Meanwhile...

I wonder why publishers don't pursue married writer/artist teams with the same last name more aggressively? Just look at the space on the spine it saves! Since writer Kathryn Immonen and artist Stuart Immonen have the same last name, AdHouse only had to put one name on the spine of the book!

That book is, of course, Russian Olive To Red King, which probably features the best writing or drawing from either of the pair, and is their least commercial and most challenging work to date. I find even the name challenging, as I keep referring to it alternately as Black Olive to Russian King, Red Olive to Russian King, Black Olive to Red King and its proper title.

I reviewed it for Las Vegas Weekly this past week, and you can read my short review of the book here.

I also reviewed Lion Forge Comics/IDW Publishing's collection of Joelle Sellner, Chynna Clugston Flores and Tim Fish's Saved By The Bell collection for Robot 6 this week. I found the finished work pretty disappointing, but do keep in mind that the disappointment was of the purest sort: I was really looking forward to a comic book based on one of my favorite live-action TV shows of all time, by one of my favorite artists of all time (Clugston Flores).

One of the many mind-boggling things about it, for me personally anyway, was just how un-sexy it was. There's the bikini car wash scene above.

Here's a few panels featuring Kelly and Lisa in their underwear:

I know it's a kids comic and based on a TV show for kids (even if all the kids who watched it are now in their thirties and forties), but I remember that show being rather sexually charged (although I watched it from about ages 14-17, when everything was rather sexually charged), and while I can't speak for Fish, who drew the above panels of the oddly flat and trapezoidal butts, I know Clugston Flores is a great drawer of sexy teenage girls.

Well, here's hoping that Lion Forge does a Saved By The Bell: Remix miniseries at some point, giving talented, wildly-imaginative creators the chance to produce a Saved By The Bell comic that is as bonkers and stylized as their Miami Vice: Remix comic...

You can read my review of Saved By The Bell Vol. 1 here.

Finally, I reviewed Cyborg #1 for Good Comics For Kids. It was alright, but it was just alright, which isn't really much better than being bad in today's super-crowded field. Cyborg is a character that, like a lot of those created to be–or primarily thought of as–team players, was rendered uncrecognizable by the New 52-boot, which divorced him (and characters like him) from everything noteworthy, likable (or just plain him) about him. Sure, Cyborg got "promoted" to the Justice League from the Titans, but that would have meant more if he had worked his way up there after years with the Titans, you know? (Actually, James Robinson similarly promoted Cyborg to the League during his short, troubled run...but Cyborg and a handful of other new recruits disappeared from the line-up after only an issue or three).

I'm not crazy about the new, new, new, new redesign, either. I liked the previous one, with the C/gear emblem on the chest, better than this one. Please note that the above image does not feature the current Cyborg design, but I went ahead and used it here anyway, because that's my favorite image of Cyborg that has appeared on a DC Comic since the New 52-boot. Or maybe ever; I don't know.

You can read my review of Cyborg #1 here.

Happy Birthday To Me

So today was my birthday, meaning I am one year older, my mind and body bear the ravages of one more year's worth of entropy and I'm one year closer to my inevitable death. On the bright side, I get cake and presents.

Presents like this beauty, maybe my favorite birthday present of all time (I say "maybe" because, in my dotage there's a good chance I've forgotten a previous, more awesome birthday present). Now, that's not actually a genuine copy of 1940's Hit Comics #1 from long-defunct publisher Quality Comics, featuring the first appearance of The Red Bee, the single greatest superhero from the Golden Age of superhero comics (After Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Namor, The Human Torch and Captain America, of course).

But it is the next best thing, a reproduction of 1940's Hit Comics #1, featuring the first appearance of The Red Bee! It's all the better a gift because I didn't know such a thing existed, and have always assumed I would never be able to read any of The Red Bee's original comic book adventures until I became an eccentric millionaire able to afford Golden Age back issues.

I can't tell you how excited I am to read this Red Bee adventure. Why, I'm practically abuzz.

Get it? Abuzz? Bee jokes!

Review: Fantastic Four: The Master of Doom

The second half of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s short run on Fantastic Four is collected in Fantastic Four: The Master of Doom, and it ends quite a bit more strongly than it began.

Ironically, the last few issues were ones in which the presence of Millar and Hitch were increasingly diluted, as Joe Ahearne scripted the last two issues from Millar’s plot and Hitch worked with additional pencilers Neil Edwards and Stuart Immonen on those issues (Throughout the eight issues collected in this volume, seven different artists assisted Hitch on inks, although the artwork remained surprisingly consistent looking until Hitch had to be helped with pencils too).

I think this fact is more of an interesting coincidence than any sort of indictment against the two guys with their names above the logo on the cover. While they may not have done as much during the finale as they did during the build-up, it’s very much still their story, and the fairly satisfying conclusion is clearly one that Millar had envisioned and been working toward, before either getting too busy or moving on to devote his full attention to more successful and lucrative endeavors.

The volume title takes its name from the climactic story arc, which is teased and foreshadowed throughout the entire volume, with little in the way of a meaningful break (The family’s trip to spend the holidays in Scotland and the children’s encounter with a Lovecraftian monster god—which Hitch does a great job of designing—being about it).

So who is this Master of Doom? Well it’s, um, Doctor Doom’s former master, the so-called original supervillain under which Marvel Comics’ greatest bad guy apparently apprenticed under for a while. He looks a bit like a naked Judge death in a veil, and he’s accompanied by a new apprentice, and the pair of them are traveling through alternate realities, killing Marvel Universes and Fantastic Fours on their way to check up on how Doom is doing in his dimension against his Fantastic Four.

I can imagine this development may have proved galling to long-time Marvel fans, as the idea that Doctor Doom—who is really pretty much a perfect supervillain—needs his origin retconned can’t have been a popular one, but in trade form one doesn’t have months between issues to think about whether or not that’s a dumb idea and, if so, how dumb an idea it actually is.

Millar does a fair job of presenting the Master as a terrible, apocalyptic threat, using many of the hyperbolic tricks Grant Morrison employed during his JLA run, and while Hitch’s designs for the new villains are pretty uninspired, he does occasionally land a great, menacing image, like the pair riding black vapor trails through a shining New York afternoon.

So the villains are built up as the ultimate of ultimate villains, they dispatch everyone, even Doctor Doom, and then it’s up to the FF to save the day against these impossible odds. They eventually see the way to do it, but to do so they’ll have to do something awfully unheroic—kill an innocent person—and, faced with two bad choices, Reed Richards must find the impossible third way (You know what else is ironic? That this story is plotted by Mark Millar, who wrote Civil War, in which Reed Richards constantly chose the lesser of two evils instead of either bothering to find the impossible third way).

It all comes down to our FF and a few allies trying to hold off armies of infinite, alternate universe versions of themselves while also dealing with a guy who seems like the biggest Big Bad they’ve ever battled.

It’s an exciting, imaginative story, and one that ends much more optimistically and, well, heroically than almost anything I’ve read from Millar since he was writing DC’s superheroes.

That’s followed by the resolution of the Ben Grimm/Some Random School Teacher Lady sub-plot, which is remarkably effective and even a little touching.

I’m still not convinced Hitch is the very best artist for The Fantastic Four (which, of course, does make him an interesting choice), but his art seems to flow better with Millar’s scripting through most of this volume (perhaps because he was slowing down, and didn’t have the time to over-reference and over-render everything to the extent he did earlier in the 16-issue run?).

He seems to have gotten a really good handle on The Thing by the time he leaves the book, giving the big brick gorilla expressive, soulful eyes, but for everything he does right, he does something as wrong as Doctor Doom’s nose—no longer the little bolted on triangle of Kirby’s design, but a big, honking metal bird-beak. I can’t look at Hitch’s Doom without giggling a little; it’s just too realistic, to the point of complete silliness.

It’s a little difficult for me to judge how clever the ending of the Master of Doom story arc was, given that the reveal of his identity seemingly invoked an old, obscure FF story I’d never read or even heard of (I assume; otherwise Millar just assigned him a back story that sounds like an old, obscure FF story I’d never read or even heard of and…well, that might be kind of cool, actually). At any rate, much of what seemed wrong about the presentation of the villains is made to feel right by the end (well, it felt right to me anyway).

I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that this volume was so good it redeemed the first volume (and, obviously, it didn’t suddenly turn the book into the sales juggernaut Marvel was probably expecting a Millar/Hitch book to be…and the major development regarding Doom seems to have so far been pretty much ignored in the Dark Reign business I’ve read, despite Doom playing a prominent role). But even still, it ended well, so that I left the Millar/Hitch FF run with much warmer feelings toward it then I had at the beginning, and that’s certainly something.


********************

OH, YEAH: I forgot to mention that there’s a point in the Master of Doom story where the big bad guy and a guy with similar powers think really hard at one another and bend reality and fill up a splash page with Marvel characters and alternate reality Marvel characters, which results in this:
Was there an issue of What If…? entitled What If Captain America was a Tyrannosaurus Rex for Some Reason…?

And, if not, why not?

Found while cleaning out my car:

DC's next plastic ring incentive program prototype? Maybe tied into their next big Batman event...?

Weekly Haul: December 23rd

Amazing Spider-Man #616 (Marvel Comics) This is the second half of Fred Van Lente and Javier Pulido’s Sandman story that I was raving about last week. The script is still smart, exciting, funny and even a bit unpredicatable, and Pulido’s art is still incredible. The story itself is big of a bummer—not only is there an element of tragedy about the villain, but Spidey’s essentially an ineffectual jerk whose only real skill is hurting supervillains, and his intervention merely makes things worse for the innocent victim. So it’s a bit of a downer, but it’s a well written, gorgeously illustratd bummer, and really, isn’t that the very best kind of bummer?


Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12 (DC Comics) Think you know the true meaning of Christmas? At least, the secular Christmas with the Santa Claus and the sled and the chimney and the Christmas tree and lights and ornaments and all that business? Would you believe we owe it all to Batman?

This is probably Landry and Walker’s best issue of the series so far, offering a perfect balance of all-ages action and knowing but effective humor for grown-ups.

It’s called “Final Christmas,” and it’s about the time Adam and Alanna Strange zeta beam Batman to Rann just seconds before the Earth is destroyed in an attempt to save the entire universe from annihilation. The villain of the piece is actually a generic DC alien type (A nameless Psion, I believe) rather than the guy on the cover, who is my second favorite Bat-villain to draw (coming in right behnd The Scarecrow). Calendar Man still gets about four wonderful pages though (“Your rampage of irritating misdemeanors ends now, Calendar Man!”).


Green Lantern #49 (DC) Oh hey wow, I’ve read forty-eight consecutive issues of this title, making it the single serial comic book I’m still reading that I’ve read the longest. I came very, very, very, very close to not reading this one, though, when I saw the name “Ed Benes” was attached to it.

Flipping thorugh it in the shop, though, I saw he was actually only one of three pencil artist to draw the issue, so I ended up bringing it home.

This is one of the many things I think is bad about Benes (althought it’s actually good for me personally, since I dislike his art so). Why does DC keep giving the guy work when he can’t keep up with it? This is only a 22-page comic book, and yet all he contributes is 11 or 12 pages of a 16-page lead story (the final page is a longshot splash of the planet Xanshi orbiting the planet Earth, with a bright green light between the two talking, and it seems like the colorist and letter might have drawn the whole page).

The division of labor is parceled out pretty organically though. Marcos Marz and Luciana del Negro apparently handle the pages of the lead story that Benes doesn’t, but they’re flashbacks, so the dramatic shift from one style to another’s not quite so drastic. The book ends with an entirely sepearate six-page story in which Black Lantern Jean Loring explains the nature of the universe to her captives Mera and Ray “The Atom” Palmer, and it’s drawn by Jerry Ordway (and is, thus, gorgeous).

Benes fares much better here than I would have expected, given some of the truly awful work of his I’ve seen recently in catching up with JLoA trades. Perhaps it helps that he’s inking himself? It certainly helps that he only has one or two non-skeletal humanoid characters to draw (so it hardly matters that he does such a poor job of differentiating characters), and there’s only one woman to draw, so the content of the panels are never re-written by the artist to actually be about butts and/or boobs. If DC’s going to continue to give Benes high-profile work, maybe they’re better off giving him easier, one-character work like this then books with sprawling casts.

Johns’ story is kind of dumb, and not the kinda awesome kind of dumb he’s often written on the title, but a more prosaic sort of dumb—it’s not aggressively, overly insulting kind of dumb though, so it’s certainly readable.

The focus is on Green Lantern John Stewart and how his retconned military background is reflected in his current role in the so-called “War of Lights.” So concerned with his time in the marines that this story is entitled “Semper Fi,” has John ring-genearted a marine uniform and guns for himself to use (instead of, you know, just wearing a force-field and shooting beams) and, at one point, he generates a whole platoon of G.I. Joes to help him fight the Black Lanterns of Xanshi.


Hellboy: The Bride of Hell (Dark Horse Comics) I was rather amused by the letter colum in the back of this issue. Editor Scott Allie was responding to a letter calling him out for some statements he made about how difficult it was to just plain enjoy modern superhero comics these days, given the degree to which they are based on past continuity or sprawl their various stories out among dozens of titles over the course of several years.

“I recently got excited about a couple of their books again, but realized I couldn’t follow the stories without figuring Civil War out—which I wasn’t interested in doing,” he wrote.

Thre reason I found it amusing was that I’ve always had difficult with the Hellboy franchise for that precise reason—I wasn’t there for the beginning, and there seems to be so much back story in so many different miniseries that I feel a little frustrated with and put-off by the whole franchise.

Which isn’t to say I’ve never read any Hellboy of course…over the last ten years I’ve probably read most of the books with the world Hellboy right there in the title, but I read the same ones over and over when the trade dress changes, and I read them out of order, and there are all these side projects I find daunting.

My point is just that any serial comic you’ve missed a whole lot of can seem extremely new reader unfriendly. Thr problem with the Hellboy-iverse, I think, comes down to the way that it’s been published—as a series of miniseries, so that I couldn’t just find a back issue box somewhere and start working on Hellboy the monthly with issue #1.

On the other hand, Hellboy is a hell of a lot easier to understand than something like, say, Secret Invasion or Infinite Crisis. There’s this big monster guy, he works for the demon and monster-fighting version of the FBI, and he fights demons and monsters. The basic premise isn’t exactly hard to wrap ones head around, even if I tend to forget the names of characters or details of Hellboy’s past and origins in the years between a trade or one-shot.

I don’t bring this up to argue Allie’s point. In fact, I’m glad he finds super-comics so hard to get into today, because that is apparently what inspired Dark Horse’s “One-Shot Wonders” program of special, easy-to-read, perfect jumping-on-point one-shot comics, of which this is one (How serious are they about keeping these things self-contained? They’re not even labeled or logo-ed as part of the “One-Shot Wonders” initiative, save for on an ad on the back cover).

This is only the second of ‘em I’ve personally bought and read, but it’s a good one, and another good example of how easy to “get” Hellboy is.

Your $3.50 gets you an ad-free 24-page story written by Mike Mignola and drawn by Richard Corben. In it, some Satanic cultist types have seemingly abducted a girl which they plan on offering up to a monster that turns out to be a big-time demon. Hellboy goes to rescue her, and along the way he and we learn a lot of interesting Biblical and medieval back story (This issue in particular made me sort of wish there was a section of notes or at least bibliography in the back of Hellboy comics; there are enough real names and real history in here that it all felt pretty genuine, whether it was or not. It was the sort of comic that made me want to read some books about the subject matter after finishing it).

Corben’s art was a bit of a revelation to me, particularly in how well it worked with Mignola’s scripting and characters. The people looked extremely Corben-esque, but rather than filter the title character through his own style, his Hellboy looked an awful lot like Mignola’s—in certain panels, he actually looks like a slightly more textured version of a Mignola drawing.

And damn, the demon he draws? When it appears at night, it’s just a black shape with eyes and teeth—it its flashback, it regains a shape, and, when we see it in the light, it’s broken and aged. That’s some accomplished, evocative art work that can so thoroughly transform the same character while keeping the interpretations firmly rooted in a base version. It’s cartoonish art that treats the subject like it was “real,” and that’s pretty exciting.

There’s also a two-page letter column and a six-page preview of Guy Davis’ gorgeous looking Marquis: Inferno graphic novel, so, all told, this has gotta be one of the better values on the racks this week.


Incredible Hercules #139 (Marvel) In the never-ending war of Marvel vs. DC, there are a million little battles, and each one has a different victor. In the Battle of the Back-Up Features, though, DC does an infinitely better job of advertising the presence of a back-up and how and where to find it. Look at the above coer design—not only is it a mess, but it hardly encourages an Agents of Atlas fan to pick it up, does it? Additional, the Agents seem to be sort of wandering around from book to book, so it’s difficult to know when they’re going to be where in any given month unless you pay very close attention (In March, for example, instead of a new ish of Inc Herc, there will be the first-part of a two-issue miniseries entitled Hercules: Fall of an Avengers, and the AoA back-up will be there. Seems to me like it would be far easier to ingor the Agents’ appearance in comics, and just wait for the trades).

Anyway, in this issue Herc and his handful of allies (Spider-Man and –Woman, USAgent, Quicksilver, Hank Pym and Wolverine) fight Hera and her allies, and the full extent of her plot is revealed. Then in the beautifully illustrated back-up, the Agents fight some mythological types while wearing neat-o disguises. It’s all pretty decent, but perhaps not remarkably so.



Power Girl #7 (DC) This actually came out last week, but I left it sitting on the shelf, despite significant temptations—it’s always hard not to buy Amanda Conner art, and shirt-less, pant-less, mustachioed manly man Vartox of Valeron on the cover was practically demanding I purchase it.

Of course, that was before Michael Hoskin pointed out in the comments section of last week’s column that it featured Golden Age Wonder Woman villain The Blue Snowman (Whose appearance in the modern DCU I’ve specifically asked for before).

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the entire issue, actually. I gave Power Girl a couple issues, but I decided to drop it around #2 or #3, as it seemed just as concerened with ickiness and retroactive continuity as all of the other DCU comics I don’t enjoy reading (albeit with much more fun, distinctive art).

But this issue was much more full-on comedy in a cape, and thus made better use of Conner’s particular gifts when it comes to design, detail and facial expressions. It’s pretty silly, containing words like “contraception bomb” and “seduction musk rifle” (which is so penis-shaped I’m kinda surprised DC even allowed it to appear) and using a gender-flipped version of the Maxima/Superman plot as a springboard for character comedy and monster-fighting.

Poor Blue Snowman doesn’t seem to survive the issue, but she’s swallowed whole by the monster, and is wearing a metal suit, so she shouldn’t be too hard to resurrect when Gail Simone or whoever decides it’s time to knock off all the mythology business and revisit Wonder Woman’s golden age for inspiration.

The metallic battle-suit and snow-shooting pipe and top hat on Ms. Byrna Brilyant aren’t really what I was expecting design-wise, but I think it turned out pretty cool. (Ha ha! Cool! The Blue Snowman design was cool!).

The rest of the issue was pretty cool too, and I’ll be back to check out #8 next month. That means, DC Comics, you owe Hoskin for the sales of two comic books.


Tiny Titans #23 (DC) I’m so happy that there exists a comic book in which the line, “There! All the bunnies are dressed like Batman!” is a perfectly natural one. This issue, which I believed shipped most places last week but just hit my shop today, is an all Bat-related one, featuring Robin, Batgirl, Bat-Mite, Alfred, the various animals that have taken up residence in Wayne Manor over the course of the past 22 issues and even the big guy himself. Oh, and younger kids Tim and Jason are introduced as well, so there are several panels of Art Baltazar and Fraco’s story that evoke the premise of the fun Batman and Sons webcomic.



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And that's this week's haul discussed. Tonight's Christmas Eve Eve, and I'm not entirely sure of what my posting schedule will look like here or at Blog@ over the course of the next few days.

I have some half-written posts and a stack of books I've read but haven't reviewed yet, and I think there was even an announcement or two this week that I may have opinions about, but holiday-celebrating—paired with the fact that no one's going to be looking at the Internet for a few days anyway—may make posting light and/or lamer than usual between tomorrow and Sunday. I'll probably still try to get something up every day, but, whatever ends up happening, rest assured both EDILW and my contributions to Blog@ will be back to normal by Monday.

If you celebrate Christmas, then I hope you have a happy and safe one, and, if you don't, then I hope you have a happy and safe Friday.

Eighteen thoughts about Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves

—I’m fascinated by the title of this miniseries. There’s an admirable obviousness and, yes, a certain amount of stupidity to it, but it’s the sort of stupidity that is at least leaning in the direction of awesomeness (See All-Star Batman and Robin and Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern for examples of DC comics that have achieved a perfect balance of stupid and awesome).


—Additionally, I’m extremely curious how the title for this project came about. Its construction mirrors that of 2007 series Superman and Batman Versus Aliens and Predator, a of quadruple franchise crossover that possibly did extremely well for DC in trade paperback (I know the trade collection made it onto a Young Adult Library Services Association list of recommended books for teens, for example).

So I suppose it’s possible DC saw that the S&BvA&P trade did unexpectedly well in certain markets and they wanted to replicate that particular formula, but rather than teaming up with Dark Horse Comics again, they decided to pit their Superman and Batman team against public domain adversaries. Instead of choosing, I don’t know, Dracula and Mr. Darcy or Moby Dick and the Headless Horseman they went with two popular species of monster in the generic.

If that wasn’t the case, then I find this project’s existence as a six-issue miniseries a little harder to guess at. Remember, DC already has a Superman/Batman team-up book, in which the two heroes team-up to fight various adversaries about once a month, give or take a shipping delay.

That book is also almost completely divorced from DCU continuity—the stories probably technically all “count” in that they’re not “imaginary stories” or anything, but they rarely reflect what’s going on in a given month or even year within the Batman and Superman titles—so why put this story out under that odd title as a standalone miniseries, instead of as an arc of Superman/Batman?

I was curious enough to look up what sales data was available, and according to The Beat’s monthly sales analysis, the story would have certainly sold more comics as part of Superman/Batman.

According to The Beat, the first issue of Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves sold 27,825 units, and the declined to just 17,273 by the sixth issue. During the same October to December of 2008 period, Superman/Batman only shipped two issues, missing the November ship date. These sold 48,187 and 45,968 units, respectively. So if Superman/Batman pushed back the start of the four-part “Super/Bat” story arc a couple months to accommodate a six-part, bi-weekly “Vs. Vampires and Werewolves” arc, they would have sold a hell of a lot more issues.

Alternately, I wonder if this might have sold better if it was just branded as a Batman book or a JLA book. Batman is the main character, and there are just about enough Leaguers to hold up the weight of JLA branding (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Nightwing and Jason Blood/The Demon…throw in a few cameos for cover and it’s a JLA story if you want to call it one). In fall of 2008, Batman and Justice League of America were DC’s #2 and #3 best-selling comics.


—One more thing about the title and I’ll shut up about it, I swear. It’s also somewhat curious given the story within. As I mentioned, there are a lot of other superheroes involved, and while Superman gets more panel-time than any of them who aren’t Batman, a new character introduced in the series gets a lot more than he does, and that character and Batman are the only ones present in all six issues. That character, by the way, is a vampire, and there’s a werewolf character that also allies itself with Superman and Batman. So really, this thing is more like Superman and Batman and A Vampire and A Werewolf (and Some Other Superheroes) vs. Vampires and Werewolves and Lovecraftian Monsters (and a Mad Scientist, if You Want to Count Him Too).


—Writer Kevin VanHook and artist Tom Mandrake have the ideal last names to work on horror comics. The names “Van Hook” and “Mandrake” look simply perfect on a spine with the words “vampires” and “werewolves” on it.


—I love Tom Mandrake. Love love love love love him. He’s one of the first comics artists I knew by name and whose work I could tell at a glance. I think his work on The Spectre and Martian Manhunter is underrated, and he’s fantastically well-suited for horror stories.


—Wait, when I said I loved Tom Mandrake above, you know I meant his artwork, right? Because I don’t even know Tom Mandrake, let alone know him well enough to be in love with him.


—I kind of hate the cover of the trade (and the first issue of the series) though. That’s a great werewolf face, and a pretty good vampire face, and there’s nothing wrong with his Superman or Batman, but, I don’t know, this just seems kind of lame for some reason. Maybe I’d like it better if the split vampire/werewolf face were green, and it was supposed to be Composite Dracula or something…


—I was happy to see this trade contains an introduction. I love introductions in trade collections of serialized comics, and I think they should be pretty much mandatory. This may be in large part simple nostalgia on my part, for a time when trade collections were much, much rarer and almost always accompanied by an introduction that argued, at least in part and usually even subconsciously, why the comics in question were even being given a spine, collected between two covers and sold outside of comic shops in the first place.

The fact that trade collections are now so common we don’t see introductions as often is a good sign, demonstrating how much more accepted comics are now then they were in the late eighties and early nineties. But I don’t think it hurts for someone to have to spend a few paragraphs explaining what’s so special about what you’re about to read, you know? Also, it’s just a little value added, so if you are buying a story twice (as serial comics and then as a collection), or are paying a little extra for a hardcover or whatever, you’re getting something extra. (Original graphic novels, on the other hand, probably shouldn’t have introductions, as they need to stand on their own in a way that, say, Superman/Batman #45-#49 might not need to).


—This introduction is by John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, making him a good “get” for a comic featuring werewolves.


—Unfortunately, Landis premises part of his intro on Superman’s vulnerability to magic, which Landis suspects might be VanHook’s original invention.

Superman can be weakened and even defeated by Kryptonite, but I discovered in Keven VanHook’s new story that Superman can also be affected by “magic.” Exactly how one defines “magic” can also be broadly defined. Whether or not this “magical effect” on Superman’s powers has been long established or not really does not matter.

Come on, Landis!


—The lettering in this book is huge. Like, gigantic. I think it’s because that instead of bolding and italicizing the stress words in sentences—a peculiarity of DC superhero comics that has long bugged me—letterers Steve Wands and Travis Landham use all-caps on the stress words, so that the narration boxes seem to take up more space than they might actually take up.

And there’s a lot of narration in this thing. Not an ungodly Brad Meltzer amount, and VanHook avoids that irritating Batman and Superman narrating about one another constantly strategy that Jeph Loeb used on Superman/Batman, but there is a narrator in this book, and that means narration boxes getting between my eyes and Tom Mandrake’s lines.


—There are a lot of guest-stars in this, as I mentioned above. Wonder Woman, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Jason Blood/Etrigan, The Demon and Dr. Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself. I certainly enjoyed seeing Mandrake’s GA for what may have been the first time, and he does a mean Man-Bat too, in a rather cool scene in which Man-Bat fights some werewolves and rips off one’s head (And it takes a pretty good artist to be able to draw a were-bat fighting a werewolf and keep the character’s distinct in close-up).

It’s kind of odd how the characters who aren’t Batman seem to come and go, though. Wonder Woman is in the first issue—appearing well before Superman, who doesn’t enter the story until the last page of the second issue—and she fights a vampire, then completely disappears from the story. Her only other mention is Batman mentioning that she called him to tell him about the vampire.

Nightwing similarly appears, fights a monster, hands it over to Batman and takes off. I didn’t really get a sense of why most of the characters were there and where they went, and found myself distracted by it in a couple of instances. In general, I got the impression that certain Justice Leaguers were always dumping their work on Batman’s lap.

I liked Nightwing’s exit though, as it just made him look like a big wussy. He chases down and KOs a werewolf, brings it back to the Batcave for Batman to examine, talks some shop with his boss for a bit, and then when Batman is ready to take on the source of all the vampire and werewolf activity, Nightwing thinks of something more pressing he needs to do:
Ha ha, whatever Nightwing! I’ve read your comic, you never have things to take care of.

—I like page 13, in which Mandrake frames Batman by the jaws of his mechanical dinosaur:


—The mad scientist seeking to pierce the veil between the world of the living and the dead and accidentally brings Lovecraftian monsters to Earth in the process is named Dr. Herbert Combs. Like Dr. Herbert West, the lead character in Re-Animator, the movie based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story, and Jeffrey Combs, the actor who played him. Get it?

Actually, I probably would have thought that was clever when I first started reading Batman comics….maybe it would have even turned me on to the work of Lovecraft and/or stupid/awesome 1980s horror movies earlier…but now it seems over-obvious. (On the other hand, I suppose complaining about an over-obvious character name in a comic entitled Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves is kind of silly of me, huh?)


—In one panel, Batman kicks a demon frog-like fetus creature monster thing so hard in the stomach that a shower of its organs pour out the other side,
and in the very next panel Batman flying kicks its head off.


—Mandrake draws pretty cool Lovecraftian horrors:


—Superman, Batman and Green Arrow all kill the hell out of vampires and werewolves in this. It’s established early on that the monsters are essentially already dead, but it’s still weird to watch Superman and Batman slaughtering their enemies. GA’s killed before, I think, but Superman and Batman?

Even with the caveat that their opponents are already technically dead, it’s somewhat strange to see either of these heroes using lethal force, given the extraordinary lengths each goes to preserve life, in Batman’s case usually going to completely insane lengths (i.e. not only not killing The Joker, but usually going out of his way to save the mass murderer’s life whenever it’s endangered).

It’s made even stranger given that Superman spends the majority of his time in the story trying to save a kid who is infected by the synthetic vampirism disease from going all the way vampire. His reluctance to take a life that might be saved—no matter how slim the chances of success—is a part of the story.

I think pitting these two particular heroes against foes that can only be stopped with lethal force raises some extremely interesting questions about who the characters are and why they behave the way they do. This isnt' a story exploring issues like what constitutes life and where Batman, Superman and their allies draw the line between life and not-life, between killing that’s acceptable and killing that's unacceptable. I’d be a lot more excited to read such a story, though.

I should note that the fact that they can’t get around killing their enemies seems like something of a failure on their part to me. Is it impossible to stop vampires and werewolves without killing them? Is searching for a cure completely hopeless? Maybe, but then isn’t that what Batman and Superman are all about? Finding a way to do the impossible?

And at the end of the day, it’s VanHook manipulating what’s happening on the page. They can find a cure if he can think of one for them to discover; they can take out vampires and werewolves without ending their lives or un-deaths as long as VanHook let’s them, you know?

But perhaps that’s something for a different story.


—I’ve seen Mandrake’s Etrigan before, so it wasn’t a great surprise to see how cool his version of the character is or anything, but wow, I love his Etrigan:
Look at the paws on him!

And that’s 18 thoughts about Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves.

The Melancholic Spider-Man

All the original Marvel characters had their own adjectives—the Fantastic Four was, obviously, fantastic. Thor was mighty, the Hulk was incredible, Iron Man was invincible, the X-Men uncanny and Spider-Man was, at first, amazing. He would later be sensational and friendly neighborhood, as well.

But he was never depressing. At least, he never starred in a comic book called The Depressing Spider-Man, but that's only because someone thought Peter Parker: Spider-Man had a better ring to it. Last night I sat down with three issues of the book from 2001, and by the time I finished the third one I had almost completely lost my will to live.

Now, I don't know if Peter Parker: Spider-Man #33-#35 are representative of writer Paul Jenkins' run on the title or not, but they are some incredibly downbeat comic books. Like, so downbeat I'm not even sure why they exist. Well, I can sort of almost kind of see the logic that since this was the title with Spidey's secret identity's name right there in the title that they'd want to focus on his inner, emotional life over his superheroic exploits but, my God, not like this, not like this!

Issue #33 bears a cover of young Peter Parker and not-dead-yet Uncle Ben at a ball game. It's drawn by Humberto Ramos, and it's a kinda funny image. You see Pete got konked on the head by a flyball and is seeing stars, while various game-goers react to that and other events in exaggerated, cartoonish ways.

Kinda looks like it might be a fun comic, right?

Then you turn the cover and, on the first page, Spider Man is clinging to the spire of a skyscraper, thinking about how fast time is moving now that he's getting older, and, in th elast panel on the page, we see his unmasked face, his eyes filling with tears, and his narration box reads: "This is the day my Uncle Ben died."

Uh-oh.

Page two, Aunt May visits Ben's grave. The next twenty? Peter goes to a Mets game by himself, all the while flashing back to ones he attended with Ben as a kid and the life lessons he learned at those games, including the last one they attended together—just three days before Ben died!

Okay, well, that was a bit of a downer, I thought, but not a bad piece of super-melodrama, really.

On to #34. This one's got Spider-Man on the cover, doing something Spider-Man-ish, plus a guy with glowing blue laser eyes. This one's gotta be a more standard superhero book, right? (And by "standard superhero book" I mean not completely focused on the brevity of human life).

The first three pages deal with a couple of monks freaking out about another of their order having escaped the monastery. Apparently, he's a mutant of some kind with the Cyclops-like problem of laser blasting and killing whoever he looks at. And he's on the loose!

Meanwhile, in the city, Aunt May gives Peter a used set of salt and pepper shakers shaped like an angel and a devil, which Jenkins writes into the story specifically to set up a sight gag referencing the angel on one shoulder, devil on the other cartoon staple. For some reason, artist Mark Buckingham draws the shakers huge though. Like, they're the size of jars.

Peter is at this point still married to Mary Jane, but they're separated (geographically but not legally, if I remember millennial Spider-marriage status quo correctly), and he's not sure if he should go on a date-like outting with his sexy neighbor, although he eventually decides to go to a neighborhood fun fair with her.

That's where the laser-eyed monk is heading. He kills a whole bunch of people by looking at them, he fights Spider-Man a bit, but, in the end, he gets aboard one of those, tilting, spinning amusement park rides that's a bit like a giant cup you stand in and while it spins around (here called "The Wall of Death").

The specifics of his eye whammy are that a) it only goes off if he's standing upright as opposed to laying down and b) the longer he keeps his eyes open, the more life-energy he expends and the closer he gets to death.

He wants to ride this ride simply because it allows him to see the stars as he expends all his energy in looking at them, and dies. Spider-Man, hero that he is, fails to save the suicidal laser-eyed monk.

So this is essentially a done-in-one story about a mutant monk committing suicide right in front of Spider-Man. William (that's the monk's name) sees the stars, but also sees God (William switches pronouns from I see "them" to I see "Him" as he dies). Spider-Man looks down at the dead monk, and then up at the night sky, and envies him: "All I see are little points of light against a big black blanket. A vast shroud of nothing, infinitely far away. Somes I wish I could be as lucky as William."

Presumably Jenkins means Spidey's an atheist and wishes he could believe like William could believe. Or perhaps he wishes he were dead, and put out of the misery that is his life? After 40 pages of vicariously living it, I can understand where he's coming from.

Sheesh. Well surely Jenkins will lighten things up next issue, right? He can't keep providing emotionally punishing stories month in and month out. No one reads Spider-Man comics to be bummed right the hell out, after all.

So that brings us to #35, on which Ramos draws Spider-Man sitting with his chin on his knee (uh-oh) talking to a little boy about something. Fuck. I bet it's something sad, isn't it?

That little boy is excitedly running home from school on the first page to tell his mom that he got invited to a classmate's birthday party, but inside he finds her laying face down on the couch of their filthy apartment, beer cans and an empty bottle of gin piled around her.

"Momma. I got home from school," he tells her sadly, awakening her. When he asks where dinner is, she says she has a headache and it's in the fridge before shes passes out again. He goes to the fridge, but all he finds are two cans of beer in it.

Jesus. Spider-Man doesn't appear until page five, and man, even Spider-Man's not gonna help any here. The boy goes to his room and fishes a collectable Spider-Man card out of a box under his bed, and suddenly Spider-Man appears with a, "Heya, Secret Sidekick!"

The boy, Lafronce, tells Spider-Man all about his day, and Spidey tells him about the villains he fought. But it's not really Spider-Man! No, it's the imaginary Spider-Man that Lafronce summons to hang out with him as a way of coping with his miserable life.

We wallow in Lafronce's terrible life for a few more scenes. Here he is at school drawing his hero Spider-Man hanging out with he and his mom, there are his aunt and uncle arguing with the principal that he should have Lafronce taken away from his mother, here he is coming home from school again this time finding a mean man beating on his mom, here's imaginary friend Spider-Man again, and there's a social worker talking about how he's doing everything he can for Lafronce over the phone, while we see him at a golf course.

Then one day Lafronce goes home and finds his mom's body being removed from their apartment. Apparently she's been dead for three months, and Lafronce was living with her the whole time?(!?!)

At the end of the story, he has another conversation with imaginary Spider-Man who is apparently going to quit being his imaginary friend now, and when he's ready to leave Lafronce, imaginary Spider-Man says "Big men don't hug each other when they part ways..they shake hands."

Ready for the last page surprise ending? Spider-Man has removed his glove and mask to shake hands with Lafronce and...Spidey's a black man!
It's a neat image to be sure, and certainly a surprise ending. Perhaps Jenkins is trying to say something about how we project ourselves into our heroes, or want them to be like us, all I could really think was Jesus, if Lafronce actually got to meet his hero like that, would that be just one more disappointment to learn that Spidey is actually just an ineffectual, whiny white kid?

Part of me wouldn't mind reading more of Jenkins' run on this title just to see if it's all like this, and part of me hopes I never come across any more. I don't think I can stand to read any more about the human misery and suffering in Spider-Man's world. After all, isn't that what all the comics set in our world are for?

Weekly Haul: August 5th

Agents of Atlas #9 (Marvel Comics) Jeff Parker is joined by another new pencil artist, one Mr. Dan Panosian, whom I believe is the...fourth pencil artist, not counting the dude who did the back-up in #1? You know, it's awfully hard for a comic book to establish a strong individual identity when it looks completely different every month. I do like this Panosian character quite a bit though. A funny face here or there aside, he does pretty great work (the robot battle on page if a perfect piece of comics making, really), and I find him far preferable to Carlo Pagulayan, who does a lot of that photorealistic stuff I don't like. He'll do until Marvel hires Kevin Cannon to draw the series—he is the ideal M-11 artist!

On the story end, this issue features Jimmy's reunion with his ex-girlfriend, who also didn't age much since the 1950s, and also runs a huge criminal empire, has a killer robot and is advised by a talking dragon. What a coincidence!

Their encounter ends with the line, “Now for the first time in centuries the world will know Dragon Clan War.”

So, you know, pretty good comic.


All Winners Squad 70th Anniversary Special #1 (Marvel) I believe this should be all you need to know about this comic book:



Doom Patrol #1 (DC Comics) I went over DC's last few attempts at a Doom Patrol relaunch, and some of the factors associated with this one, over at Blog@ as part of my weekly "Twas the Night Before Wednesday" column yesterday, which brings us to the third Doom Patrol #1 of the decade. How is it? Well, I wouldn't bet too terribly much money on this series hitting #36, but it should definitely last until at least 2010.

Let's take the writing and art separately here, because, somewhat unfortunately, the two aspects exist quite separately from one another, as if writer Keith Giffen and artist Matthew Clark haven't quite become one just yet. At least not on the comics page; I have no idea how close they are in real life.

Giffen jumps right in with an action scene, in which a Doom Patrol consisting of thre three originals of Robotman, Elasti-Woman and Negative Man and two holdovers from the Byrne reboot, Nudge and Grunt (who, as a four-armed gorilla should be held over), plus a character named Dusty I've never heard of, are storming a mad scientist base in a fictional country. Information is communicated throughout via various sorts of cutesy add-ins, like clips of e-mails or green-on-black computer files that reminded me (negatively) of Greg Rucka using similar storytelling strategies during his OMAC Project miniseries.

I was a little surprised to see the set-up of the Doom Patrol changed so much from their last few appearances (in Geoff Johns' first "One Year Later" arc of Teen Titans, and last year's The Brave and The Bold #8), in part because that status quo seemed to be the safest premise with which to launch another attempt, given that the last two deviated pretty far from the original concept and didn't last long.

Here, the Doom Patrol is based on Oolong Island (from 52, which became a sovereign nation in another Giffen miniseries, 52 Aftermath: The Four Horseman, if I remember correctly), and serve as some sort of paramilitary strike-force.

This issue details one such mission and then, back on Oolong Island, Giffen employs the old mission debrief as characterization shortcut, with the surviving members of the mission being interviewed individually by a priest in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt going by the name Rocky. Is this the former Challenger of the Unknown Rocky Davis, who Brad Meltzer randomly made a priest in that re-named DC Universe: Last Will and Testament one-shot that was going to be a Final Crisis tie-in, until someone at DC apparently read it and realized that a good 50% of didn't mesh with the rest of FC? (Or, alternately, it is in continuity, but Darkseid's death caused continuity ripples. Whatever floats your boat) Let’s see, Wikipedia says it is the same guy!

So, overly complicated continuity? Check. Effort made to make it fit into the greater story of the DC Universe, even if it makes a reader feel like they're missing something? Check. What about terrible act of violence and/or gore, preferably with a young, female victim? I believe having Nudge completely liquified (save for her severed arms, of course) by helicopter machinegun fire checks that particular box.

Nice cliffhanger, though.

As for the art, Clark (inked by Livesay) is competent, which (somewhat sadly) makes him a decent enough artist for the current DC line. I didn't care for a majority of the character designs, as the characters all look like something between a paramilitary group (Negative Man's outfit, for example, could have been bought at an Outdoor Army Navy store) and Ultimate Doom Patrol. It's appropriate, given the fact that they are a paramilitary group, but that doesn't mean I have to think it looks cool. Dr. Caulder probably looks the worst (that vest!), but then he's most likely to change clothes between issues.

This might just be one more example of Caleb being old-fashioned, but I prefer the characters to resemble their classic looks. Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman...all DC's classic characters have been able to make their original costumes work (tweaks here and there over the years), I don't see why the Doom Patrol can't stick to their original costumes.

Like I said, Clark is competent, and his art therefore isn't bad per se, but it's not up my particular aesthetic alley, and not the sort of art that would keep me buying a book I wasn't particularly interested in reading.

All in all, I don't think I'd bother with Doom Patrol #2...were it not for the back-up.

That's The Metal Men, also by Giffen, with his JLI/Hero Squared writing partner J.M. DeMatteis and original JLI artist Kevin Maguire. This is a team that has become one on the comics page, by virtue of working together off and on for decades now. It doesn't come as any surprise at all that it's great. It's definitely "Bwa-ha-ha" in tone, with each of the Metal Men's personality flaws exploded a bit, and Doc Magnus getting sitcom-style grief from his neighbors. Maguire's Metal Men are a lot more human-looking than the post-52 ones we've seen by Duncan Rouleau, but Maguire's gift for facial expression and "acting" through his drawings makes him an absolutely perfect artist for the series.

This is much shorter than the lead feature but, ironically, feels and reads longer, and to include a lot more story. The two features are night and day. It's almost hard to believe that they share a writer.

I think I'll give the series at least another issue or two, or until DC announces what they'll be doing when it comes to collecting back-ups in trades (I assume they'll get their own, as I think there's a bigger trade market for Blue Beetle and Manhunter then there ever was a comic book market for them).

Oh wait, there's more. There's a four-page preview of the upcoming Magog series, which will also be written by Giffen, and feature art from the Howard Porter/John Dell team. There's this full-page image that fuctions as a "cover" for the preview:
It's pretty stupid-looking, but I actually like the guy in the upper left corner who seems to have jumped off a trampoline to go flying gun-first at Cable. There's a page with a bunch of vultures, a rotting ox corpse, Magog standing above pools of blood, and writer Keith Giffen's name spelled wrong in the credits box. Then there's a page with a panel showing a cart full of bloody, severed arms. Then there's a page with armless black slaves carrying heavy objects for Western-looking dudes while flies harass them. Then on the last page Cable threatens to kill a dude if he doesn't give him the information he wants. This looks...well, it doesn't look long for this earth, that's for sure.


Kimi Ni Todoke Vol. 1 (Viz) I was going to get Warren Ellis’ Frankenstein’s Vagina today, but my shop was all sold out, so I got this manga volume from last week instead. It’s product description on Amazon.com really sold it to me:

Sawako Kuronuma is the perfect heroine...for a horror movie. With her jet-black hair, sinister smile and silent demeanor, she's often mistaken for Sadako, the haunting character from Ringu. Unbeknownst to but a few, behind her scary façade is a very misunderstood teenager. Shy and pure of heart, she just wants to make friends. But when Kazehaya, the most popular boy in class, befriends her, she's sure to make more than just that--she's about to make some enemies too!

I haven’t read it yet (review later in the week, maybe here, maybe at Blog@, I guess you’ll just have to check both sites constantly!), but having flipped through it, I see that she does not wear her hair flipped over her head to cover her face, nor is she barefoot and soaking wet and wearing a nightgown. I think the product description on Amazon.com may have exaggerated slightly!

It does come with a sheet of stickers inside though, that’s cool:



Secret Six #12 (DC) Let's see, blood and boobs on the cover, Wonder Woman trying to beat information out someone even though she carries a magical lie detector on her hip, and Wonder Woman threatening to rip off Deadshot's dick. I think. Let me look up "castrati" just to be sure. (Hmm, actually the definition seems to refer to boys who are castrated before puberty, but it’s close enough to count). So yeah, Wonder Woman totally threatened to rip off his dick. Sheesh, Wonder Woman sure seems out of character here, I guess maybe Gail Simone doesn't have a very good handle on Wonder Wo--oh wait, she writes Wonder Woman doesn't she?

Huh.

Nicola Scott kicks her usual amount of ass. Having just read Simone's Wonder Woman for the first time in a long while last week, I was somewhat taken aback at how good Scott's Wondy was here; she seems to depict her even better than the regular Wonder Woman artist (I especially liked her two finger take down of Deadshot, and the panel drawn from Jeanette's point of view).


Wednesday Comics #5 (DC) I hope these don’t end up being worth money some day because, as you can see, I’ve been using mine as bath towels, and that particular issue is no longer mint condition.

Batman: They jumped right over last week’s cliffhanger. Did Batman bang that broad or not? James Robinson would have told us!

Kamandi: The average weight of a gorilla is somewhere between 220 and 450 pounds. Those poor, poor horses!

Superman: Remember when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely famously told Superman’s origin in just four panels and eight words in All-Star Superman #1? Well John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo take a break from Superman being sad to re-tell his origin in seven gigantic panels, using the better part of a 14-by-20-inch page to do it.

Also, did you know that Superman was an ugly fucking baby? It’s true:

Gross! He looks like he's half pig. He’s lucky the Kents didn’t smash him with a shovel, thinking him some sort of hideous alien homunculus.

Deadman: That demon thing with his giant blue eyeballs on his shoulders? That thing is awesome.

Green Lantern: In this week’s installment, Hal Jordan gets super-pissed at his friend Dill when the latter insists on staying in on a Friday night and reading books instead of wanting to go out with him drinking and banging broads.

Metamorpho: Hell yes.

Teen Titans: Wednesday Comics editor Mark Chiarello, who is officially My Favorite Person this summer, revealed in an interview with CBR that he has two, one-page strips ready to go in the advent of someone or two someones missing a deadline (I imagine they are in a glass case in his office, marked “In Case of Deadline Miss-age,” with a little metal mallet dangling from a chain in front of it).

What are these strips? The Creeper and Plastic Man. And who are they buy?

Chiarello says he’d rather not share. “I don’t want fans to go, ‘Ah, man. You got so-and-so to do this and we’re never going to see it,’” he said. That means “so-and-so” must be someone with fans, and is also probably someone pretty damn awesome, considering the roster on this thing.

Well, I’m off to pack my blowgun, darts, sleeping poison, and straightjacket for a trip to New York City to see if I can find Mr. Berganza, and perhaps get him to miss a deadline on he and Sean Galloway’s strip, so I can get a Plas or Creeper one instead.

As far as the actual comic, it still sucks. I like the two-panel sequence where the narrator is talking about how metahumans suck because “they have abilities beyond humans. But it’s not something the earned or merit,” which features Robin, the only member of the Teen Titans who isn’t metahuman, doesn’t have abilities beyond humans, and did earn his position of Batman’s apprentice through merit.

Here’s the first one, in which Robin cops a feel off of big brother Nightwing’s ex-girlfriend:

Strange Adventures: Goddammit, I love that dog design! And the plant life, and he fruit!

Supergirl: Supergirl saves the plane with no help from her Superpets, whom she decides need to see a doctor. A super-vet? Have you ever tried putting a cat in a carrier to go to the vet? Can you imagine putting a cat with Superman’s powers into a carrier?

I love the dude in the background of panel 10; Amanda Conner draws great background guys.

Metal Men: Whatever title Dan DiDio is going to be taking over later this year, I hope Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan are drawing it. There’s no reason this art team shouldn’t have all the work they could possibly stand at DC.

Wonder Woman: Priscilla Rich! Better, easier-to-read coloring! Diana sleeping in the nude!

Sgt. Rock: The Nazis take a break from torturing Rock to go get some equipment with which to better torture him. You know, if virtually anyone other than Joe Kubert were drawing this…

Flash Comics: This is the Flash-iest comic I’ve read in a long, long, long, long, long time.

The Demon/Catwoman: Eh, there’s some more rhyming. That’s something.

Hawkman: Hawkman manages to land the plane on an island. And, if I remember the early interviews about the project correctly, the island in question is the most awesome island upon which a plane can crash in the DC Universe.

Back-page ad: Hey, I guess Robot Chicken’s month is up. This week there’s an ad for the BBC’s Robin Hood. Has anyone watched that? Is it good? I’ve seen some previews on Primeval DVDs, and it looks potentially good. Advise me someone, advise me.

July 22nd's Weekly Haul addendum

Despite my complaining about Diamond not shipping Wednesday Comics #3 to my shop yesterday, and the fact that I said I would probably just have to pick up #3 the following week along with #4, I actually made a special trip back to the shop today to get it—and a couple other books I forgot to get.

It was my day off today, and I was in the neighborhood of my shop today, and I didn’t have much to do (other than attempt to write maybe the dumbest Blog@ post I could think of) anyway, so I spent a second afternoon in a row reading and then writing about comic books. So here’s your bonus Weekly Haul feature. Enjoy!


Leave It To PET Vol. 2 (Viz) This is a couple of weeks old, but I left it on the shelf the first few Wednesdays on account of not having enough scratch to add it to my pile. Since I was in the shop on an off-day though, it seemed like a good time to pick it up.

This volume is only slightly less delightful than the first, in large part because this time I went in expecting the delight which came as such a surprise the first time I read a PET collection. Well that and the fact that since so many other super-robot servants made from recyclables to aid the person who recycled them were introduced throughout the course of the first book, manga-ka Kenji Sonishi has a larger pool of characters to work with here, but none of them are quite as engaging as PET himself.

This $8 digest (so…cheap!!) offers 18 more stories of young student Noboru Yamada getting into trouble and then turning to PET to help get him out of it, only to be disappointed when PET makes it much worse through his forgetfulness, clumsiness or general uselessness.

The highlight in this one for me was probably “I’ll Form The Head!,” a story in which PET and his sister Alu (a super-robot made out of a recycled aluminum can) combine to form new super-robots that are just slightly taller than their individual forms. Adding the length of an aluminum can to a super-robot with a plastic bottle for a body doesn’t really improve the functionality of the plastic bottle-based robot, you see.


Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #3 (Marvel Comics) I think this one may actually be two or three weeks old, as I've forgotten to pick it up more than once. This is the Bo Obama guest-starring issue, although the First Dog plays a rather minor role, with most of the issue devoted to the Pets seeking two Infinity Gems underwater, awfully close to a slumbering Giganto. I only know that’s what those giant whales with arms and legs are called thanks to the Marvel Pets Handbook, which taught me more about the history and biology of the Gigantos than I will probably ever need to know. But if the subject comes up at a cocktail party, and I happen to be at that cocktail party, I’m ready!

Next issue they fight Thanos. My money’s on the pets, since they have a giant bulldog and a sabre-toothed tiger* on their team, and Thanos is just a big purple guy in a funny costume. Well, he probably has some super space-guy powers too, but man, I just re-watched Walking With Prehistoric Beasts again recently, and the sabre-toothed cats are fucking badass! Look out, Thanos!


Runaways #12 (Marvel) So I guess I took this off my pull-list during the Terry Moore run, and despite liking #10 and #11 a lot never put it back on, so when it came out yesterday it wasn’t placed in my hand by an employee of my local comic shop, which often leads to me forgetting a particular book is supposed to come out that week and neglecting to purchase it.

This is the second full issue of the all-new, all-female creative team of Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli, and it’s an intensely character-focused on. Last issue some sort of mix-up with a Predator drone-looking plane or missile crashed their house and killed their coolest member, and their newest member, Clara, used her plant powers to encase all of the rubble in vines, trapping the team within.

The majority of this issue deals with the kids stuck in the ruined house, trying to figure out what just happened and what to do next, while bickering in such a way as to reveal various conflicts between one another. And then an adult family member enters the picture, which is never a good sign in Runaways.

Immonen cooked up a crackerjack cliffhanger, and the intense character-work was very well executed, with the perfect amount of melodrama (these are teenagers, after all). Artist Sara Pichelli proves herself quite gifted here, managing to make almost an entire issue of a super-comic devoted to talky-talky still feel dyamic, dramatic and engaging.

Runaways is now back on my pull-list, so I won’t neglect to buy it the next time it’s released.


(DC doesn't put the covers of individual issues of Wednesday Comics online, so here's a picture of Cuddle Pillow Batman, who has fallen on hard times, wrapped in a discarded issue of Wednesday Comics in a vain attempt to keep warm.)

Wednesday Comics #3 (DC)

Batman: I like when Batman hangs upside down, like a bat.

Kamandi: Still gorgeous, and getting gorgeous-er. Which is a word I just made up meaning “like more gorgeous, but more so.”

Superman: Superman continues to have a sad. Man up, Superman!

Deadman: So, so, so pretty. Part of this installment looked a bit like the opening credit sequence from a really cool movie from the ‘60s.

Green Lantern: Hal Jordan was planning on making a romantic dinner of lemon-dill marinated steaks for Carol Ferris tonight when he suddenly realized he was missing one of the key ingredients—

Metamorpho: Well this feature sure slowed down after the first installment.

Teen Titans: Yikes. I had to read the last three panels repeatedly to figure out what the hell was happening. I think Trident is either shooting water or an energy beam at the side of the flying submarine hospital ship, maybe? I thought he was piloting his own sub and ramming the other vehicle the first few times through.

Strange Adventures: The first two panels of this, showing the different ways in which the space baboon-men guard their two prisoners? Brilliant.

Supergirl: I can’t decide which horrifies me more, the concept of a dog with Superman’s powers, or a cat with Superman’s powers. The dog is bigger and stronger, but, at the same time, I think cats are nastier.

Metal Men: At this point, this is probably the most straightforward superhero story in the book, I think. It’s really great-looking, and its completely devoid of acts of cannibalism or sex crimes. Maybe this Dan DiDio character is unfairly maligned on the Internet…?

Wonder Woman: Okay, Ben Caldwell does lose some readability in this thing, particularly in panels seven through nine, where his dialogue bubbles blend into one big one, despite two people taking turns talking within the same bubble. I can forgive it given the experimental nature of the strip (and the project in general). That and the fact that this reads like one of the better Wonder Woman stories I’ve read that wasn’t collected in a hardcover Archives edition. The coloring’s pretty poor though, at least for this format and the size of these panels.

Sgt. Rock: This is Joe Kubert drawing things, which is really the only thing you need to know about it.

Flash Comics: This strip really hit its stride this week. Ha ha ha! It’s stride! ‘Cause Flash runs! That’s his power! Ha ha ha!

The Demon/Catwoman: Hey, speaking of sabre-toothed cats…

Hawkman: It turns out Hakwman isn’t just brutally fighting terrorists (check out the blood on his mourning star…that’s what should happen when your hero fights crime with a heavy metal ball covered in spikes), he’s brutally fighting aliens disguised as terrorists. If they did another round of Wednesday Comics next summer, you wouldn’t hear any complaints out of me if it consisted of fifteen strips all by Kyle Baker.



*So apparently you’re not supposed to call ‘em sabre-toothed tigers anymore, since they’re not tigers. The narrator kept calling ‘em sabre-toothed cats, which is more accurate, but is gonna take some getting used to.