Fast Thoughts - The Week of 9/17/08

BIRDS OF PREY #122 - I cannot say anything about this issue save that it ends with the greatest cliff-hanger since the Army of Ghosts episode of Doctor Who. Pity the solicitations spoil it - and it has been projected, somewhat, by previous issues... but those last two pages and the thought of the next issue... WOW!


CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #3 - Hey! A Frank Cho cover that doesn't have a ridiculously posed slave-girl on the cover! Why do I get the feeling we're going to see a dip in the sales this month?

Ah well - it's the loss of the speculators and the teenage boys who keep Cho in ink-pens and booby-rags because this issue signals the return of the barbarian we all know and love. Of course we get another flashback to the tales of Conan's adventurer grandfather but this time the tale is briefer and ties in more directly to Conan's story rather than being a distraction from it.

You want a good issue to jump in on? Now is the time.


DCU DECISIONS #1- As putrid as this series is in concept, writing, art-style (or lack thereof - Black Canary looks like a man in drag for crying out loud!) and overall execution, I must say one thing. This comic did put forth the most out-there idea I have seen all year in any form of speculative fiction - an African-American woman winning the Republican Party's nomination for President.

Sadly, some things are too impossible to believe even in a world where you can believe a man can fly. But in all seriousness, this book is Judd Winick writing Green Arrow as a clueless moron and Bill Willingham writing Lois Lane as Ann Coulter. Did we expect anything else but a train-wreck?


HELLBLAZER #247 - John Constantine has had many Crowing Moments of Awesome but this comic may have just taken the piss out of all of them.

In this issue, in order to find and fight an insane, soul-eating magician who just gained access to a portal to Hell and devoured most of the magicians in London, John broke into a church in Italy, stole the bones of St. Nicolas, ground them up into powder, put them into six plastic bags which he just took through customs without bothering to hide them (Bonemeal for the garden.) and then SNORTED said bone fragments in order to tap into the power generated by the general belief that mindless consumerism gives to Santa Claus during the Holidays.

Tune in next time, kids!