Here it is! Got a couple of good ones. Enjoyed Justice League a lot, and the new Bomb Queen came out - but Incredible Herc is my pick of the week.
Trinity - I do hope Morgaine and Enigma get to do something other than kibitz sometimes soon. I’m enjoying the series, but good god, I’m getting tired of Enigma bitching about Morgaine dissing the Bat…though I can’t get enough of Morgaine dissing the Bat - it’s a refreshing change from EVERY OTHER TIME THESE THREE CHARACTERS INTERACT - but it’s like fanboy bickering on the page, and that should be left for Superman-Prime.
Flash - My main comment is that the next issue commentary confuses me… This issue ends with Iris appearing to be speed-aging again…next issue, nothing about that, at all…just chasing the monkey - you’d think Wally’d be more concerned with Iris, even with Grodd’s hypnotic suggestion. Also, Jay has a hell of a butt for an old guy, apparently. >_>
Superman’s Reign - Either I’m unusually wise to the way the genre foreshadows things, or the twist concerning the Atom was telegraphed by a mile. As soon as Manhunter started talking about not trusting Flash, but didn’t say anything about Atom - who Superman had in his hands for a long time - I knew that Atom had to be one of Superman’s agents. Didn’t guess on the choice of agent, though. Though I WAS wondering how she would play into the story. Odd continuity aspect in the History Lesson story, though…the bit with Superman’s wife and the Miraclo happened BEFORE the Ultra-Humanite fight - which is to say, Tangent Superman shows him giving her the pill, whereas the Ultra-Humanite fight happened some indeterminate time after the end of the '98 Tangents. (Humanite’s initial attack is in the process of happening at the end of Superman.) I like this version better, though.
I’m not liking Trinity. Nothing that happens in it really interests me. I’m disappointed, because I expected to enjoy it.
Superman/Batman #49 - not bad, but now we’re left with the question of who’s manipulating Lana?
Action: I don’t care for the art. I was never a big fan of Swan and this is too Swanesque for my taste.
Cat came off a very Edie-ish (Desperate Housewives).
Can I assume from this her time as President Luthor’s Press Secretary is no longer canon? As far as I can tell from JLA, Luthor was president; that hasn’t been retconned away.
Is Ron Troupe still married to Lucy Lane in current continuity? There’s really no reason why not.
Picked up the Eternals TPB. Kirby characters, Gaiman story, Romita art–what’s not to love.
I like Sersei’s new look.
Tangent: Superman’s Reign - Never read any earlier Tangent stuff, but having no problem following along with this, and am enjoying it, so good work.
Trinity - Okay, but no awesome. Konvikt (sigh) and Graak still look like they’ve escaped from some weird Dr. Seuss book. Black Canary’s JLA rolecall was just unnecessary, and Morgana and stupid-mask-guy Greek chorusing away is just wasted space too.
Birds of Prey - Bedard seems to have a much better grasp of the Birds than McKeever did, and he’s making this his own without completely losing the feel the book had when Simone had it (unlike, say, the sad state of the All-New Atom 
).
Brave & Bold - As a start to a new arc, not too interesting. The team-up structure felt off, given the way Boston Brand’s power works, and I don’t buy the characterization of either one of those two and what happened to that homeless woman.
I thought it another near miss from Gaiman, rather like 1602 in that regard. Not bad but it went over some well worn ground that he’d already done and the lack of pay off in the end hurt it. I did really like the Romita art, though.
I am still loving Incredible Herc, though. So is Kereberos a skrull or the long hinted at Coyote? I’m voting skrull just because the Coyote one is too obvious.
Let’s see…
Kick Ass #3: Ok, finally some story. In retrospect, I can see why he had his pacing this way, but nonetheless, still very inefficient. I’m now very interested in what happens in the rest of the series.
Titans #3: Hmmm…not sure what to think of this. I’ll give it the rest of the arc. Is it me, or is the Titan’s history fraught with daddy issues and team in-fighting? JLA (except the JL/JLI/JLE era), JSA, FF, The Authority, Avengers, and maybe X-Men have much, much less of this (X-Men has way more in-fighting).
Angel #8: Everything was good until they went into the odd story line of what happened immediately after the series finale. The art is not helping at all. This was the most straight-forward issue. It also looks like they’re going to milk Spike’s story, which might deserve it’s own story. Overall, worse than Buffy, and I hope it survives the loss of Whedon.
Astonishing: Great fucking run. I like Kitty Pride. I can see her making an explosive comeback. I thought Armor would’ve been a casualty. The only thing to make me pause was Agent Brand and Beast.
I figured I’d give Checkmate one more shot, given how good it was with Rucka. I was wrong. :rolleyes: It’s all “Ooo a new character” and “Ooo war and pollution are bad” and "Ooo he’s the ultimate warrior with pretty much the exact **same fucking power as ** Trauma in the Initiative only not as interesting. I think this is the writer so proud of making a new guy that he’s gonna run the book into the ground promoting him.
Picked up Flash to support Williams’ art, which I really liked on Robin. Not so good here. And geez, Wally, less bitching more punching, ok?
JLA was good but odd. Black Canary brought down the hammer as she should have, but sadly the big bad of the book is neither interesting nor a surprise. Also, an odd new look for Red Tornado. You;d think they’d want him to look happier, not so grim. :dubious:
Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin (Fantagraphic Books, $65) I love the idea: Collect everything Bill Mauldin drew professionally until his discharge from the US Army in 1945, in chronological order, in two huge, lushly-produced volumes. I’m a huge fan of Mauldin and have had dog-eared copies of The Brass Ring and Up Front kicking around my garret for over 20 years.
I don’t think his reputation is well-served by this collection. Just like Jack Cole (The Plastic Man Archives), Will Eisner (The Spirit Archives) and R. Crumb (The Complete Crumb) would have been better-presented by having the first volume or two skipped–or its contents interspersed with later, better examples of their work–the second volume of this set is invaluable to all fans of Mauldin’s grunt’s-eye view of the war. Vol.1 is mostly dross, fumbling around as the man learns to draw and form captions for his cartoons. I understand the scholarly importance of showing the whole spectrum of his career, but the fan in me wishes I’d had the option of just buying Vol. 2 or a “Best Of…” compilation.
Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphcs Books, $49.95) This book makes kinda the opposite point. Jaime Hernandez was feakishly good right out of the gate as an illustrator, and the fact that he kept getting better end better is just one of those unexplainable mysteries of life. His writing didn’t follow the same curve, exactly. The early Rand Race/Mechanix stuff didn’t do an awful lot for me back in the day and chiefly showed how much better a writer his brother Gilbert was. But he made some daring choices–concentrate on the Maggie/Hopey relationship, split them up for about a decade, put some serious pounds on Maggie, replace Rand Race with sympathetic losers like Ray and Doyle, etc. Around the time of “The Death of Speedy Ortiz,” he’d outstripped his brother as a writer and pretty much the rest of the world as an artist. The only way they could improve on re-presenting these stories (this Omnibus- type collection represents about the tenth printing of some of these stories) is to put it on huge, “Marvel Treasury Edition”-sized pages like it does for selected Chris Ware comics.
Palookaville #19 by Seth (Drawn & Quarterly, $4.95) I haven’t followed this title in years, and this is apparently chapter 3 of God knows how many. It holds up, though. The hero, a 60-ish coot completely lost in the modern world, has to park his mother into a nursing home. She’s lost to dementia and Alzheimer’s, and he’s taken some early steps down the same road. The whole second half of the comic is him looking at various trinkets, toys and perfume bottles in his mother’s apartment and extrapolating her life, tastes and personality from his findings. Seth, a genius at spot blacks, clean lines and varying line thicknesses, balances indy sensibilities with extreme sentimentality more effectively than even Tony Millionaire. I can’t imagine any other artist making this work, but Seth does, and I need to track down some back issued of this comic fast.
Boy, JLA really shows how much comics have changed since I read them in the 70s. A member of the Justice League admitting he watched two other members having sex? Just the idea of sex in the Hall Of Justice, between two unmarried people (they are unmarried, aren’t they?) is unexpected, but to have another member admit watching? Did Robin used to use that same Justice League perv video feed to rub out knuckle-children to Wonder Woman in the shower?Well, I have to admit I probably would have.
Given that Magnus and the Chief are involved in this, my main thought upon seeing his new body was Didn’t they learn their lesson about giving their mechanical men cool black bodies after the Brain incident? Clearly not. If Red Amazo goes boom, I’m going to laugh. >_>