Okay, one more week ’til Spacebooger starts the next regular session of Friday Night Fights up again, but that doesn’t mean we gotta wait for him. I know the last few weeks have been a bit free of the usual violence and carnage we’ve come to expect, but I’ve figured out what I’ve been doing wrong — too many kids comics, not enough Grant Morrison. Those Brits really know how to get the disturbingly gory violence flowing, right? So let’s turn things over to last week’s Batman and Robin #3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely:

And Robin wins the prize for the understatement of the year. As for me, I’m off to scrub the horrors from my eyes with a wire brush. Hope y’all have a great weekend…

Green Lantern #45

Most of this issue is devoted to the ongoing “War of the Light” — as Carol Ferris and the Star Sapphires fight Sinestro and the Sinestro Corps, as the Green Lanterns fight the Red Lanterns, as Agent Orange’s orange constructs attack the tiny Blue Lantern Corps. And in the middle of all the fighting, the Black Lanterns make their appearances. Among the newly risen are the entire destroyed planet Xanshi, former GL and Red Lantern Lara, former Yellow Lantern Amon Sur, and the Weaponers of Qward. The best moment, however, was Larfleeze’s somewhat panicked discovery that his own hideout, already littered with hordes of dead aliens he’d killed, was now a breeding ground for zombie enemies — and all of his energy constructs are far, far away…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nothing real spectacular going on here, but the storytelling is solid, the dialogue is good, and the artwork is fun. Larfleeze’s “Yuh-oh” gets some extra prizes all its own.

Justice Society of America #30

Flash and Stargirl are the only Society members still standing against the army of supervillains. Since the bad guys are all refusing to attack Stargirl, Flash takes off to get help while Courtney lays some smackdown on some of the villains. Flash soon returns with the new Dr. Fate, and all three keep the bad guys busy ’til the rest of the JSA can recover. After that, the villains get their butts stomped good. Unfortunately, Mr. Terrific has been stabbed back at the brownstone and is near death, and the two new recruits, King Chimera and the All-American Kid, have conflicting reports of what’s been going on (actually, they have the only real clue about what’s been going on, if anyone would listen to them). And the stresses of the evening have Wildcat and Magog at each other’s throats.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Still not a great story, but it’s acceptable. It’s a bit frustrating that when the team’s looking for someone who tried to kill one of their members, everyone would just ignore the only people who were in the building at the same time. That’s a pretty obvious clue to overlook…

Batman and Robin #3

While Batman interrogates Professor Pyg’s fire-powered meta-terrorist (by zooming around the city in the Batmobile and holding him about a quarter-inch above the asphalt), Robin finally wakes up in Pyg’s hideout just before the bad doctor is preparing to lobotomize a girl named Sasha, one of his artificially doll-faced victims. Pyg introduces himself to Robin by… doing a really creepy sexy-time dance. Wwwwwow. That’s a pretty horrifically memorable way to introduce yourself to the world, I gotta say. Luckily, Robin has been working his way free of Pyg’s ropes this whole time and unleashes on Pyg and his dolls. Batman discovers that Pyg’s scheme involves releasing a aerosolized bio-weapon virus on Gotham City, and he comes to Robin’s rescue at the abandoned carnival. But they can’t find Sasha afterwards. And it turns out that the dollmasks don’t come off once they’ve been put on. Sasha wants revenge — and she meets up with a new partner to help her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. So much awesome stuff here — Batman’s near-face-scraping interrogation in the Batmobile, Pyg’s uber-creepy dance, Dick and Damian both dropping the whupass on the baddies, and some excellently creative sound-effects captions. This was a fantastically fun comic.

Detective Comics #856

Batwoman and her military dad make a narrow escape from Alice, thanks to the assistance of Abbot and his shapeshifting pals, all former members of the Church of Crime. Dad and daughter argue about the crimefighting biz, and later, Kate, her dad, and her stepmom — along with cousin Bette “Flamebird” Kane — attend the annual GCPD Charity Ball. Kate makes a scene by showing up in a spiffy tuxedo, to the disappointment of her stepmom. Kate runs into the only other woman wearing a tux — Major Crimes Unit leader Maggie Sawyer, formerly of Metropolis PD. After sharing a dance with Sawyer, Kate gets a visit from Abbot and his friends, now non-shapeshifted — they share some info about why they broke with the Church of Crime and reveal that Alice wants to succeed where the old leader, Mannheim, failed — they plan to destroy Gotham City. But has the warning come too late? Meanwhile, in our backup story, the Question is on the trail of the kidnappers and survives two different attempts on her life in only a few pages. But will she ever get the answers she needs to break the case?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great characterization work for Batwoman and her family. Excellent action, too. Some great intrigue as well. This is big fun. The Question backup story is good, too — very heavy on the action here, and Renee Montoya makes such a cool protagonist.

Wonder Woman #35

Wonder Woman and Black Canary are in Tokyo on some downtime from their next battle in Roulette’s metahuman fight club. Wondy’s down in the dumps about, um, various stuff, so Dinah tries to cheer her up, with some success. Their next bouts go well, until they’re matched up against a single fighter — and Wondy’s not strong enough to beat her. The new fighter is the goddess Pele, the daughter of the god Kane, Wondy’s chosen patron when the Olympians deserted Earth. Pele is angry because Zeus killed her father, and she plans on taking her revenge by killing Wonder Woman. Is there a way to survive a goddess’s wrath?

Verdict: Thumbs up, but largely for some of the smaller points. Wondy’s reaction to the over-sexualized toys of her in the Japanese stores was very funny, all the dialogue between Wondy and Black Canary was great, B.C. taking on all the villains in the arena at once was thoroughly and awesomely cool. But I’m getting a bit tired of the over-reliance on Roulette’s fight clubs as a storytelling gimmick, and Diana has spent much too much time lately fighting gods and goddesses.

Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #4

Uh-oh, Thanos is on the scene, and he means to get all the Infinity Gems away from the Pet Avengers. None of them are tough enough to take him on, so Frog Thor (I just can’t get into calling him “Throg” — even for this series, it’s too silly) takes all the gems and gives them to Lockjaw, on the pretense that Lockjaw is going to betray them all and hand them over. Instead, Lockjaw blasts Thanos a few times, then teleports him pretty much all over the place before stranding him in an alternate universe where he can’t get back. Huzzah! Cute animals triumph over evil!

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up, because this issue was still plenty fun. But this was still the weakest issue of the series. If Thanos couldn’t understand what the animals were saying, why all the subterfuge that Frog Thor goes through? How did Ms. Lion survive getting a face-full of Thanos-blast? Why wasn’t Lockjaw more powerful when he possessed all of the Infinity Gems? Still, like I said, lots of good fun in this one, and I’m looking forward to the planned ongoing series with these characters.

Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! #7

Dr. Sivana is back and plotting more evil. After learning about Tawky Tawny’s connections to Billy and Mary, he manages to trail them to their home, bug their apartment, kidnap Tawny, and lead them straight into a trap — he’s re-activated the giant robot Mr. Atom, and he’s managed to super-charge him with the Marvels’ own lightning! Do they stand a chance to stop Dr. Sivana’s schemes?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Cute story, cute art, and they manage to raise the stakes and make things even more dangerous for Billy and Mary. That’s actually a pretty nice accomplishment for a kids comic.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #39

The Leader, the Abomination, and the Rhino are pulling off a ton of crimes as they work toward a plan to take over an orbital super-laser. Wolverine gets conned into making hot dogs while wearing an apron, just so Spidey can upload the pix to the Internet. Luke Cage beats the Abomination by beating him senseless with Wolverine. Spidey and Storm beat the Leader with rain. And Rhino wants out of the villain biz, so he and Tigra fake an epic battle so he’ll have an excuse to retire.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one was just spectacular fun. The coolest scene was Tigra’s faked battle royale with Rhino — in a dramatic, drenching downpour, no less. The prize for best line goes to Tigra for: “Won the fight. Stole a line from the Thing. I’m totally a hero, and everything’s fine.” Just plain fantastic stuff.

Well, the Disney-Marvel deal still seems to be a topic of much interest, so let’s talk a little more about what it all means.

The first thing it means for Marvel is a great deal more financial security. Much like DC with Time Warner, Marvel is going to get a bit of a cushion if they have a financial downturn.

But the first thing that comics fans care about is — what’s this mean for my stash of new comics every week? And it’s not going to mean a single thing. Disney will probably never meddle in the comics publishing side of things, ’cause frankly, comics are a tiny, tiny part of the entertainment industry. A hit movie or video game makes more money than all of Marvel’s or DC’s comics do in a year. Disney won’t care whether Peter Parker marries Mary Jane, whether Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is Captain America, whether Jean Grey comes back to life again or not.

Right now, everyone is assuming that they’re going to Disneyfy all of Marvel’s books to make them more kid-friendly or even tween-friendly. I don’t see it happening. Disney owns Miramax Films, and they didn’t release any kid-friendly versions of “Pulp Fiction,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Dogma,” “Trainspotting,” “Kinky Boots,” “No Country for Old Men,” or “There Will Be Blood,” did they? Disney cares about making money, and as long as Marvel makes money, they won’t try to fix what ain’t broke.

The fact of the matter is — Disney is a gigantic, multi-national entertainment corporation. They care about making money. Disney does not care about comic books, not enough to meddle pointlessly. Disney does care about movies, TV, and video games. ‘Cause that’s where the money is in the entertainment biz.

And Marvel’s characters are proven money-makers in movies and computer games. That’s why Disney wants them. And they must want them awful bad, ’cause they’re not going to see a dime from “Iron Man 2” and probably not from “Iron Man 3” if Marvel had a three-picture deal with Paramount. Same for Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, or any other Marvel property whose film rights are held by another studio. A contract’s a contract, and there ain’t nothing in the world that the Mouse can do in that case. They can offer to buy the contract from Paramount, but that’ll be real expensive, maybe too expensive. Disney is probably at least three years away from being able to get a Marvel superhero movie out with their name in front of the credits.

But Disney knew that going in, and they still made the offer — which means they’re pretty confident that Marvel is going to be in a position to make Disney a very large amount of cash. They want Marvel’s superheroes in their creative stable bad enough to shell out $4 billion for them, and that may mean they’ll also be motivated to bargain for the rights held by other studios. After all, Disney has some of the deepest pockets of all the movie studios, and they may just have the pocket change on hand to get Tony Stark away from Paramount, or Spidey away from Columbia, or the Fantastic Four away from Fox.

Will the movies be good? The best we can do is keep our fingers crossed. Sure, Disney has always had a mixed record on live-action films, but the same goes for Marvel — or don’t you remember “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider,” or the “Fantastic Four” movies? The hopeful side of me remembers that Pixar has a lot more say in Disney than they used to have — and Pixar’s one superhero movie was one of the best ever.

Are we going to see crossovers? Not on film, not on TV. Maybe in video games — the “Kingdom Hearts” series crammed in every Disney character they could, and they might try something like that again. But we’ll definitely see some crossovers in the comics, and probably before the end of next year. Probably not “Hannah Montana: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” or “MODOK in Wonderland” — but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some sort of kid-friendly crossover, similar to DC’s “Superman and Bugs Bunny” crossover a decade ago. I’ll admit I’d really love to see if the Hulk can get as mad as Donald Duck can…

But there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that’ll happen that we’ll have no way to predict. We’re down the rabbit hole now, and it’s definitely a whole new world out there…