Future's End #1 & #2 - A Review

After reading the lackluster Future's End #0 (which DC Comics released on Free Comic Book Day this year), I fully intended to give this series a miss.  I've had my fill of stories involving dark futures, the heroes failing to save the day and enough angst and ennui to fill a dozen Morrisey albums.  The fact that the story - at its most basic level - was a blatant rip-off of X-Men: Days Of Future Past didn't help matters.

Still, I happened to read a preview of Future's End #2 and learned that it would involve the funeral of Green Arrow.  Being as big a fan of Oliver Queen as I am, that was enough to pique my curiosity.  So I picked up the first two issues last weekend to see what I might see.

Not much, as it turns out.


Future's End #1 combines the worst aspects of Countdown and Brightest Day.  Specifically, we get to see a lot of heroes die horrible, random deaths and we get to see Ronnie Raymond act like an incompetent, entitled douche-bag.  Why DC Comics keeps forcing the unnatural Ronnie Raymond/Jason Rusch partnership is beyond me.  I don't know anyone who likes this version of Firestorm and the low sales figures/cancellation of the New 52 Firestorm series would seem to bear out that idea that more people hated it than not.

Indeed, Roy Harper says it best in Future's End #2 when he calls Raymond "a liar... As well as a fraud -- phony -- and a complete and total coward."  And he is not wrong.  Raymond is directly responsible for Oliver Queen's death and his actions in this issue do nothing to endear him to the reader.  Yet I somehow think we are meant to sympathize with Ronnie, because all he wanted to do was sleep with his girlfriend while on the clock at his day job as Oliver Queen was radioing for him, specifically, to help avert a disaster.

This doesn't work.  At all.

What does work is the funeral sequence, which has a hint of Jeff Lemire's writing about it.  There are so many wonderful, subtle details revealed here.  Roy Harper in a red costume modeled on Green Arrow's uniform.  Black Canary crying in the background.  And Animal Man's eulogy, in which he talks about Oliver Queen leading the rebellion against a second Apokoliptian invasion.



Now THAT is a comic I want to read!  Alas, that's the biggest problem with this series and - in many ways - much of the New 52 line so far.  We keep getting teased about stories that are far more interesting in abstract than the stories we've been given.

I want to see Green Arrow fighting alien invaders with nothing but sheer chutzpah and a madman's arsenal of trick arrows.  I want to see how Roy Harper became his staunchest defender and why Dinah Lance cries the hardest at his death.  But most of all, I want a story where the heroes are fighting villains instead of each other.

This is not that story.  Maybe Justice League United will become that story in the future?

I hope so.  I'd really like to read that story.

Larfleeze #1 - A Review

I remember a colleague on Twitter asking earlier this week if there was really a demand for a book starring Larfleeze - The One and Only Orange Lantern of Avarice.  I highly doubt it and I say that as someone who has generally been amused by Larfleeze's appearances in the pages of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern.  Sadly, this first issue gives me little optimism for this book having a long life.


Your enjoyment of this story comes down to one important question - are you a fan of the Keith Giffen & J.M. Dematteis Justice League series?  If the answer is yes then you will love this book.  Larfleeze is basically Chuck Jones' Daffy Duck (i.e. I'm a coward, but I'm a GREEDY little coward) with the power to back up his laughably overblown opinion of himself.  He is joined by a new comedic foil - an alien slave, er butler who plays the L-Ron to Larfleeze's Maxwell Lord. 

Most of the plot of this issue (what little of it there is) has Larfleeze retelling his life's story to his current slave - er, butler - as he waits for an inevitable death on the edge of the universe.  How he got to this point is unexplained but I'd wager it has something to do with Larfleeze's making war on The Green Lantern Corps in the pages of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps in this month's issues of those titles.  Way to kill the suspense, editors! 


The artwork of Scott Kolins is equally divisive.  Either you like it or you don't and I most assuredly don't.  Kolins underinks his work to a ludicrous degree given the intricacy of his line-work.  This problem is only aggravated by Kolins' regular colorist Mike Atiyeh, whose efforts at providing a "tint" to a scene generally leave everything nearly the same color.  There are several points where only Kolins' habit of highlighting important figures with a thicker black line than everything else save the characters from blending into the background entirely.

Bottom Line?  I won't be back next month and if I can't be sold on this title I doubt even the rest of the Green Lantern family of books will be able to prop it up long.     

52 Catch-Up: Green Arrow #1-6

I don't think any book in the New 52 line-up has disappointed me more than Green Arrow. Not because of anything in the book itself but more because of the promise that wasn't fulfilled.

As regular readers know, Green Arrow is one of my favorite characters and I was of the opinion that most of the people writing him in the last decade had no idea what they were doing. So when it was announced that Oliver Queen would be getting a fresh start under the pen of J.T. Krul - whose work with the character during Brightest Day I liked - well, I was cautiously optimistic.

As I noted in my review of the first issue, J.T. Krul gave us a good set-up. The basic concept of Oliver Queen being this universe's version of Steve Jobs was a solid start and a nice modernization of the character's classic origins as a billionaire playboy. We were given a brief look at Ollie's support team at both his day and night jobs. Krul also managed to establish what sets Green Arrow apart from similar heroes, apart from his archery gimmick - his skills as a tracker, his hatred of people who abuse their power and his motivations for being a hero - with surprising subtlety.





Sadly, the potential of the first issue went largely untapped and Krul never expanded upon the one hint he gave as to how Oliver Queen's past may have differed from the old Green Arrow before leaving the book with Issue #3. Krul's three issues are, for the most part, standard superhero action fare. Do not misunderstand me - it's good superhero action fare. But this isn't what the opening issues of a new series should be like.




To my mind, an opening arc should firmly establish the main character's past and character for new readers. But these opening issues don't really do that. Apart from the aforementioned hint we aren't given any information at all about Oliver Queen's past or motivations for having become a crime-fighter. Was he washed up on an island and forced to fight a drug cartel for the freedom of an enslaved tribe? Did he discover a secret marijuana farm and force the hippies running it to take him back to civilization at arrow point? Was he abducted by Chinese slavers and forced to think up lucky numbers in a fortune cookie factory? We don't know!

Oddly, this lack of a back-story is more of a hindrance to long-time fans rather than new readers. I know I was anxious to see how the relationships between Green Arrow and his extended family would be different in the New DCU. Heck, I was anxious to see if there would even be an extended family. It turns out there isn't. This book is firmly set in the new Year One, before Roy Harper was adopted and apparently before Green Arrow met Black Canary, despite a promise at the end of Issue #2 that she would appear in Issue #3. She did not.

Another problem is that none of the supporting characters are developed past a one-sentence summary. Naomi is a sassy hacker grrrl. Jax is a pacifist weapon designer. Nobody seems to have any life outside of helping Ollie do what he does or - in the case of Queen Enterprises CEO Emerson - being an annoyance. Yet Emerson gets a scene suggesting that his motivation for riding Ollie so hard is because of his friendship with Ollie's father and his worries that Ollie is wasting his potential. It's a nice touch, making Emerson a much more complex character with a few simple panels and these opening issues could have used more brief scenes like this.





I mentioned before that Krul did a good job of establishing Ollie's basic character in the first issue. One way he did this was by giving Green Arrow the perfect villainous foil in a gang of publicity-hungry supervillains. No matter what the incarnation, there's nothing Green Arrow should hate more than people who abuse their power and hurt others like it is nothing.





Though I disagree strongly with the equation Naomi makes between supervillains posting their crimes on-line and being cheered for it and people who play violent video games. Wouldn't a comparison to the people who watch Jersey Shore, cheering the antics of a group of morally reprehensible publicity whores be more apt? Just saying.





While I can quibble with the characterization and the metaphors, I cannot quibble with the action nor with how well it is illustrated. Dan Jurgens or George Perez would be a fine artist to put on any book. Put the two of them together though, with Jurgens doing layouts and Perez doing finishes and you have something unique that captures the best of both artists. The characters all have a classic Perez feel to them but the form and flow of the panels is more structured, with just as much detail to the setting as there is to the characters. Most importantly, all of the characters have unique designs that make them easily identifiable even in the long shots.





Issues 4-6, co-plotted by artist Dan Jurgens and writer Keith Giffen, suffer from similar problems to those I described in the first three issues. There's a lot of well-designed and well-drawn action sequences but the characterization is still shallow, at best. What is worse, someone is stealing jokes from the a movie about another billionaire playboy superhero, which leaves me questioning just how coincidental it is that Oliver's executive assistant is a hyper-competent redhead.



Does this seem familiar to anyone else, somehow? Anyone?

All issues of parody or plagiarism aside, the plot of this trio of books doesn't have as much punch as the first three. The focus here is upon two new villains - Blood Rose and Midas. Blood Rose is a standard issue gun-totting femme fatale with super-strength. Midas, a slightly more original creation, was a scientist whose injuries at the hands of a group of eco-terrorists turned him into an avatar of pollution. Think Swamp Thing mixed with The Toxic Avenger... but evil! Heck, Alec Holland even gets name dropped!





Blood Rose wants to see Oliver Queen suffer slowly before she eventually kills him. Why? Good question - one Oliver actually asks her point blank and one she refuses to answer. There is a hint in the artwork that she may have known Oliver at one point in the past but nothing is ever explained.





Midas, for his part, has a much simpler motivation - he's a nerd who never had any luck with women before his accident and his relationship with Blood Rose is the closest thing he's ever had to real intimacy. He does what she wants to make her happy and appreciate him more. Which only serves to make the ending of this arc and the lack of explanation as to how these two ever hooked up even more nonsensical.

However, the confusing plot and lack of back-story for the characters is not the least of this arc's problems. The art is full of continuity errors and one great big whopping WTF moment, when Oliver Queen is apparently shot in the head and survives! I suppose the bullet is meant to have just grazed the front of his forehead but given that the gun was aimed at the back of his head before he tried to move, Ollie shouldn't have had a chance to dodge. ESPECIALLY considering the twist ending which... well... pretty much confirms there's no way Ollie could be faster than Blood Rose and certainly not fast enough to dodge bullets.





Ollie doesn't even have a bandage or signs of a wound when he goes after Midas and Blood Rose afterward! The blame for this can probably be laid on artist Ignacio Calero, who took over pencil finishes on the final issue. George Perez, he ain't.





In the end, all my grousing is completely meaningless given that Issue #7 will bring a new creative team to this book - Writer Ann Nocenti (most famous for her work on Daredevil and creation of Typhoid Mary) and artist Harvey Talibao (Most recently seen working on a Silver Surfer mini-series for Marvel). With any luck, they'll be sticking around for a while and we can finally get a look at Oliver Queen's past. Either way, you can be sure I'll be covering it!

O.M.A.C. #1 - A Review

To understand O.M.A.C. #1, you have to understand Jack Kirby.

There’s a reason Kirby was – and still is – known as “The King”. No single artist has influenced comic book artwork today more than Jack Kirby. He innovated many of the artistic tropes that we take for granted today, such as a character’s fists or feet launching out toward the reader like a printed 3-D movie. Kirby was also an excellent visual storyteller and one of the greatest idea men the industry has ever seen. If he had a flaw, it was that as great as he was with concepts, he was weak on character development. Thankfully, his concepts were strong enough that this was rarely a problem, given the stories he favored telling. You don’t need a lot of complex characterization when you’re dealing on the level of gods waging war.

The spirit of Kirby is strong in this title, which revives one of Jack Kirby’s old characters for the modern day. Dan Didio, better known for his position as DC Comics editor in chief than his work as a writer, has a lot in common with Kirby. He has a lot of big ideas and trusts those ideas to sell themselves without needing a lot of explanation. This proves to be a good choice in the case of O.M.A.C – an acronym for One Man Army Corps.

The action centers open the offices of Cadmus – a bio-medical company we are told has made tremendous strides in mapping the human genome and genetic engineering. The facility is attacked by a mysterious being who identifies itself only as OMAC. OMAC then proceeds to open up an industrial size can of whoop-ass on Cadmus security, fighting its’ way toward Cadmus’ mainframe computer and the information within. By the issue’s end, we find that OMAC is controlled by a sophisticated artificial intelligence called Brother Eye, which seemingly has the power to infect any human with the power of OMAC.

There’s not a lot of depth to this story (what do you expect from a hero, whose original incarnation answered to the name of Buddy Blank?) but there doesn’t need to be. This is old-school comic-book action, the way King Kirby used to write it. I personally prefer my heroes to have a little more depth but even I can see the appeal of this concept. As Terry Pratchett once noted, just because something is simple does not mean that it is stupid and this book is far from stupid.

Artist Keith Giffen alters his usual style a bit for this book, apparently aping Kirby’s style in terms of both layouts and finishes. This is an effective choice, with most of the pages having the standard five and six panel layouts that Kirby favored, with only one double-page spread in the whole book and only two splash pages.

While nobody can draw a monster like Jack Kirby could, Giffen does draw monsters just as well as Kirby did. He also manages some great expressions on the human characters, creating people who are distinctive and memorable despite having relatively little time on the page.

This book is a wonderful tribute to times past and the legacy of Jack Kirby. It also manages to be a great action story in its’ own right, with the art to match it. The only flaw I can see is that at no point in the story is it explained just what O.M.A.C stands for. Still, if you like your comics full of action and free of fluff, you might want to give O.M.A.C. a try.

One Good Thing And One Bad Thing About Doom Patrol #4

BAD THING: You know those comics which claim to tie-in to a bigger storyline that are just an excuse to get the regular readers to care about the crossover and a means of suckering in all of the fans of the crossover who wouldn't buy this book any other way? This is one of those comics.

On the bright side, at least there's three pages of history explaining who the Black Lantern Doom Patrol members are and and who the current Doom Patrol is for those of us who don't read Doom Patrol. So at least you don't spend the whole book confused as to who is fighting who and why. That being said, there's no reason to buy this book if you're just interested in Blackest Night.


GOOD THING: The real treat comes at the end of the issue, where there is a non-Blackest Night affiliated story about The Metal Men.

Now I know what you're thinking - why do I care about the Metal Men all of a sudden? I don't. But I do care about anything Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire do together. Because it's always worth reading and frequently hilarious.

One Good Thing And One Bad Thing About Ambush Bug: Year None #7

GOOD THING: You know right from the start that no holds will be bared and that Giffen will be poking fun at the DCU and everyone involved in creating this book.

BAD THING: Fun as it is, you can't help but wonder just how much of this is a joke and how much of it is Giffen playing The Fool to Dan Didio's King.

Ambush Bug is one of those characters and series that is either hit or miss. Your ability to enjoy it is entirely dependent upon your ability to laugh at sacred cows being tipped over and, in the case of the scene where comic fans are depicted as barely-literate apes, your ability to laugh at yourself as well.

The world might not be able to stand it but I wish they did this as a monthly, if only because we could use more comics parodying One More Day, where Ambush Bug goes to The Demon Neron - not to have his marriage erased from history, but to get a recommendation for a good divorce lawyer. :)

FILM REVIEW: Superhero Movie

The Short Version: It is worth seeing and was a lot funnier than I thought it would be. Definitely give it a see if you can catch a cheap show or once it is out on video.



1. Fair Warning - the movie poster and the trailers are a total lie. This movie is not, in fact, a parody of a whole bunch of different superhero movies or one big mockery of the Marvel Comics universe. It is, baring a few random scenes that don't have much to do with anything, a fairly straight-forward parody of the first Spider-Man movie.

This is, however, a good thing as the worst material in the movie involves Our Hero's brief visit to Xavier's School for Gifted Non-Asian Kids. The best gag in the whole sequence is one that was cut from the movie but included in the closing credits as we see the unfortunate mutant with toilet-paper dispensing claws who has the unfortunate task of wiping Wolverine's ass. Why? Well, apparently this Wolverine can't retract his claws.

I freely admit this is disgusting and unfunny. However, this is freaking Marx Brothers compared to the rest of the scene, the gags involving Professor Xavier's wife and children (all bald and in wheelchairs) and Pamela Anderson's cameo appearance as Invisible Girl.


2. Speaking of which - all of Pamela Anderson's appearance in the movie is in the trailers. Seriously. She's in the movie for about 30 seconds. So if you're just going to see this movie for Pam, stay home. Despite this, I still think she did a much better job with the part than Jessica Alba.


3. Drake Bell plays Rick Riker. Good choice for the lead as he looks like Brandon Routh's skinny cousin and sounds like Michael J. Fox. Perfect faux Parker in other words.


4. I'd be willing to bet this entire movie started with the concept of "Leslie Nielsen is Uncle Ben" and went from there. And that's not a bad thing at all. Because while the movie does recycle a lot of jokes from The Naked Gun (Superhero Movie's penultimate gag is exactly the same as Naked Gun's final gag), Nielsen is still a skilled enough performer to make them new.

Nearly all the best moments in the movie have Nielsen involved in them, from his attempts at refuting Rick's "You're not my real father!" complaints (I raised you like a father would! I had sex with your mother like your father did!) to the funeral that had me rolling in my chair as Nielsen attempted to negotiate his way through the fine print on a coupon.

Don't ask. Just watch.


5. Best joke that got cut? A direct reference to the first Spider-Man - in which Rick watches the girl of his dreams through her bedroom window as she is getting dressed and she "just happens" to have a stripper pole there.


6. Best joke that was left in the movie? It involves the revelation that due to budget cutbacks The Daily Bugle is now having to share its' building with an insane asylum.

7. Biggest question after the movie was over? How long before Keith Giffen sues over this?

Ambush Bug and Dragonfly? Separated at birth? You be the judge!

Looking To The Stars - What's in The News?

Don't expect a big focused rant this week, folks. There's big changes coming to the Nexus and I'm too busy cleaning up sawdust and hammering up plywood to pick one big story to focus on.

So what do I have for you this week? A few links. A few rants. And a few quick reviews and odd notes.

Let's get it on, then.



The 2005 Comics Nexus Year End Awards

At the time of this publishing, there is still time to go vote in 2005 Year End Awards . So go vote! It's your patriotic duty! Our voting process guaranteed to be 100% Diebold free!



House of M: Part Four

The final chapter of Matt Gardner's masterpiece parody of House of M is finally up!

NO MORE FATHER! NO MORE CROSSOVERS!

Would that it were so...



PREVIEW: CIVIL WAR

Read it and weep, Fanboy!

It's going to suck.

Not because Bendis is masterminding it. Not because Millar is writing it. Not because the whole stated purpose of the series is to bring back the unified Marvel Universe Stan Lee envisioned and yet it's being built upon the backs of the two stories that did more to screw up Marvel Continuity in recent memory.

No, it will suck because Spider-Man has a new costume.

Nothing good has ever come of any storyline where Spider-Man gets a new costume. It's like Ted McGinley joining the cast of a show – disaster WILL strike!

Seriously, the stink off this story is so bad that not even a good writer like... I dunno, Paul Jenkins could save this...

*ahem*


What?!?

*whisper whisper whisper*

You're kidding me!

*whisper whisper whisper*


Seriously? Well,okay...



PAUL JENKINS TO PEN "CIVIL WAR: FRONTLINE"

Damn you, Marvel!



PREVIEW: GREEN ARROW #60

Nothing's happening and...It's over. A lot of people look pissed...

I rag on Judd Winick a lot for this book. And small wonder as Green Arrow is one of my top five favorite characters of all time. Still, I had some hopes that maybe, with the chance to do a fresh start that maybe he could finally do a simple story in less than eight issues.

My optimism seems to have been misplaced. Seven pages here, nearly 1/3rd of a whole comic book and what do we see?

Resolution of what has happened to all of the supporting cast, one of whom has been buried under rubble for three whole issues at this point?

No. We get treated to seven pages where we find out that gangs are robbing people, bullets are scarcer than food and that the crime-lord wannabe Brick has apparently become a hero. And except for one panel, we get no hint that Green Arrow is anywhere to be seen. Still, the conceit of Star City having become a war zone in One Year is a nice, original idea.

Shame it was done already in the Batman books six years ago.

Can you say "Hack" boys and girls? Sure. I knew you could.



Giffen/DeMatteis Give Humorous Exclusive to BOOM!

BWA-HA-HA-HUH?

NOOOOOO! This means no more Giffen/DeMatthias Defenders!

Oh well. Good news, Dan Slott! Until Mike Carey takes over X-Men, you are my only Monthly Man At Marvel. (I also pick up Joss Whedon's books... but those aren't monthly purchases).



REVIEW: Green Lantern #9

I came down kinda hard on issues #7 and #8 a few weeks ago, so I wanted to take this opportunity to say that issue #9 has got me willing to give this book a chance for a while longer. Numerically, I'll give it a solid 8. Worth reading if only for two things.

1. The modernized Tattooed Man – I've been saying they needed to bring this character back with a modern twist for years and Geoff Johns has finally done that thing here.
2. Hal Jordan gets Batman to lighten up. 'Nuff Said!



REVIEW: Amazing Spider-Man #529

Proof that even a pro like JMS can crank out a bad issue when Editorial forces him to toe the company line. Tony Stark calls Peter and MJ his family, despite them only having lived with him a few months. Peter's new suit is apparently dampening his Spider-Sense as he should have sensed a man drawing a gun and been able to jump-carry a victim out of the way of a bullet easily. Even the humorous acknowledgement of how badly each issue of "The Other" flowed into each other (i.e. the How DID Mary Jane's arm heal so quickly?) isn't enough to save some bad characterization and faulty power portrayal. All for the sake of unveiling... bleh... the new Spider-Suit.



FINALLY, A THANK YOU!

Thanks to all the well-wishers who sent me their sympathies regarding my friend Sam. It means a lot to know that my story touched you. And I think you'll really like something that I'm going to be presenting fairly soon.

So with no further ado, I shall bid you adieu.

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. Same Matt website.

Looking To The Stars: The Future of DC

Just when I try and get out, they pull me back in.

No, I'm not still going on about my job with the comic store. I'm talking about DC Comics. My abandonment of most of Marvel Comics is well known by this point. And with all the upcoming news about bold new directions and characters dying and bland non-specific hype coming out of DC recently, I wasn't seeing myself buying much more from DC either.

And then came the good news. A whole spattering of good news, in fact. Good news that has assured me that I won't be completely turning into an indy comics guy anytime soon.

1. Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns writing Superman.

I've never been a big Superman fan. As a kid, I always preferred the more cerebral heroes who didn't punch their way through everything. And back then, Superman didn't do much but punch his way through every little thing. More recently, but rarely, many writers have been able to balance the simplicity of Truth, Justice and the American way with more complex storylines that tested Superman's spirit as well as his muscles. And with two of the writers who are the absolute best at maintaining the mix of Silver Age sensibility with modern storytelling at the helm, it looks like Superman will be a very good book to recommend to new readers when the new Superman movie hits the big screen this summer.

2. James Robinson on Batman.

My favorite Batman story of all time is a little story called Blades. Barely a story about Batman at all, the focus is upon a new Gotham vigilante dubbed The Cavalier who winds up teaching an inexperienced Bruce Wayne something about good intentions and heroism. It was the first thing I ever read by a writer who would quickly become one of my favorites and the indirect source of my nickname.

So it is with a good deal of joy that I can note that Starman author James Robinson, after an extended stay in Hollywood, is apparently returning back to DC to write not one, but two titles; Batman and Detective Comics. Batman has suffered from some truly horrible writing in the last two years and I haven't bought a Batman book since the time when Jean Paul Valley was still up and kicking because of it. So yeah... I'll be giving both these titles a shot.

3. Ron Marz on Ion.

Longtime readers will know that it was Green Lantern, and Kyle Rayner in specific, that got me into reading comics as an adult. Now as much as I am loving Geoff Johns bringing the GLC back, and what he is doing with all the characters... I've been kind of sad seeing Kyle shoved to a supporting role, even if he does hold a post as teacher in The New Corps. And a lot of people, who STILL can't get over the fact that Kyle still draws breath even though they have Hal back in a position as a respected hero AND a Green Lantern, are still insisting that Kyle will die during Infinite Crisis.

So here, in order, is my news for anyone who is a fan of Kyle Rayner.

GOOD: Kyle will be surviving Crisis.

BETTER: Kyle will be getting his own solo title under the nom de plume Ion.

BEST: Ron Marz is coming back to write it.

In short: Eat it, H.E.A.T.!

4. Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes.

On that note, not only is the new, non-confusing REAL Supergirl going to survive Infinite Crisis...

Not only will her book be continuing...

But she will be getting a second title, apparently paired with The Legion.

Hmmm... come to think of it, isn't Superboy Prime still alive and kicking and just begging to go to a place where heroism as an ideal is very much needed?

I'm not suggesting anything here... save that this may be a very good time to be an old-school Silver Age comics fan.

5. Keith Giffen on Blue Beetle.

Rumored for a while, but now confirmed. Glad to see there's still some room at DC for a little levity. I'd hate to have the only thing I see from Giffen be the amusing, but impossible for me to get at my store Defenders.

So yes. I'll be around a while longer. Much to the chagrin of El Editor Grande Daron, who will be quite disappointed to know that despite his predictions of doom last week, I did not get a single bit of hate mail in the past week over my statement that Gail Simone has the best grasp of the Ollie Queen/Dinah Lance relationship of any writer at DC and that anyone who dares disagree with me is arguing against solid fact, not opinion.

Hey that wasn't Daron, that was ME, your most vertical editor, Kevin S Mahoney! I write in a thick blue font, very unlike Daron's!


But more on that, and how Gail has indirectly made my life as a Green Arrow enthusiast much more difficult, next time...

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. Same Matt website.