Back later with actual content.
Oh, okay. Thunderbolts this week - it inflicted Skanky-wicks on us as artist - hope that’s not a long-term gig or I’ll drop the book like a hot potato.
Read the new Fables last night. I like the new storyline better than the last one already.
“The Black Knight” (I won’t spoil who he really is, although it’s a minor spoiler) is a much more likeable main character than Jack was.
Tom Strong is on tap, but I’m not excited about it. I can’t make head or tail of Moorcock’s time-travel story.
Nuttin’ for me. Didn’t even see any TPBs that looked interesting. Ah, well. 
Nothing for me either this week.
I didn’t get anything this week, either. Weird. Maybe I’ll catch up on JSA or something.
I picked up Batman : Year One and Sin City’s first volume - haven’t gotten to either yet.
Fables was excellent this week; I agree that I like this focus much better than Jack’s tale. Powers was also new this week - Deena’s powers continue to tease us.
Geez!
Let’s see, what else do we have - Action Comics, starting the Shazam/Superman/Eclipso miniarc, which will build into something over in JSA, and then lead into Day of Vengeance. Captain Marvel’s booked solid.
Conan has a new miniseries starting this week, as well. I wasn’t terribly fond of the art, but it seems pretty decent for Conan material.
JSA! The JSA/JSA arc wrapped this week. Degaton gets his gob smacked, we see a few hints of things to come, and Rip Hunter sees a knot in the timestream “around 1985” that he’s never seen before - one which causes Power Girl a bit of feedback as they pass through it.
Adam Strange - Penultimate issue of the miniseries which will build into the Rann/Thanagar War. Finally, a familiar name for the villain of the piece : Starbreaker. Complete with a one-panel flashback cameo of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold when the JLI dealt with Starbreaker!
FYI, folks: As you know, I’ve been worried that the tighter continuity of Dan Didio’s DCU means I’ll need to buy books I don’t want to get the whole story, which lead me to be less likely to follow books I am interested in. Well DC has addressed this problem with Crisis Counseling, a weekly update of what’s been happening in the DCU that leads in to Infinite Crisis.
A pretty neat idea, IMO. I was worried about getting into any of the post-Countdown minis for fear of not knowing enough of what was happening in Flash or JSA, because I don’t buy comics I don’t want just to complete stories anyomore. It’s just a waste of money. Now I don’t have to.
–Cliffy
That is a nice feature. I’ll definitely follow OMAC Project and possibly Villains United, but I’m not nearly as interested in the other two miniseries.
The links to the previews of the individual miniseries have some PDFs. I couldn’t get the OMAC one - some kind of download problem. The Rann/Than one was black-and-white, and missing dialogue balloons, so it didn’t tell us much. The Villains United one was colored, but no dialogue - still, it had some interesting cameos.
The Day of Vengeance one, however, sheds some light (pun intended) on Eclipso’s new host for that crossover…
Well, as of Ultimates 2 issue 2, it’s still very unclear whether or not Loki is all in Thor’s head or not. One thing is damned sure though…that belt DID give him his strength. And if it was a “godly” artifact, it sure didn’t have much in the way of protection.
I wonder what that could be. Why, the possibilities are… infinite.
Your subtlety knows no bounds. Then again, anytime a comic says the word ‘1985’ I know exactly what they’re talking about.
Ultimates 2 - I’d almost forgotten. Yes, it appears that either Thor is insane, or they’ve gone back to the mythological roots - see, Thor of Mythology had a belt that enabled him to wield Mjolnir…
Excellent issue, though.
I just got JSA. I thought it was pretty anti-climactic, the only real highlight being the glimpse of a future JSA in the person of Starwoman and her mention of “Tyler’s time-traveling pills.” The “stop the time traveler and everything is back to normal” is totally a cliche of the genre…it doesn’t even explain why that would work, I’d have to assume that Degaton’s “Red Morgue” assassins only exist as a result of Truman’s assassination which the JSAx2 retro-prevented. Quite frankly, I don’t even get how Degaton got to be so dangerous, in his prior appearances, the only time-travel equipment he ever had or used was Professor Zee’s machine. Atom Smasher seems to be losing his resolve, which does not make me happy at all…I think it’s refreshing to have a hero who’s fed up with the revolving-door justice that super-villains take advantage of. The Power Girl situation seems to be coming to a head, though I don’t see why the Arion origin for her was unsatisfactory.
Oh, one other highlight…the first use (that I know of) of the word “retcon” within the pages of a comic book.
Do I have mixed feelings about this idea! On the one hand, I’m sure it really does benefit fans (and the DC sales department) who don’t want to buy every single issue that crosses over umpteen million titles.
On the other hand, isn’t the need for a page like this a sign of a much larger problem? If a reader can’t just easily follow the storyline within one title, and needs to rely on an external source to fill in the gaps between issues, there’s a problem in Mudville.
On my own list this week was The Atheist #1, a perfectly timed antidote to TV’s Revelations attack of the glurge. According to the author, the lead character is “A misanthropic genius who uses his off-the-charts intelligence to save the world from all sorts of bizarre threats. He doesn’t do it out of the kindness of his Grinch-sized heart, but because these far out menaces are the only thing that stimulate him intellectually.”
That pitch was enough to induce me to trek to a comic shop that’s far beyond “local” - my LCS didn’t stock it - to check it out. On the one hand, there’s a lot of potential for playing an atheist as a misanthrope to grate. (Judging by the author’s disclaimers at the end, he’s perhaps overly aware of that possibility). Most atheists I know are warm, fuzzy people. I, being a misanthropic atheist, found the prospect of seeing someone starring in a comic to be irresistable. Besides, it got extra brownie points for featuring a black lead character, because we don’t have nearly enough of those in the medium.
After reading it I can say it holds promise, although it doesn’t yet live up to the quote from the author. Lots of potential to get this either very right or very, very wrong, but I’m encouraged - best of all, not just out of starvation for a believable atheist character, but out of the potential for “The X Files” done with a skeptical - and right - lead. In this issue, ghosts appear to be coming back from the dead to inhabit the bodies of the living, converging on one town, and partying till their host bodies wear out. “The Atheist” has been called in to investigate, after previously finding the mundane roots to a series of apparently supernatural situations.
Oddly enough, Image, which is releasing it, doesn’t appear to have it on their web site. The nominal “publisher”, Desperado Publishing, can’t correctly spell “Atheist” consistently, but does reveal that it will be an ongoing black and white series.
On the flip side, I also read Astro City: Confessions as a result of a recent thread here on the Dope. I found Life in the Big City to be generally well-executed but tinged with the Silver Age nostalgia that others feel, but I don’t. Unfortunately, many of the things that bothered me about the first volume were present in Confessions as well. As a coming-of-age story, which is the main plot of the book, it’s not bad, even if I find some of the problems faced by the Altar Boy a little too pat and easily resolved.
There are certainly elements that I enjoyed. If you’re going to riff on Batman, turning him into
a vampire
certainly is an interesting and novel twist. The reactions of the “general public” are very convincing, from the varying reactions to the perceived effectiveness of the super hero community to the tinges of racism and classism in the coverage of the Shadow Hill murders. I could go on in this vein for a while. There’s some meat to chew on here, even if I find many - nay, all - of the super hero characters way too clean-scrubbed to be believable. Even with that, I would reacted much more positively had the ending not been such a cop-out:
Instead of sticking with the source of the evil being rooted in humanity, it turns out the evil’s coming from generic outerspace alien beasties. Even the Shadow Hill killer apparently isn’t human. Had Busiek stuck with his theme of both good and evil being present in the same people at the same time, with one face or the other showing depending on the situation, I think the story would have been much more powerful.
Also, if I’m to view Astro City as a mature piece of superhero fiction, I need to see better representations of female characters. For what is supposed to be a thriving city (cities, if you count Shadow Hill as its own separate entity), female characters are noticeably absent. Sure, there are civilian women in the group shots and the occasional female superhero shoved to the background of a panel somewhere, but otherwise, women aren’t there. The few who do show up are either crazy (Winged Victory), or evil:
the commander of the alien fleet, and the vampire responsible for the Confessor’s condition
.
Ultimates 2: I think they are just gonna keep us guessing as to whether Thor is truely the god or not, and I like it just fine that way. Actually I hope he is crazy. I prefer a little more grounded story. Aliens are bad enough, but mythology really confuses things.
Ultimate X-Men: Xavier is a bastard. Well he has bastardcidal tendencies anyway. Ultimae Xavier is really not above reading/overriding peoples minds as he sees fit. I first was disturbed inthe first year when he mentioned he would read authors’ minds instead of waiting for them to publish their next stories. Invasion of privacy much, X?
Marvel Knights Spider-Man: Well, I was gonna drop MKSM after the first arc because I just didn’t care for Millar’s depiction, but since it’s a new team AND a New Avengers tie-in I gave it a shot. I like it better than the first arc, but really, I hate when they blatantly copy DC characters (Squadron Supreme aside) and treat them like they are new. I know it’s an ‘homage’ but really.
Toyfare: “Meesa tink Annie go boombad!” “Son of a bitch! He screwed us again!!!”
No.
Seriously, while I tend to agree with you theoretically as a matter of my personal taste, it’s not an accident that by far the best-selling comics, month after month, are books that exist withint cohesive superhero universes. People like this stuff, even if you and I ain’t those people. There’s nothing wrong with giving them what they want. Especially since in the case of DC, it subsidizes the publication of other comics that are not loaded down with that baggage.
You don’t like comics that aren’t self-contained, you don’t buy 'em. The problem only comes (for you, for the industry) when you buy comics you don’t like – not when they merely exist.
If a reader can’t just easily follow the storyline within one title, and needs to rely on an external source to fill in the gaps between issues, there’s a problem in Mudville.
The Atheist sounds neat, but I too am bothered by the fact that he helps people through boredom. I’m an atheist, and the reason I help people is compassion.
I think this is somewhat unfair. There just aren’t any women in Confessions because it’s a story about Batman, and Batman’s a dude. Yes, more of the KBAC stories have centered on male protagonists, but Busiek’s got more admirable female characters than most – Marta from the first Shadow Hill story, for instance, or Asta, and the Lois Lane-analogue from one of the more “recent” issues wasn’t exactly heroic but you sure felt her shock and bewilderment.
–Cliffy
Whoops. The sentence “If a reader” was Selkie’s, which I failed to delete when quoting.
–Cliffy
My others this week : Majestic #4, which I continue to enjoy; Wolverine #26 - which came out before, and I wanted to pick up to see just who Hydra’s getting hold of; and Exiles #62 where we’re finally getting to the background of the world hopping.
True enough that no one’s forcing me to buy them (and I don’t intend to), but I can’t think of any other storytelling medium that expects readers to jump from one title to another the way that the comics industry does. If I watch 24, the producers don’t structure their storytelling in a way that I either have to watch The Shield also, or rely on a summary of events told in another medium (the web, a book, a videogame) to understand what happens from one episode to the next. If they did, they’d do an effective job of alienating a viewer from 24, and if such crossovers becaome commonplace, I’ll bet the TV audience would flee in droves and television viewership overall would plummet.
DC’s throwing an awful lot of promotional weight at this for me to ignore it as “just another comic that doesn’t interest me.” These megaevents may indeed be giving the existing fans what they want, but I have to wonder at the long-term effect on the industry. Not every title needs to be new reader friendly, but Countdown to Infinite Crisis - which I generally liked, BTW - really threw in my face how continuity heavy and interrelated the storytelling will be. With a $1 price point and heavy promotion within the local comics shops, this is exactly the kind of title I would love to see used for new readers, but they’d never understand it. Heck, I even considered it but decided that I just don’t know nearly enough about the DCU to justify it.
In a Batman story I don’t expect a major female character, but Astro City juggles a large cast and aside from Marta (who headlined one of the two Astro Cities stories I’ve really liked), I find the absence of female characters in speaking roles striking. Off the top of my head, the only ones I can think of are Winged Victory (nuts), and Mary from the Christian group (and even she barely appears on panel compared to the others). But, two “evil” characters critical to the plot of Confessions, although understandably receiving minor panel time, are female. Busiek even goes out of his way to make sure an otherwise gender-neutral “alien badguy” is female.