Getting started. Haven’t read mine yet…
Guardian #2: Grant Morrison reveals his writing secrets: “I prepared myself for this with a firery cocktail of absinthe and crack.” Seriously, Morrison doesn’t quite match the breathless giddiness of the first issue, but this remains a very fine read. Morrison isn’t my favorite comic writer, but goddamn if he doesn’t sometimes hit the nail on the head with everything I love about superheroes and the comic genre. SUBWAY PIRATES!!! PRESIDENT CLINTON!! WOO!
Green Lantern Secret Files 2005: I should know better than to waste my money on these things. The first story, about Hal’s love of flying, was decent. The profiles are worthless if you read Rebirth, or any Green Lantern story ever (besides hinting on what baddies we’ll be seeing in Hal’s new series), and the second story, a deleted scene from Rebirth, should ahve stayed on the cutting room floor.
OMAC #1: Finally! I can share in the plodding pace and utter lack of excitement too! Also, I don’t know who the hell this woman is or how she knows Batman. Woo! I didn’t like it, so I’ll use this space to bitch about the OMAC tie-ins that I’ve bgun to see about, such as in Superman. I was happy to see that Infinite Crisis was branching off into all the differnet miniseries, because that meant that the regular titles could go on as usual, and the crossover excite,ent could happen there. Not so, apparently. Well, I’m reading my usual stuff, and the minis, but nothing else. I’d better be able to follow this thing, or it’s Dan DiDio’s ass!
Birds of Prey #82: Black Canary and Wildcat kick ass. What’s not to love? But I just started following this title again, what’s up with Oracle? Besides guilt over Beetle, I mean.
Batman Dark Detective #1: hey! Batman’s not a total asshole! I love it! The Joker’s dialogue was a bit much, but I haven’t seen him be this smart and dangerous in a long time.
Teen Titans #24: Luthor offers Connor a game of solitaire. Superboy cutting loose was well-written, especially what he did to Vic, but it seems a bit much after the big fight with Light. i coulda used a breather. Now, can anyone give me a primer on the Outsiders?
Freedom Force - The miniseries continues to recap the storyline of the first game, including the two best bits of dialogue from the game.
Microwave : “Freedom Force demands the return of our comrade. Demand : Not Negotiable.”
and
Time Master : “I want to live forever.”
Man-Bot : “Good for you. Join a gym.”
Glad you got OMAC, Menocchio - the tie-in with the new issue of Superman is very minor. Basically, he’s attacked by an OMAC Android. The fight is short.
Outsiders primer : Arsenal (nee Speedy) and Nightwing (nee Robin) started up a new team of do-gooders, funded by a corporation that turned out to be a front for Waynetech, and had been being fed information on criminal targets by Deathstroke, disguised as Batman. The membership includes Indigo, a robot from the future who sort of popped up one day - see the **Graduation Day ** event for the genesis of her storyline. Actually, that’d be a good thing to check out anyway, since it pretty much sets up both **Teen Titans ** and Outsiders. The other members are Shift, who is apparently Metamorpho’s cast-off leavings; Thunder, a metahuman gal who counts Black Lightning in her family tree, providing the obligatory link to the previous team; Grace, team bruiser and former bouncer; Jade and Starfire you know.
If you care (and why would you?), Sasha Bordeaux was a character introduced in the Batbooks between No Man’s Land event and the Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive event.
Sasha was a boydguard imposed on Bruce Wayne by Waynetech, which was worried about his safety during the urban unrest right after No Man’s Land. While Bats tried to keep her at a distance, she was on the ball and eventually figured out his secret. She even put on a mask and went out with him to fight crime a few times, although she wasn’t very good at it. They became close, and there was some romantic tension there.
Then, Vesper Fairchild, one of the girlfriends Bruce used to enhance his dilettane image, was murdered in Wayne Manor. Bruce was arrested for the murder, and Sasha was arrested as an accessory. Eventually Bruce escaped prison but he left Sasha to rot while he tried to track down Vesper’s real killer. Sasha could have gotten out by exposing Bruce’s secret identity, but she stayed silent even though he had abandoned her.
Eventually Bats found the real killer and proved his innocence. Of course, after Sasha got out of jail, their relationship had soured somewhat. 
She was approached by Checkmate, and she agreed to sign up. I think that’s the last anyone saw of her until OMAC #1.
This period, by the way, from the NML through BW: M?, was the best the batbooks had or have been for a long time, IMO. BW: Fugitive was not as good and it crossed over more than just within the three Batman titles, so it was harder to follow. But most of the stuff before that was really quite good.
–Cliffy
I remember. Unfortunately, I left for college and stopped my collection just as that stuff was winding up. That was when Detective Comics was done in funky Noiry colors, right? Fun stuff.
Yup. Much of that 'Tec run in available in TPB, although not all of it, I think. I don’t know if any of Brubaker’s Batman is in TPB (other than Bruce Wayne: M/F itself) and I don’t think any of Grayson’s Gotham Knights is, which is too bad, because that was a fine book.
–Cliffy
Teen Titans was most excellent this week, of course. If Johns keeps this up, he might even make me stop missing Young Justice so very very much.
JLA : Classified - some more wacky hijinx, Gardner being Gardner, and a bittersweet ending that came outta left field, tone wise. Oh, and more naked Bea.
Thunderbolts - So, apparently, Photon/Genis/Captain Marvel’s powers have changed… again. And the nega-bands are gone. And where’s Rick, by the way? Sigh. Still probably the second best team book in the core Marvel U, after…
Young Avengers - which continues to impress. Time gets a little wacky, but that’s to be expected with Kang around.
And outside the core MU, there’s Exiles, which is building to its end, and I can only hope that the promise yielded by the last panel of this week’s issue is fully explored next time.
Seven Soldiers : Guardian - Meh. At least we’re hopefully done with the subway pirates thing.
Birds of Prey - Whew. I was worried for a sec that they were gonna off Wildcat. Nice to see Booster Gold calling in about Ted; Helena’s plot begins to take shape.
Green Lantern Secret Files - In the second story, I liked the promise of Hal’s bond with the Spectre being “necessary” in a cosmic sense, even if we haven’t yet been told why. The first story was nice, but I was picking up some homoerotic overtones there which were just a tiny bit creepy, especially with Hal and his dad. Plus, rule #1 of being a Green Lantern : Don’t leave your power rings on a barrel at a nigh-abandoned airstrip while you go joyriding in a jet. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Conan - Nicely done story this month. Classic feeling, even.
Manhunter - Ramping up for the Who Hunts the Manhunters? plotline even as Kate finishes dealing with the courtroom disruption.
Spider-Man and Human Torch - Heh. This one, I liked best of all so far.
Livewires - An intriguing twist at the end. Some very amusing AIM humor.
Cable and Deadpool - Parodies the recent Wolverine arc.
Astonishing X-Men - Lovely. Loved the ending.
Still to go : Authority; Ex Machina.
New Books for May 18: a good week, overall. A good number of the books kicked into high gear.
Breaking Repetitive Cycles & New Starts.
Not long ago, I wrote about Garth Ennis and the different strategems he’s used to get around the inherent limits (and monotony of writing the Punisher: by making humorous hay of what’s essentially a grim, grinding and absurdly lethal war on organized crime; and now by adding much depth to this treatment of Frank Castle’s foes (the Kitchen Irish, the military brass and the Russians in Mother Russia) and allies (the MI-6 man in Irish, Nick Fury in Russia). Palimiotti and Gray, Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker are all pulling off something similar in Hawkman, Daredevil and The Authority: Revolution.
As much as I’ve enjoyed most of Bendis and Maleev’s run on Daredevil, the utterly unnecessary “Golden Age” arc, was a real disappointment. It seemed to signal a creative dead end: now that Matt Murdock’s secret was out: all that was left was to watch him struggle to maintain a halfway “normal” life as a big time lawyer/superhero, while being tortured by every clown claiming a stake in his version of Hell’s Kitchen, or out for revenge for past beatings. The theatrical use of “eye witness testimony” in “Decalogue” seemed like a good stop gap solution at first, but then I thought that ten such monologues could get pretty boring too, and once again I was ready to drop the book. After reading DAREDEVIL #73, I feel like Al Pacino’s Don in Godfather III, every time I get away, “They pull me back in!” The unexpected conflict between the wife and victim of the serial killer took me by surprise. I didn’t expect the relationships between “the witnesses” it to get so exciting. Right now, it looks like I’m riding this arc, right out to the end.
Regarding HAWKMAN #40, a friend wrote:
There isn’t much I can add to this, except to say, like Ennis’ on the Punisher, Palmiotti & Gray’s plan to kill off Carter Hall, may well be an attempt to break a confining cycle of Carter’s gloom over the Hawk’s violent cycle of bloody death and reincarnation (and frustrated lust and desire over Kendra) by opening up new ground, and having Charlie Parker stepping in as the new Hawkman. It may work out well in the long run, but I’ll miss the sexual tension that existed between Carter and Kendra, at least over the short term. Hopefully the brutal, dark nature of metahuman warfare in Saint Roch will continue to make up for it. I for one, look forward to Parker and Saunder’s bloody revenge on Hawkman’ foes. And as ever, here, Jose’s inks over Bennett’s pencils rule.
AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #8 (OF 12) I’m surprised to see people complaining. Ed Brubaker clearly saw something we all missed: the team’s been nearly rudderless since getting schooled by the powers that be in Brave New World. Nowadays I think that, from that point in time, the team should have either: Quit the Earth, and gone off to explore the bleed - perhaps running into and taking on the Four from the great unknown while Elijah and company went after them from Earth. Or retaliated, taking over the government, and thus leading us directly to this point. (Though I cannot blame Robbie Morrison and Dwayne Turner for what they did with the team: the Jenny Fractal story was very good, and for the most part, they were just trying to give us fans what we wanted.)
We should be grateful that Brubaker is clearing the decks here: breaking the demoralizing cycle of having the powers that be scold the Authority (and perhaps DC, scolding us fans for wanting to see more of them), and opening the door to more global @ss-kicking next time around; or a brave new (Miracleman-ish?) start of some kind in the future. Personally, I find it pretty damn exciting to see the new Jenny, every bit as nasty as the old, kick the demoralized members of the team back into gear (lots of nice character bits here). She may be annoying as all hell, but all I can say is, “how quickly they forget”. This is the Jenny we know and love. (Perhaps Loeb is trying to emulate her example in developing his new Supergirl.) Apollo flash frying the spies is a hopeful promise of things to come. The teams got it’s teeth back. Hallelujah! (We have four issues to go, the length of the old story arcs. They know their target now, and after a quick detour to bring aboard a new/old Doctor, might it be too much to hope for a fast moving ending involving the near destruction of even more cities?
Alternate views of the Batman
BATMAN DARK DETECTIVE #2 - As amusing as Harvey Dent’s encounter with the Joker was (and somewhat contrived the Scarecrow’s delayed gas attack) the meat of this installment is Wayne’s private conversation with Sliver St. Cloud. Their discussion turned encounter underscores what’s been missing from the rather extreme portrayals of the Batman we’ve been seeing in the other Batbooks: Wayne’s simple humanity (something I’m acutely aware of lately, having belated seen several episodes from the first season of Batman Animated on DVD), and the idea that the Batman is BOTH men, despite his self-deluding, self-denying comment to St. Cloud, early in their conversation. He’s pretty sympathetic and intense here, something we rarely seen outside of his encounters with Selena Kyle in Catwoman. Equally refreshing is the Bruce Wayne we’ve been seeing in Willinghams Robin (though readers are in the right when they say this version of the character doesn’t seem to fit in with the impatient “dick” of most of WarGames, or the omnipotent version Morrison gave us.
ROBIN #138 was really dense, packed with interesting incident and characterization. For one thing, there’s an interesting trend developing here: Willingham’s Tim Drake seems to prefer to use his fists as a last resort, to fend off surprise attacks… Whenever possible, he prefers to talk his foes into inaction, and so far it’s been surprisingly interesting, akin to the ‘sweat box” scenes in TV cop shows. Last issue he took an honor bound Japanese assassin out of pursing the open contract on his life. Here, he kidnaps Oswald Cobblepot, and in the process we’re treated to the Penguins refreshing, if cynical, view of the relationship between Batman and the Joker. I hope Willingham continues to treat us to such scenes in the future.
As mentioned in a review above, a good number of readers have had problems with the way Batman has been portrayed as of late, but in Willingham’s Robin we see an interesting alternative to the “dick” everyone’s been complaining about. Here Bruce Wayne is quite dark, even scary at times, but he’s also a lot more thoughtful, subtler person, and very respectful of his protégé. He’s willing to give Robin space, even when Robin attempts to deceive him. It’s instructive that Bruce settles for terrifying “Edward Drake” instead of beating him for leads. It makes me think that Bruce is well aware that Robin has chosen to shelve his resentment over being sent away while Stephanie lay dying.
Finally I never would have expected the military equivalent of a corporate headhunter to attempt to recruit Tim away from Batman. This is a really refreshing idea. Along with Robin’s attempt to politely decline becoming Bruce’s Ward, by creating a fictional “Uncle Edward”, it serves to underscores the point that, of all of the Batman’s accolytes, this Robin may eventually outgrow his mentor, and move on to bigger, better things. (Much as I love Cassandra Cain, I gotta’ concede that she is kinda’ limited, compared to Tim’s brainpower. She’s reached her potential. Robin’s barely touched his.) The Batman may need a Robin. However this particular Robin may not really need a Batman.
Even with Sandra Hope’s competent inking, Damion Scott’s page looks like a mosaic, of colored tile or stained glass. When everything pops forward in an image: nothing pops forward, and like some of Scott McDaniel’s issues of Richard Dragon, it all becames too hard to read, in this case obscuring what has are otherwise pretty good page layouts. (I am really hoping McDaniel doesn’t have the same problems with line quality. I’m sure this was part of the reason the Dragon title was cancelled.)
This is the second book I was planning on dropping, but despite the art, Willingham’s writing keeps pulling me back. His Robin which is beginning to be as surprising and interesting as Catwoman when Ed and Darwyn Cooke jumpstarted their revamp.
Dangerous Games & High Stakes Writing.
In BIRDS OF PREY #82, it’s become clear that Gail Simone has set up an interesting parallel path for two of the Birds: the Canary and the Huntress. Both women are engaged in high stakes infiltration missions. Despite the immediacy of the threats the Canary faces, (and here she finds a clever way out, by playing on male pride and “face” issues), hers may well end up the lesser challenge. She and Ted have the luxury of striking at their foes and getting out of town. The Huntress’ ballsy gambit (and it’s still unclear what Helena’s long term goal is) succeed or fail, there is no sure way out short of sacrificing her identity as Helena Bertinelli, which generates a great deal of suspense. I also like how Simone has Helena build her own crew, from Josh in a distant supporting role, to Savant and Creote on the front lines. One finds oneself wondering how she’ll ever go back to the Birds now. In one meeting with the Mob, she seems to have flown straight over the point of no return.
In BLACK PANTHER #4, Reginald Hudlin presents us with a really exciting story of a nation, and a king, under siege. The Black Knight’s address to the troops was a great reflection on the cynical abuse of idealists throughout history, and I love the fact that the US has not yet entered the fray (I thought the NSC was sponsoring Klaw’s mission). This very timely story (given the raging debate over economic imperialism abroad) serves to underscore one rarely acknowledged problem when a hegemon is intent on imposing unilateralist policies in an era of resurgent nationalism. Globalism rarely allows others to have any pride in their cultures and traditions, and against some cultures and creeds, this is a recipe for disaster. John Romita Jr. provides some great artwork here, easily rivaling his work on Mark’s Wolverine.
Guest artist Matthew Clark’s page layouts for TEEN TITANS #24 were pretty good. I wish I could say I liked his rendering style more, however. It reminds me very much of Whilce Portacios work, which I honestly think has gone downhill since Wetworks. Otherwise this was a pretty exciting kick off to the four part “Insiders” crossover with the Outsiders, where two major subplots come to a head: the nagging question of Connor Kent’s twin legacies, and to which he feels greater allegiance, and the mystery of who is the mole inside the Outsiders. Given the severity of the smackdown Superboy lays down on the Titans, particularly Wondergirl (who is literally in tears when he takes her down) and Robin, his closest, most reliable friend in the world, I half expect that either Superboy will have to leave the Titans for a while, or some of his closest friends will, even if they realize he was under Luthor’s mental control (which may lead into the re-shuffling of team members promised in the “Titans of Tommorrow” story). Despite Tim’s unspoken alienation towards Batman (discussed above), I wouldn’t be surprised if Willingham or Johns had the third Boy Wonder ask his mentor for some very special (and very green) “K” when Christmas roles around this year.
Anyone Else?
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this:
One fun line in this issue is Carter Hall’s utterly unapologetic response, to Alan Scott, who badgers Carter about ethics (not killing villains, and not lobotomizing them, a clear reference to Dr. Light in Identity Crisis).
Carter’s Response? Something along the lines of “Buzz off Alan. If the JSA are gonna’ be wimps about something like this, I guit the JSA! Effective Right Now!”
Hardcore, Man.
The Goon hits its usual high standars, too.
That title is popular with my comics store owner, as well as myself.
I only picked up JLA Classified #7, and I thought it sucked. As much as I love a lot of those characters, and as much as I used to love the creative team, I am so over this. The current miniseries has been nothing but a self-indulgent, masturbatory waste–and not even very funny.
JSA #73:
Minor comments:
I was happy to see Crimson in action again. Even under these circumstances.
Spectre/Eclipso Luv? Eeeeeeeeeeeeew!
I hope Billy will manage to reveal his identity to the JSA. I want some Billy/Court…uhm…courting, dangit.
Major comments:
This issue has assuaged my last couple fears about Villains United.
Some reservations I had about VU from the start:
The villains uniting, even with the good reason, didn’t seem…workable. And I was afraid that Black Adam would have to be taken out of character to fit in.
But between VU and JSA #73, we have demonstrations of dissention in the ranks, proof that not every villain is joining, and Black Adam’s reasons for joining are all perfectly in character for him. Gail Simone and Geoff Johns impress me again!
I feel sorry for Atom Smasher, I really do. He did something he thought was right at the time, and it turned out to be a big mistake. Now he has his own concience, and the entire JSA telling him that. It can’t be good for the poor kid.
Manhattan Guardian #2:
I’m going to miss the Subway Pirates. They were nifty.
Teen Titans #24:
Holy goddamn hells!
If what I think is going on with Superboy is, in fact, going on with Superboy, it had better get out and come back to bite Luthor in the ass. This is SO much worse than what Zatanna and the others did to Light, IMO. His mind may have been fiddled with, but at the core it was still his. This…this is…even worse.
And the bit with the Outsiders…I…well, I hope that isn’t permanent…
I’m referring to Indigo being ‘Brainiac 8’, of course.
I agree: I love what … Indigo had going with Shift,… … it balanced out the sloppier sexual antics of the “older” members of the crew.
Another thing I forgot to mention,… it’s likely just an incidental throwaway bit, but it seems the ressurrected Darla has taken a page from John Constantine’s book. She walks the synchronicity freeway: she just starts walking towards her goal, and reality bends over backwards to get her there as fast as possible. It likely won’t matter a whit in the story to follow, but I thought it a curious bit.
Again from new books elsewhere: I re-read Robin #138 last night. (I loved Damion Scott’s previous work on Batgirl). There’s a lot to be said for Scott’s layouts. His storytelling works, and the fight scenes at the end are quite good. Robin and the super-soldiers moves flow in and out of each other very well. Perhaps people would have less of a problem if he went back to using panel borders. That’s def. part of the problem here. I’m not sure what else I can say about his rendering of the figures. Here it seems like he want to avoid rendering a lot of backgrounds in certain pages. I also still think lack of variation in the line weights remains a problem.
It’s really a shame. Scott is on to something here.
Anyone seen Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #13?
Who the hell is the big guy supposed to be? I mean, he can heal wounds with his freaking eyes…and he’s some kinda religious fanatic too.