Lucifer #2 - A Review

God is dead and The Devil is the prime suspect. But Lucifer is not guilty and has himself been the victim of an attack with a strange weapon, the likes of which he has never seen before. To prove his lack of guilt (for Lucifer could never be said to have been innocent of anything), he will partner with his brother Gabriel and the two will journey to the one place where many may be found with motive, means and power enough to slay both God and Devil - Hell itself! Yet even now events play out on Earth that may hold even direr consequences for Lucifer...


Lucifer is a gorgeously Gothic work. Lee Garbett's utilizes a streamlined style that is light on details and heavy on the inks. There is an inherent darkness to Garbett's work that suits this series well. The colors by Antonio Fabela are mysterious and moody. And the letters by the legendary Todd Klein are as grand as one would expect.


Holly Black does not do things by halves. Within the span of two issues, she has perfectly captured the essence of the characters from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Mike Carey's Lucifer and begun telling a tale that is familiar yet unique. It remains to be seen what may come of the subplots involving various mortals, including a school-teacher who finds a bottled demon in her parents home that may be familiar to long-time Vertigo Comics readers. All I know is I cannot wait for next month's issue!

First Trailer for NBC's Constantine

So what do I think, as the bloke who wrote the Hellblazer Episode Guide?



 I think I can't wait until fall.  How about you?

Bloody Hell! NBC Developing A Constantine Series!

 
SOURCE: First Flash, Then Gotham… Now Constantine Is Being Developed For Television


On the one hand, as a John Constantine fan, I'm glad to hear this news.

On the other hand, NBC doesn't have the best track record when it comes to fantasy series, even if Warner Brothers is the studio actually developing the series.

I'm withholding comment until we get more news and confirmation that an actual Brit has been cast in the role this time. 

Whither Constantine? - My Thoughts On The Hellblazer Cancellation

SOUIRCE: DC Cancels Its Longest Running Series, Hellblazer, And Replaces It With New 52 Title, Constantine

Am I upset?  Yes, but it's the same, muted sadness you get when an elderly relative who has been dying a slow death of cancer finally passes on.  You've already seen the worst and accepted the inevitable, so there's nothing left but the moving on.

I've already been accused of being a heartless bastard and a DC Comics apologist once over this point.  So really, there's no harm in my refuting all the whining I've seen over this point this morning.



They're replacing it with a PG version!

As of this afternoon, the only person I've seen saying this is Warren Ellis.  And unless there was a revolution I missed this morning, Warren Ellis is not in charge at DC Comics or Vertigo.

If Constantine is part of the New 52 line, that means it will be a PG-13 equivalent, at worst.  I think it far more likely Constantine will be a T+ title aimed at 16 years old and up.  Which, I will say as a librarian and comics fan of some years, is probably the age at which most comics fans start reading Vertigo titles.  No less a luminary than Andy Diggle said he first read a John Constantine title at the age of 15.



They can't possibly do the same things in a New 52 title that they could with a Vertigo one!

This point is true in one respect.  They'll probably have to bleep out the swearing and cut the nudity.  But if that's what you're reading Hellblazer for, let me blow your mind - you can see real tits, asses and dicks for free on the Internet EVERYWHERE!   Those of us who just want to read a story about a smart-arse, lower-class mage dealing with magical weirdness can imagine what is happening just off-panel just fine.

Seriously, Animal Man and Swamp Thing are a part of the New 52.  And they're just as disturbing and messed-up as ever.  I think John will be fine, particuarly with a writer like Robert Venditti at the helm.



How Can They Cancel It?  It's The Flagship Title Of Vertigo Comics!

Perhaps in the minds of British comic fans, Vertigo = Hellblazer.  As an American who worked in the comic-selling business, I can confidentially say that Fables has been ruling the roost at Vertigo for some time now and that most long-time comic fans are more likely to name Sandman as the title that defined Vertigo Comics rather than Hellblazer.   In all honesty, the Vertigo shared universe hasn't really existed outside the pages of Hellblazer since Lucifer came to an end.   In recent years, Vertigo has been more of a creator-owned imprint than an adults-only line.  And with DC Comics' new ratings system, having an entire adults-only-only line isn't quite as neccesary as it once was.



It's Disrespectful To The Rich History Of The Character To End The Book!

In my opinion, the legacy of John Constantine has been disrespected for a while now. And judging by the most recent sales figures on Hellblazer, most of his fans agree.  The sales have been dropping steadily for a while now.

196 - HELLBLAZER (Vertigo)
09/2007: Hellblazer #236 -- 12,938
09/2008: Hellblazer #247 -- 11,851
09/2009: Hellblazer #259 -- 10,813
09/2010: Hellblazer #271 -- 9,851
----------------------------------
09/2011: Hellblazer #283 -- 9,597 (+2.4%)
10/2011: Hellblazer #284 -- 9,608 (+0.1%)
11/2011: Hellblazer #285 -- 9,500 (-1.1%)
12/2011: Hellblazer #286 -- 9,404 (-1.0%)
01/2012: Hellblazer #287 -- 9,368 (-0.4%)
02/2012: Hellblazer #288 -- 9,553 (+2.0%)
03/2012: Hellblazer #289 -- 9,363 (-2.0%)
04/2012: Hellblazer #290 -- 9,472 (+1.2%)
05/2012: Hellblazer #291 -- 9,426 (-0.5%)
06/2012: Hellblazer #292 -- 9,533 (+1.1%)
07/2012: Hellblazer #293 -- 9,247 (-3.0%)
08/2012: Hellblazer #294 -- 9,396 (+1.6%)
09/2012: Hellblazer #295 -- 9,143 (-2.7%)
----------------
6 months: - 2.4%
1 year : - 4.7%
2 years : - 4.6%
5 years : -29.3%

To put the above numbers in perspective, the last issue of the recently canceled Resurrection Man sold 16,672 copies. Even at it's lowest, it was still selling just over 13,000 a month.  It's honestly a miracle Hellblazer has been allowed to go on so long as it has.

I personally stopped reading the book back in October of 2009, precisely because I thought Peter Milligan was ignoring the rich history of the character so that he could promote his own love interest for John and do whatever the hell he wanted with the rules of magic in John's universe.  Besides that, John stopped aging and should- by all rights - be looking 70 years old if the plan to age him in real time meant anything anymore.  At this point, closing out the door on this version of John is a mercy killing.
 

Dallas Fan Days - Day One, Part Two

And now for something completely the same... more cosplay pictures!

 I wasn't the only longcoat-wearing Brit transplant in attendance.  He is known by many names.  The Laughing Magus.  The Hellblazer.  John Constantine.  But mostly THAT BASTARD!

A nice classic Robin, The Boy Wonder.

 Cowboy Joker.  Yee-Haw-Ha-HA-HA-HA!

Red Robin & Black Bat.

The Little Mermaid

I don't know who she's supposed to be, but the gun is awesome.

Cross-play Loki.

Invisible Woman & Batman

Robin & Harley Quinn.  I was afraid to ask about the blood.

Harley Quinn and me.  She's the one on the left.

  THIS IS SPARTA... armor.

Friday Comic Con News Round Up - Part Two

All news from the DC Comics Justice League & Green Lantern panel.

* Earth 2 #0 will show us more of the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman of that earth before their deaths. There will be eight superheroes or "Wonders" of that time. One of them is apparently Terry Sloan, who is now a villain but has some kind of noble motivation for what he does.

* Alan Scott will basically be the Superman of Earth 2. The heavy hitter and paragon of virtue.

* Wesley Dodds is now Canadian and works for The World Army that has taken over protecting this Earth without superheroes. There will also be an original character leading the World Army named Amir Khan, whom Robinson describes as "Captain Nemo meets Nick Fury."

* Upcoming issues of Earth 2 will reveal Wildcat (who will have some kind of connection to The Red, though they won't use that name) and Dr. Fate, along with several other familiar names working for the government Nicola Scott says we've already met one, but nobody noticed.

* Justice League Dark will be introducing a new character who is described as "the Moriarity to John Constaintine's Sherlock Holmes". Shazam will also be showing up in JL Dark

* Robinson called bringing back the Ma Hunkle Red Tornado "a nice challenge", when one fan asked about her returning in Earth 2.

* Geoff Johns is planing to bring back The Metal Men at some point in the future.

* There's no plans for Plastic Man... yet.

* Blue Beetle will NOT be joining the Teen Titans.

John Constantine describes the ending of Brightest Day in one word.

Why I'm Glad I Didn't Cancel My Subscription To Hellblazer Until Now.

I meant to do it... but it slipped my mind the last time I was in the shop. And then Issue #259 - the first with new artist Simon Bisley - came out, and I have a whole host of reasons to be annoyed with what has been done with this book.

Now for those of you who don't recognize the name, Simon Bisley is an artist who is best known for his work on Heavy Metal Magazine. He has a distinctive style, some might call it epic, which is wonderful for certain genres but is not really appropriate for others.



Sword and Sorcery? He's great.

Dystopian Futures? One of the best.

Modern Day London? Not too bad.

My point in showing all this is that while Bisley is a skilled artist, he is not a particularly realistic one. And yet, his style is still more realistic and better suited to depicting normal humans than that of the previous artist - Giuseppe Camuncoli.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

At any rate, I was glad to see the new issue because it drove home to me just how bad the last issue and the current plotline - centering upon John's efforts to bring his most recent lover back from the dead - are. Not only is John being written horribly out of character but the storyline violates past continuity and the rules of the world of Hellblazer.

What's wrong with this scene? Three things...

1. Last I checked, Chas wasn't on speaking terms with John - A lot of writers have fumbled on this since the end of the Mike Carey run - and Denise Mina at least acknowledged the differences during her run - but I don't recall there ever having been any reconciliation between the two fast friends where Chas forgave John for being indirectly responsible for his wife leaving him. For that matter, I don't recall Chas ever reconciling with her.

This was further aggravated in the most recent issue, which had a scene with Chas' wife nagging him about hanging around with that John Constantine. I suppose I could forgive it if were made clear this was a flashback story... but references to John's being "an old vampire" were made.


2. Phoebe is better than Kit? I don't think so...

For those of you who haven't read any of Garth Ennis' Hellblazer (and you haven't, why the heck not?), a bit of explanation. Kit is one of John's old girlfriends and pretty much the love of his life. She dumped him about halfway through Ennis's run and came back for one "last night goodbye" in Rake At The Gates Of Hell. Until now, no Hellblazer writer since then has seen fit to even mention Kit save in passing and even then only to refer to her being the strongest love John had ever felt in his life.

It's a cliche in bad fan-fiction that oftentimes the original characters the author creates will be presented as being much better than previously established characters in everything. It is also said to be the hallmark of a poor writer that they will tell you things about the characters rather than making them apparent through the story.

For Milligan to have Chas talk about how much better than Phoebe is than Kit... it tastes badly of both of these cliches.


3. You Cannot Raise The Dead Using Magic in The World Of Hellblazer

This isn't an obscure point by any means. Indeed, it is the very centerpiece at the plot of Garth Ennis' last John Constantine story - Son of Man - which you'd think Milligan would be at least passingly familiar with since he's making reference to Kit.

Let me think... what was it John said there? Oh yes...

Not to mention, if there was some way of bringing people back from the dead... why didn't John try it before on any of the other friends and lovers he was responsible for killing? Apart from - you know - Phoebe being "special".



So yeah... I'm done with Hellblazer until further notice.

Thoughts On Nearly Everything I Read In August

There's a few things I feel the need to write full reviews for. So apart from all those books (and all the Blackest Night tie-ins, which are going to get their own post), here are my thoughts on everything else I've read this mont.



CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #12 - The Black Colossus adaptation comes to a close but not quite soon enough for my tastes. Don't get me wrong - this was a good read. But it did feel slightly padded in the middle chapters. Some characters can benefit from decompressed storytelling but Conan is not one of them. And they fail to save the ending of the story (Conan ravishes a princess on the altar of the evil god he just saved her from being sacrificed too) from seeming cliched, even though this is probably one of the most definitive sword and sorcery tales ever.


DOCTOR WHO #2 - Your love of this issue will depend upon two factors; how much of a Doctor Who fan you are and your ability to cope with a silent-film tribute in the middle part of the issue, where the Doctor's pursuit of the villain becomes a Keystone Cops skit. Take that as you will - but note that I loved it.


DOCTOR WHO: COLD BLOODED WAR - Another Doctor/Donna tale, this one centers upon the duo being dragged into a civil war regarding sexism and monarchies in the Draconian empire. Ugly artwork distracts from a decent story where Donna does more to save the day than The Doctor. Only required reading for the most dedicated of Whovians.


EX MACHINA #44 - The plot thickens. More is revealed about the source of Mitchell Hundred's amazing powers and the purpose he was meant to serve. It is awesome. Get the trades and start from Issue #1 if you aren't already reading this book.


FABLES #87 - Oh good. After last month's origin of just how Mr. Dark escaped from his prison and a crossover which has nearly ignored the mental breakdown of one of my favorite characters in the whole series (Rose Red), I'm overjoyed to see that this issue... continues to ignore her breakdown and instead focuses upon all the bad evil magic stuff that is now running loose and the power struggle among the witches of what was the 13th Floor.

*sighs* You'd think at least Snow White would give a damn about her sister and what might have happened what with Jack raping her. But no - Red Rose doesn't even get a bloody mention, though Bigby, Beast and Cole can't stop talking about what a scoundrel Jack is without even MENTIONING Rose.


HELLBLAZER #258 - Crap. Utter crap. The art is about the same as ever - and that's not a good thing - but Milligan makes multiple continuity mistakes that only further aggravate the problems with his portrayal of John Constantine. To make a long story short, John tries to use his magic powers to resurrect his murdered girlfriend - something which, according to the widely available and very popular Hellblazer story Son of Man - you CAN NOT do with magic under any circumstances. Throw in John, who is no idiot, trying to use a magical device that depends on the user being pure... yeah. John hasn't been written this sleazily or stupid since the Brian Azzarello days. In my personal continuity, these stories DID NOT HAPPEN. Period.


JACK OF FABLES #37 - Jack is going bald and fat. Gary lost his power to make inanimate things come to life. And somewhere in the Homelands, Jack Frost - son of Jack Horner - is embarking upon a quest to become a great hero or at least a much better person than his parents. At last this book is still awesome and knows how to keep a plot thread going.


KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #153 - Most of the comic space is devoted toward some of the series regulars playing a Car Wars style board game, which is quite amusing. The on-going stories advance somewhat, with magical things being afoot in Bagworld and the fight for who owns Hackmaster getting ready to go into overdrive.

The Gaming At The Movie column continues to be a blight upon the printed page, with this month's column advising you on how to best rip-off the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for your D&D campaign. Yeah - I'll still clear of anything which advises me to use Jack Sparrow as an GM NPC who "wouldn't overshadow the player characters."

Son, if you're doing CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow any justice, he'll steal every scene he's in. Savvy?


POWER GIRL #4 - Pure unadulterated win. The best new book to come out this year.


RED SONJA #47 - Last issue, Sonja was racing northward against her sworn enemy toward their mutual vague goal. This issue... they are both still racing northward toward their mutual vague goal. But Sonja does kill her traitorous sister and give her niece up to another family. And then at the end of the issue, everyone is STILL racing northward toward their mutual vague goal.

The one bit of good news? Apparently the series is ending and restarting as Queen Sonja, with Mel Rubi returning as artist and a good writer this time!

Hellblazer #257

Last time, John got his hands on a love potion after telling Phoebe - the doctor who just dumped him - that he can use magic to make her love him again. The suggestion was that John was using the potion on a bottle of wine he gifted to Phoebe AND on the liquor of a magus named Julian who is blackmailing John.

It was my hope that Milligan wasn't taking this step and effectively making John into a date-rapist; a line which even the dodgy Constantine has never crossed and which even other characters in the book noted was horribly out of character for John Constantine.

Well, Milligan apparently did take the final step and elect to turn John Constantine into an attempted love-potion date-rapist for no readily apparent reason. The only thing that kept it from coming to that was his new love interest Phoebe figuring out something was up and pretending that she was madly in love with John, despite only knowing that the wine he gave her was laced with "some kind of date rape drug" and not love potion.

So John wound up getting some of the best sex of his life while feeling horribly guilty about the whole thing... not knowing that Phoebe knew and wasn't really influenced. What's really screwed up is that she knows what John was up to and yet doesn't seem to care, nursing him back to health after his latest scam explodes in his face. This whole thread interests and disturbs me more than the actual "plot" with John trying to get his back against another sorcerer who is blackmailing him by using the love potion on her, which is one strike against the writing.

The art is another matter, with Julian - the eternal sorceress in the body of a 15 year old school girl - being depicted in an exaggerated style that jars with all the other characters in the book. As a stylistic choice, it stinks... though the rest of the art by Guiseppe Camuncoli is decent enough.



The Final Verdict: Not a good time to be coming onto this book. In fact, I may be leaving it after one more issue. We'll see. I'm giving Milligan a chance to turn this around with the final part of this storyline. But I doubt he can.

Hellblazer #255 & #256

Peter Milligan has managed to do something I doubted any writer apart from Brian Azzarello could ever manage; make me seriously contemplate dropping Hellblazer from my subscription.

I can't really explain why, save that while he seems to be writing stories about a character named John Constantine who knows some magic and is a bit of a con-man, he doesn't seem to be writing about the John Constantine we know.

#255 continues the Regeneration storyline in which John awakens the ghost of an ancient Plague Doctor in his efforts to "hex" the stadium where the London 2012 Olympics will take-place. The last issue showed us flashbacks of a man stuck in London during one of the infamous plagues, who contemplates whoring out his eldest daughter to The Plague Doctor in order to assure his family safe escape from the city - a story that was seemingly unconnected to the main tale involving John being desperate for cash and feeling heartsick after his latest relationship ended.

Now we find that The Plague Doctor ghost is - in fact - the ghost of the father in the flashback and that his daughter wound up killing the Plague Doctor rather than lay with him. The father effected another plan to escape the city and wound up killing his whole family before killing himself - better that they die by his hand than he should lose them to the Plague or the soldiers killing the plague victims. He asks John to move his bones so that he can rest in peace apart from his family. John tells him to slag off and leaves him to haunt the site, condemning for taking the coward's way out.

This flies in the face of what few ethics John Constantine has ever been shown to have. In one of the better Garth Ennis stories, John did grant final rest to a man condemned to eternal life (a family member no less), noting that "one bastard can forgive another bastard". Given that John has done worse... a lot worse... in the name of saving his own loved ones and friends, it doesn't seem likely that John would condemn a man for trying to save his family from a more painful and slow death.

This "almost but not quite" feeling continued into #256 and the first part (Part One of Three we are told) of a story called Hooked. Following off the last page of #255, in which John's now ex-girlfriend Phoebe rebuffs his attempts at trying to ask her out again and he threatens to use his magic to make her love him. She says even he couldn't stoop that low... and here we open on John negotiating with a blue-haired alchemist over a love potion.

Even Epiphany, the alchemist in question, notes how horribly out of character it is for John to be doing something like this but John dismisses any such questions with instances that he is as big a bastard as everyone thinks.

That's the problem, though. I don't think he is.

In my estimation, most Hellblazer writers don't think that he is.

Even Garth Ennis said that John had a basically decent bloke deep down and that his biggest flaws were snap judgments, cowardice and an insatiable desire to poke at metaphorical wasp's nests. He thought John honestly did try to do the right thing for his and his loved ones - he wasn't a hero by any stretch of the imagination, but he was trying to be good. And giving the woman who dumped you a love-potion laced bottle of wine is about as not-good as you can get.

I'll give it another issue or two to see how it goes, purely because it is SOMEWHAT uncertain if that is exactly what John did and if he didn't use the love potion on another mage who is blackmailing him. We will see... but right now, this book is dancing on a knife's edge for me.

Two Weeks Of Comic Reviews

Because I just didn't feel like writing this past week.



CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #10 - So, Conan? Do you think this month's issue of your comic was a good one?





No. No, sir you do not.

The adaptation of Robert Howard's Black Colossus continues and remains true to the spirit of that classic tale. Truman borrows quite a bit from Howard's dialogue and scenario, but does get in his own original work as he explains precisely why Conan was wandering the streets when he is discovered by the queen, who was told to hand command of her armies over to the first man she met in the street that night.

The artwork by Thomas Giorello is excellent and has grown on me to the point that I think I'm beginning to like his work slightly more than Cary Nord on the original Dark Horse Conan series.


DETECTIVE COMICS #853 - The long-awaited conclusion to Neil Gaiman's Batman story.

How is it? Well, that depends entirely upon your tolerance for Neil Gaiman and - at the same time - Grant Morrison. Because this issue manages to simultaneously be a fairly typical Gaiman story about the power of stories and a perfect continuation of Bruce's fate following Morrison's Final Crisis.

On one level, it is an examination of the concept of the death of Batman through the eyes of many characters, which concludes that the details of how Batman dies are unimportant. What matters is that the only way Batman's story can ever end is WITH the death of Batman since, by definition, the main defining characteristic of Batman is cannot ever give up his quest for justice except in the face of the ultimate ending. And yet, because the concept of Batman is so powerful, he cannot ever truly die.

On the other level, this issue does go along neatly with the how Bruce was killed in Final Crisis and the idea of The Omega Sanction, which traps the person targeted in a series of alternate realities, each worse than the previous one. Most of the realities we see are indeed worse than the main DC Comics universe and we do see Bruce being reborn.

All in all, I recommend this story to all but those who would say "Oh... it's Neil Gaiman telling another story about stories!" It is that... but so much more as well. If nothing else, the end works as a neat little tribute to Goodnight Moon.


EX MACHINA #41 - Things seem to be going into the home-stretch for the final run of the book, with Mayor Hundred setting a dangerous gamble going into the final year of his administration to leave the city forever if he can't fix the budget. Journal and Kremlin step up their plans to bring down Hundred's administration before then. And it looks as if The Great Machine's arch-enemy has returned. Nothing but set-up this time around but it looks like it's setting up one hell of an ending. I'll be sorry to see this book go.


GREEN LANTERN #40 - Okay. Time for a War of Light update.

* Former Green Lantern baddie, turned Sinestro Corps member turned Star Sapphire Corps member Fatality is out looking for John Stewart. Probably to apologize for holding a grudge about his failure to save her home planet from blowing up.

* Scar, the injured female Guardian, appears to be going more and more unbalanced. This is no surprise to those of us who read the Black Lantern back-up stories a few months ago, which she narrated as she discussed the dead loved ones of various DC Comics Heroes.

* Hal still can't get the blue ring off his hand and hoping for World Peace isn't good enough. :)

* Orange Lanterns are created when a sentient being is killed or otherwise absorbed by an Orange Lantern projection. They are then transformed into a being of orange energy, controlled directly by Agent Orange.

* Orange Lanterns appear to have the ability to absorb/devour the energy output by Green Lanterns. Even the Guardians cannot harm them directly. For some reason, this ability doesn't seem to apply to the energy of Blue Lantern rings.

It's getting heated.


HELLBLAZER #254 - I can't say I'm really enjoying Peter Mulligan's run on the book so far. It's not that it's bad, persay. But it does seem like he's trying a bit too hard to be Jamie Delano.

This story briefly continues the thread from last issue with John's latest romance blowing up in his face, intermingling with a colleague of John's asking him to use his mojo to disrupt the plans of the rich-pricks remodeling London for the 2012 Olympics. There's also flashbacks to a possible ancestor of John's, who is faced with the prospect of whoring out his daughter to escape a plague-filled London or making a literal deal with the devil.

This is all very interesting, but the flashback doesn't seem to be connected at all to the main story with John and it seems to be a slippery slope giving us a flashback without a more direct connection in a two-part story. Delano and Ennis did this sort of thing quite often and to good effect but they usually limited such stories to one issue and never cheapened themselves as to make confusion the main impetus for buying a second issue.

The art by Goran Sudzuka is crisper and cleaner than I'm used to seeing the art in Hellblazer be. In fact, I think this may well be the "brightest" the book has ever looked. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Nice as the art looks. it just seems right to me that Hellblazer should be dark as anything with more shadows than color in the artwork.


JACK OF FABLES #33 - The plot thickens with Jack's bastard son by The Winter Queen (who has now become Jack Frost somehow) leaving home to seek his long-lost father. Babe the Blue Ox dreams of being a Conan expy named Brom Wilderhart. And Jack, fed up with having to deal with Bigby Wolf for five minutes, declares that he is quitting the book, going back to Fables and taking the artist with him. Not a good time to jump onto Fables, but an enjoyable story that shows why this is the best book on the market today... along with the other two Fables books that are out now.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #32 - Well, I finally dropped this book. I just don't have the patience to wait around while DC Editorial gets their act together and gives Dwayne McDuffie to write the same kind of stories he did when he was writing Justice League Unlimited. The entire JLA idea has been put on hold because of all the A-List heroes being busy elsewhere and the Justice League concept being put in the hands of James Robinson for a mini-series.

Even as a James Robinson fan who has really been looking forward to the new Justice League, I think that stinks. But what really stinks is that Dinah Lance continues to get no respect.

This issue opened with Superman questioning her decision to shut down the Justice League of America rather than compete with Ollie and Hal's scab team. While I think Dinah acquits herself well with the argument (i.e. "you think it's okay for ME to be the leader when you, Diana and Bruce need time off?" and "the resources to unite everyone for big problems are still there - there's just no team meetings on the satellite"), it doesn't say a lot that everyone else on the team is defying her orders and continuing to meet without her. And even though they refuse to elect a new team leader and John Stewart gets a page-long speech where he explains why Dinah is the best leader the JLA ever had and the main reason he refuses to take a leadership post is because it will make it a lot easier to convince Dinah to come back if nobody is actively replacing her, it doesn't ring true.

The last few months have been like asking a gourmet chef to make you a sloppy joe and DC needs to get its' act together and free McDuuffie up to do something like - oh, I don't know - a monthly Static book?


THE LITERALS #1 - A very funny issue in which we learn a little more about Kevin Thorn and the rest of the Literals family as he goes looking for a muse as he plans to rewrite the whole world. I love this if only for the fact that Comedy is Groucho Marx with a goatee.

"If it's a muse you want, I'm the guy to ask. I've got enough good material to amuse you all day!"

I think Comedy is probably the ones pulling the strings on this story already. Because at the end of the issue, in the greatest literal pun of all time, Kevin Thorn makes a monkey out of Bigby Wolf.


RED SONJA #43 - Horrible. Just horrible.

Granting that Red Sonja has always lent herself well to cheesecake portrayals (something too many of the covers have been devoted to), the various artists working the interiors of the book had been fairly good about not going overboard on this sort of faked posing.

No more, I'm sad to say. Nearly every page of this book seems to be a splash-page and we get more up-skirt shots of Sonja (if the phrase "up-skirt" can be applied to a chainmail breechcloth) in this issue than in the other 42 issues before combined. Still, I guess we can say we now know the answer to just what Sonja wears under her armor... even though the answer (leather short shorts) doesn't make a lick of sense.

Throw in the visions of the inner form of the Cthulhu-like beastie who Sonja is fighting (four-words; green-haired Lady Godiva) and you have a lot of flash with no substance at all.


WONDER WOMAN #31 - Much has said about how, to paraphrase Kingdom Come, the minute you make The Super more important than The Man, you lose what is most important. Oddly, I don't think anyone has ever applied this same sentiment to emphasizing The Wonder over The Woman.

I mention this, because in one panel Gail Simone has managed to ground Diana and make her seem like a real person and less like an imaginary goddess. And suddenly, she's a lot more interesting and likable for it.





Is this a little silly? Yes. But it's just so overwhelmingly refreshing to see a Wonder Woman who is allowed to make jokes, ogle her boyfriend and not be The Perfect Princess or The Amazon 24/7 that I like the idea. And the more I think about it, the more it seems right in the same way that Superman is more Martha Kent's boy than the Last Son of Krypton is right.

Don't worry though - there's still plenty of Wonder in this issue, including Diana punching a missile, a ton of Spartans on winged horses storming the UN and the return of Ares and Athena. Oh, and we finally get an answer on just who this crazy Genocide woman is and we get to see a use of the power of the Gods that truly makes sense in the contents of how the Greek Gods did operate and - in fact - probably WOULD operate in the DC Universe.

I gush on the writing but I should mention that the art is very good too. Great book - highly recommended.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 3/18/09

A very light week this week, particularly since my FLCS got shorted on Kull #5...



HELLBLAZER #253 - Scab comes to a conclusion and with it comes an explanation of how all the randomness of the last two issues fits together. Seems that at some point in the past, John was paid by a factory owner to hex a union head into taking a bribe and now the curse has backfired on them both

I can't say I'm all that excited with what Milligan is doing with this book so far. It isn't bad by any means but it isn't as great as I expect a John Constantine story to be. As far as threats go, a mysterious rash seems an unworthy challenge for someone who has fought The Devil himself and gone toe-to-toe with Merlin and won.

I'm also not too crazy about the idea of John actually doing spells for hire, ala Harry Dresden. Yes, I know he's done similar things in the past but most of those jobs involved recovering magic artifacts or John tricking a person into thinking he had done something. John actually having enough magic power to give the evil eye just seems wrong somehow.

There's a lot to like here though. Milligan refers back to the Paul Jenkins run on the book and we get to see John's uncle who raised him after his father was sent to prison again. And Milligan's story - though it does seem to have been written entirely as an excuse to make a play on both meanings of the word 'scab' - does a fairly good job of evoking the feel of Modern Britain and the political issues of the last decade as Jaime Delano did during the late 80s. But this only serves to reveal another problem - this story feels somewhat unstuck in time.

Apart from the reference to Dani and Rich, this story could be set at almost anytime in John's career. Indeed, John's younger appearance as drawn in this issue and the fact that his Uncle is still alive and appears to be in early middle-age (about where John should be, actually) suggest this to be taking place sometime far before the mid-life crisis John seemed to be suffering during the Diggle and Carey runs.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it does make me wonder if Vertigo has completely abandoned this book's attempt to have one year of comic pass for one year in real life and if we are really going to work to John's foretold death, which should be coming in a few years if I recall correctly.


RED SONJA #42 - A lot of action this issue, with not much else happening. Oh, I could tell you of the on-going story with Lady Sonja - apparently a reincarnation of Red Sonja - and her quest for the magical Blood Legacy gem. I could tell you about the wonderful action scene in which she fights a horde of various martial artists. But all of this would just be window-dressing for the end of the book and the part where Red Sonja summons Cthulhu so she can fight him.

Yes, that's right. Red Sonja summons Cthulhu so she can fight him!

Okay, it's not actually Cthulhu... but it is close enough for government work. And she needs to do it as part of some ritual to help her track the Blood Legacy, so it's not like she's summoning it JUST to fight it. But it's still pretty awesome as far as sword and sorcery goes.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 2/18/09

In which I name the most awesome moment from each book as we look at Hellblazer, JLA, the Red Sonja Annual and the very last issues of Comic Foundry Magazine and Birds of Prey.



BIRDS OF PREY #127 - Honestly, I'm almost relieved that this book is being put out of its' misery at this point. Bedard didn't do a bad job on the title, really... but it was nowhere near as awesome as it should have been coming from the guy who did the Black Canary mini-series two years ago.

Still, all of The Birds get their moment to shine here and this is about the best you could hope for in a conclusion to the series... even though the conclusion does little more than set up the upcoming Oracle mini-series and there's nothing to stop The Birds from reforming later. Which I really hope they do - Manhunter needs something to do and Misfit is too cool to trap in limbo or damn to the Teen Titans.

The Best Moment? A tie between Misfit fighting Gizmo (DARK VENGEANCE!) and Black Canary's reaction to Calculator saying he doesn't want to hear anything except screams. (Five Words: Canary Cry For The Win)


COMIC FOUNDRY #5 - It ended as it began - with a big "F.U." to Wizard Magazine on the cover. Not so much of the usual comedy material but that seems to be fitting for a final issue. And with pieces by Matt Fraction and interviews with Bryan Lee O'Malley & Grant Morrison, it's not like I can really complain about the content.

Rest In Piece, Comic Foundry. Every time I see a kid mock Rob Liefeld, I'll think of you.

The Best Moment? The introduction in which Editor Tim Leong notes that this issue had "More talent here than all of Wizard World Dallas". A statement which I can vouch for as being accurate, if somewhat upsetting as a DFW fanboy. The loss of what is - sadly - the best non-Manga comic convention that DFW had still stings... even if I didn't go last year because I was more of a celebrity than half the guest list.


HELLBLAZER #252 - Milligan is still spinning his wheels a bit, telling us two stories which are connected only by a word at this point - Scab.

We get a fair bit of the English politics of the Delano era here with an anti-Labor Lord getting visited by the ghost/zombie of a Union leader he may have had killed off. Meanwhile, John deals with a strange scabby growth that is covering his chest as well as a creature who seems to be his current girlfriend's aborted child from several years earlier, reborn as a scabby nightmarish youth.

The artwork is competent but seems ill-suited to the Hellblazer style. And while I can see Milligan building toward something in the story, Scab seems like it will read better as a trade than as a monthly mini-series.

The Best Moment? John holding back the tears as he tries to figure out how to lie to his girlfriend about just what came after her, knowing that the likely truth will upset her more than he can stand (and kill any chance he has of keeping the relationship going)... all while burning the scabby corpse of what might have been her baby.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #30 - McDuffie doing what he does best - telling a good, action-packed story with his own creations as well as the toys in the Justice League box. You know it's a good story when Superman pushes the metaphorical dark side of the moon away from the Earth to save the solar system... and that's not even the high-point of the book!

The Best Moment? The good Dr. Light gets back her natural powers and then goes on to own The Shadow Thief. Take that Judd Winick!


RED SONJA ANNUAL #2 - A classic old-school Red Sonja story with some of the best Red Sonja artwork in recent memory. The plot is a basic thing; Sonja acts as body guard for a magician who is trying to save the last of the great dragons of Hyboria from a rival who would harvest their bodies for spell components. A simple story but classic Red Sonja was never that complicated. This issue should be a hit with those fans who are unhappy with the current "new" Sonja storyline in the main book.

The Best Moment? Sonja's speech about her father teaching her how to hunt and to honor the beasts they killed as she finds a dragon callously butchered by the evil wizard in an effort to claim the beast's heart.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 1/21/09

A bigger week than usual for me. Sadly, a lackluster one. But amazingly, the books that have disappointed me the most of late were the ones that excited me the most this month.




BIRDS OF PREY #126 - Good news - most of the gigantic waste of space that was The Syndicate (aka the techie-based super-villain group that has been the main source of eeeee-vil in BoP since Tony Bedard took over) has been killed off.

Bad news - in order to do that, they turned The Calculator into a Borg/Matrix Droid. This would be kind of a cheeseball move, even if the design of "Calculator 2.0" and the circumstances of his empowerment at the hands of the sentient program Kilgore seems awfully similar to when Brainiac forcibly assimilated Barbara Gordon during Gail Simone's run.

I'd drop this book if the end weren't so close.


CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #7 - Either the flashback stories of Conan's grandfather are growing on me or I didn't mind this one as much since it had a more direct bearing on the action of the on-going story than previous stories, as Conan's mother tells him of his grandfather and how the old man would wander off into the woods alone for days at a time but always returned, his wanderlust not quite so great as his desire to stay with hearth and home.

As for the current action, Conan's latest romance - and his departure from his village - are settled in perhaps the only way they could be settled. Still, the images are powerful, despite being heavily foreshadowed. I am sure Robert Howard would approve.


DOCTOR WHO: THE FORGOTTEN #6 - The Doctor sums up my own thoughts on last issue's ending beautifully with his first sentence. "... now that's just stupid." It turns out that the revelation that the ultimate villain was... well, who they said it was... another fake-out. And a beautifully pulled off one I fell for hook, line and sinker.

I don't want to spoil too much of this story or the final chapter, except to say that this is easily one of the best bits of Doctor Who writing that isn't a part of the TV Show. The eventual trade paperback is a must-read for any fan of Doctor Who.


GREEN LANTERN #37 - Geoff Johns is writing an epic here, with more and more revelations coming out with every issue as The Final Crisis ends and The Darkest Night approaches. This issue?

* Confirmation that the Red Lanterns are little more than rabid dogs with no intelligence.

* Removing a Red Lantern's ring kills them.

* Blue Lanterns can not only recharge the rings of other Corps Members at will - they can drain power from them as well, as we see in this issue as they depower a slew-load of Yellow Lanterns.

* The leader of the Red Lanterns Atrocitus (aka the guy who prophetically predicted both Abin Sur's death and Sinestro's betrayal of the Green Lantern Corps) gives Hal a prophecy. "One day, you will become renegade once more. The Guardians will take your greatest love from you. You will revolt. And you will lose everything as the universe divides." Now taking bets on if this involves Carol Ferris, Cowgirl or Hal's Family.

Please do not spoil the secret of the last page!


HELLBLAZER #251 - Somehow, I missed the news that Peter Milligan was taking over as the writer on this book from Andy Diggle. A damn shame, especially since - after the bang-up job that Diggle did on Green Arrow: Year One - I was really hoping he might wind up on Green Arrow/Black Canary if his schedule freed up.

I'm not bitter at all, mind you.

So how was Milligan's first solo issue? Well, I'm giving it another issue or two before making any big judgments... but so far, so good. Milligan has already passed my first test for any Hellblazer scribe: must be British. And I rather like John's new love interest even though I give her a cheesemaker's chance of surviving past the next issue. Still, the plot - involving John's developing a very odd scabby rash mixed with seemingly unrelated tale of a union worker turned scab in a strike - is your standard, high-quality Hellblazer concept so far. One to keep an eye on.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #29 - Lame. Just... lame. I don't care if this IS setting up something for Dwayne McDuffie next month, this book looks and reads like what it is; a one-shot fill-in issue that was probably commissioned solely to be a "Faces of Evil" tie-in. The artwork leaves one longing for Ed Benes, ass-shots and all and Len Wein - while capable of writing a good Justice League story - doesn't do his legend any favors here.


KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #147 - Not even the typically lame and lackluster 'Gaming The Movies' column could ruin this issue. With a wonderful review of Fallout 3, an article introducing a wonderful Sanity mechanic for base-line d20 games, another presumably useful article that introduces wizard familiar rules that 4th Edition D&D was somehow released without and a spattering of hilarious comics depicting things coming to Hard 8 Enterprises as well as The Black Hands attempts at a Cattlepunk game... this is the best KoDT in a goodly while.

Unsurprisingly, there are no letters praising the new column. But there was another intelligent, thoughtful letter written by a Gamers Rant fan who notes that as disappointed as he is with Jolly Blackburn's decision to knuckle under to the whims of a devoted team of trolls with too much time on their hands, he isn't going to stop reading the magazine because of it or even make threats to that effect. This proves once and for all, I think, that all intelligent, right-minded and generally dashing and handsome people support Noah Antwiler and his snarky, unapologetic reviews.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 12/17/08

BIRDS OF PREY #125 - What should have been a charming "old-school" story in which Babs and Dinah team-up, in person, to bring down one of the creepier members of techie-villain group The Syndicate is ruined by the artwork of Scott McDaniel. I'm not one who believes that all artwork must be full of cheesecake shots and pin-up work but is it too much to ask for somebody who can actually draw women to be given the art chores on Birds of Prey?

At least the art distracts from Tony Bedard's dialogue and the heavily forced idea that Babs is apparently suffering some kind of crisis of faith in her own abilities following her nearly getting beaten to death by The Joker last issue. Apparently this is mean tot set up the character-redefining Oracle mini-series nobody asked for. At least we won't have to suffer through this for much longer...


CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #6 - More of the same, though the story is moving forward. Conan's adventures intercut with tales of his adventurer grandfather. This time Conan comes home and plays storyteller regarding his own adventures, reunites with his mother and hears tale of how his grandfather came to settle down, due to a woman who promised him adventure enough at home - Conan's grandmother, of course. Though it seems Truman is now writing for the Trade, the issue does not suffer for it. I suspect though that this tale may, like Conan's own tales, be all the better told in one sitting.


EX MACHINA #40 - This may well win my pick for issue of the year. A meta-textual treat staring Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris themselves, as they go in to pitch for the job of doing a comic book based on Mayor Mitchell Hundred's administration. There's quite a few in-jokes here, such as "BKV" being mistaken for Brian Michael Bendis (which would piss me off as much as it does him) and the "finished comic" that eventually shows up on the last two pages. Give you a hint - if you're a fan of Wildstorm in general and The Authority: Kev in particular...

One question - is BKV's girlfriend's name Ruth? I just want to know if the issue name is a bad pun...


FABLES #79 - Still the best overall book every month, bar none. Go get the first trade if you haven't read it already.


HELLBLAZER #250 - An anthology comic of five stories involving John Constantine and the holidays. Well, four stories involving the holidays and one that has sod and all to do with anything. Let me give you the run down and we'll make like it's Sesame Street.

One of these things is not like the other...

* "Happy F****** New Year" - a story by Dave Gibbons, in which John is pressed into recovering a stolen Egyptian artifact only to wind up rushing to stop the sacrifice of a baby on New Years Eve.

* "Christmas Cards" - a story by Jamie Delano, in which John stands witness into a Christmas Eve poker game between a ruthless card shark and a man desperately trying to win the money to buy his daughter out of sexual slavery.

* "All I Goat For Christmas" - a story by Brian Azzarello, in which John is hired to end the curse on the Chicago Cubs.

* "The Curse of Christmas" - a story by Peter Milligan, in which John is pressured by a pushy ghost into investigating the mysterious deaths of three politicians who all died mysteriously during The Queen's Christmas Eve address.

* "Snow Had Fallen" - a story by China Mieville (a British sci-fi writer who is apparently my generation's answer to H.P. Lovecraft, according to the biography I found), in which John is called in to investigate an industrial accident and the plague of demons hounding an Anglican orphange in the shadow of a purification plant at Christmas.

If you guessed that four of these writers are Brits and one is American, you're close. If you guessed that four of these writers are respected masters of horror and one of them had a run on Hellblazer that was so disastrous that most John Constantine fans pretend it never happened, spot on.

Still, if you're curious about Constantine and looking for a good jump-on issue, this is it. Just skip the bad poetry and John fighting a giant goat demon in an American Sports bar.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 11/19/08

AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE #4 - Ambush Bug kills Dan Didio just after Dan takes responsibility for everything going wrong at DC Comics. What more do you need to know?


CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #5 - More flashbacks to the days of Conan's grandfather but at least this time there's a lot of good action in the past AND present. The last few pages don't speak well of Conan's homecoming... but do speak well of an interesting issue #6.


DOCTOR WHO: THE FORGOTTEN #3 - Pia Guerra goes off art duties and the art and the art goes into the toilet. The 10th Doctor looks like an anorexic Elvis impersonator, Martha looks nothing like the character from the show. Even Tom Baker is unrecognizable except by virtue of his hat and scarf. Even then, the scarf is FAR too short. A pity, because this series was enjoyable enough, even if it IS a Martha-Era 10th Doctor story. At least Tony Lee's story still holds up and the characters sound like themselves even if they don't look like themselves.


EX MACHINA #39 - Should I feel the least bit ashamed that I was rooting for fighting liberal "Trouble" here and was hoping she'd humiliate the Republicans royally?

Nahhhhhhhhh.

The series goes into the endgame and I can't wait for the next issue.


HELLBLAZER #249 - John finds out that he's been getting his strings pulled and who has been behind not only his recent troubles but most of his problems throughout life. It's somewhat ironic that the revelation presented here may annoy some old-school Hellblazer fans but they are likely to be the only ones to get what is going on anyway. Personally, I have no problem with the idea and at the very least, it isn't quite as continuity breaking as Brian Azarello's unfortunate run on the series. And the final page is pretty much the sum total of everything you need to know about John Constantine.


RED SONJA #39 - I still don't get if Sonja is amnesic or if she's just being reborn or what. At least it will all be settled next issue. I hope.


SAVAGE TALES #10 - The Red Sonja story is the highlight, as usual. Two-parter with Sonja going on a quest with a legendary general in honor of an old friend. And a historical Hercules tale that stacks up surprisingly well with the Marvel version of the character - heroic and a womanizer, but no less noble for it.

Not-So-Fast Thoughts - Comic Reviews for 10/29/08 and 11/05/08

Between things going on Halloween and this past weekend - which was, amazingly enough NOT spent at Wizard World Texas - it was a while before I picked up my comics, much less read them.



FINAL CRISIS: RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS- More of a Green Lantern tie-in than a Final Crisis one on the surface, this continues the events of The Sinestro Corps War. And not only do we get to see a mess of Red Lanterns, we also get a look at what appears to be The Controllers getting ready to establish the Orange Lanterns and the very first Blue Lantern. So... yeah. Not a good jump-in issue but a continuation of the greatness that we've come to expect from Geoff Johns.


FINAL CRISIS: RESIST - I should have known better than to buy a Greg Rucka book sight unseen... but I thought this was going to tie-in to the much more enjoyable Final Crisis: Submit. It's not that it's all that bad, really, but a bit of a tough plow for those of us who don't read Checkmate and are wondering when Snapper Carr became a teleporting secret agent. Still, for those Kirby fans who were afraid that Final Crisis would not feature EVERY crazy idea The King had while working at DC Comics, have no fear... by the end of the story, Mr. Terrific is leading an army of OMACs against the New Gods.


GIANT SIZE RED SONJA #2 - Lots of good, short stories here to enjoy. A character-defining quickie where Sonja is separated from the more traditional literary amazons by being paired up with a true man-hating psychopath... an illustrated version of Frank Thorne's famous "Red Sonja Stage Show" drawn by the man himself... and a classic "Red Sonja vs. Undead Wizard" story by Roy Thomas himself. The only one that falls flat is a very strange and very creepy story involving an angel falling to Earth, falling in love with Sonja and then screaming as he is dragged back up into the Heavens as he begs Sonja to come with him. Overall, a fine issue.


GRANT MORRISON'S DOCTOR WHO #2- A darn good read, even if this IS a Sixth Doctor story and the ending is in no way possibly in cannon. Second Doctor fans will want to check this out for the heroic end of Jamie. Grant Morrison fans will want to check it out because... well, it's a good read and rather easy to follow even with the inclusion of a shape-shifting penguin.


HELLBLAZER PRESENTS CHAS: THE KNOWLEDGE - Last issue of this mini-series came out this week. I finally got the rest of it shortly before this. And I really wish I hadn't have bothered. Don't get me wrong - Chas is a great supporting character. But even with a story centering around the Cabbies of London sitting on top of a secret that keeps a demon imprisoned in the roads of London and John completely out of the picture, save for the scenes showing just WHY he is out of the picture... Chas just doesn't hold the interest very well.

And the scenes at the end of this issue, where he extols the virtues of a simple life, ring somewhat true... the whole thing seems a bit tilted given that Chas is made out to be some sort of virtuous paragon because he refuses to cheat on his shrewish wife... even though All His Engines - a story which no less an expert than Neil Gaiman considers to be the quintessential Hellblazer story - showed Chas cheating on her easily and almost running off to America with the woman involved. Of course I'm picking nits, but that's rather a big one to pick given the popularity of the story and how relatively recent it is.


JACK OF FABLES #27 - You have to love any book where the living spirit of the Deus Ex Machina shows up to save the day and everyone is pissed off that he won't do more, because it would kill the story.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #26 - While the idea of an alternate-reality Justice League fighting to restore a reality that might erase them from time has been done before (Indeed, Dwayne McDuffie wrote The Once and Future Thing episode of Justice League Unlimited), this issue is a good one. Comic History Fans might get a chuckle out of "The Brown Bomber" - a character who seems to have been created as a parody of DC Comics' original idea of an African-American superhero before Tony Isabella slapped some sense into The Powers That Be and convinced them that a redneck who transformed into a super-powered Black man was a BAD IDEA. I'm a little confused as to where this leaves Animal Man (are his powers coming from Anansi now too?) but still... good read.


KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #144- The comics are good as always. The new movie column is an abomination. Seriously. Instead of the brilliant comedy and sarcastic kvetching of Noah Antwiler, we are - thanks to the whining of a few people who shouldn't be allowed to handle sharp objects - now being treated to a column that gives us gamers advice on how to "game" various geek movies for material for their role-playing games.

Because apparently there are a lot of game masters out there who have no idea rip off movies and TV Shows for game fodder who have been demanding such hot tips as "You could easily recycle some of the gangs from the movie, such as the Disco Boys, the Red Eyes or the Susies" for their comedic superhero games.

I'd protest but Jolly Blackburn and company have made it clear that they'll only listen to the hyperbolic exclamations of everyone who is willing to devote time to trolling their message boards claiming to have stopped reading the magazine rather than the people who actually buy the magazine. And I have no desire to demean myself by saying that I will no longer buy the magazine, am burning all my back issues and that I will not rest until Jim Davenport is living in a cardboard box under the freeway.


KULL #1- A new Kull the King mini-series. Soon to become a regular series? We can but hope, because this first issue - as Conan #0 did several years ago - perfectly defines Kull as a character while separating him from Robert Howard's other famous hero. Whereas Conan is a definitive man-of-action who has no problem with splitting hairs or skulls as needed, Kull is an educated warrior, trying to raise himself above his barbaric past. A must read for all fantasy fans.


RED SONJA #38 - My patience is starting to run thin with this "bold new direction", even if I am intrigued as to how they are going to end this and if/when they will return to the status quo.


SECRET SIX #3 - I'm not sure what I find more disturbing: on-the-wagon, paternally protective Bane or just-plain Ragdoll. I really wish they had found someone other than the "dear gods why has nobody killed her yet" Devin Grayson creation Tarantula to be the centerpiece of this story... but given the average mortality rate of the guest stars in this series, I figure it's only a matter of time...


SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE: DARK RISING #1 - The good news is that - apart from one fan-service shot while she's doing a back-flip in the middle of an action scene (unlike most rich American heiresses, Sheena DOES wear proper undergarments) - there isn't any gratuitous cheesecake artwork in THIS Jungle Girl book. The bad news is that the interior art isn't all that good. The story is as good as previous Sheen installments though, but one wishes they would find a good, steady artist and try and keep this book coming out monthly.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 10/22/08

BIRDS OF PREY #123 - Well, THAT was anti-climactic. The last issue ended with the promise of a big show-down between Babs and The Joker and we get... nothing. And to add insult to injury, most of the issue is devoted to giving us background on "The Syndicate" and the comically awful ideas used to make these guys worse than your usual group of robber-barons. Like it wasn't enough that one of their number is Gizmo from the Fearsome Five and they were willing to bring The Joker in as a partner.

Case in point: the CEO of "YourSpace", we are told, has gone out of his way to make it easier for child predators and serial killers to gain access to the personal information of young children using his service. This is all part of the plan to gather more material for his secret underground porn empire. And then there's the head of the "auction" website who has kidnapped numerous people and forces them to live in an underground Utopia he built, killing them if they fail to care for the collectibles in their new homes...

This kind of thing seems more appropriate to a Garth Ennis Hellblazer storyline than to an issue of Birds of Prey and it doesn't speak well of a story when The Joker is the least disturbing baddie in it.


FINAL CRISIS: SUBMIT - A must read if you plan to get Final Crisis #4. I discussed most of my questions about this book in my review of that issue, but the short version is that the background we get for Mark Richards (aka The Tattooed Man) doesn't gel with what we've seen in the past. Still, this is Grant Morrison working with a vastly underrated character and spelling out a little more detail of the post-Anti-Life Earth. Worth a read, even if I am confused as to how this fits a few things.


HELLBLAZER #248 - An awesome issue, all around. Not just for the first half in which John handily undoes the plans of two villains who are united against him but for the second half in which John makes his peace with Chas regarding... oh.... most of the events of the later part of the Mike Carey run. And the last page and the set-up.... wow! If you aren't reading this, you should be.

Is Your Comic Collection Awesome?

So Chris Sims - that most distinguished of comics luminaries - recently composed a list of Twenty-Five Things Every Comics Collection Truly Needs To Be Awesome.

Do I measure up? Let us see...




1. The Mod Gorilla Boss/Any Ape Criminal Comics - Jay and Silent Bob #3, in which everyone's favorite stoners team up with a fugitive ape. (Yes, I know this got ripped off for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... this is more awesome. And more is the pity we had Will Ferrel instead of Tommy Lee Jones playing the cop.

2. A Collection Of Stories From The Golden Age - The Collected Jack Kirby's Green Arrow. Featuring Green Arrows of the World!

3. At Least One Comic By Kyle Baker - The Bakers #1.

4. A Prose Novel About Comics - Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O'Neil. Perhaps the best novelization of a comic book series ever.

5. Something That Will Allow You To Sound Smart In Public - Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Season of Mists. If I had a dollar for every person I was able to persuade that comics had intellectual merit using this book and it's use of mythology, literary references and just plain trope-defying awesomeness... well, I might have enough to buy myself a big coffee at Starbucks. But that ain't nothing.

6. A Comic That, If It Came To It, Could Block Shuriken, Blowdarts, And Most Medium Caliber Handgun Rounds - Craig Thompson's Blankets. Suitable not only as a heart shield but also as a blackjack in dealing with household intruders, cockroaches and investment bankers.

7. One, and Only One, Issue of Pizzazz - ... Okay. I don't have that. But I have every issue of Comic Foundry.

8. A Comic Written by a Rapper - ... dammit.

9. Jack Staff - I keep meaning to pick up the trade but... no, not yet.

10. A Story That Deals With a Serious Issue - The Complete Dennis O'Neil Green Lantern/Green Arrow HC. The first to do it and - arguably - the best.

11. Something Romantic - Amazing Spider-Man #49 (#490). You want a nice rebuttal to every argument against Peter and MJ being married? Here it is in one issue.

12. Cover Girl, by Andrew Cosby, Kevin Church and Mateus Santolouco - No, but that's because I find Kevin Church's web-comic to be unfunny. Why would I pay money for his work?

13. Something That Is Totally Awesome But That You Totally Do Not Understand - Genshiken. A lot of the specific jokes about Tokyo and Manga-cons go past me, but I get enough of the fandom humor and the character humor to like the comic.

14. Something That You Can Give To Someone Who Doesn’t Get It - Fables: Legends in Exile TP. You want to drive home the point that comics are not for kids and that comics are awesome? That is it.

15. A Comic That Was Ten Years Ahead of Its Time - The Starman Compendium Vol. 1.

16. Porn - Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 1-4. Let's be honest. This is how most men would live, were it possible for us to strut around in nothing but boots and our boxers, solving our conflicts with cunning and steel, slaying unidentifiable monsters and bedding a different nameless wench every night.

17. Something For The Kids - Amelia Rules! Best comic for kids and kids-at-heart on the market.

18. Print Collection of a Webcomic - I have various volumes of Order of the Stick, Dork Tower, The Devil's Panties and Penny Arcade.

19. A Story That Hits All Three (i.e. it touches your head and make you think, your heart for an emotional connection (and) your gut for the fist-pumping “**** yeah!” moment) - Pretty much the entirety of The Sinestro Corps War. The head moment came with the revelations regarding the emotional spectrum which, corny as it is, makes as much sense as the science behind rings that focus thought into solid energy. The heart moment came when Hal Jordan ordered his hometown to evacuate because he wasn't sure he would save them all... and to a person, the entire city elects to stay and hang green lights up in their windows. And the "*** yeah?" Guy Gardner and John Stewart pull a planet out of orbit to hit a bad-guy with.

20. A Run You Had To Hunt For - Hellblazer. Nuff said.

21. Showcase Presents Sugar & Spike - Okay. I don't own this one. Because I deal with enough cutesy for the sake of cutesy kids material at work.

22. A Comic Where Somebody Punches Hitler - No, but I do have Adventures of the Light Brigade - a comic series in which the elite of Britain's commando corps steal Hitler's testicle. Which - while not as manly as punching Hitler - is a heck of a lot more humiliating to everyone's least favorite Veggie painter.

23. Something That You Absolutely Love, Except For One Little Thing - The Adventures of Red Sonja - Volume II. As fine a collection of sword & sorcery as you will find anywhere. The one problem? It ends on a cliff-hanger, in the middle of a storyline. You have to get Vol. III to see the end. It's a minor thing if you're a fan and you were planning to get the whole series anyway... but it is somewhat annoying as there was something of a gap between the 2nd and 3rd volumes coming out.

24. Something That Might Not Be Very Good But God Damn It, It Means The World To You - Green Lantern #90. Yes, it's a rather generic "alcoholism is bad" comic with Kyle Rayner trying to help one of his friends deal with his problem... but it's also the book that got me into comics as an adult at the age of 19.

25. Something That You Absolutely Hate - As much as I know I'm opening myself up to so much criticism for saying this.... Vol. 10 of Y: The Last Man... the book that killed the series for me and yet, I still have the whole thing to keep it complete.



Final Tally: 19 out of 25 with no wiggle room on Hitler humiliation = punch in the face.