Wednesday Comics #1

Here, as I see it, is the problem with the straight-up anthology book.

In a normal book, either the 22 pages of story are worth your money or they’re not.  You don’t go through and say “wow, pages 3, 7, 8, 17, and 21 were really awesome, but I totally got ripped off on pages 1, 5, 12, and 13.” In anthologies, though, each story contributes to whether it’s worth your time and money or not.

Wednesday Comics takes that to the extreme, because it essentially gives you one page each of 15 strips.  I say strips because they really do look like they belong in the Sunday paper rather than in a comic book.

I give credit where credit is due for a cool presentation and a cool idea.  They’re trying to break out of the box and present something people aren’t used to.  I get it.

And individually, there are some stories that I’m really stoked about reading. Azarello & Risso’s Batman, Kyle Baker’s Hawkman, Paul Pope’s Adam Strange, and a couple others look interesting if cheesy.  But is that enough interest to justify 16 bucks a month? I’m not sure.

Is it a new retro-cool artform, or a cheesy and temporary gimmick? Not sure about that one, either.  But I guess I’ll keep watching, because it’s definitely something different.

Captain America: Reborn #1

Creators: Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch, and Butch Guice

I’m conflicted about blatant retcons like bringing back Cap.  Retcon is silly, generally speaking. It’s non-sensical and usually messy, but it’s also an essential component of stories based on company-owned trademarks nearly as old as the Glen Miller Orchestra.  We all knew that Steve Rogers was coming back. The only question was how it would be accomplished.

To answer that, we have a story by Brubaker (who has done an excellent job on the Cap title for quite a while now) telling a story that has all the elements such a story must contain.  We have a re… um… re-Cap of the Steve Rogers’ life, a glimpse of Bucky as the new Cap, and an explanation of how when we saw Steve die, we didn’t really see him die.  We get a mildly bizarre look at Steve lost in time.  (And pretty soon Q will come along and explain it all to Picard.  No wait.  Sorry.  But srsly, Brubaker must have paid particular attention to the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

So basically if you get past the fact that the Cap mythos has been on fairly thin ice since about 1970, and if you don’t mind magical Doom tech being thrown around, you get a nice bring-back-Steve story that’s up with the current Dark Reigning times and looks to be pretty entertaining.

I think we can all agree that it’s a little silly, but sometimes you have to just enjoy the ride.

Creators: Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch, and Butch Guice

I’m conflicted about blatant retcons like bringing back Cap.  Retcon is silly, generally speaking. It’s non-sensical and usually messy, but it’s also an essential component of stories based on company-owned trademarks nearly as old as the Glen Miller Orchestra.  We all knew that Steve Rogers was coming back. The only question was how it would be accomplished.

To answer that, we have a story by Brubaker (who has done an excellent job on the Cap title for quite a while now) telling a story that has all the elements such a story must contain.  We have a re… um… re-Cap of the Steve Rogers’ life, a glimpse of Bucky as the new Cap, and an explanation of how when we saw Steve die, we didn’t really see him die.  We get a mildly bizarre look at Steve lost in time.  (And pretty soon Q will come along and explain it all to Picard.  No wait.  Sorry.  But srsly, Brubaker must have paid particular attention to the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

So basically if you get past the fact that the Cap mythos has been on fairly thin ice since about 1970, and if you don’t mind magical Doom tech being thrown around, you get a nice bring-back-Steve story that’s up with the current Dark Reigning times and looks to be pretty entertaining.

I think we can all agree that it’s a little silly, but sometimes you have to just enjoy the ride.

Green Lantern #42

I don’t want to be ungrateful.  Geoff Johns gives me my monthly fix of sci fi insanity, and I always love it.  But I have two questions, and the answers scare me a little.

First, are we ever actually going to get on with Blackest Night?  This thing has been teased since the end of the Sinestro Corps war almost two years ago.  I know it’s prophecy (I will hold forth later on why I hate prophecies in stories, and why there is a slight exception for Johns’ Lantern stories). I know there’s a lot to set up.  But come ON, already.  We finally get an in-story glimpse of the black, and it’s welcome.  I just hope we can get this all going now.

Second, is the course of Blackest Night going to end up making Jordan look like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?  Or maybe more like the Lucky Charms guy, with all the green clovers and blue diamonds and orange constructs.  Can purple horseshoes be far behind?

That aside, we get more awesomeness in this book than you can shake a stick at.  Some payoff from previous stories, some humor, a pretty serious plot twist, and a lot of punching of orange things.

minor questions:

How can anything be charged to 7839%?  If all those constructs were the result of projecting power out of the battery, and then all that goes back in, wouldn’t it just end up back at 100%?  Has Larfleeze stumbled on perpetual motion?

Another procedural question:  with all these corps popping up all over the place, I wonder if there’s some kind of open source Battery-and-ring management platform that they’re utilizing.  It can’t be easy to manage rings for thousands of sectors.  The Guardians have had millenia.  The others had to get off the ground in a matter of months.  Maybe there are ringslinging consultants floating throughout the galaxy…

I don’t want to be ungrateful.  Geoff Johns gives me my monthly fix of sci fi insanity, and I always love it.  But I have two questions, and the answers scare me a little.

First, are we ever actually going to get on with Blackest Night?  This thing has been teased since the end of the Sinestro Corps war almost two years ago.  I know it’s prophecy (I will hold forth later on why I hate prophecies in stories, and why there is a slight exception for Johns’ Lantern stories). I know there’s a lot to set up.  But come ON, already.  We finally get an in-story glimpse of the black, and it’s welcome.  I just hope we can get this all going now.

Second, is the course of Blackest Night going to end up making Jordan look like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?  Or maybe more like the Lucky Charms guy, with all the green clovers and blue diamonds and orange constructs.  Can purple horseshoes be far behind?

That aside, we get more awesomeness in this book than you can shake a stick at.  Some payoff from previous stories, some humor, a pretty serious plot twist, and a lot of punching of orange things.

One minor nitpick: How can anything be charged to 7839%?  If all those constructs were the result of projecting power out of the battery, and then all that goes back in, wouldn’t it just end up back at 100%?  Has Larfleeze stumbled on perpetual motion?

And a bonus procedural question:  with all these corps popping up all over the place, I wonder if there’s some kind of open source battery-and-ring management platform that they’re utilizing.  It can’t be easy to manage rings for thousands of sectors.  The Guardians have had millenia.  The others had to get off the ground in a matter of months.  Maybe there are ringslinging consultants floating throughout the galaxy…

Astonishing X-Men #30

I don’t really get why everyone seems to hate Simone Bianchi, but the haters can rest easy now that his time on this book is done.

Ellis went with some rather weird pacing on this arc, which forced him to pack quite a bit into this last issue.  Bat-shit-insane Forge, “New Mutants,” a brief (maybe) explanation of where the ghost boxes are going, etc. each could have taken up much more page time.  Instead, they all got shoe-horned into this book, with the result that we don’t really get as much info as we’d like.

Still a pretty cool ending to a pretty crazy story.  Also, If you’d asked me to make a sworn statement, I’d have said the word “zettawatt” was made up.  It isn’t.

I don’t really get why everyone seems to hate Simone Bianchi, but the haters can rest easy now that his time on this book is done.

Ellis went with some rather weird pacing on this arc, which forced him to pack quite a bit into this last issue.  Bat-shit-insane Forge, “New Mutants,” a brief (maybe) explanation of where the ghost boxes are going, etc. each could have taken up much more page time.  Instead, they all got shoe-horned into this book, with the result that we don’t really get as much info as we’d like.

Still a pretty cool ending to a pretty crazy story.  Also, If you’d asked me to make a sworn statement, I’d have said the word “zettawatt” was made up.  It isn’t.

New Bat-books In Town

Gotham City Sirens #1

Detective #854

Streets Of Gotham #1

Things there are more of in the new Bat-universe:

Girls.  True, there were always more than average, and the bat-femmes were always more ass-kicking than other lines (Casandra Cane is not Lois Lane, let’s face it). We see right off the… er… bat that Batwoman is driven. It’s nice that she isn’t an exact female version of the Bruce / Dick I-watched-my-parents-die cookie cutter.  Her tragedy is different, and her method of dealing with it is different.  And yet, just like Batman, she goes to great lengths to justify herself rather than dealing with the most basic of emotions.

Then there’s Catwoman, who’s never better than when Dini is handling her. She’s openly conflicted on which side of the fence she’s on, and it doesn’t look to get any clearer considering the company she’s keeping.

In addition, we get glimpses of other great female characters, like an unhinged Manhunter and a slightly oddball take on Renee Montoya as a private eye.

Great writers.  Dini helms both Sirens and Streets, and Rucka is on Tec.  Both of these guys, just like Morrison and Winnick on the flagship titles, know their way around a comics series.  They each get to concentrate on characters they’ve been developing in other series for several years.  They know their characters, they know their settings, and it appears they have a great plan.

Artists.  I’ll stop talking about Dustin Nguyen.  He’s one of my favorite artists, and one of my favorite Bat-artists, and he’s drawing Dini. Nuff said. JH Williams does some serious work, and makes even the most ridiculous things look classy.

Darkness.  I hope everything’s okay with Dini, because his two books have both started out dark, dark, DARK.  Child hookers, burning bodies, mysoginistic bonecrushing.  We get pretty quickly how much Gotham has gone to hell since Bruce Wayne’s death.

I’m pretty happy with the starts of the two main Bat-titles.  I’m thrilled that there look to be great supporting books as well.

Gotham City Sirens #1
Detective #854
Streets Of Gotham #1

Things there are more of in the new Bat-universe:

Girls. True, there were always more than average, and the bat-femmes were always more ass-kicking than other lines (Casandra Cane is not Lois Lane, let’s face it). We see right off the… er… bat that Batwoman is driven. It’s nice that she isn’t an exact female version of the Bruce / Dick I-watched-my-parents-die cookie cutter.  Her tragedy is different, and her method of dealing with it is different.  And yet, just like Batman, she goes to great lengths to justify herself rather than dealing with the most basic of emotions.

Then there’s Catwoman, who’s never better than when Dini is handling her. She’s openly conflicted on which side of the fence she’s on, and it doesn’t look to get any clearer considering the company she’s keeping.

In addition, we get glimpses of other great female characters, like an unhinged Manhunter and a slightly oddball take on Renee Montoya as a private eye.

Great writers. Dini helms both Sirens and Streets, and Rucka is on Tec.  Both of these guys, just like Morrison and Winnick on the flagship titles, know their way around a comics series.  They each get to concentrate on characters they’ve been developing in other series for several years.  They know their characters, they know their settings, and it appears they have a great plan.

Artists. I’ll stop talking about Dustin Nguyen.  He’s one of my favorite artists, and one of my favorite Bat-artists, and he’s drawing Dini. Nuff said. JH Williams does some serious work, and makes even the most ridiculous things look classy.

Darkness. I hope everything’s okay with Dini, because his two books have both started out dark, dark, DARK.  Child hookers, burning bodies, mysoginistic bonecrushing.  We get pretty quickly how much Gotham has gone to hell since Bruce Wayne’s death.

I’m pretty happy with the starts of the two main Bat-titles.  I’m thrilled that there look to be great supporting books as well.

X-Force #16

I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I don’t consider myself a dummy.  I think I have a pretty large capacity to understand what’s going on in a story, no matter how little backstory I have on it.

That said, the last three pages of Messiah War were completely incomprehensible to me.  I have no idea what they were doing, I have no idea why they were in the location they were, and I don’t know what it was that did or didn’t happen at the end.

I generally hate the reviews that say, “this sucks because I didn’t understand it.”  But what else can I say?  I can’t tell you if liked it or not, because I don’t even know what happened.

It seems likely we’re going to find out more if we keep reading X-Force, but then I question why the word “conclusion” was used here.  The only sense in which it’s a conclusion is that this must be the last book with the Messiah War branding on it.

So in the end, after 7 issues and 150 pages, here’s what we have: Cable is apparently still not coming back to the present, and Hope is apparently still with him.  I thought bringin them back to the present continuity was the whole point of the story. They could at least have attempted to bring some closure to this. Or did they, and I just didn’t understand it?

I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I don’t consider myself a dummy.  I think I have a pretty large capacity to understand what’s going on in a story, no matter how little backstory I have on it.

That said, the last three pages of Messiah War were completely incomprehensible to me.  I have no idea what they were doing, I have no idea why they were in the location they were, and I don’t know what it was that did or didn’t happen at the end.

I generally hate the reviews that say, “this sucks because I didn’t understand it.”  But what else can I say?  I can’t tell you if liked it or not, because I don’t even know what happened.

It seems likely we’re going to find out more if we keep reading X-Force, but then I question why the word “conclusion” was used here.  The only sense in which it’s a conclusion is that this must be the last book with the Messiah War branding on it.

So in the end, after 7 issues and 150 pages, here’s what we have: Cable is apparently still not coming back to the present, and Hope is apparently still with him.  I thought bringin them back to the present continuity was the whole point of the story. They could at least have attempted to bring some closure to this. Or did they, and I just didn’t understand it?

6-word reviews

Boys #31
well, you can’t say nothing happens

Batman & Robin #1
pretty much the week’s awesomest thing

X-Force #15
threat threat threat death threat cliffhanger

Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink #1
prepared to hate, but pleasantly surprised.

JSA #27
With Johns’ magic gone, I’m done.

Secret Six #10
unusually dark, even for this book

Wolverine #72

I had good reason for thinking this arc was going to come to its flashy, larger-than-life conclusion.  This seemed especially true since, due to shipping problems or whatever, #73 had already shipped and was not the Millar / McNiven Old Man Logan story.  So I settled in expecting an ending.

What I got was a bit less satisfying.  I’ll grant you that this alt-future that Millar has created is driving about 70% of my interest in this arc.  Regular readers may recall my theory that there are no more ideas left in the present-day 616 Marvel Universe, so well-planned alternate timelines appeal to me.

This, obviously, is why we hadn’t been told who the “President” was, and it resolves a good chunk of the ambiguity surrounding the fates of the big guns.

The imagery is fantastically vivid and creepy, as it has been throughout.  And you can’t tell me that the Logan / Skull battle isn’t spectacular.  It’s sort of a “What If” nerdgasm with a typically over the top Millar conclusion.

Then there’s the third act. Let’s make no mistake: the end of this book is a heartbreaker. We have a sense that things are not going to end as well as Logan thinks, but it’s still as gut-wrenching as it is inevitable.

There’s an uncharacteristic amount of thinkage in this book for a Millar work.  Is Logan a hero for going back to his old ways, or is he a hero?  If he is a hero, why did he wait until his loved ones were dead?  Is it okay to conquer your demons when those you depend on you might be better served by embracing them?

We probably won’t get any clear answers on these questions when we get to the REAL end–not the one I thought I was going to see here–in some sort of special one-shot.  I find that mildly annoying, but I’m still hoping for a good wrapup to a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Final Crisis Aftermath – Dance #1

I see it’s time for the next fiendishly clever, super-funny, massively high-concept Joe Casey book that no one will buy.  So in case you’ve gotten sick of your worn-out copies of Automatic Kafka, Wildcats 3.0, and The Intimates, Here’s your new dose.  This time out, Casey gets to play with one of Morrison’s more amusing ideas from FC, Super Young Team.  The team are a bunch well-meaning but narcissistic kids who have grown up on WiFi, Facebook, and manga.  They’re set up as big media superstars, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll acclimate to the vacuous soundbite culture surrounding them.

Unlike the other FC aftermath dreck we’ve seen so far, this book has plenty of interesting features to recommend it.  There’s the rebelliousness of youth, of course.  Everyone likes that.  But complicating that, we see quickly that Superbat is not the kind of guy who wants to just bask in empty glory, even though that’s obviously what he’s expected to do.  The team would all like to chafe against authority, but at present they’re just too busy being young and looking good.  The side dishes are also pretty spectacular: we have unrequited love, a monster, big parties, a glimpse of the incredible pace at which Japanese pop culture seems to move, and a heavy layer of self-aware sarcasm. Top it off with a scolding from an aging old school hero and a sprinkling of evil-corporation scheming, and you’ve got a great little brew.

One thing I do wonder: +1 for the ongoing twitter stream in this book, but -2 to Casey, or his editors, or whoever, for not realizing that Superbat is @ing himself, highly odd behavior on twitter.

Batman Battle For The Cowl #3

******* SPOILER WARNING ******** I’m gonna talk about who the new Batman is. If you are trying to live under a rock, and you don’t want to know, then don’t follow the jump.******* /SPOILER WARNING ********

Comes now the final chapter of Battle For The Cowl, the book that’s put my beloved Bat-mythos on hold for about five months building up to this week.  This week we found out who would be the new Batman.  Now the wait is over, and… well,  now I know, I guess.  The particulars can be argued with, and I have to say that it didn’t end as spectacularly as I would have liked.  But it worked, and I enjoyed it.