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.)

And the new stuff

I only made it through three books for this week:

Trinity #1's lead story is, like, 10 pages of Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman sitting in a coffee shop talking. And they are in their civilian identities. Now, this strikes me as odd because: why would a reporter from Metropolis, the world's wealthiest bachelor, and a DEO agent all be sitting at a coffee shop in Keystone City? And the paparazzi is there, though not allowed near. Why does no one think that's weird? Plus, the Flash shows up IN COSTUME and talks to them. And no one thinks its weird. But I do like Mark Bagley's effective storytelling and overall, it is good, if vague. Same with the back-up that confounds AND entertains. Still, I liked the whole thing and have high hopes for the series. Of course, I had high hopes for Countdown...

Secret Invasion #3 is a paradox. It's better than issue 2, but it also seems to ignore Bendis's own continuity for the event. REAL SPOILERS!!! BEWARE!!! If Echo is not a Skrull, why do that New Avengers issue that focused on her? Because that seemed to subtly indicate she was a Skrull. Plus, we know Iron Man isn't a skrull (even in the close-up there was no green in his eyes, so he's human) so why throw that red herring in there just to upset people if they've been doing the damage control for months already stressing how un-Skrully Iron Man is. Anyway, I liked it, but this issue seems to show that a lot of the buildup Bendis planned and worked on was merely to shock and sell books and not actually bolster the story itself.

Finally, Ultimate Origins #1 came out and it was underwhelming. Not, like Brian said, because the reveals made no sense, but because the reveals were so cliche. What is revealed in this issue has been done before. In the Marvel Universe. In Earth X (out of continuity), in New X-Men (in continuity?), in Truth (in continuity). But they built this up like it was revolutionary. Which begs the question: why should I care. Aside from that, though, the writing was very good (minimalist Bendis is all too rare these days) and Butch Guise's art is great. I just wish they were doing something better. Like Ultimates 3. Then, that'd be awesome. Or readable anyway.