost!

Library comics Pt. 6: Some thoughts on Scooby-Doo #131-#151

The covers of these comics tend to be really great. Often times they tell a little story on their own, or a gently macabre gag (like Shaggy and Scooby inadvertently building a sandcastle full of tiny bats, above), and in general evoke the covers from classic kids comics like those published by Dell and Gold Key way back in the day.

Most of the issues I grabbed from the huge stack sitting on the library were determined by the strength of the covers, so I’m pretty confident that these covers do what comic book covers were originally designed to do—sell a particular comic book to a particular audience (Contrast that with all of the static, boring, interchangeable characters posing covers of today. I think the first 50 or so covers of Ultimate Spider-Man were so interchangeable that it didn’t matter which one was on which issues).

I also felt something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in my life time while reading this: Disappointment that a cover promised a story that didn’t happen within. I was looking forward to seeing a leprechaun in Scooby-Doo #130, but the cover turned out to just be a gag for that particular cover, which probably came out in March or so. I understand this used to happen pretty frequently in the olden days, but I can’t recall ever experiencing it in my comics reading career (Now, kung fu VHS tape collecting, on the other hand…)


—These are really kids comics. It sometimes bugs me that the term “all-ages” is usually applied to comics that are actually just meant for kids, when the term “all-ages” should rightfully just be applied to comics that are actually geared toward entertaining readers of all-ages. These aren’t all-ages comics, they’re kids comics. As much as I love the concept and characters of Scooby-Doo (and I love ‘em a lot, but would need a couple hundred pages to tell you about it; endless repeats of the first few seasons of the show, and its various 1980s Saturday morning iterations, made up one of my first cultural experiences, and determined large aspects of my world-view for the first few years that I can remember), I had a hard time forcing myself to read through all of these stories.

Part of me wants to blame the format, as each book contains several mysteries, most of which use the original Scooby-Doo formula (common, non-violent criminal dresses up as a monster to scare people away from somewhere for some reason; the kids investigate and bust the criminal/monster). Seven-to-ten pages isn’t much space to build an interesting monster and present a plausible mystery, while allowing room for chases and gags.

But I think my failure to connect with the material in any strong way is actually a product of how faithfully the comics adapt the Scooby-Doo cartoons. See, as hard as this is for me to admit, Scooy-Doo cartoons are generally pretty terrible.

The things I liked most about it as a kid—the music, the action, the awesome monsters, the weird feelings I felt about Daphne—had nothing to do with the strength of the writing or the depth of the characters (The strongest of which were Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, who, as potent as they’ve become, were pretty basic in conception, a simple grafting of the opposite characteristics one would expect onto character of that type.)

Looking back on a lifetime of Scooby-Doo watching, I think A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was probably the best of them in terms of quality, and when I’ve watched later incarnations, like the direct-to-DVD movies, What’s New, Scooby-Doo? and Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue (I love the character redesigns on this one, by the way), I’ve never really more than half-watched them, with the TV on or a DVD playing in the background while I drew or colored or worked out or whatever.

So in terms of providing engaging stories, thrilling mysteries, drama and humor, these comics are about the same as the television shows. They can be a bit more frustrating in that reading a comic book requires 100% of one’s attention, while it’s easy to devote less of that to a TV show, which moves ahead without you).


—While there’s a general format to these, in which two to three compressed TV show-like mysteries unfold per issue, they can occasionally be surprisingly experimental. Some issues include puzzles and mazes within the panels of a story, allowing readers to participate in a monster chase as Shaggy and Scooby do. Vito DelSante and Nick Purpura write a “musical” story, in which the characters "sing” the majority of their dialogue, their lines rhyming while musical notes appear in the various cartoon bubbles. There’s a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Shaggy imagines a world in which the gang never formed to fight pretend ghosts. Another story features a faux mystery arranged by the gang, leading to a surprise party for Shaggy. Scooby-Doo #135 opens with a retelling of 1969 episode “A Clue for Scooby Doo” from the villain’s perspective.

Oh, and then there’s one story that’s set in a women's prison. Swear to God.It’s called “Stars Behind Bars,” it appears in #148, it’s by Frank Strom and Scott Neely, and it sees the gang investigating the ghost of Lizzie Anderson, the first inmate ever incarcerated in Sentworth Penitentiary.


—There’s a surprising amount of variety in the artwork. I’m always genuinely fascinated by licensed comics, particularly ones like this, that are based on a cartoon which has had precious little basic design evolution in over 40 years. For the most part, all of the artists in these issues stick extremely close to the way the characters looked in 1969—some panels even swipe poses directly from stills, which is kind of disturbing—but there’s room for some real variety here, and I admittedly had more fun studying the different ways artists drew the characters than I did with the stories themselves.

My favorites are probably Tim Levins and Fabio Laguna, who have the most highly animated style. Their art has thick lines that helps it pop off the page, and their characters are all high expressive and full of life, seeming more fluid and capable of movement than comic book characters usually do.

I love the way Laguna draws Freddie’s unmasking face in #148. Check this out:
I think that’s the only time I actually laughed out loud while reading any of these.

Oh, and I also really loved the work of Karen Matchette, whose style pushes furthest away from that of the cartoons in terms of the principles, and whose extras and settings are created without the slightest attempt to ape those of the cartoons.

I plan on looking a little more closely at two specific stories in posts later this weekend, and one of those is a Matchette story, so I'll be posting much more of that later.


—Costuming is pretty fascinating here. The characters spend most of the time wearing the clothes they wore in the seventies, although there are a couple of instances of them wearing updated versions of them, and/or location-specific costumes (like Fred wearing a blue and white Hawaiian shirt while on vacation, for example).


—I like the way that all of Scooby’s dialogue has the first letter of ever word changed to an “R” to evoke his speech pattern. I’ve long been amused by the fact that Scooby is a dog who can talk, just not very clearly.


—Velma is often drawn much slimmer and a bit talker than she appeared in the cartoons. I blame the fact that the producers of the 2002 live-action movie (which I liked, shut up) cast the super-hot Linda Cardellini as Velma, necessitating that the cartoon character become gradually hotter.


—An occasional feature that I really enjoyed was “Velma’s Monsters of the World,” in which a few pages would be devoted to Velma talking directly to the audience about a “real” monster, be it one from mythology or a cryptid of some kind.

These generally feature Shaggy and Scooby delivering some form of corny joke at the beginning or the end of the feature, but in between Velma provides a nice, child-friendly summary of a monster of some kind, and allows artists to draw these creatures in something approaching Scooby-Doo style. I would love a book that was nothing but these things, a sort of Beasts! hosted by Velma and drawn by various Johnny DC artists.

The longest of these I encountered was in #134, a five-pager deoted to the silly creatures invented by lumberjacks, like the Axehandle Hound, the Hodag, the Hidebehind and similar American legendary creatures like the Jackalope.

Shorter pieces are devoted to Japan’s Rokuro-Kubi, Cadborosaurus and the Yeti. Here's a page from the Cadborosaurus story:


—I only encountered a Daphne hosted feature, once, but it was kind of fun too, even if I don't think anyone in Mystery Inc. is in any position to preach about fashion:


—While reading through these I found myself wishing DC would take advantage of the goodwill the characters surely have among comics creators to get some big-name, unlikely creators occasionally involved, the way Bongo does with it’s Treehouse of Horror annual specials.

I can’t speak for DC’s regular Scooby-Doo readers, an audience I most definitely don’t belong too, but I’d sure love to see the likes of Jill Thompson, Sergio Aragones, Stan Sakai, Dan Brereton and so on drawing Scooby-Doo stories every once in a while. Shit, can you imagine a Kelley Jones Scooby-Doo? Or a Richard Sala Scooby-Doo? I can’t tell you how much I would want to read a Richard Sala Scooby-Doo comic.


—Scooby-Doo has the best letter column of all the Johnny DC titles. Check out the art it gets:

My friend helps me review some recent graphic novels

Library comics Pt. 5: Superman #693-#697

These comics are so strange, I’m not even really sure where to start with them.

Obviously, they’re part of the Superman family of books DC publishes, and these are different from the Superman family of books DC was publishing up until recently in two key ways.

First, and most noticeably, Superman is not actually in them. The star of this book is Mon-El, a Legion of Super-Hero character whose background is so complicated and has been subject to so many different revisions over the years that one would need charts to explain it in any great detail.

I think he was created and/or used as a stand-in for Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths severed Superman from the Legion continuity, as he’s very Superman-like. He dresses similar, likes the same primary color combinations, looks the exact same, and comes from a planet where the humanoid white people gain fantastic powers under Earth’s yellow sun, their only weakness a single element.

For the purposes of this story, as Mon-El’s currenty continuity stands, he was a friend of Clark Kent’s when Clark was a teenager and was dying of lead poisoning, so Clark shot him into the Phantom Zone to keep him alive, promising a vague and insincere Reed Richards-like “I’ll find a cure for you someday, friend.” He just recently did.

As to why Mon-El is starring in a comic called Superman instead of Kal-El, well Superman’s been absent from most of his books for the majority of the past year or so, as part of a huge plot involving un-shrunken Kandor, a hostile New Krypton and Superman being banished from the Earth for unconvincing reasons.

Superman without Superman isn’t completely unprecedented, of course. After Superman died in the ‘90s, he wasn’t in his boos for several big, long story arcs. What seems different about those stories (“Funeral for a Friend,” “Reign of the Superman,” et cetera) was that while Superman wasn’t the protagonist of each, they were always stories about Superman. How would people get on without Superman, what did Superman’s loved ones, allies and enemies think and feel now that he was gone, could anyone really replace him, etc.

The current Superman status quo talks about Superman a lot, and one of the story arcs contained in these issues—“Man of Valor” is specifically about Mon-El wanting to be a symbol of Superman without actually calling himself “Superman”—but the comics I’ve seen all seem much more plot driven then theme-driven. They’re not about Superman so much as tangentially related to Superman. (These comics, for example, are set mostly in Smallville and Metropolis, and feature Ma Kent, Krypto, the current Superboy and Lois Lane’s dad, but not in relation to Superman so much as in relation to what’s going on in Superman books these days, if that makes sense).

The other strange thing about these books is that they have the “triangle” numbering of the old ‘90s Superman line, when each of the (then) three-to-five Super-books would lead directly in to one another, so an additional number was needed on the cover to indicate which sequence to read them in.

It was a system that had its positives (a new Superman comic each week, all of which are equally “relevant” and part of a big, epic story) and negatives (the fact that the style and tone would change slightly each issues, as each creative team brought something different to the material, no matter how rigorously it was plotted out). I think Steve Wacker and Marvel perfected that sort of comics storytelling on the almost-monthly Amazing Spider–Man, with story arcs generally having the same creative team within that numbering system (So, for example, Dan Slott and Marcos Martin would do four almost-weekly issues, then hand the baton off to the next team for the next story arc, which would run weekly-ish).

I was surprised, and a little relieved, to find that despite the triangle numbering (which here actually appears in a Superman shield-shaped pentagon), most of these issues were part of their own, stands-on-its-own stories (There were some previous and later issues that didn’t available at the library, but I just scanned through ‘em and don’t really wanna write about them, as they make up every fourth or fifth chapter of a story, the other chapters of which I’m missing).

That means they’re easier to read, but I wonder if that isn’t also pretty annoying. If one doesn’t need to read the various books triangle-numbered 14, 15 and 16 between Superman #693 and Superman #694, why bother with the numbering? If one followed it for a month or two, would one feel kinda tricked, and less likely to follow the Super-books?

I don’t really know. I gave up on Superman a while back. For the most part I liked what writer James Robinson was doing, but the pace was too plodding.

If a storyline about Mon-El and The Guardian fighting super-crime in Metropolis while Superman is off in space while Jimmy Olsen risks his life with some dangerous investigative reporting while the General Thunderbolt Ross shaves his mustache and pretends to be Lois Lane’s dad and builds an army of Superman-fighters consisting mainly of the Creature Commandos and forgotten characters from 1st Issue Special sounds pretty awesome in theory, how long do you think you’d like to see it play out? Six months? A year?

I got bored about three months or so into it, when it became clear what the big mystery was, and that everything else was simply Superman (and Action, which I dropped almost immediately after an issue which consisted of little more than the latest Firebird getting brutalized for like 20 pages, and, I assume, Supergirl and maybe Adventure) just killing time until the series about Superman on New Krypton (Superman: World of New Krypton) wrapped up and the various characters could all fight.

Those triangle or pentagon numbers, as well as the banners reading “World Against (The Superman S-shield with an “X” drawn through it)” across the top of the covers that would seem to indicate that all of the Super-books are telling (in actuality, they’re just general status quo branding, like “Dark Reign” was for Marvel), didn’t make staring to read it again very inviting.

James Robinson is still writing Superman, and the art teams change fairly frequently, with Fernando Dagino, Javier Pina and Bernard Chang penciling these five issues. Of them, I liked Chang’s art the best, as he has a nice, dark, thick line, uses strong, sometimes severe shapes in constructing his images, and is pretty dynamic in his storytelling (Dagino and Pina are fine too though; Dagino’s style reminds me unfortunately of Eddy Barrows’, and Pina has a softer, rounder figures that seem out-of-place coming between chapters by Dagino and Chang).

The pace is still plodding, although a slow pace isn’t such a bad thing when you can read 100 pages of the story in a sitting, instead of stretched out over a few months (I suspect these stories will all be a lot more engaging in trade then they were in serial publication).

General Ross—er, Lane’s team of Known Supervillains Who Work For the Army To Fight Known Superhero Superman For Some Reason have captured Mon-El, and taken him to 59009, the codename of their little Superman-busters club, have captured Mon-El and dressed him in tight black underwear (What does the mysterious number mean? Type it into a calculator, turn it upside down and you get—“boobs.” Wait, I think I got the wrong number., it was supposed to spell “hell”…)

Lane wants him to join his team, which now also includes some magic lady with a face tattoo, Parasite and that purple guy who put Green Lantern’s girlfriend in a refrigerator (Major Force? Is that it?). To convince him to do so, he tortures him.

Then Mon-El hangs out in Smallville, Ma Kent sews her forty-fifth version of a super-costume (Which I kinda like, actually) and Mon-El’s early adventures in Metropolis from a few issues ago are repeated, only now he’s wearing a different costume.

Robinson is building to something, and manages the neat trick of revealing that many of the elements of his Superman run (I’d say “characters,” but at least one of them is actually an object) were actually members of the…spoiler alert!…Legion Espionage Squad.

This will mean something to you if you knew there was a legion Espionage Squad. I wasn’t all that excited to see Whatshername and Whosit, but I appreciated the long-term planning and the surprise (Particularly the one where the thing turned out to be someone in disguise…like, who expects something that isn’t even a sentient being to be a super-person in disguise?).

I have no idea where this ultimately goes, as #697 ends with a blurb saying, “to be continued in Adventure Comics #8” and the library I got these comics from doesn’t have a subscription to Adventure Comics, just Batman, Superman and Scooby-Doo. But props for packing some genuine surprises into what has so far been a very predictable (and very, very, very long) storyline.


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Couple of nitpicks before I go:

Issue #694, the all-Pina issue, has the evil killer monster version of Bizarro I can’t cotton in it. In this panel, he hits Mon-El with freeze breath. But Bizarro doesn’t have freeze breath. He has heat breath and freezevision, the opposite of Superman’s freeze breath and heatvision. This is an outrage! They should fix it in the trade! And give everyone their money back! And fire someone!

And not to pick on Pina or anything, but, he drew this one, too. Check out Starman in this spread. Does his pose look familiar?

Hmm. Close enough to look overly familiar, but not exact enough to suggest a straight un-fooled-around-with swipe. (Oh, by the way Legion fans, who’s that dude dude with the Tetris piece on his uniform?)


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Finally: I’ll have a few general, scattered thoughts about DC’s Scooby-Doo comics, and that’ll do it for these “Library comics” posts

Hey, coma-ridden Dr. John Henry "Steel" Irons! Is there a Marvel comic you're looking forward to reading when you regain consciousness?

(Steel is so excited to read Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman and company's Atlas #1 that he fights his way out of a coma to do so in Superman #695, which was written by James Robinson and illustrated by Bernard Chang)

Off-topic: So, what was up with that Lost show, anyway?

(Above: A detail from one of Kate Beaton's Lost strips; follow the link below to see the rest of it and some of her other strips riffing on the show)

I didn’t watch Lost when it first started airing, as I didn’t watch a lot of network TV at the time—with the exception of Meet The Press. Back then I was still working as a writer/editor for an altweekly paper, and one day my fellow editor gave me the DVD of the first season of Lost to take home and watch if I was interested. She said it was incredibly addictive, and thought I’d dig it.

She had already watched and reviewed the DVD for the paper though, so I didn’t have to read in order to write about it. So there was no urgency to watching it, and I left it on top of the To Watch, Someday Hopefully Soon pile of similar DVDs that studios sent us for possible review.

One of my roommates at the time got to it before I did, and as I was passing through our living room one day I saw the oldest Salinger sibling from Party of Five, a hobbit and an attractive woman in what looked like part of air plane lodged in a tree, while some sort of big monster tried to get at them. It sounded like a dinosaur, but the director was being really stingy about showing it. I watched for a while waiting to see what the dinosaur looked like, got bored, and went back to whatever extremely important business I was doing in another part of the house.

My roommate reacted similarly to my co-worker; he liked it, was instantly addicted, and ended up watching many more episodes on the DVD in a row than he intended to, having some difficulty stopping watching it.

I asked about the dinosaur, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I asked about the monster—I assumed it was a dinosaur, but maybe it was a monster?–but he still wasn’t sure what I was talking about.

Eventually, we sorted out the conversation I was trying to initiate, and he informed me that no, they never did show the monster in the first season. There was a polar bear at one point though, and a smoke monster.

Both of these folks ended up getting caught up on the first season via the DVD, and then watching new episodes as they aired. I’d occasionally ask if they had shown the monster yet, or if they ever explained what was up with the island. They never did.

That was the extent of my flirtation with Lost. I just didn’t want to get involved spending hours and hours and hours watching a show where they never show the dinosaur, you know?

That said, I know the show has been enormously popular within my online, um, peer group…? The demographic of which I’m a part? Like, Marvel Comics let one of those Lost guys write the first third of a miniseries for them and published them without getting the rest of it, as if he were Chasing Amy-era Kevin Smith. Newsarama and similar sites would write about comics writers joining the creative staff (Brian Vaugh and Paul Dini, I think?). My then-local comic shop would always have dudes talking about the previous night’s episode whenever I went in on Wednesday afternoons to pick up new books. Kate Beaton did some strip sthat I didn’t get (but wanted to).

So I know some of you watched it. Hell, maybe all of you did.

I also know that the last episode aired tonight…or is maybe still airing, depending on your time zone. This I know because while I’ve never watched Lost, I watch Dancing With The Stars religiously.

So, can someone tell me in the comments section a) Did they ever show that goddam dinosaur? And b) What was the deal with the island anyway?

Go ahead, be as direct and spoiler-y as you want. Well, you need not to be detailed, as I don’t know the characters beyond The Guy Who Was On Party of Five, Harold Whose Name Is Hard To Spell So I Usually Just Say “Mercutio From Romeo & Juliet,” The Guy Who Was A Hobbit and The Fat Guy. Just a simple “It turns out they were in little Matrix vats and it was all a programmed virtual reality hallucination” or “They were all different personalities in the same crazy person’s head” or “It was all a dream M. Night Shyamalan had one night” is sufficient.

I have no intention of ever watching the show, and, if for some reason that changes (Maybe it will be on cable when I’m in a nursing home watching TV 18 hours a day?), I won’t mind knowing what’s going on.

Thanks!