Sunday, December 7, 2008

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 11/26/08 & 12/4/08

The week of Thanksgiving, all the comics I got were for my girlfriend. This week, all the comics I got were for me. Kinda funny, that.



BIRDS OF PREY #124 -

Line Of The Issue: "Hear that sound? That's Black Canary's motorcycle. Six other pissed-off heroes are right behidn her and about to walk in. Wanna show them too?" - Misfit, to The Joker, after being told that he just killed Barbara and asking "Wanna see?"

Fans of Barbara Gordon and all other Bat-fans take note - this is a must-have issue. I've ragged a bit on Tony Bedard - justifiably, most think - for some of the stupid, over-the-top villains presented as part of the ruling class of techie town Platinum Flats. But I can forgive all of that for the moment in which Barbara Gordon manages to get back at The Joker in the perfect fashion. Highlight the text below if you really want to know...

Barbara smacks The Joker in the teeth with an escrima stick, breaking most of his teeth and ruining his famous smile. Eye for an eye, tooth for a leg justice at its' best. And while Joker has kidnapped a dental surgeon and had his teeth repaired in the issue denouement and the only thing that saved Barbara from being killed after that was the timely intervention of The Birds, I still count it as a moral victory. Barbara, for better or worse, embraced her physical changes and refused to become a victim whereas The Joker couldn't deal with the effect of a physical assault changing who he was and went out of his way to put things back to normal while denying the original attack. In the end, Barbara proved she was stronger than The Joker.

Given BoP's cancellation, this panel seems oddly bittersweet.



It's okay, Dinah. You've got a writer who will actually let you do stuff in your own book again starting next week!


DOCTOR WHO: THE FORGOTTEN #4 -

Line Of The Issue: "The problem with non-intervention is that someone always ignores it." - The Seventh Doctor

At last - it all gets explained. Well, sort of. There's still a lot up in the air but at least most of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies I noticed before have been explained away with one revelation. Highlight for the spoiler.

The Doctor isn't really trapped in a museum devoted to him but is under some form of psychic attack by the same bug creature that attacked Donna in the 4th Season episode "Turn Left". All the inaccurate things from before - Martha calling herself a doctor when she hadn't become one yet and the phrase "There's something on your back" sounding familiar when The Doctor didn't hear that said until after Martha stopped traveling with him among them - were hints that something is up and The Doctor is trying to stop his memories from being erased using the Museum mind-scape as a battle ground.

As before, the highlight of the issue is the flash-backs with older incarnations of The Doctor. While this issue's flashbacks aren't quite as execiting to me as last issue, I'd put that down to my loathing of The 6th Doctor and my unfamiliarity with the 7th rather than any fault with the stories themselves. The 6th Doctor is every bit the blustering loud-mouthed con-man he should be though the 7th Doctor seems oddly subdued given what I know of the character. Still, should be an interesting read when we get to the virtually unknown 8th Doctor in the next issue and return to the Christopher Eccleston days as well.


JACK OF FABLES #28 -

Line Of The Issue: Next: I eat some tacos. Oh, and I win the war, then everyone stands around for three issues telling me how fantastic I am as they give me more medals. Oh, and in the issue after that? All three of them -- at once.

Still the funniest damn book on the market, bar none. Not much else to say.

This one is for an old friend - a simple man of simple wants, who, like Jack, dreams of being able to tell attractive women to fix him tacos and wait for him at his place.






KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #145 -

Line Of The Issue: "No need to Bob... He umm... inserted it (Bob's severed arm) into your, um, body for easy "carry-all retrieval". - Sara, retrieving a fallen party member's body, after being reminded to be sure to get his severed arm as well after a an ape attack.

The plot thickens in the Hard 8 offices with Waco Bob joining Jo Jo Zeke in quitting his job. And in the Knights campaign, their past continues to haunt them as they find out the helpful villagers caring for them are cultists of a thief god religion started by one of Bob's old characters.

And yes - the replacement movie column for Spoony's "Gamer's Rant" STILL sucks. This month "Gaming The Movies" instructs you on how to spice up your Car Wars campaign the bargain-bin DVD in the making "Death Race". That's assuming, of course, you still have a copy of the 1982 RPG around and are willing to sit through a movie that has less plot than most video games these days. Of course that's probably a given if you're one of the people who kept trolling Jolly Blackburn into firing The Spoony One.

Mr. Blackburn - I know you probably can't bring Noah back. But couldn't you at least replace his column with a gamer movie column that is funny?


SHEENA: QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE - DARK RISING #2 -

Line Of The Issue: "Curious you did not object when MY garments were taken, Bob Kellerman." - Sheena, to her environmentalist sidekick, as he is forcibly stripped by cannibals.

Query - is it fan service when your attractive female lead is stripped of everything save her jewelry and a few strategically replaced floral leis for reasons which are, at best, ambiguously related to the plot, if...

1) her male companions receive the same treatment.
2) there are no gratuitously posed shots or splash-pages during the entire scene she is effectively naked.
3) the one part where her lei slips and you see a flash of butt crack, is illustrated in a long shot and there's nothing sexual about the moment.

I find myself torn in considering this question. Because there's very little reason for Sheena to go through with this plan where she allows herself and her companions to be captured without fighting by a group of Nazi-worshiping cargo-cultist cannibals in order to buy them time while awaiting the collapse of a dam she thinks is coming other than to allow for a cheesecake scene where Sheena (and her companions) are stripped down to nothing, prepared and then tied up basically naked over a hot fire.





And yet, despite this contrivance, the artwork doesn't even approach the cheesecake-ridden excesses reveled in by other books starring blonde jungle goddesses. Sheena is depicted as being competent and in-control the whole time - not a helpless piece of eye candy by any stretch of the imagination,

That, along with the brilliant plotting, wonderful comedic timing and characterization which makes plans like this seem feasible is all I need to recommend this book to any comic book reader. Thank goodness that at least one of Will Eisner's creations is in the hands of a writer who know how to uphold his legacy and write a heroine who can be sexy without being trashy.


WONDER WOMAN #26 -

Line Of The Issue: "I gave you an order, soldier. You were to observe the saboteurs, not screw around with them on some *%##$ magic clam shell." - Director Steel, to Nemesis, regarding a photo of him and "enemy of the state" Wonder Woman.

Could somebody who has been reading all the New Gods books and everything connecting Amazons Attack explain something to me, please?

It was my understanding that The New Gods had taken the Olympian Pantheon hostage and that their apparent absence and abandonment of The Amazons in their time of need was what spurred Diana to abandon her position as champion of the Olympian Gods and start seeking favors from a South Seas deity. And I can swing with that.

Explain to me then why the Olympian Gods are now returning home after having apparently been cruising around deep space - IN A FREAKING SPACESHIP - and are curious as to why their home is trashed and they can't seem to remember who they are/were? And apparently Athena is now about to die since she used the last of her power to make the last of their champions (I assume that's Diana) immortal again.

I suspect all will be explained shortly but I'm still very confused.

6 comments:

  1. I'm just not getting anything from the columns of late in KoDT. And thats not even the movie guy. Who sucks. But honestly the two guys BEFORE Noah had crappy movie columns also. I also don't like their book guy either. But then I have a history of thinking he's a pretentious dick from my days on the Kenzer forums...
    Still I'm hoping some kind of turn-around is being put in place for the Hard8 strips. Maybe some-one manages to remind Heidi its not HER game company, she's just the trustee for Timmy...

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  2. The Olympian Gods were being held by Darkseid on Apocalypse. Mary Marvel released them in 52 at which time they had corporeal form.
    As for the space ship ... meh ... why not I guess.

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  3. I'm hoping that the entire gang walks out to join Jo Jo's company and the rest of the gaming world follows after Hackmaster 5.0 bombs.
    Because I can't see Heidi's vision of Hackmaster flying at all with the anti-Monty Haul DMs like B.A., Peter or Nitro...

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  4. Actually, that makes sense...
    The only way to breach the barrier between Apokolips and normal space is using New Gods technology - either Boom Tubes or one of their ships.
    So in order to get away from Apokolips, especially if they were corporeal, they'd need... A SPACESHIP!

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  5. The worst part about this, and in my opinion the current problem with DC, is that you have to have read 2 years worth of books consistently and regularly to understand what is going on. Is it too hard to put a narrative in that says "Freshly saved from Apokalips and now travelling the stars helping those who need help ... its ... THE OLYMPIANS - coming this fall" or something less lame than that.
    I'm a long time DC fan, and know an awful lot of history, but even I am getting fatigued with having to find the 3 panels in one issue that explain major events in Final Crisis, RIP and others.

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  6. This is true. But I still find this preferable to the Marvel approach where it doesn't matter what books you read as the continuity, characterization and history will be completely different in each title anyway.

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