Weekly Haul: March 7th

(Above: A panel from best book of the week Fantastic Four #543. I usually post the cover of the best book at the top of these Weekly Hauls, but it seemd a shame to put that pedestrian Gradanov cover up, when the interiors were chock-full of such great panels, like this one of the Human Torch sucking the flames off of an exploded hotrod).

52 #42 (DC Comics) The fact that Black Adam was going to lose a member of his new family at some point near the end of the series seemed like a foregone conclusion since 52 began, and that would drive Black Adam to resume his murderous ways. After last week’s big, gory death scene, it seemed like Isis at least was safe. But 52 continues to surprise, even when you’ve seen things coming for almost a year’s time. All Four Horsemen descend upon Adam and Isis, and she succumbs too, leaving Adam alone again, but his turn back towards evil comes for a rather unexpected reason.


The All-New Atom #9 (DC) Newsarama.com recently announced that penciller Mike Norton would be taking over art duties on this title, which is good news—but at least nine issues too late. With three art teams so far, the book has had the artistic consistency and polish of 52, but without the excuse of a weekly schedule. Writer Gail Simone has cut down a bit on the asterisk abuse, but doing something completely retarded twice an issue instead of ten times an issue is still retarded. I like Simone’s concept of Ivy Town and its relationship with its former hero, and I’ve come to like Ryan Choi and the idea of a college professor/hero, but the whole title seems to suffer from being too-rushed on the front end, both in the inability to sign a monthly artist, Simone’s odd idea of “experimenting,” and too little differentiating it from every other superhero book on the stands. Dropped until further notice.


Captain America #25 (Marvel Comics)
I see that one can purchase two copies of this comic, one with each of the two variant covers, for $107.50 on eBay at the moment (Thursday afternoon). There are 21 dumb motherfuckers who have bid on it. That’s just one of several auctions going on right now; the cover of the issue I bought (For $2.99, mind) is being auctioned off for $51 at present, and 15 idiots have bid for it. A little bit of advice, civilians: The book is worth exactly $2.99, and it’s not going to increase in value over the years (trust me; I speak as someone with two copies of the Death of Superman issue, one still in it’s unopened polybag). If you have a copy, get it on eBay stat and cash in while there are still some suckers left; if you don’t have a copy, don’t waste your money. Hell, you can have mine. My address is in the upper right hand corner—send me your address and, let’s say, $5 ($2.01 for shipping and handling) and it’s all yours. Sheesh. I realize the news media needs to report on something to fill it’s column inches/online electronic inches/airwaves, but it’s not like there isn’t a war in Iraq and a high-level Bush official charged with a high crime. And if they want to talk comics, can we at least talk good comics?

Alright so, Captain America #25. As all four of my faithful readers know, I’ve been reading writer Ed Brubaker’s run on the title in trade from the library, so I’m pretty far behind at the moment. But as a comics columnist, I felt it my duty to be as least as on top of the big comics story of the news cycle as that bastion of comics industry news CNN, so I gave my local retailer and Marvel their shares of my $2.99 to see the “death” of Captain America.

Props to Brubaker, who’s run on the book I’ve quite enjoyed, for at least making it look convincing. A sniper’s bullet to the back of the neck, and a gut full of automatic fire finish the good Captain off, or at least make it look that way by the end of the issue (In a storyline that has already involved “Life Model Decoys,” the reality-altering Cosmic Cube, and the long presumed KIA Bucky Barnes back among the living with a robot arm, there are just too many outs to even care—I mean, Cap is only in the modern Marvel Universe at all because the Avengers found him floating in a block of ice after a rocket he was riding blew up during World War II). Anyone who reads comics will tell you, it’s not a matter of whether or not Cap really died or if he’ll really come back from the dead, it’s just a matter of when: Immediately? A few months? Maybe not for a whole year?

One of the admirable things current Marvel E-i-C Joe Quesada instituted when he came on was a “Dead Means Dead” policy, because he was savvy enough to realize the number of deaths and resurrections has cheapened both sorts of stories over the years. The policy has gotten more and more lax over the years however. Since I’ve been reading Marvel Comics more religiously, I’ve seen Colossus come back from the dead, Bucky come back from the dead (after a few decades of being dead), Uncle Ben come back from the dead (well, it’s an alternate reality Uncle Ben, whatever) and, most recently, Captain Marvel come back from the dead, the latter of whom is a character who died of cancer 25 years ago. We’ve even seen Hawkeye killed and brought back to life within the space of a few years, under Quesada’s watch. And when the company’s Distinguished Competition has brought Jason Todd back from the dead in a way that was so retarded (I’ve really gotta stop using that word) that it made Captain Marvel’s return seem brilliant, well, why would anyone care one way or another if Captain America is “dead” or not?

As for the issue itself, it’s fairly well written, giving a decent overview of Cap’s career up until this point as well as his new status quo (i.e. being “killed”). It is an awful jumping on point for new readers though, which makes it’s hype all the sadder; any “civilians” picking it up are more likely to be turned off by comics than on (It’s a perfect example of how hard it is to get into continuity-laden “universe” comics). Steve Epting’s art, heavily shaded and given that glossy, airbrushed looking sheen I hate, is decent, but not my cup of tea aesthetically.




Detective Comics #829 (DC) Don’t say anything dirty about the cover, don’t say anything dirty about the cover, don’t say anything dirty about the cover…


Fantastic Four #543 (Marvel) I snapped up this extra-sized, 45th anniversary issue of FF because Dwayne McDuffie’s the new writer on the title, and I enjoyed his last issue immensely—for the first time since “Civil War” began, Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards’ actions made a bit of sense. I didn’t even realize this issue also included back-ups, let alone ones by such remarkable creators, so this book came as quite a welcome surprise this month. In McDuffie and penciller Mike McKone’s lead feature, new reader’s get caught up on the high points of FF history, with particular attention being paid to their origin and their recent “Civil War”-related strife. This is what they call a “good jumping on point.” Ben and Johnny watch Val and Franklin and watch a documentary about their team, while Reed takes Sue up in the Fantasticar to discuss their relationship. McDuffie absolutely nails each and every character’s distinct voice, and continues to make sweet, sweet lemonade out of the sour lemons of Civil War.

Back-Up Feature #1 is written by Stan Lee, who also co-stars, and is drawn by the X-Statix Presents: Deadgirl art team of Nick Dragotta and Mike Allred. The Mole Man threatens New York with annhilation, but Reed won’t let the FF save the day (“Let some other super heroes save the world for a change. It’s DC’s turn!”). Miffed that Marvel isn’t doing anything to celebrate their 45th anniversary, Reed proposes the FF just sit this one out. Luckily, Lee saves the day, after letting his creations make fun of him for a majority of the story. Dragotta and Allred do one hell of a good Lee (I totally want that jacket!), and the army’s special FF phone, with the 4-shaped antennae, is the very definition of awesome. I don’t know what Reed’s so pissy about—it doesn’t get much more special than this story.

But wait, there’s more! Back-Up Feature #2 is written and drawn by Paul Pope, an artist who’s style is so unique that there are times I kinda wish he could just draw every superhero comic from both Big Publishers. Batman, Robin, Superman, Bizarro, Catwoman, Spider-Man—I’ve never seen him tackle one of their properties without being thrilled at the character designs and energy of the line work. Here Pope takes on the FF, and we get to see him draw Johhny, Reed, Ben, Spidey, J. Jonah Jameson, Crystal (with a new dog!) and Wyatt Wingfoot. Here are some badly-scanned examples of Papal awesomeness:



Pope has a wonderful way with Spidey’s webs (and dig that panel where he walks on his fingertips while dodging fireballs!), Thing’s craggy orange skin and, the biggest revelation, Torch’s flamed-on appearance. If you only read one superhero comic this week, this is definitely the one it should be.

Wait, what’s this?



Tch, tch, tch…looks like Pope snuck a cigar into Marvel’s smoke-free environment. I do hope that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing more of his work on their characters in the future.


The Helmet of Fate: Zauriel #1 (DC) This is the Helmet one-shot I’ve been most looking forward to, as I’m a huge fan of Zauriel, one of Grant Morrison’s most promising (and least capitalized on) additions to the DCU. JLA #6-#7 are very, very high on my list of Most Favorite Comic Books Ever, although no other writer has been able to fuse the crazy science fiction version of Heaven with DCU mythology as well as Morrison. He peppered Zauriel’s dialogue with fantastic Biblical-sounding science jargon and place names, and gave him a very human sense of humor and worldliness; he flirted with Wonder Woman and complained about his throat and sacrificed immortality for a girl. He belived in God and Jesus, but not in a particularly pious way; he knew they existed, in much the same way you know your neighbors exist. Outside of Morrison’sJLA issues, no one’s done anything very interesting with him. Mark Millar wrote a four-part mini that gave Z. his new super-suit and a base, but it was nothing you didn’t already see in The Prophecy. Geoff Johns used he and Asmodel to little effect in Day of Judgement and used him again in JSA and Infinite Crisis, but by then he’s devolved into a token Christian version of Hawkman.

Sadly, writer Steve Gerber doesn’t fare very well with him in this one-shot either. He gets a nice-looking logo (as have all of the Helmet stars), and great art inside and out thanks to Michael Kaluta and Peter Snejbjerg, which at least makes the story worth a read, even if it doesn’t seem strong enough to lead to anything new for the character (Personally, I’ve always felt that he, like Steel and Oracle, should have remained on the League with The Big Eight when Mark Waid took the baton from Grant Morrison, but I’m just a DC reader, not an editor).

Gerber starts quite strong with a scene of Z. visiting a Sunday school and taking some questions from kids, which he has no answers for. It definitely shows how difficult theology in the DCU must be. For example, one kid asks if Heaven is “Just for earth people, or will Superman go there if he dies again?” Unfortunately, Gerber doesn’t have Zauriel answer any of these questions, and his nonchalance about the afterlife in JLA was one of the things I always liked about the character; it would be cooler to see him confidently answering about Kryptonian heaven and hell in the pre-established DCU theological terms about the afterlife being what one wants it to be and making the teacher uncomfortable. Oh well.

Things all go downhill from there, when another angel summons him to do an errand for The Presence which basically amounts to some pretty pedestrian superheroing—God wants Z. to journey to a distant planet where a race of plant people fight a race of fungus people and removing the Helmet of Fate from one of the factions. Oh, and Zauriel totally kills a guy too, which doesn’t seem too terribly superheroic. Being God’s literal representative in the DCU seems somehow wrong to me, as does being a superhero “in order to proclaim God’s existence and his love for humankind in a more visible, tangible way.” See, I thought Zauriel came to earth because a) he liked it down here and b) he wanted to defend it from Maggedon, even after Heaven itself had given up on it.

Ah well, back to limbo with you, Zauriel. Hopefully another writer who really gets you will come along again someday.


Justice League of America #6 (DC) Almost there. Writer Brad Meltzer gets all of the heroes who will eventually form the new League line-up in the same place at the same time this issue, as the heroes face off against their perennial opponents Solomon Grundy and Amazo. What makes these confrontations different from all the others? Well, there’s the amount of blood and level of violence; I was honestly a little surprised to see that “Approved by the Comics Code Authority” stamp on the cover; if that’s all-ages appropriate, what does the CCA do anymore, exactly? Make sure there are no F-words or full-frontal nudity? While I could certainly spend longer picking this book apart, nitpick by nitpick, I’m just going to concentrate on two things this month.

First up, flip to the two-page sequence on pages four and five, in which the League confronts Amazo. This here is pretty much everything that’s wrong with Meltzer’s work on these characters. The whole sequence is, of course, narrated, presumably by Roy Harper, since the narration boxes are orange, like his hair. He tells us everything that’s happening, of course, but while he does so we also get a few other simultaneous threads of verbal information, the dialogue between Kathy, Amazo and the heroes, plus what must be Amazo’s thoughts and/or narration. Roy’s narration is at a conversational pace, a couple sentences per panel, but Amazo’s dialogue is much, much slower, with the word “me” stretched out over two panels (Roy gets two whole sentences in during the time it takes Amazo to pronounce that syllable), and the word “Situation” takes four panels to appear in Amazo’s head (Panel four has “SITU,” panel five “SITUA” and so on).

So, what the hell is going on, exactly? Roy thinks faster than Amazo? He thinks faster than Amazo can talk? Do we even need to know what word Amazo is thinking to himself?

The fight choreography here seems overly forced just to include everyone (Is the Bat-Pen Laser in panel nine really necessary? Couldn’t Hal just make his ring-generated chainsaw a couple inches longer? And later Black Canary and Lightning each take one of Amazo's ears, which should, at the least, take out Jeff too), but I was much more irritated by the narration, particularly Roy’s line, “From there, they get Ruthless. Clark goes for his eyes.”

First off, Roy Harper doesn’t know that Superman is really Clark Kent, and even if we’re to believe that he has somehow figured this out over the years, he doesn’t know him on a first-name basis, and thus wouldn’t be very likely to think of Superman as “Clark,” now would he? Batman does that, but it’s only to needle Superman; even Superman’s friends who know his secret identity and actually are on a first-name basis with him call him “Kal.”

And secondly, “get ruthless?” “Clark goes for the eyes?” Come on, how often does Superman get ruthless, and/or go for the eyes? He’s not the only ruthless superhero here, of course. While Red Tornado fights for his life against Solomon Grundy, he repeatedly goes for a kill shot, shooting a metal shard through Grundy’s heart, and, later, ripping him in half. I know Reddy was in dire straits there, but come on, didn’t he read that story about Diana killing Max Lord? Superman and Batman hate that shit.


Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness #1 (Dynamite Entertainment/Marvel) I lost interest in Dynamtie’s AoD comics pretty quickly (before the ongoing even launched, in fact), as they seem to keep covering the same ground and recycling the same jokes over and over, and although I keep trying out the (usually rather inspired) crossovers, I end up dropping them all mid-story. Well, this one certainly showed promise; even if it turns out to be unreadable, at least it will give us some more of Arthur Suydam’s neat zombified versions of classic Marvel covers. As for the story, Ash gets punched into the Marvel Zombiverse by the zombified Sentry, just before the events of Marvel Zombies (he arrives days before the plague hits the heroes). Writer John Layman’s Ash is pretty annoying (if Bruce Campbell ain’t playing him, Ash loses a lot of his charismas) and dragging the Necronomicon into things seems sort of pointless (can’t Ash ever fight zombies without the book being involved? I mean, Batman sometimes fights the Penguin or the Riddler; it’s not the Joker in every issue, you know?), but the interactions with the Marvels are all pretty well-written. A bigger obstacle is the art of Fabio Neves, which has that soft, airbrushed, heavily-referenced look of Greg Land’s art. I suppose it’s appropriate, given that Land was the first artist to delineate Marvels’ Zombieverse, but I’d prefer a style that meshed better with Marvel Zombies’s Sean Phillips’ style, or just plain looked more drawn. The cartoony image of Ash trussed up like an inch worm in Spidey’s webbing, for example, should look totally cool, but instead just looks limp, with an airbrushed celebrity likeness Weekly World News-ed into an ugly modern Marvel comic. I’ll stick with it for at least another issue, but already this cross-over is failing to live up to it’s potential. Now pardon me while I go re-read that Dragotta/Allred story in FF and imagine how awesome this book might have been if they illustrated Layman’s script…


Midnighter #5 (WildStorm/DC) That bit where Midnighter learns about human sexuality in the 96th Century? That’s pretty much worth $2.99 right there.


The Mighty Avengers #1 (Marvel) I didn’t mean to purchase this comic, as I was almost positive I wouldn’t like it. Writer Brian Michael Bendis’ last few years on New Avengers has been nothing if not frustrating, and this second Avengers book by the same writer features a collection of heroes I either know nothing about (Ares), know a little about but don’t find very interesting (Wonder Man, Black Widow, Ms. Marvel), know a little about and hate (Sentry), or know fairly well but have grown to hate during the course of “Civil War” (Wasp, Iron Man). But I found it in my pull this Wednesday, and felt obligated to make the purchase. I say all this because the context may be useful to you—I was totally ready to hate the book, and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

A few of Bendis’ bad habits remain, including the fact that all of the characters sort of talk alike (Mole Man repeats a line that Reed Richards used in The New Avengers: The Illuminati #1 almost word for word here), and a couple of panels are completely recycled, which gave me unpleasant flashbacks to the conclusion of Secret War, which rivaled The Flintstones in the re-using-the-same-art-over-and-over department.

Those are my only gripes about the book, however. Bendis has clearly learned from his mistakes during the New Avengers launch (which outsold everything, meaning Bendis didn’t have to do anything different unless he cared about writing better comics, which is clearly the case). The entire line-up gets introduced in the very first panel, as they swoop in to fight the Mole Man’s invading hordes of monsters. Bendis flashes back and forth between the team’s fight and Tony Stark, director of SHIELD and Ms. Marvel’s discussions of who should be on their Avengers (honestly, it’s quite similar to Meltzer’s scenes of The Trinity picking the new League, only BMB gets it done in one issue, rather than four).

Of particular note is the drastic swerve from the status quo in this book, something I personally found much more shocking than the “death” of Captain America this week—Bendis’ usage of thought bubbles. Thought bubbles have been MIA at Marvel since around the time Joe Quesada became EIC, and they increasingly seemed to be a thing of the past, back when Chris Claremont was over-writing the X-Men and Golden and Silver Age comics, when the art alone wasn’t sufficient to tell the story. At Marvel, the thought balloon has long been replaced with the first-person narration box, but that only allows for one narrator (unless you’re Jeph Loeb, in which case you’ll used dueling narrators, distinguishing their thoughts by a bat-symbol or S-sheild in their box, or Brad Meltzer, in which case every character narrates everything all the goddam time, their boxes color-coded to distinguish who’s thinking what). How much simpler the thought bubble is, since it’s dotted line connects the thought to the head of the person thinking it. It’s something that can only be done in comics and, reading JLoA and this story in the same week, it seems the bubble may indeed be the more effective way to let us inside the characters’ heads, as long as the writer resists the old-school soliloquies and sticks to one-word thoughts and brief phrases.

So there you have it, I don’t like Bendis’ Avengers writing, I don’t like the line-up and I don’t like the whole Marvels-who-work-for-the-government-just-like-in-The Ultimates status quo of the team, and I still really enjoyed this book. If you don’t suffer from the same prejudices I do, I imagine you’ll love it.



Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil #2 (DC)
In the second issue of Jeff Smith’s long over-due reimagning of the Marvel Family characters, we’re introduced to several more important players in the mythos, included Mary Marvel, Mr. Tawky Tawny, Dr. Sivana, and the voice of Mister Mind. It’s all great fun, well-written and beautifully designed, drawn and colored. These characters, perhaps even moreso than the Billy/Cap dynamic, differ fairly dramatically from their DCU and old Fawcett iterations. Tawny is an Iffrit, which isn’t too different than what Jerry Ordway did with the character in The Power of Shazam!, but he’s played as a wise and competent spiritual guide type, not comic relief. Mary looks like a little girl rather than a sex bomb, and while that seems the biggest departure, it’s really just Smith correcting an old Beck mistake; Billy and Mary were supposed to be twins, and yet she looked like a teenager while he looked like a little boy. I know girls mature faster than boys, but that wouldn’t have explained their discrepancy of ages. Sivana is a wonderful looking little troll; he seems smaller than ever, but that too is in keeping with Beck’s version, wherein Sivana was Billy’s size. Here he’s the Attorney General and head of the Department of Technology And Heartland Security (the few off-handed riffs on the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 power grabs seem terribly dated in 2006), which doesn’t strike me as appropriate as his traditional mad scientist background (Besides, the original Sivana has the coolest villain origin of all time). While the book is still a ton of fun, at this point it seems clear that it’s not going to be the “Year One” sort of book that would redefine the Marvel characters’ place in the DCU I was hoping it would be. If you’re just looking for great comics, that doesn’t really matter, of course, but if you’re a Captain Marvel fan and regular reader of DC’s “universe” comics, it’s something of a tragedy, considering where Judd Winick’s taken the characters. Confidential to the writers of 52: Check out the last panel on page 12; that’s how you do a nice, tasteful, all-ages appropriate talking-crocodile-devours-helpless-human-victim scene.


Superman/Batman #32 (DC) “The Enemies Among Us Part 5?” Jesus, this story is still going on?


Ultimate Spider-Man #106 (Marvel)
My favorite part of this issue by far had less to do with the story itself (which remains excellent; if anything, this issue is better than the last few) than it did with the book it was appearing in. Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin of Crime, is an evil gangster who is viewed as a legitamate businessman. At a legitamate business meeting, one of his flunkies tells him that a company he own acquired a company that owns the likeness of Spider-Man (who, you’ll remember, got his start in pro-wrestling, where he signed away the merchandising rights to his name and image). Fisk ruminates on what this means for a moment, and then says with a sinister smile: “Take any sublicense offer. Take any media offer. Go to town. Flood the market.” The flunky responds, “Run it into the ground?” Kingpin smiles broadly, “Exactly.” This scene occurs two issues after an ad for Shakespeare brand fishing equipment, “The Superhero’s Choice For Fishing,” who are selling a Spider-Man Fishing Kit and Spider-Man Tackle Box. It is followed by ads for Spider-Man dimensional stickers and a Spider-Man 3 Limited Edition Klik Candy Dispenser.