Stand Up for your Rights

Liberty Comics

Here’s one of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s periodic fundraiser comics, designed to both raise a little scratch for the organization and educate readers about the continuing need to support the CBLDF and oppose censorship of comics, graphic novels, etc.

This one features a number of different stories by a number of different creators, but the real standouts are Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s short vignette about The Boys and the horrible, violent things they do to super-people, Darwyn Cooke and Dave Stewart’s tribute to “The Deadly Book,” Mark Millar and John Paul Leon’s modern re-telling of “House of Dracula,” Art Adams’ great pinup of Monkeyman and O’Brien, Ed Brubaker’s “Criminal” story about pressuring the press, and the short strips on “Tales of Comic Book Censorship” by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones.

Verdict: Thumbs up. You’ve joined up with the CBLDF, haven’t ya? Twenty-five smackers is all it costs to get a membership, and you help support efforts to stamp out comic censorship.

Birds of Prey #121

The Joker is moving in on the Silicon Syndicate in Plantinum Flats; the Birds get acquainted with Infinity, their newest operative; and Misfit enrolls in a new school. That’s pretty much it.

Verdict: I’m thumbs-downing it. It’s a place-saver issue. Worse, it’s a fairly dull place-saver.

She-Hulk #32

Shulkie and Jazinda have captured the Nogor, the Skrull’s “Talisman”, or spiritual leader. So they, umm, keep him tied up. With ropes. In their RV. She-Hulk rescues a bunch of humans captured by the Skrulls, and then they get attacked by Jazinda’s dad, the original Super-Skrull himself.

Verdict: I’m turning thumbs down on this one, too. The main problem is that it’s just not interesting.