Aw, no! My shop sold out of Tiny Titans #50! The last issue, ever! Aaargh!
Well, I guess I can wait a week...
While I was at the shop, I flipped through the long-awaited (by me) Justice League #7, which revealed Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's highly-anticipated (by me) new, "New 52" reboot of Captain Marvel-although-they're-calling-him-"Shazam"-now (By the way, why don't you go read the long-ass story at this link, or at least click on the link so I get your page-views).
And by "flipped through", I mean I actually flipped through the Justice League portion of the book—Jeez, did it look Bendisy this month, or what? The first six issues were half splash pages, and this issue had a good 2-6 pages of nothing but talking head panels as Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor Skype one another?—and looked at all the pages of the "Curse of Shazam" back-up, only reading fractions of the dialogue to make sure the characters were who I thought they were supposed to be.
Did you guys see it yet? Did you read it? Is that guy called Sivana really supposed to be Sivana?! Really?!
He's a giant. He looks like the kind of thug the real Sivana would have hired to fight the real Captain Marvel for him. If you haven't, um, apparently the formerly four-foot-tall, elderly bald guy with impenetrably thick glasses who only changes out of his lab coat in order to effect a disguise is now a thirtsysomething bodybuilder in a skintight white turtleneck...? Like, a slightly beefier Lex Luthor, with glasses...?
What does the "New 52" Penguin look like? Is he 6'5, well-built and handsome?
And Geoff Johns' new take on Billy Batson's character is, apparently—surprise!—to make him an asshole. I am really sorta shocked by this, despite the fact that Johns' approach to revitalizing stale, direct market-rejected DC superheroes is to begin by making them totally unlikeable assholes (See his Hawkman, Green Lantern and Aquaman). I guess that's the hero's journey, to start out as a loathsome asshole and become less of one, but I don't know—Hal Jordan's only, like, 1% less of an asshole than he was when Johns started writing him in 2005 or so. I thought Billy Batson might avoid this characterization, by being a kid, as Johns has written teenagers and old people as not-assholes in his past writing —Stars and STRIPE, JSA—but here we've got another a-hole with superpowers to root against, er, for.
Anyway, just checking in to say "Aargh!" and "Aaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Why, God? Why?!"
Reviews of books I actually paid money to read in the comfort of my own home, and which I read every word of—promise!—to follow later tonight.
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3 comments:
If we're lucky, maybe the character you mention will turn out to be Magnificus Sivana, Thaddeus' son who doesn't take after him.
And the shame of it is that Johns has done more good stuff with the Fawcett characters in the modern era than anyone besides Ordway, in JSA and 52. They're not beyond his grasp.
"I guess that's the hero's journey, to start out as a loathsome asshole and become less of one..." well that's just one form of transformation. Go see http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html
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