Six of One…

Secret Six #2

While Catman distracts Batman with a big fight up and down Gotham’s skyscrapers, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, and Bane break into Alcatraz so they can break Tarantula out. Of course, things don’t go too smoothly, especially after super-strong trustee Mammoth shows up to stir up trouble. And Junior, the monstrously creepy crime boss who lives in a trunk, crawls out into the open just long enough to offer the world’s metavillains a bounty of $10 million for each one of the Six.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This book is so, so, so very wonderful. Action galore, awesome dialogue galore. Ragdoll is hilarious, Deadshot is hilarious, Bane is hilarious. Even Batman is kinda hilarious. Batman eats take-out burritos. Mammoth gets hit in his ornament-things. The only person here who isn’t hilarious is Junior. He’s just scary and creepy. Okay, he’s a little bit hilarious. You should be reading this book — it’s big fun.

Wonder Woman #25

The Queen of Fables is back, attacking Wonder Woman in Hollywood because she believes Wondy is Snow White. The Queen tries to trap Wondy in her vision for a “Wonder Woman” movie — all rotten dialogue, skimpy costumes, terrible history, and insulting plot twists. Eventually, we get a face-to-face battle between Diana and the Queen, and luckily, the planned movie gets put into turnaround.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one is a blast, at least partly because of Wondy’s mortified embarrassment about how bad the film of her life is going to be. All the movie-related banter is also pretty enjoyable. The Queen of Fables is a good villain — it’s too bad she isn’t used more often. She also gets the best line in the book: “I will feed you in pieces to three separate bears!” Something tells me Gail Simone had a lot of fun writing this one.

George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards: The Hard Call #4

It’s been a while since the last issue of this one — I figured I’d missed ’em all. Alex is a new ace — one of the lucky few gifted with superpowers by an alien xenovirus that kills or disfigures almost everyone who contracts it. In an attempt to find Kira, a recently disfigured joker, who’s been kidnapped, Alex has enlisted the help of the infamous Croyd “The Sleeper” Crenson, an ace who gets new powers every time he goes to sleep and who’s prone to abusing uppers to the point of murderous psychosis. Meanwhile, the Jokertown Clinic’s counselor, Fallon, has started stealing and releasing the “Black Trump” virus, which is designed to reverse the effects of the Wild Card virus — unfortunately, it kills as many as it cures. Will Alex and Croyd be able to find Fallon before he kills again?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m a sucker for the “Wild Cards” series, sure, but I’m also enjoying the story a lot. Croyd was always one of my favorite characters in the novels, so it’s nice to see him getting a nice starring role in this one.