Weekly Haul: March 14th

(Above: The Jabberwock hot on the heels of the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit in Wonderland #3, as drawn by Sonny Liew)


52 #45 (DC Comics)
I always feel guilty when I notice a problem with the art in this weekly book—I mean, it’s weekly! Of course it’s going to look rushed now and then!—but shouldn’t the coffins in the foreground on page three be much bigger than the two men in the background, especially considering that they were bigger than the men on page two? That’s my only nitpick about this issue—well, that and the fact that Montoya looks super-silly in her private eye sterotype outfit—as Black Adam decimates the entire nation of Bialya while searching four the Fourth Horseman, and the super-armies of China and the U.S. prepare for war. That last page, combined with the image on the next issue box, has me positively salivating for the next issue (it’s really quite gross, drooling on my keyboard as I type this).

Given the attention and makeover Dr. Sivana and Black Adam have gotten in this series, it’s strikes me as doubly strange that DC launched Trials of Shazam! when they did—a Marvel Family book more in keeping with 52 launched after 52 would have seemed to be more natural (and, undoubtedly, better received).

DC Tobacco Product Watch: Intergang’s Boss Manheim smokes a cigar during his conversation with the president of Bialya. But then, Manheim’s evil.


Civil War: The Confession #1 (Marvel Comics) I was so let-down by the end of the Civil War books, that I had no intention of buying this. At least, not until I read Captain America #25, and the fact that the title took on a whole new meaning. Workhorse Brian Michael Bendis and his frquent collaborator Alex Maleev provide the conclusion of the “Civil War” story that should have been in Civil War #7, and the result is a book that is far more essentiall a read than Civil War #5-#7 or Civil War: Frontline #1-#11. Tony Stark explains himself and his behavior to the corpse of Captain America (and, conveniently, the readers), and we get to hear Cap’s last words to Iron Man.


The Irredeemable Ant-Man #6 (Marvel) And thus concludes the origin story of Eric O’ Grady, Ant-Man III. If you slept on this one, be sure to buy the trade—I’m going to be sad if this title gets cancelled while we have three ongoing Avengers titles set in the 616. Best part? Robert Kirkman explains why SHIELD agents tend to say “Blast!” instead of “Damn!” or “Christ!” or “Fuck-a-duck!”




JLA: Classified #36 (DC) Oh thank God it’s over. I appreciated being able to enjoy a JLA story featuring Plastic Man, Martian Manhunter, Flash and John Stewart, and sorta dug some of the clever concepts Dans Slott and Jurgens played around with throughout this five-part story arc, but it was a mediocre Justice League story at best, and grew pretty tiresome by the end. I don’t think Trevor Scott is the best finisher for Dan Jurgens’ roughs either. I look forward to next issue, though, which presumably will see the long-delayed Peter Milligan-written tale of Kid Amazo, first solicited as an original graphic novel, then as an arc in this series, one which got pushed back to make room for three other arcs. I assume that means the story was one DC was nervous about, either because of the edgy content or the poor quality. Let’s hope it was the former.



The Lone Ranger #5 (Dynamite Entertainment) A few more baby steps in the origin of the most well-known Western vigilante of them all. It’s been slow-going, but there’s no questioning the quality. Though the pace makes for a barely-there read in the monthly installments, I assume it will read great in trade—which I really should have waited for.


The New Avengers #28 (Marvel) Do Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Yu, Molly Lazer, Aubrey Sitterson and Tom Brevoort even read Marvel Comics? Cause they should know that Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation does not appear on him when he takes astral form. That’s the only nitpick I’ve got this week, other than the fact that so many characters sound like the exact same person talking, a problem with Bendis-written stories, but one I’ll gladly suffer if it
’s a choice between that or dreadfully slow pacing. This arc, as well as the first issue of Mighty Avengers has been rocket-paced.

The team seeks sanctuary in Japan, while we flashback to learn a little about how they came together after the war. I love Yu’s art (well, all except the garden hose-sized veins he gives Cage and Wolvie) and Bendis is doing better work here than at any time previous during his run on the title.

New Avengers also contains the sound effect of the week, which is the sound of Wolverine slicing some SHIELD guy’s amour with his claws: “SLIICCCEEEE.” Try saying it out loud. It gets kinda hard when you get to the e’s, since they’re silent, and I have no idea how to pronounce a long silent e, let alone draw it out extra long. I assume it’s meant to be read as “Sli-i-sss-eeee!”, and that is just al-around awesome.


Sam Noir: Ronin Holiday #2 (Image) “Call off your rhino if you want to live.” It’s lines like that that make Sam Noir such a fun book. In this issue, the samurai detective and the pirate detective battle a jungle girl and her pet battle rhinoceros, then meet a witch doctor. Sam contemplates clowns, mimes and how rodeos could be improved by substituting bulls for rhinos, and the pirate detective tells us his life story. I can’t remember the last time I used the word “rhino” this many times in one paragraph.


Superman #660 (DC)
I think this done-in-one story was meant to be a stop-gap issue, something to fill up an issue of the book while regular artist Carlos Pacheco (who is too slow to be regular artist on a monthly comic book) caught up. If so, it’s a nice refutation to the sentiment that fill-ins = lesser stories. Regular writer Kurt Busiek gets inside long-time Superman foe The Prankster to show us his motivation, his modus operandi and his place in Metropolis, and he completely reinvents the character in the process—rather than a Joker knock-off or a second rate Trickster, the Prankster comes into his own here, as both a formidable Superman foe and a winning character in his own right. Bravo, Mr. Busiek, bravo. The art comes courtesy of Mike Manley and Bret Blevins, two artists whose work I haven’t seen in quite a while, and it was a welcome treat.

In the future, it would behoove DC to stockpile done-in-ones like this—“rogue profiles” like this and the ones Geoff Johns used to do while on The Flash seem to be a good strategy—to be ready for delays when they occur. As for the trade paperback collection program, simply save them until you have four to eight of them, and release them in a trade of their own, so that the trade paperback audience doesn’t have the flow of their stories interrupted, while you’ve saved the direct market audience from having to shop at Pacheco’s (or whoever the slow artist in question is) pace.


Teen Titans #44 (DC)
Last month’s all-ambushes and fight scene issue is followed by the all-torture issue, as the villainous members of Titans East hold the various heroic members of the Teen Titans hostage in different rooms of their headquarters, where they can burn, dismember, psychologically terrorize and do whatever Martch planned to do to Wonder Girl on that S-Shield-shaped bed in the Krpytonian Suite. The pencil art, buy Tony S. Daniel, is stiff and lifeless, and the characters are all always awkwardly posed. The writing, by out-going writer Geoff Johns and incoming writer Adam Beechen, caused me more problems.

For example:

—I thought Robin was being held captive in the “Robin Cave” beneath his Titans’ tower in San Francisco, but here he shows up in the East Titans’ tower in New York City.

—What the hell did Johns and Beechen do to Match, who was an exact clone of Superboy, with Superboy’s powers, personality and smarts? Now he’s just a crumbling, half-backwards-talking Bizarro clone. Given that Superboy is dead now, isn’t the former more interesting than the latter? And why does he have black hair instead of blonde? Why does he dress like Superboy? And why does he have heat-vision now? Did he develop since his last appearance, as Superboy developed his?

—Isn’t it odd for Batgirl to say “Rematch” when attacking Ravager, since she won their last fight? Doesn’t the loser typically ask for a rematch?

—Why does Deatstroke call Robin “Drake”? Does he know his secret identity now?

—Did we really need the line “Let’s find out for sure, Bat-Bitch” in this book? I mean, I realize that superhero comics are primarily bought and read by adults these days, but if one DCU title should be young reader friendly, shouldn’t it be the one that shares its name with a kid-friendly cartoon and line of toys?




Wonderland #3 (SLG) Way too long passes between each issue of this delightful series, but I can’t help myself—every time a new issue, hits the stands, I snap it up. I blame Sonny Liew’s delightful Disney-inspired (but not influenced) art and David Hedgecock's clever lettering (on display in the panel above, in which Mary Ann reacts to the amount of mud and dirt in the well she's trapped in).


Wonder Woman #5 (DC) This one-off issue by Will Pfeifffer in which the D.E.O.’s Agent Diana Pierce looks for leads on Wonder Woman’s whereabouts at a clinic for battered women inspired by Wonder Woman, isn’t very good, but it isn’t any worse than the last four issues of Wonder Woman, either. The art, by Geraldo Borjes and Jean and Wellington Diaz, isn’t bad at all, and I didn’t miss the Dodson’s at all.

Wondy’s new status quo in the DCU strikes me as sillier and sillier each time I see a story dealing with it; not only does she look exactly like world-famous superhero, diplomat and murder suspect Wonder Woman, and how many six-foot-plus women with the beauty of Aphrodite can there be, but she even has the same name!. She works for an agency of the U.S. government, an agency that employs people whose job it is to keep track of people like Wonder Woman.

I suppose you could say it’s no sillier than a building full of reporters never figuring out that Clark Kent is Superman with glasses on, but that status quo was established almost 70 years ago, not last year, and we’ve had several plausible explanations from how he managed, from Birthright’s study of acting to Superman/Batman Annual #1’s mention of super-speed vibrations slightly distorting Supers’ face to All-Star Superman #1’s Jekyll-and-Hyde like transformation.

DC Tobacco Product Watch: Sarge Steel smokes a stogie, while in D.E.O. headquarters in Washington D.C. , and one of the women who gets help from the Athenian Women’s Shelter is shown smoking a cigarette.