If comics get reviewed in a forest and no one is around to hear - Matt on 6/10

Hey, remember those other guys who used to post here sometimes? They seemed nice. I wonder what ever happened to them. Also, the two people who used to comment. Ah well. Comics!

۞ Okay, I've mentioned how much I'm enjoying Batman R.I.P., right? Like, in a non-ironic, non-negative way? Because I really, really am. So why is nothing even resembling that storyline showing up in this ostensible crossover with Detective #846? I'll admit that I think Hush is a monumentally stupid character, so I'm prejudiced against this from the jump, but this is ... Look, in a vacuum this would be okay. Ish. I guess. But trying to tell me that this has ANYthing to do with the clever, complicated stuff Morrison's doing over in the main book is setting the bar a bit high. Forgettable, and I'm not going to be sticking with this storyline.

۞ Batman Confidential #19 is part three of the storyline, and more of the same: a solidly entertaining flashback story from Fabian Nicieza with exquisite artwork from Kevin Maguire. They've worked together as a creative team before, and they mesh well. Fun stuff.

۞ I know, I know: I swore I was done with Booster Gold. And I hate buying things just because they're part of a crossover -- it makes me feel like a sucker. But I LOVED DC One Million back in the day, so sending this book retroactively into the crossover was reason enough for me to buy it.

The level of disappointment I feel is suitable punishment for letting myself be tricked like this. Hey, DC: it's ISSUE #1,000,000, not the YEAR 1,000,000. It's the year 85,271, as you correctly note on the cover. And if you were going to go to the trouble of matching the cover, why not include the stupid CGI title page that was on all the 1,000,000 issues as well? Seriously half-assed as a One Million tribute, and still meh as a comic on its own. Fool me once, etc.

۞ Secret Invasion #4 is better than Secret Invasion #3. Damning with faint praise? Maybe so, but it's what I've got.

۞ Invincible Iron Man #3 is fantastic. Matt Fraction's script seems carefully designed to be equally applicable to modern Marvel Universe continuity or to Iron Man movie continuity, and it's such a good Iron Man story that I found myself not caring either way. The strongest Iron Man's book has been since ... I dunno, since I was, like, 12. Nice showcase for Larocca's art, too. Much more appropriate than newuniversal.

۞ Okay, okay, a little bit more on Secret Invasion: it feels to me like Bendis is just hitting plot beats, like he just re-read Robert McKee's STORY and is following all the rules on this one. This is the middle issue, so we find out more about the Invasion plans, the heroes begin to regroup, sort of, and ... yeah, it just all completely fails to come alive for me. Oh well. Maybe next issue.

۞ Although I do have to wonder why the whole thing feels so much better in the tie-in books -- Captain Britain and MI-13 #3 is what I want from the MAIN miniseries: a plot with enough energy and momentum to carry itself past its own stupid points; characters who seem different from one another, and invested in the moment; some humor, some wit, some flair; heroic moments that feel genuinely heroic ... this is worth checking out even if you're ignoring SI altogether.

۞ Action Comics #867 does a nice job continuing the Braniac story. It's shaping up to be another nice Geoff Johns-written DCU book and the best Superman's been in a while. But... well, how to put this.... Ah, heck with it, I'll scan in the image, but let's do it in bits and pieces first. This is from the book's splash page. Can you guess what Supergirl is doing?


If you guessed "vomiting," "recovering from a brutal hangover," "smelling something awful," or "appearing in a Warren Ellis comic," you think along the same lines as me. You're also wrong; she's examining a Braniac drone and is meant to be looking frightened.

Here's another bit of the image that irritated me.


Yes, the left side is a bit deceptive as the shadow cast by her arm makes her appear even more unhealthily skinny, but even with out that ... why is Supergirl emaciated? Look at her ribs jutting out -- it makes me want to send her fifty cents a day so she can get away from Sally Struthers.

So let's put together those two images with the rest of it and see what we get...


Yep. It's Paris Hilton: Supergirl. I can't wait for my daughter to be old enough to enjoy this with me.

GET IT TOGETHER, GARY FRANK!

Where is everyone? Matt on 6/2

I was out of town at a wedding! What the hell is everyone else's excuse? Anyhow, here's some belated thoughts on all things comicky for June 2nd.

۞ So there's apparently been some kind of fooferaw over Batman #678, partially because of the blatant use of the stupid "magic negro" trope, partially because some people find it incomprehensible, and mostly because it's becoming clearer and clearer that to fully understand Morrison's Batman run, one is going to have to have read (and remember!) thousands of seriously obscure Batman stories. (So far, "Batman -- The Superman of Planet X," "Robin Dies At Dawn," possibly a few issues of World's Finest, and Batman #47. Great.)

But here's the thing: I'm LOVING this. Yes, the art is atrocious (although I like it much better than I did the Kubert who started the run off). Yes, Morrison is writing in a deliberately elliptical and allusive style. But it's FUN. It's interesting. It's somewhat challenging, I suppose, but mainly in the sense that I'm honestly curious about what's going to happen next month. In other words, it's that rare comic that I enjoy in EXACTLY the same way I enjoyed Transformers off the 7-11 spinner racks when I was a kid. I don't expect everyone to agree, but, there you go.

۞ On a different end of the spectrum is Angel Revelations #2. I'm enjoying this -- Aguirre-Sacasa needs to give up on the more action-y stuff and just accept that drama is his metier -- and Adam Pollina's art is fluid and lovely. But if it disappeared from the shelves tomorrow, I don't really think I'd notice. That said, if you haven't given this a shot, check it out; it's good to reward Marvel when they actually try something interesting and different.

۞ And then there's Astonishing X-Men #25, which ... exists, I suppose. It's easy to forget that Warren Ellis wrote Excalibur for 20-odd issues back in the nineties (especially easy as Marvel hasn't ever bothered reprinting them), but ... yeah, I feel like I saw all of this back then. In those days, it was Moira MacTaggart's coffee, which was terrible. Now it's Beast's coffee, which is apparently terrific. Ellis appears to have decided that the way to humanize superheroes is by having them shill shade-grown organic beans. (Actually, Planetary starts with a coffee discussion as well, as does Ellis's novel Crooked Little Vein. Maybe I'm onto something here.)

Back then Pete Wisdom was the sardonic British character who managed to enliven and poke fun at the mutant team tropes. Now it's Emma Frost (who is not actually British, I don't think, but don't tell her last three or four writers).

It's all good enough, I guess, helped along by Simone Bianchi's van art on steroids. We'll see what Ellis does with it long term, I suppose. I know I've been finding a lot of his recent stuff, from newuniversal to Doktor Sleepless to Black Summer to even Nextwave, MUCH better when read as a chunk. It's like he's abandoned writing for the individual issues altogether.

Anyhow, blah blah blah Warren Ellis-y.

۞ Some of you might remember that I really liked Top Cow's Pilot Season: Genius, and that I encouraged everyone to vote for it in the official Top Cow Popularity Contest Of Popularness. Let's just say that I'm a little cooler to Pilot Season: Alibi, which reads like either the pilot episode of a really dull Alias/24 knockoff or like the first issue of a really mediocre Boom! Studios comic that's clearly being pitched to Hollywood.

Nothing here engages me, nothing makes me want to see where the story goes, and, really nothing here is worth wasting any more time writing about.

A Special Comment on Marvel's Preview Books, by Matt

So, you know, I review these preview books all the time, right? Each week, I read through the envelope and give my pithy thoughts. Usually, these consist of "_______ was pretty good!" or "______ is on a down week, but I look forward to future issues," or "Wolverine Origins is just a terrible comic." But, see, here's the thing: who cares?

Not rhetorical: who actually cares? Once in a great while, I can do some good -- say something like, "Hey, that SKAAR book is better than it sounds," or "Holy crap, Guardians of the Galaxy is good even if you don't like Annihilation." That's a nice feeling, even if only six of you are reading this. Less frequently, I can warn you off some kind of horrid abomination, although usually it's just another issue of Wolverine Origins.

This week, though ... this week, Marvel really irritated me. Here's what we got in the preview pack, along with my incredibly terse (and always spoiler-free!) review:

• Amazing Spider-Man #564 - Fine. Not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, but fine.
• Avengers Invaders #3 - I find this unreadable, but those of you that are liking it will probably continue to do so.
• Cable #5 - Eh. It's ... readable. Fine. Inoffensive. Wraps up the storyline adequately.
• Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #41 - I'm not the fan of the Marvel Adventures books that some are, but this is decent enough. Does what it sets out to do, anyhow.
• Punisher War Journal #21 - My love of Matt Fraction is on frightening public display in my other posts here, and I've worked hard to sell his other awesome work (buy the THOR thing! It's TERRIFIC!) so I feel totally fine saying that this is, um, far from his best.
• Squadron Supreme 2 #1 - Continues Straczynski's work accurately in tone and pacing, which means that I want nothing to do with it. But that's a personal issue more than anything else. Supreme Power fans should be very happy.

Okay, so that's five perfectly adequate comics that may or may not please existing fans of the title/character/creator, plus a first issue that's pretty much a continuation of a recently cancelled title.

Meanwhile, here's what was NOT in the preview pack:

• Astonishing X-Men #25 - Because god forbid I be able to confidently recommend Warren Ellis's first issue, right?
• Patsy Walker Hellcat #1 - No doubt Marvel is so confident in the built-in Hellcat audience, there's no reason to let word get out if this thing is actually good or not. Yep, all eleven Hellcat fans nationwide are just LOCKED IN TO BUY.
• Secret Invasion Front Line #1 - The Front Line books have been frankly abominable for the last two big events, but they've put a new, more appealing creative team on this one ... so why not give retailers a chance to put the word out if it's better?

Look, seriously? What's the POINT of these preview packs? If it's just to give people like me a chance to read Cable a week early, well, fair enough. But it's an OPPORTUNITY, a chance for me -- and people like me around the country -- to tell our customers when there's something out there that they're not picking up. And, realistically, that's not going to be mid-storyline in Cable, Punisher War Journal, or anything else, even if those books were better than they actually are.

I dunno. Is anyone actually reading these things of mine? If so, does anyone find them helpful? Because this week's previews depressed the hell out of me, and it had nothing to do with the quality of the books involved.

Good night, and good luck.

Matt hurries through comics for 6/23

So I have, like, eleven billion other things to do, most of which I'm even being paid for, so of course I'm doing this to procrastinate. But I'm going to make it quick, though! In, out, comment, done, bam!

(I also previewed a bunch of this week's Marvel books a few days ago but can't be bothered finding the link. Scroll down a bit.)

Here we go!

۞ What If This Was The Fantastic Four: A Tribute To Mike Wieringo is a review-proof book, really, because what kind of jerk would complain about paying five bucks to donate to the HERO Initiative in honor of a really terrific artist...? Okay, fine. I'll do it: this isn't a great comic. Wieringo was one of my favorite superhero artists, he brought a real sense of fun to his work, and his death really is a tragic loss for the comic book community as well as his family and loved ones ... but this isn't his strongest work by any stretch, and it's in service of a Jeff Parker story that's ... well-intentioned, anyhow. The tributes in the book are genuinely moving, and I'm glad to have bought it for charity purposes, but as a comic book, it's really only so-so.

Annnnnnnnnnnd that's me going to hell, I suppose.

۞ No Hero #0 from Avatar is an interesting book, Warren Ellis hammering his particular vision of superheroes onto a Marshall McLuhan/Timothy Leary type. Could go either way, but ... did Black Summer ever finish? I don't remember an ending, but can't see Ryp and Ellis starting something new with that still uncompleted. Yes? No? No time for questions! Onward!

۞ Oh, look, it's eleven thousand Secret Invasion crossovers! Runaways/Young Avengers is actually really strong; it captures the voices of both teams, and has some strong artwork from Spidey Loves MJ mainstay Takeshi Miyazawa. New Avengers #42 and Mighty Avengers #15 are both Bendis showing us what's REALLY been going in his books, and they're good if you're into that sort of thing.

I'm kind of tired of Bendis feeling compelled to actually show me whole entire scenes again and again, because I know something slightly new now, but whatever. It's not like I have to pay for it again each time or anythin-- wait, I do? Oh, well THAT'S annoying.

۞ My Matt Fraction love continues unabated with his work on Young Avengers Presents #6: Hawkeye. (And, seriously, the last issue of a mid-selling miniseries is suddenly written by Matt Fraction and drawn by ALAN DAVIS?!? What the hell?) The double entendre on "god, he moves so fast" alone is worth the cover price on this one. Great stuff. Make Sheldon try to reorder it for you.

۞ I'm going to be honest about this, even though I hate reviewers who say this sort of lazy crap, but I literally fell asleep during 1985 #2. Just dozed right off. Not a reflection on the book, I don't think -- I really am juggling a whole bunch of stuff right now, and it's tiring -- but ... yeah, I'm not really qualified to say. I don't like the art very much, though, so there's that.

۞ Meanwhile, over in the DC books....

You know, cutting all the DC books that I haven't been liking really makes their output seem much stronger to me. Green Lantern #32 continues to be an excellent (if somewhat unnecessary, maybe) retelling of Hal Jordan's origin -- I'm really liking this run on GL through and through. Pity about Green Lantern Corps, but I think I've already covered that.

۞ And the big one: Final Crisis #2 I loved it. Just loved it. It feels less like a stupid, continuity-heavy crossover "event" and more like one of Grant Morrison's better efforts on JLA. (Also, I didn't read Countdown or any affiliated books once I realized how terrible they were, so I couldn't care less about the continuity hiccups, which might help.) Anyhow, yeah, good, packed issue with a real sense of menace for the heroes and some characteristically great throwaway ideas from Grant Morrison. (Bullet shot through time indeed.) This one seems to be getting better with each page, unlike the whell-spinning Secret Invasion on the other side of the store. I'm optimistic.

Okay, back to real work. Bye.

Holy crap there are a lot of Marvel books this week - Matt pre-reviews for 6/23

There are a ton of books in the Marvel Preview Pack, an absolute TON -- and even more of them on the advance shipping list. It's a HUGE week, Marvel Fans, and a suprising number of the books (the ones I've read, anyhow) are really good. Anyhow, given the volume of books and the always SPOILER-FREE nature of these preview reviews, let's see how quickly we can knock these out.

۞ Uncanny X-Men #499 - Wraps up the SF story and the Russia story adequately, and clears the decks for an interesting run with the updated creative team. Perfectly sound.

۞ X-Men Legacy #213 - Very interesting twists here. I'm really growing to dig this storyline a lot.

۞ Runaways #30 is so late that I have no recollection what's happening, but I get the sense that I would really like it if I did. Stupid late books.... I'm NOT looking forward to the new creative team, though.

۞ Wolverine First Class #4 - Fun. Not my usual cuppa tea, but if you like this sort of thing (Kitty Pryde transformed into a cat warrior, for example), this is a well-executed version of it.

۞ Ultimate Spider-Man #123 - Not quite as appealing to me as last issue, but a suitably creepy introduction to this storyline, and one that has me at least a bit intrigued.

۞ Thor Reign of Blood One-Shot - This is the second of three linked Matt Fraction Thor one-shots, and, like the last one, this one is AWESOME. Captures the violent, sleazy tone of true myth and just goes to town with it.

۞ Captain America #39 - Consistent like the sun, taxes, and traffic. This is good stuff.

۞ Thunderbolts #121 - A lively but slightly rushed wrap-up to the Ellis run. Good, but I was hoping for something sublime.

۞ Fantastic Four #558 - Promising start to the new storyline, this feels like a much denser read than the last one. I hate the fuzzy panel edges, though. Not sure why that drives me so nuts, but it does.

۞ Immortal Iron Fist #16 - Snif. Matt Fraction bids goodbye to Iron Fist the way it deserves. Great stuff. I'll give the new creative team a shot, but they've got a lot to live up to. (And, if there are any other Fraction junkies out there, he's the writer on the Young Avengers Presents issue shipping this week also.)

۞ Wolverine Origins #26 - I'm predisposed to hate this book in general, but replacing the dependable Steve Dillon with a much lesser artist (think Lenil Yu + Mark Texiera + someone who has no clue how to layout a page) really takes it to alarming new lows.

Blah blah blah about 6/18 from Matt

Last week, I proudly declared that I was going to chop books to save money and then only found two books to get rid of. I can guarantee that number jumps by one this week, but let's see how we do.

۞ The book that's gone is Trinity. I know this is a bit strange, as I was just singing its praises last week, but I realized with issue #3 that I just kind of don't care. The art is painfully static, the writing more than adquate but still not particularly interesting, and the plot unremarkable. Ironically, I think the weekly scheduling is working against the book -- I'd pay three bucks a month for this, but 12 bucks every month? For 12 months? I'd rather buy Wii Fit, or Rock Band Wii, or a palette-load of diapers at Sam's Club. Sorry for misleading y'all before, but I'm done.

۞ Glad I got that off my chest. Now we can turn to ... hmmm ... yeah, let's do another negative one before we get happy. I'm done with Flash. My go-to line on the book has been that I'll buy anything with Freddie Williams II art, but, well looks like I was wrong about that. I really hope DC can figure out what to do with this title, though, because I loved the character back in the mid-90s.

۞ On to happier things! (Happier things which, perhaps not coincidentally, include NO futher DC books. Hmmmm.) Still loving the Incredible Hercules. Last week I called Captain Britain the best thing to come out of Secret Invasion, but the God Squad here is pretty entertaining as well. Hell, writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente also manage to do something vaguely interseting with Nightmare, that depressingly dull knock-off of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. (Down to the word balloons, no less. Good lord, Marvel. Have you no shame?) Nice last page twist, also.

۞ My goodness, but the cover for X-Factor #32 is ugly. And dull. I think we should have a word for that. Dugly? Ull? I'll work on it. Anyhow, yeah, ugly cover but some really nice interior art from Valentine De Landro, and Peter David manages to keep building on the story he's telling here -- he's done an incredibly good job of rolling with the various crossover punches and still letting his story feel organic. Good book, hideous cover -- feel free to send Glenn Fabry back to Vertigo where he fits in a bit better.

۞ Although I have an avowed fondness for Mark Millar's writing of young kids, he's pretty clearly at his best when he's A) working in his Big Dumb Action Story mode, and B) he doesn't need to rely on a bunch of other writers making his ideas make sense. (I think B is what really crippled Civil War at points; Millar wanted to write creepy, vaguely incenstuous dialogue for Johnny Storm and Sue Richards, and the Fantastic Four writers had actually read the characters before.)

ANYHOW, Wolverine #66 sets off Millar's big Future Wolverine In The Bad Marvel Future story, and it looks like it's going to hew pretty close to his strengths. Still plenty of time, as always, for Millar to give in to his more puerile impulses ("...and then in issue #69, the villain has sex with the corpse of Wolverine's children!" or something like that), but he's set himself off to a very strong start.

۞ My favorite book this week, though, was one that most people probably missed: Genius #1, from Top Cow. It's part of their Pilot Season thing, where they release a whole bunch of first issues into the wild with virtually no publicity, and everyone votes on what should become an actual series. (Where "everyone" equals "all seven people nationwide who are aware of the promotion," I guess.)

Genius is a pretty clever book, though -- the high concept seems to be "What if the 21st century's military genius were born into an L.A. gang, and used her military tactics to band the gangs together to declare war on the cops." It works much better than it sounds thre, and the art is stinkin' GORGEOUS, somewhere between cel-shaded animation and Adam Hughes. This Afua Richardson girl is going to be big at some point, I suspect. (Unless she becomes big for her music, which is not entirely impossible either. Good, big voice. God, I loathe talented people.)

Anyhow, all of you should pester Sheldon to order this for you (Diamond Order Code: APR082211, I believe), and then vote for it to become a series, and only then will I accept your gracious thanks.

۞ And I also bought the final trade of Y The Last Man to read, having remained remarkably unspoiled as to the ending. Hopefully I'll get to that today, but I'm pretty confident it'll be fabulous.

Matt buys back some time - 6/11 books

I think it's getting to be about time for me to trim my buying list -- I find myself reading an awful lot of these books and thinking, "Hey, that was meh ... just like last issue." Which is both financially irresponsible AND a waste of my time, especially as I have a new baby that's more intriguing to me than mediocre comic books. Also, I don't want to feel like Negative Review Guy, which is what happens when I read a bunch of books that don't thrill me. Here, then is my public declaration of what I'm not reading

۞ Booster Gold #10 is my last issue of this book. It's perfectly adequate, but it's not dazzling me enough. I feel like the ideas are intriguing at their core, and I like the issues when they're described to me ... it's just that actually reading them consistently leaves me cold.

۞ I'm buying Green Lantern Corps as I eagerly await the forthcoming crossover, but issue #25 ends that. I confused Peter Tomasi and Stuart Moore last month, which makes me feel dumb, but they both write perfectly good space opera that fails to engage me. I'll stick with the core book for now. (I maintain that this book would be much awesomer if it were called Green Lantern Crops and were about interstellar farming, but what do I know?)

۞ Somewhat surprisingly, the current run on Batman Confidential remains on my purchase list. I just adore Kevin Maguire's art, and Fabian Nicieza is, er, playing to his artist's strengths here. (ie, Issue #18 features an extended sequence in which the original Batgirl fights Catwoman naked in a hedonist club. If that's not playing to Maguire's strengths, I don't know what is. Also, probably not a comic to read at work, or around children, or in public, or anywhere else where you might be embarrassed.)

۞ Trinity #2 makes me think I'll stick with this as well. I've got a lot of time for Kurt Busiek, who is competent even at his worst, and this nice, slick, mainstream superhero story is far from his worst. Feels more "comic book-y" than the semi-novelistic sweep of 52, and more "good" than the horrifying disaster of Countdown.

۞ I like newuniversal shockfront also -- it builds nicely on the basic NU concept, but is another strong mainstream showing from Warren Ellis. Every so often it seems like he recharges his batteries and starts churning out really solid work again; he's in one of those phases now. I'll keep buying this...

۞ ... and Doktor Sleepless as well, for most of the same reasons. I wish the art in Doktor Sleepless were a little less generic Avatar house style, but it's perfectly readable, and this book makes a great venue for Ellis's obsession with the intersection of science fiction and our contemporary reality. Good stuff.

۞ I really enjoyed Captain Britain and MI13 a LOT -- it's an improvement on the first issue, and one of the best things to come out of Secret Invasion so far. I'll definitely keep picking this up ... BUT it also points out one of the main problems with modern superhero comics, althoug I'll have to bury discussion of it behind whited-out spoilertext. Highlight between the brackets to figure out what I'm on about. [Apparently, we were meant to believe last issue that Captain Britain (or at least his human host) really died. Like, tragically sacrificed himself. This issue is all about starting to play up the ramifications of that, and it does that well ... except that I never, ever, ever, ever even considered that at the end of last issue. I saw the explosion, thought "well, I wonder how he escapes from that," and moved on. It was a bit jarring to find that everyone here is taking it so seriously -- don't you all know you're in a comic book?] Aside from that minor complaint, though, a fun book.

۞ Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust is pretty good for one of these one-shots. I really like Mike Carey's work at Marvel, and Christos Gage is becoming a reliable mainstream writer. And there's some gorgeous Timothy Green III work, which is nice to see. Worth picking up if you're following Secret Invasion, actually. I don't regret buying this at all. (I absolutely abhor the title pages for the SI books, though -- it's like generic Photoshop Backgrounds for Spastic Beginners 101 stuff. Just hideous.)

۞ I love Action Comics #866 -- when Geoff Johns is on, he is ON. And this is the strongest thing to appear in a Superman book in some time. Genuinely creepy, ominous, and fun to read. I'll be buying this, moving forward.

۞ And Locke & Key continues to be the best thing being published this year, by ANY comic book company. Not only will I continue buying this (for the one remaining issue), I'll buy the collected edition, and anything else Joe Hill writes. Fantastic horror comic. Really.

So after that dramatic intro, I cut a whopping two books. Great.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow - Matt gets caught up

Hey, so having a kid is time-consuming! Who saw THAT coming? Not me, obviously. Fortunately, she's a dreadful conversationalist, so I can safely read comics while rocking her and the like. Here are my reviews on last Wednesday's books, followed by a couple of "preview" reviews for books that'll be out tomorrow.

۞ Secret lnvasion #3 is, perhaps predictably, a huge disappointment to me. Issue #1 of this was exciting! It was punchy! Stuff happened and things blew up and there was a big surprise ending and wooooooooo! Since then, it's been a long, wanky fight scene (issue #2), and now this: the Marvel F-list fights bravely in New York! They all talk Bendis-y! Something bad happens to The Vision version 8.3, and I try manfully to remember who he is and where he came from and if I should care! There's one good paranoia scene that's got to be a fakeout (or DOES it?!?!), and then a cliffhanger where a bunch of heroes charge in to save the world and it would be amazingly cool, except that it's, like, the G-list of unrecognizable Marvel dudes.

Actually, it's not even the G-list -- it's a bunch of Bendis's pet characters who we know are awesome because he spent a whole issue of Avengers telling us that Nick Fury (who all the famous characters think is awesome) thinks these no-marks are awesome. THAT, my friends, is character development at its finest.

And Lenil Yu is clearly being rushed, as the cleaner line he was using in issue #1 is back to being the Sienkiewicz-ian scrawl he's perfected since Superman: Birthright. This is starting to feel an awful lot like Bendis's last Might Marvel Miniseries, House of Filler.

۞ A while back, Commenter Sean mentioned that he's been known to develop crushes on writers, and I know exactly where he's coming from. I was totally into Matt Fraction for awhile (Five Fists of Science, Casanova, that Spider-Man annual, Iron Fist), but then we got together and it was totally not all I was hoping it would be (Punisher War Journal). So I avoided him for awhile and he acted all embarrassed around me and it was totally awkward until we got drunk together at this party and made out, and there were no strings attached and that was pretty good except for that one part when Namor showed up (The Order). So now things are kind of okay again and I think I like him but I don't know how he feels about me and I'm afraid to ask because what if it makes things all weird, you know?

Which is a long way to go to say that Invincible Iron Man #2 is just as good as issue #1 was, and that you should be buying it and loving it and treasuring every moment with it, because it's summer and you can never tell what's going to happen to a guy on his summer vacation.

۞ I don't really want to make out with Justice Society of America #16, but I sure am pleased to bump into it. This is apparently the story that Geoff Johns has been setting up with the nigh-incomprehensible last four issues, because this is a sharp little character piece masquerading as a 1980's DC Comic (in the best possible way). Some nice swerves on the typical Galactus story, and a good use of the ridiculously large cast. Maybe I'll reread from issue #9 or whatever and see how it hangs together.

۞ I'm the dissenting voice on Kick-Ass #3, it appears. As I mentioned in my thoughts on Marvel 1985 a week or two back, I find Mark Millar surprisingly good at writing teen drama, so I liked the in-school bits, but the super-hero stuff remains dull to me, no matter how much violence he injects it with. I think this will read better in collection, to be honest.

۞ Trinity #1 is ... okay. It features the Superman-Batman-and-Wonder-Woman-sit-around-a-table scene that is apparently required in all 21st Century DC Comics, but THIS TIME THEY'RE IN THEIR CIVILIAN IDENTIES!!!!! ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!! That said, at least Kurt Busiek doesn't feel compelled to cover the page with 75 billion different colored captions (like Brad Meltzer), or to weight the proceedings down with trite pseudo-psychological melodrama (like, oh, say, Brad Meltzer). It's not the Busiek of Astro City, nor even the terrific early Thunderbolts issues, but it's a solid superhero comic and a promising start to a weekly series. (Except for the backup, which I found literally unreadable. That might be a problem down the line.)

۞ Ultimate Origins #1 was always going to be a problem for me. I found Bendis's thin reinventions of the Marvel Universe in Ultimate Team-Up and Ultimate Spider-Man to be much less interesting than Millar's ground-up rethinks in Ult. X-Men and Ultimates. (Ult. Spider-Man overcomes this with some excellent craft and lively character drama, but Team-Up was pretty much an unmitigated disaster.)

So Ultimate Origins, being Bendis's unifying theory of the Ultimate Universe, was bound to accent the side of the Ultimate line that I find less interesting, and as such to disappoint me.

Which it does. (And I thought this was Butch Guice's worst art in a while as well.) At least it met expectations.....

۞ I also read The Boys #19, which was just as good as the rest of the issues have been, and as such not worthy of special praise or scorn. The price you pay for consistent work, I suppose.

۞ Which brings us to this week's preview books. It was a pretty thin bunch, a lot of things that I don't find interesting to begin with (Moon Knight) or didn't find particularly interesting once I had read them (Hulk: Raging Thunder, the apocalyptically grim X-Force: Ain't No Dog). But I do want to call special attention to Skaar, Son of Hulk #1, which overcomes a catastrophically stupid title to be a surprisingly good book.

For everyone who was disappointed that World War Hulk failed to be an adequate follow-up to the themes and ideas of Planet Hulk ... this is your book. Something like a really good Conan comic blended together with Marvel's sci-fi stuff, there's a lot of promise here, and it's worth checking out.

(Also, it contains 100% less Jeph Loeb than Marvel's other Hulk book, which guarantees a quality uptick.)

Something You Should Buy: KILLING JOKE ANNIVERSARY hardcover

I don't love hardcover books. They're clunky and unwieldy and expensive and they're hard to keep open while I'm eating and a whole bunch of other stupid complaints. Hardcover comics are even worse. I know I'm in the minority, but I like the somewhat disposable nature of comics. I like folding 'em back and reading 'em and then tossing them into a box to give to any of my friends' kids who need entertaining when they're at our place. (Not all comics receive this treatment, but a lot do.)

Slapping a hardcover on, say, six issues of Green Lantern and charging thirty bucks for it just feels like ridiculous overkill, like one of those stupid sweaters for a dog. There are a few things make some hardcover comics (mainly Marvel's oversized non-premier hardcovers and DC's Absolute editions) worth the pricetag and inconvenience, though:

• Larger size for improved viewing of the artwork.
• Bonus materials like scripts, design sketches, pitches, etc.
• Corrected coloring and/or art.

It's the last one that makes this edition of the Killing Joke worth the money. Reading this recolored hardcover is like seeing a favorite movie in HD for the first time. It is simply absurd how much this slight-seeming story is improved by being colored thoughtfully, thematically, and carefully by the artist himself, rather than by a separate colorist. (John Higgins, in this case, who has done plenty of quality work in other places and shouldn't be scorned too badly for this tempera nightmare.)

It never occurred to me to ask why the original was colored largely in arbitrary splotches of pink, yellow, and green, and now I don't know how I ignored it for so long. I wish that someone would go back and do this same thing to the other early Vertigo books where whole pages are colored with undifferentiated washes of green, brown, and yellow. (I'm looking at you, early Hellblazer.)

I could go on for pages about this, but it seems like a good picture-worth-a-thousand-words opportunity. Here's a panel from the original edition (my well-worn third printing):

And here's the same panel from the recolored edition:

The flashback sequences are improved as well, dropped out of sepia into cold black-and-white, with flashes of red popping out Schindler's-List-style. Here's the sepia original:

And Bolland's thematically recolored version:

I can't emphasize enough how much this improves the story. It worth the money for an upgrade if you've only got the old version, and makes the book into a must-buy if you don't own it yet. Last I checked (on Saturday), there was a copy on the shelves; if it's gone, ask whoever's behind the counter to order one for you.

Some hardcover collected editions are a waste of time, space, and paper. This isn't one of them.

I Can't Believe I'm THIRD - Matt on books from 5/29

Three Grant Morrison books. Joss Whedon’s big X-Men finale. A new Mark Millar miniseries at Marvel. Another Bendis-written Secret Invasion tie-in.

So why do I feel so let down overall? Maybe it’s just sleep deprivation.

۞ Final Crisis #1 is a tough one to discuss. Morrison tends to write his arcs as a whole, which can lead to some seriously inscrutable first issues. (And, sometimes, second and third and even fourth issues -- I remember how completely befuddled everyone was almost all the way through the Rock Of Ages arc in his JLA run, and that reads fabulously in collection.) He has a real knack for tying things up satisfyingly, though, so I’m going to reserve final judgment, even though I found this opening salvo to be something less than I had hoped.

۞ All Star Superman #11 and Batman #677, however, are both terrific. Morrison is doing a much better job accommodating the somewhat limited talents of his Batman artists in his scripts, and All-Star Superman sets up the climactic issue with style. God, do I love All-Star Superman. (Also, apropos of my comments on Final Crisis, Morrison’s Batman run thus far reads MUCH better as a chunk than it did as it was being released. Still a shame about the art on those early issues, though.)

۞ Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1 is a really well-executed book that’s a victim of its enormous lateness. If this had been a normal comic, not something that represented the culmination of a storyline spanning (almost exactly) FOUR YEARS, it would be fabulous. If many of the dramatic reveals hadn’t been spoiled during the wait for this last issue, it would be great. As it stands, it’s a very competently done comic that -- like so many late books before it -- will be much better for people reading it collected in the future, when they can get the whole story without waiting three months between chapters.

۞ Green Lantern #31 is still very good. Not really much to say about it beyond that, but you should be reading if you’re not already -- the upcoming Blackest Night crossover looks terrific, and you’re going to regret not being around for the whole buildup if you miss this.

۞ Brian Michael Bendis has quite a few annoying writing tics, and New Avengers #41 indulges one of my least favorite: the scene we’ve already seen, this time from a different perspective that reveals a tiny bit of new information. This comic could’ve been condensed down to two word balloons from Shanna in a much livelier, tighter-written, NON-FLASHBACK-Y comic. I really think Bendis would benefit from more severe limiting of his storytelling space -- the more room he has to spread out into, the more he bloats to fill it.

۞ Mark Millar has a history of being able to write surprisingly good stories about young kids growing up, when he wants to -- the first two issues of Chosen were terrific. -- and Marvel 1985 #1 is yet another good example of that.

Unfortunately, he also has a habit of shoehorning in something complete asinine in the last issue that completely undermines and ignores the strongest parts of what preceded it, so let’s hope he avoids that temptation here. I don’t think he is -- I think this is an updating of a an old Twilight Zone riff, although it’s being telegraphed awfully early if it is -- but you can never tell when Millar is going to think that a clever little story would be improved by some sort of incestuous zombie rape scene or something.

At the very least, he nails PRECISELY how awesome Secret Wars #10 was for a kid at the time. (And how awesome it remains, in fact. There’s a lot of ridiculous junk in that miniseries, but the scene under discussion here is still Dr. Doom at his finest. That and the cover of the Hulk holding up a mountain forgive a lot of silliness.)

۞ And speaking of silliness, we have Helen Killer #2, which answers the question “How long can a mash-up of Daredevil, the Hulk, and The Miracle Worker sustain my attention?” (Hint: not even two issues.) That said, the pun in the title is terrific, and the whole thing is obviously a labor of love for the creators. So they have that going for them, at least.

Also, I reviewed some of this week’s other books in preview format a few days ago, so go see if any of my warnings or suggestions would’ve helped your purchasing this week.

Comic Reviews from the FUTURE! - Matt previews 5/29

Remember, books are on Thursday this week. If you come in on Wednesday, all you'll be able to do is talk to the staff. And who wants to talk to the staff?

Anyhow, here's what I think about the upcoming books.

۞ My original review of Immortal Iron Fist #15 centered around what a disappointing end it is to the Matt Fraction/Ed Brubaker run, with so-so art (for a title that's been graced with some little-known but stellar artists) and an overly talky story. The issue was especially disappointing since the last Times Past issue was probably my favorite single issue Marvel's published in the last decade or so.

So you can imagine my relief that Fraction's got one more issue to tie his stuff up and give a solid launch to the upcoming team, supposedly (hope hope hope!) with pencils from original artist David Aja. But the bulk of my thoughts still hold true. The first serious misstep from an excellent comic.

۞ Thor #9 - Okay, look: I don't like J. Michael Straczynski's work. I'll be up front about that. His stories all seem to take themselves SO SERIOUSLY and claim to have such earthshaking importance, and yet they are so ponderously dull. Like baseball, or presidential debates. So THAT certainly doesn't predispose me toward this book.

But am I the only who hates the pseudo-archaic font they use for the Asgardian word balloons? It renders the book even more unreadable than most of JMS's stuff.

۞ I lost a lot of interest in Ultimate Spider-Man when Mark Bagley left, which is notably odd, as I've never really thought particularly highly of Bagley's art. AND I usually like Stuart Immonen. So that was weird. Also, not something I'm going to solve in this review.

Anyhow, issue #122 feels like the best issue in a long time. Nice bit with the villain, some hints toward Ultimate Origins, Bendis keeps his worst tics in check (needless padding, irritatingly same-y dialogue) and still uses his abundant talents, and some good MJ/Kitty stuff make this really worth checking out, especially if you bailed like I did.

۞ Uncanny X-Men #498 is yet another weird issue of a weird run on this book for me: I hate the art, hate the plot, think the characters aren't acting like themselves ... and yet I remain hopeful. Part of that is that the book will soon be reteaming the writing staff from my beloved Iron Fist, and part of it is ... I have no idea. Faith in Brubaker? Pathetic devotion to an aging franchise? I have no clue.

۞ X-Force #4 - Apparently Dexter really liked this book, but Dexter is clearly the sort of person who cannot be trusted with matters of taste. Seriously? This is the distilled essence of everything that went wrong with the X-Men in the nineties and early 2000s.

It's got grim 'n gritty, black leather, ultra-violence, and all of the worst villains in X-Men history TOGETHER AT LAST. Not to mention the not-at-all-awaited return of a really stupid character direction from the eighties. If it were handled with any sort of humor or subtlety, I suppose it could be big dumb fun, but as presented, I can live without it.

۞ X-Men Legacy #212 - Is this coming out weekly? I mean, better too often than never (check out the in-store date on that link!) but good lord. Anyhow, the art is the weakest of this run, and nothing here makes Gambit any less stupid than usual, but I'm still really enjoying this nevertheless. Mike Carey is quietly becoming a really solid superhero writer.

Looking forward to hearing what you guys thought.....

Matt on some of this week's books.

Hm. Apparently having a kid puts a damper on the amount of time one can spend reading comics, and an even firmer damper on the amount of time one can spend writing about reading comics (especially for no pay). Here's some of what I read, typed with a dozing kid on my lap.

(Also, don't forget that I reviewed a bunch of this week's books in advance last week. If, you know, you're interested in such things.)

● Justice League of America #21 is apparently an Important Book because Libra appears and does some stuff that sure seems almost exactly like the stuff that The Mockingbird was doing in the run-up to Infinite Crisis. You are supposed to know this because it says "SIGHTINGS" on the cover. I'm not sure how effective this branding is going to be, as the logo is eminently ignorable, not to mention ugly and nonsensial.

Dwayne McDuffie does his traditional underrated terrific job with the character moments, but ... I can't shake the feeling that I've seen it all before, very recently. Carlos Pacheco is one of my favorite superhero artists of the last decade, and it looks like someone has given him a stern talking-to about not giving Superman squinty eyes. Now they all have the creepy Gary Frank Thousand Yard Stare, but whatever. Good book.

● Every time an issue of Justice Society of America comes out, I realize that I have no recollection whatsoever who half the characters are or why they're doing what they're doing. Sometimes this is because I am dumb, other times because I have not been reading DC Comics since the dawn of man, and still other times just because there are nine billion characters in this book. Issue #15 manages to be confusing for all three reasons at once, and winds up borderline incomprehensible as a result! Nicely done, fellas.

● Incredible Hercules #117 is the best Secret Invasion tie-in yet, even though it took me well over an hour to read it in between my child's fussing sessions. The script by Pak and Van Lente is sharp, the plot is both clever and relevant to the crossover as a whole, and the art is terrific superhero stuff. I really like this book, and this might be my favorite issue yet.

● The Flash #240. Huh? Soooo ... this is some sort of Final Crisis tie-in, maybe? There are Darkseid references, anyhow, and some sort of banner-branding of "The Dark Side Club" on the cover? I have no idea. In fact, I have no idea what the higher-ups at DC are even thinking anymore. Anyhow, I'm completely in the tank for Freddie Williams II's art, so I liked this, even with the crossover perplexity and Tom Peyer's not-as-clever-as-it-thinks script. (When Peyer nails one, he NAILS it. The rest of the time, he's Joe Casey with a much better interview persona.)

● Mighty Avengers #14 makes me sad that Marvel thinks that their clever metafictional marketing gimmick actually needed to become a character. I don't know why -- this issue is perfectly fine, with some legitimately clever twists in the Secret Invasion plot -- but it does.

Comic Reviews ... of the FUTURE! - Matt reviews 5/21

Reviews of the Marvel previews -- these books will be on the shelves and ready for your well-manicured hands this coming Wednesday, May 21^st. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I hate Wolverine: Origins. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I think Daniel Way is a boring writer, and he seems to loathe the characters he’s writing. And yet issue #25 really isn’t too bad. It advances the plot nicely, begins to tie up one of the more unnecessary plotlines in recent memory, and works within its own logic. It’s also probably improved by comparison to the DREADFUL reprint of New Mutants #97 that they’ve included as a backup for no discernible reason.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #54 is actually quite good. I haven’t been reading it since ... good lord, I don’t know, probably since the last Mark Millar run three years ago, but this is a solid FF story that manages to feel like the Fantastic Four while still being identifiably the Ultimate version of the characters. Who knew? The art is blandly attractive as well.

Iron Man Director of SHIELD #29, combined with Green Lantern Corps from this week, leads me to believe that I don’t much like Stuart Moore’s writing. It’s a pity, too, because he was a terrific editor at Vertigo years ago.

Ultimate X-Men #94: thank god that Kirkman run is over. This could go either way, but it’s a promising start and much more tonally in line with the early issues of this book than Kirkman’s weirdly detached ‘90s pastiche was.

Captain America #38, still the most consistent book Marvel publishes. (Although this storyline is beginning to drag a bit -- was Cap really killed over a year ago, real-time?!?)

Fantastic Four #557 is the best issue so far of the Millar/Hitch run, although who would ever have suspected what faint praise that is.

X-Factor #31, also incredibly consistent, and also feeling like it’s spinning its wheels somewhat. I never thought I would type these words, but the book is really missing something without Layla Miller.

FIRST POST!!!!!!11!!!! - Reviews for books from 5/14

Well, I suppose that SOMEONE is going to have to start this, and silences have always made me twitchy. So it might as well be me.

Let’s start with DC.

Green Lantern Corps #24 manages to take all the goodwill I have for these books, following on the terrific-ness of Sinestro Corps War, and squander it on an eleventh-hand iteration of a half-assed old Alan Moore story. Sort of like ... well, sort of like a lot of the other stuff going on in the Green Lantern books, to be honest, only without half of the panache or an eighth of the writing ability.

Batman #676, on the other hand, is the first issue where Grant Morrison’s run is starting to cohere as a whole for me, thanks in part to a dramatic improvement in the art. (And the fact that I consider Tony Daniel to be a dramatic improvement should let you know just how unreadable I find whichever Kubert it was that started this run off.)

I keep reading Booster Gold, currently on issue #9, largely because I’m convinced it’s good. There’s no actual evidence of its ostensible goodness, but I keep reading anyhow. This issue has roughly 2,000 too many words, and owes its entire existence to an uncomfortable mashing together of the Giffen/DeMatteis sitcom JLI with the Johns/Meltzer/Rucka dystopian nightmare of OMACs and Identity Crisis. It works marginally less well than that description would imply. Also, Dan Jurgens hasn’t changed his penciling style since 1989.

Batman Confidential #17, on the other hand, was a completely unexpected dose of fun. Kevin Maguire is one of the few artists who can make me buy a book I’m otherwise uninterested in (such as his otherwise TERRIBLE issue of Superman/Batman a year or so back), and this is one of the cases where the gamble pays off. Fun times in the DC Universe, which are all too rare these days.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel....

Captain Britain and MI13 #1 is one of two Secret Invasion books this week, the one I was most excited for. It’s a de facto sequel to the Wisdom MAX miniseries, and it’s ... okay, I suppose. A lot of the charm of the earlier mini is gone, in service of the awkward jihad-esque Secret Invasion plot. But Skrull John Lennon is a lead character, and that makes it worth buying no matter what. You should really get the collected edition of the earlier miniseries, though, because that was much better -- and it might lay some groundwork for this whole Invasion thing.

The other Secret Invasion book is Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #1. It’s written by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, which is significant because he wrote the vastly underrated Marvel Knights 4 series, and it’s nice to have him back on Marvel’s first family. This is a much more successful SI crossover than Captain Britain, fitting in well with the main limited series AND tying back in to a particularly strange bit of FF history. Worth reading.

newuniversal: Shockfront #1: because Warren Ellis likes compound words and hates proper capitalization. This is an improvement over the earlier newuniversal miniseries for two reasons: 1) The characters are no longer painfully obvious photoreferences, and 2) KICKERS INC. puts in an appearance! KICKERS INC.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elsewhere in the Warren Ellis-verse, Thunderbolts continues to be completely fabulous with issue #120.

The best book of the week, though, is Locke & Key #4, published by IDW. Joe Hill (aka Stephen King’s kid) continues to shine as a writer of modern horror comics, and Gabriel Rodriguez is a find on art. Seriously, so many of the creators who start in other media stumble when they get to comics -- too many words (see: Captain Britain) or awkward scene transitions (see: that Iron Man mini by Favreau from last week) or just a general frustration with the form (see: Jodi Picoult’s Wonder Woman run, among many others). Hill avoids all that, and is in the process of crafting a genuinely spectacular horror comic worthy of his father, while making tremendous use of the comic book form. You really should be reading this.

There. That wasn’t so bad for my first week out of the gate, was it? Let’s see how we hold up.....