Weekly Haul: November 25th

Blackest Night #5 (DC Comics) I was warned repeatedly at the shop to make sure I read Green Lantern # 48 before reading this issue, so I did. It’s not really that big a deal though; GL just explains how Hal Jordan and Sinestro convince the main orange and red lanterns to join their rainbow coalition.

This fifth issue of the main miniseries that DC’s event is spun around was mostly notable for the number of splashes in it—four double-page splashes, one single-page splash. That’s a lot for a 26-page, $3.99 comic, and some of them are less-than-impressive. Did we need two double-page splashes devoted to the rag-tag rainbow Lantern corps they’re apparently going to be calling “The New Guardians?” If Ivan Reis was going to take a whole page to draw a crowd of heroes showing up for a fight, couldn’t he have gone full Perez on it, instead of just drawing 15 heroes?

There are two pretty big moments here, one of which I’ve been expecting to happen since the #0 issue, the other of which was a complete surprise, but lead to a pretty great “Oh man, the heroes are so boned now” ending. That said, you can probably glean the entirety of this issue’s story by flipping through it in the shop.

Of course, if you just did that, you’d miss the part where skull-licking, open grave-sleeping-in villain Black Hand tells Barry Allen, “Don’t worry, Flash. I won’t disturb your body. You aren’t my type.” You see, he says this because he is a necrophiliac, and he is talking about having sex with Flash’s corpse. This is the best selling American superhero comic book of the moment.


Green Lantern #48 (DC) Orange Lantern Larfleeze and Red Lantern Atrocitus team-up with the Green, Yellow, Blue, Violet and Indigo Lanterns, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen draw the living shit out of everything (and attempt to do a Disney duck that doesn’t look like a Disney duck, perhaps to avoid a lawsuit) and the issue ends with the tag “The New Guardians Charge Up in Blackest Night #5!” Yes, they’re going to call this rainbow Lantern team The New Guardians! Will they get their own series after this? Will it last longer than the last New Guardians series? Why aren’t they the New New Guardians or the Brand-New Guardians? So many questions left unanswered by GL #48…


Incredible Hercules #136 (Marvel Comics) “Assault on New Olympus” is a well-named story arc. What’s it about? Well, it’s all right there. Athena, Herc and Amadeus Cho grab some random Mighty and New Avengers (Wolverine, Spider-Man and –Woman, Hank Pym, USAgent, Quicksilver) and launch their attack on Hera’s New Olympus stronghold, where her and her evil allies are preparing to launch a mysterious attack that will wipe out all life on earth.

It’s pretty fun stuff, but nothing special on the awesomeness scale established by previous Incredible Herc stories.

A few random observations:

—I did not care for the way Rodney Buchemi drew Spider-Woman’s under-arm bat-wings.

—“Brevoooorted” is a pretty good sound effect.

—This is the first issue of Inc Herc to include an Agents of Atlas back-up, continuing from the back-up in the Assault on New Olympus one-shot, which continued there from X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas It’s just six-pages long, and while it looks great and reads fine, it seems a little too sleight.

—Adi Granov’s cover is pretty awful-looking, isn't it?


Justice League of America #39 (DC) Writer James Robinson tries to match the depravity of Geoff Johns’ Blackest Night #5 at the climax of this 30-Page, $3.99 issue. Black Lantern Dr. Light is found licking the severed head of Gehenna, who was transmuted into salt in an earlier issue of Blackest Night, and, when the heroic Dr. Light II arrives, the undead zombie rapist supervillain tells her, “Firestorm’s girlfriend tastes salty good. Now… …Let’s see what you taste like.”

So, congratulations…?