http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=339451 - related thread.
Here 'tis.
Now, what you’re all here for :
Marvel Knights 4 #23 - the return of the Impossible Man! Actually, seems a little like fanfiction gone wrong.
City of Heroes #6 - Newsstand gets them way early. Not bad.
Majestic #10 - Please let this be the first step in revitalizing the Wildstorm Universe.
Cable and Deadpool #21 - Still the funniest ongoing there is.
Exiles #71 - Not a bad wrapup, and next ish - The New Universe!
Nightwing #113 - I really like this story arc. I plan on sticking around a while.
Action Comics #832 - The Spectre takes Satanus.
Firestorm #18 - Very blah OMAC tie-in.
Villains United #6 - Love the reveal of Mockingbird, makes me wonder which one was doing what, all this time. Love the motivation and reasoning behind the Society’s creation. Love, love, love. One Quibble :
I thought Pariah was unkillable.
Infinite Crisis #1 - 'Twas Brillig. Ouch for the Freedom Fighters, though.
JLA #120 - Not bad, not bad at all.
From those last two :
Seems J’onn survived in some fashion - good. I think these two actually show that I guessed the identity of the red-caped fellow correctly, in all probability… just that he wasn’t being controlled by Luthor, he was rescuing J’onn from the imminent boom. Then again, he doesn’t break out till after… so I’m not sure. LOVE the last panel of Infinite Crisis though.
Possibly due to the Columbus Day holiday, my shop only got one comic this week (so careful with the spoilers, boys and girls).
Fortunately, it was Infinite Crisis #1.
Boy Howdy, was that worth the wait. Does that ever live up to all the buildup and the hype. The art was gorgeous, the story is great. You can really feel the stakes here. I’ve never seen a crossover done so well.
And that last page made me smile and smile. And I didn’t even read teh original Crisis!
I just got Villains United #6 and Infinite Crisis #1 (Perez cover), but haven’t read them yet. Also got a DC Direct Adam Strange figure marked down to $4 and a DC Direct Tim Hunter figure for Selkie, also on sale.
I seriously went back to just… admire that last page, maybe a half-dozen times after reading it. I was giddy with geekiness. That page may be the apex of my 24 years of comic-fandom.
Oh, and Ex Machina and Fables were really good this week, too.
DC blah blah Donna Troy #4: Good story all and all. Made me kinda care about Donna. Kinda. I understand why she scared the Brainaics now. Kinda.
Donna Troy was Harbinger? Is this new or has it been established before?
Rann-Thanagar #6: : Shrug : Not bad. Not sure what Blackfire’s playing at, but I’ll go with it.
Villains United #6: What?! Awesomeness!
Gamera– No close up of the corspe= no death. Unless you’re Sinestro. Pariah’s probably doing a Highlander healing thing right now.
Freshman #3: Its’ getting real good now. If you haven’t given it a try yet, do it!
She’s not really dead, right? They wouldn’t kill off my favorite character in the third frickin’ issue, would they?
Infinite Crisis #1: What Menocchio said. Hopefully it says that good.
I didn’t buy it, but did anyone else see the new cover for Supergirl #1? Its’ an amazing Silver Age parody/homage. I might just have to pick it up.
More comics later.
With regard to the first point : She wasn’t Harbinger. Harbinger was Lyla, and is dead. Return seems to muddle this point.
With regard to the second : It’s possible - but Lex would be aware of that, I’d assume.
And a third VU tidbit :
Anybody think this Alt-Lex is one we have seen before?
New Books for October 11th: Spoilers in White Text
Tryouts. I checked out a few books I normally don’t pick up this week.
One thing the “Crisis” has done is made the JLA a lot more interesting than they normally are. Harras’ & Derenick’s, “Requiem for a League” in JLA #120 was a great epilogue for the League as we knew it. I almost felt like I’d attended the ceremony myself. Harras did a great job scripting the dialogue: Arthur, Batman, Manitou Dawn (where were the rest of the JL Elite?), Hal, Oliver, Wally, the characters really came to life here for me. (It was even nice to see the Key again.) And I found Green’s finishes over Derenick’s layouts pretty appealing. I might pick up the arc that follows. 8/10
As I did last month I picked up Claremont’s & Bachalo’s Uncanny Xmen #465 for the art, and I gotta’ say, I love Bachalo’s work when he’s legible. After the confusion of last issue (Lord, entering an X-title mid-story these days can be akin to waking up in a labyrinth – with the lights off), this actually turned out to be a nice story about love and sacrifice. Lot’s of cute Bachalo girls too. Lovely to look at. (The score might’ve been higher if I knew enough to follow the exchanges between the large number of super mutant chicks running around this issue.) 6/10.
While I haven’t been a big fan of some of the considerable changes Devin Grayson has put Dick Grayson through as of late, I have to say Nightwing #113 was a pretty decent read this week. The exchanges between Rose Wilson and Dick Grayson, as he tries to curb her homicidal impulses while tracking down a chop shop operation with a hidden agenda were pretty entertaining, and the ending suspenseful. It’s also nice to see Cliff Chang’s flowing layouts. Surprisingly good stuff. If Grayson had jumped into this Wiseguy/Donnie Brasco story line earlier, I might’ve kept the title on my pull and hold list (but then I guess the unsatisfactory War Games just had to take precedence). 7/10
Closing Acts.
Johnson, Williams and Fisher bring their refreshing take on an “early days” Batman tale to a close in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #196. It’s been a real fun miniseries, marred (that’s a bit too strong a word,…) only by the anticlimactic close of Batman and his “teams” encounter with poor, dangerous Victor Fries, who here is more deluded than malevolent. The close would have made a great lead in to Miller & Lee’s All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder, and I hope to see the team again someday. 7/10
Palmiotti, Gray, Bennett & Jose bring their year long Fadeaway Man/Charley Parker story arc to a satisfying and violent close this week in Hawkman #45. Long time readers know that when we read stories like this that the odds are the status quo will be restored by tales’ end, but this story really worked. Along the way, we enjoyed intriguing twists and turns, and the creative team did a fine job reinventing a good number of the Hawks Silver Age foes, turning them into real threats that I’d love to see again, esp. their Satana, Hummingbird, Trygg the Sorcerer and Lionmane. Good solid story folks: thanks for the thrills! 8/10.
Countdown & Crisis.
Like the conclusion of Johnson, Williams and Fisher’s “Snow” storyarc, the best of the DC Countdown miniseries, Simone, Eaglesham and von Grawbadger’s Villains United miniseries came just short of great close with a series of really, really intriguing twists and revelations, efficiently set in a battle that recalls the last stand of Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch. (The only thing that would’ve been better is for Simone’s story to have ended like The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassiday & the Sundance Kid.) This has been a great ride from start to finish, a model of superteam storytelling. Long live the Secret Six: may they wage total war against the Society once again! Best of the Week. 9/10.
(First off, I got the Perez cover: it’s the better composition.) The first issue of Infinite Crisis lands us squarely in the middle of a desperate multi-front war, and things are already going badly. The fall of the Freedom Fighters truly tragic. Phil Jimenez is certainly at the top of his game here. The action scenes are spectacular, and the meeting on the moon suitable tense. At this point my main concern is that the sprawling story Johns is trying to wrap up may well have too many conflicts, and may never quite cohere into a whole. We’ll see. My fingers are crossed. 8/10, for the art.
Hardcore.
Garth Ennis kicks off the second issue of his Ghost Rider miniseries by introducing a truly despicable new villain in Earl Gustav (who reminds me very much of Doonesbury’s CEO of Universal Petroleum) whose bitterness must secretly be liberating. It allows him to be a bigger bastard than he must have been in the first place. (And for those who might argue Gustav is an extreme, unfair parody of a corporate executive, I recommend watching Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room with the proviso that the real bastards don’t get caught.) Malachi moves ahead with his plan to cover his ass by setting good ol’ Johnny Blaze on a collision course with Hoss, Ruth and Kazaan. I’m praying, in the back of his mind, Johnny knows that he’s being played, that Malachi cannot really free him from the hordes of hell, and that he’ll have to come up with something really slick to make sure he doesn’t get dragged back to hell. With Blaze’s few, almost pathetic, lines, Ennis has got me rooting for the gullible fool. I’m hooked. Crain’s great computer coloring isn’t hurting matters either. Great stuff.) 8/10.
Ennis really knows how to get a reader excited. Structurally this issue of Ghost Rider is very similar to last weeks issue of The Punisher, where Ennis gets us wound up for the unspeakable horror Frank Castle will soon unleash against the white slavery ring. While by todays standards, the horrific retribution exacted by the Spectre in Fleischer and Aparo’s mid-seventies (Weird) Adventure Stories reprinted in the new Wrath of the Spectre trade paperback might seem tame, that’s just because Jim Aparo’s storytelling was (sadly) constrained by the standards of the day. (This volume also contains three previously unseen stories.) It would be great to see some of the more recent pencillers on Hellblazer, the Punisher and Ghost Rider illustrating sinners melting into bloody oozes or getting chopped up by giant scissors. Fleischer’s stories are an interesting study in the same kind of cathartic storytelling Ellis has made his stock in trade in his ** Punisher Max** condensed into single issue stories. My single complaint is that two of the characters in the later stories look far too much like Commissioner Gordon and Clark Kent for their presence not to distract the readers from the story in places. 6/10.
[font=Comic Sans Ms]If you evcr need a reminder of how ugly the world can be, all you have to do is pick up an issue of Azzarello and Risso’s 100 Bullets. In issue #65, it gets uglier than ever. Victor and Loop cool their heels in a hot place, while Lono, the DeMedici’s new warlord reminds us once again what an utter monster he is. The only thing we have to be thankful for is that this time, it wasn’t a woman. And not for the first time, I gotta’ ask y’all to explain something to me: I just didn’t get the point of the lesson Victor arranges for young Loop Hughes. What was the point of that little reminder? How does this connect to what Loop said about Lono “wising Loop up” to their opposition? In a way, that’s one of the things I like about this title. Can’t ever figure out everything in one go. 8/10.[/font
We most certainly have. Just who is another question, though. I’m currently in an argument elsewhere of whether it could possibly be the Pre-Crisis Earth-1 Luthor, who survived Crisis intact, only to later be replaced with the more subtle, less openly criminal post-Crisis Lex.
Could be.
We’ve certainly seen a lot more Silver-Age tendencies from one of the Lex’s - I’m still left wondering which one did which things - the VU Leader seems to have been the President, but he’s a lot calmer than the guy from Superman/Batman #6. I’m wondering about the Lex from Anti-Earth - the Crime Syndicate’s world…
I’m thinking Mockingbird was the post-Crisis Luthor, and that he served out the first term as president and then the fella over in the Society who is obviously Luthor-1, replaced him, no doubt against his will, between terms. Mockingbird then ended up getting his hands on the Battlesuit, after Luthor-1 had to go missing after his rampage.
Oh, and, of course…Luthor-1 isn’t injecting Venom and Kryptonite any more, so his mind has probably stablised some.
Well, I’m also curious as to
Which one is working with Brainiac?
Also, one piece of possible evidence against the arrangement you suggest :
The Calculator tells Luthor what Blue Kryptonite does, whereas Luthor-1 should know. Then again - maybe that scene in Supergirl was Mockingbird, not VU Luthor - and Calculator has been working with both? Not sure.
It seems very likely Calculator’s working with both of them.
I don’t think Calculator knows he’s working with Mockingbird, but I don’t see Mockingbird either not knowing about Calculator, or not making use of him, regardless of which Luthor is which.
I must be the only one in the world who’s not overly enthused with Infinite Crisis. I LIKED when it seemed that the end of the Crisis meant they were moving forward in some deliberate way. The first super-hero was given a nice fate, the JSA were given a historical role and a fitting send-off…DC was making a radical attempt to attract new readers, and in a large way, it worked. For every change that long-time fans revolted at (prime example: Kyle Rayner), there were tons of new fans interested in the new stuff. (Yes, that’s right. The Kyle character kept the Green Lantern title running for ten years. That’s not a sign of general unpopularity.)
For several years now, it looks like they’ve given up on expanding the market and to work on turning the DC Universe into an Bronze-age DC fan wet dream. Hal Jordan’s been dumped as Spectre, brought back as Green Lantern, with the Guardians once again controlling a rebuilding GL Corps. The “Satellite-era” JLA has taken center stage. There’s now a Supergirl who’s Superman’s cousin again. Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again. The JSA is back, and while I like the stories their return has brought about (the Jack Knight Starman series is one of my favorite comics stories of all time), it’s still a step back from the Crisis. Power Girl’s post-Crisis retcon…unchallenged for fifteen years as the new established continuity…is now connected back to the Pre-Crisis world (I assume that’s what’s going on, at least, not without some justification). And now, the ending page of Infinite Crisis # 1. Whoopee.
I have no doubt that this could turn out to be an excellent story. I certainly am interested in why Luthor wants the Ray (at first I thought it was Damage that Psycho-Pirate was dragging off, connected to his role in Zero Hour, but I can see I was wrong. That said, I didn’t notice Damage meeting the same fate as the other Freedom Fighters). The OMAC story still interests me, and how the heroes will deal with it when they present a divided front in many ways. I’m continuing to follow this, and it could well be an entertaining story, but how optimistic can I be about the DC Universe in general if the general trend is “undo everything that changed since 1985”?
Yeah, I’m with Mr Keller, here. DC really grew up post-Crisis, & the Bronze Age nostalgia kick of Alex Ross & that lot is like a regression. Although I am glad to see the GLC back.
CMK, you must have missed the place where Wonder Woman killed a guy, or all of the new heroes popping up in Seven Soldiers (and we’ve been promised more!).
Geeze. DC just cannot win. Depending on who you’re talking too, they’re either betraying their past and slipping into darkness and nihilism, or else they’ve given up on progress and are blindly returning to the stories of the creator’s youths.*
Oh, and Babs is still Oracle. Cassandra Cain is still Batgirl.
*Which strikes me, someone who grew up with the post-Crisis comics as rather odd. I mean, it’s new to me. And the writing, in general, is so good and full of giddy energy that I could hardly care if it’s reminescent of stuff that happened years ago.
Why should I care about Donna Troy? I mean, she’s been dead for, what, a month? Why is her return a big deal?
Also, IMHO, Batman is turning into a tool. He had a great line in Crisis #1, but he’s just turned into a jerk all of a sudden.
I wanna know who the big villian who’s managed everything so well will finally be when (s)he appears, because they’ve really screwed over the heroes big time.
Oh, she’s Wonder Woman, isn’t she? (rampant speculation)