Lots of stuff out this week. Secret Six is a personal favorite, but the book that surprised me a little was Doom Patrol. I like the premise of the new Doom Patrol. The art’s good. And the backup feature is even better. Nice to see the Metal Men back in action.
Haven’t participated in this thread in a while…(haven’t gotten any regular comics in a while either…)
I picked up the new Walking Dead TBP (#10). Really, really good. They’re really exploring zombiedom as well as the psychological side. I was worried it was going to get too soap opera-y (the young couple) or outlandish (the Governor’s city). But this seems to be regrounded. I want to know how Walter (the guy from back home) survived this long.
I also got Darwyn Cooke’s Parker: The Hunter hardback. I didn’t get a chance to do anything more than a casual flip - but holy crap this book is gorgeous! I absolutely cannot wait to see what Darwyn’s been up to for the last year.
Been sleeping a lot this week (siiiick), so I haven’t got much read yet…
Of what I have read:
The Hangman - a good start to the Red Circle one-shots. Seems to have more in common with the !mpact version than the original MLJ - which is neither criticism or praise, just a statement. All in all, quite good, though I wasn’t really impressed with the art - especially the entity that visited Robert just before he was hanged. Reminded me of a Spawn character a bit too much.
Doom Patrol - I continue to withhold judgement - there’s a bunch to like, a bunch not to like. We’ll see where it goes. On specific comments: I’m not loving the art on the main feature - Giffen should totally start drawing his own stuff regularly again. Also…One, maybe two, more for the ‘he killed them’ side of the Giffen Death List - not that anyone’ll miss Nudge and Grunt anyway. The Metal Men feature (By Giffen, DiMatteis, & Maguire)…is…so unrelentingly jokey, it makes their JL look like Identity Crisis. It was fun, but the ‘Copper who?’ jokes weren’t funny enough to repeat as often as they were, and I really wish the MM could get something resembling consistent characterization aside from Tin’s stuttering, Mercury’s hotheadedness, & Tina’s love of Magnus.
Cry For Justice - Not as bad as issue one, I guess…but that’s damning with faint praise. At least neither Freddy nor Supergirl got the slaughter that the others endured to get them in - but Jay Garrick did (and god, I hope he’s not being dragged into this mess…) The backmatter created several points of Atom-related irony - 1) the costume’s becoming invisible and intangible at human size was mentioned in his origin, despite not doing so in the story itself; 2) the text portion (written, I assume, by Robinson, though I see no credit on it) laments the slaughter of Atom’s tiny tribesmen in the 90s… After issue 1, particularly Congorilla’s part…
You forgot Lead’s stupidity. The new characterization of Gold is kind of dopey–Mercury should be the egotistical one. He is, after all, the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. 
And as long as they’re going to be playing the Metal Men for laughs anyway, bring back Nameless!!!
Usually I get my stuff completely out of sync these threads but I did get something yesterday. I’ve gotten hooked on 20th Century Boys and unfortunately gotten myself current with the releases at the third volume. It’s about a circle of friends growing up in the late-1960’s/early-1970’s in Japan. Forty years later none of their lives are what they wanted them to be; they’ve all abandoned their dreams for the day to day mundane life. One of them is using their childhood experiences to become the leader of a cult that plans to bring about the end of the world.
What works for me in 20th Century Boys is the way it quickly shifts from nostalgia filled childhood memorials to the broken dreams of the grown men to the creepy cultists and all around again. It’s by Naoki Urasawa who created Monster (in fact both series ran at the same time) and while I think that Monster was better this is much in the same vein.
Even that changes in scale and type so much I’m hard pressed to call it a consistency. From the glacial slowness of thought and action in the Superman/Batman MM/OMAC arc, to the vague dopeyness here, to the childishness of the MM miniseries from 2007, it’s barely more consistent than Gold’s swapping from a good leader to a raging egoist.
And Doc totally needs to give a Responsomiter to some Cesium. Who can mercilessly taunt Mercury every time he says that.
Too bad Francium is radioactive, and thus belongs in the Death Metal Men. His taunting would clearly be far more fun.
OK, finished what I’m likely to finish this week, so other comments:
Exiles - It really sucks that this is getting cancelled…it’s the best it’s been in at least 2 years. (Everything from the end of World Tour to the original title returning.) Art, writing…both good, both fun. Characters…slightly confusing in Blink’s case, but interesting. Worlds…appear to be fairly well thought out. Claremont’s abortion got over a year, the relaunch gets half of one. It ain’t fair.
New Krypton - This book really makes my head spin - in a good way. It’s twisting and turning pretty good, but it consistently makes sense in it. I can see multiple ways this plot thread could be going, none of them pleasant, all of them interesting. Reading this and current issues of Superman - I can see Robinson still has a deft hand. Why is Cry For Justice such a train wreck? (Well, OK, it’s not that hard - on WoNK, he has Rucka reigning him in, in Superman, the characters are either new, or obscure, or rebooted so they’re essentially blank slates, so he can do what he wants without butchering existing characterization. C4J has neither advantage. I wonder if Geoff Johns takes Robinson’s claim of writing Hal as him as a compliment, given what a putz Hal comes across as under Robinson’s [del]pen[/del]word processor.)
Secret Six - It’s good to see a character I like being beaten in a way that makes sense. That is all. Well…that and Ragdoll continues to be a delightful little freak. ‘I hardly miss my little gentleman!’ is the line of the week.
Agents of Atlas - Not digging the art, and totally not digging that it’s going to be moved to a backup in Incredible Hercules (which, as much as I love Fred van Lente’s writing elsewhere, I just can’t work up a modicum of interest in) for a while before getting relaunched. Better than cancellation, though.
Hack/Slash - Also not digging the art. The insight into Samhain makes him a bit more interesting, but it also makes his killing of the young girl last issue rather confusing. Best case, right now, would be for him to be working both sides of the fence - and not knowing it - as I see it.
Claremont’s what killed the book for me.
Except Gallium.
And no-one likes him.