Stray Cat Strut
Secret Six #22
There’s a lot of stuff happening in this one — Black Alice and Scandal Savage fight each other, then bond with each other; Catman remembers his awful childhood, his terrible father, and how he took his first steps into adulthood; and Catman takes care of the last people who kidnapped his son, making one more colossal sacrifice to keep his child safe.
Verdict: Thumbs up. There’s not a single bad moment in this issue. The whole thing is just spectacular and awesome and brilliant. I hope Gail Simone never leaves this title.
Spider-Man: Fever #3
Spider-Man is still stuck in the spirit world, being influenced by a spider spirit that claims it gave him his powers. The Sorror-Fly, a fly spirit that used to be a human, is trying to help Peter and give him some context for the strange stuff he sees, but it’s not doing a lot of good. A magical dart fired by the dog spirits a couple issues back finally hits its mark, destroying the malign spider demon trying to influence Peter, but Spider-Man is still poisoned and dying. At last, Dr. Strange finally arrives on the scene and both drains the poison and turns the Sorror-Fly back into a human being. But can the heroes figure out a way to stop the rest of the spider demons before they decide to invade Earth?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Seriously head-trippy stuff. I don’t know that Steve Ditko could have come up with something this wild and weird, but I do think he’da managed something really close to it.
The Unwritten #14
The new Tommy Taylor novel is a forgery, written to be as bad a chunk of writing as possible in order to lure Wilson Taylor, the original author, out of hiding so he can be killed. Tom Taylor, Wilson’s son, and his friends have their own troubles to worry about. Lizzie Hexam’s method of secretly communicating with Wilson through books has been detected by the literary conspiracy controlling the world, and Savoy has been bitten by the supposedly fictional vampire Count Ambrosio, giving the vengeful bloodsucker an unwitting spy into Tom Taylor’s life. And the assassin Pullman is on the scene, too. Once the conspiracy picks up Lizzie, can Tom and Savoy save her and get back underground?
Verdict: Thumbs up. The net is tightening around our heroes — heck, multiple nets are closing in fast. No idea how or if they’re all going to get away from all this. But the ongoing mystery is still enthralling and still very fun to read.
Today’s Cool Links:
- Vote for your favorite Terry Pratchett books in the Discworld Cup.
- The difference between boys bikes and girls bikes? Purely ornamental.
- This has been around for a while, but it’s new to me, so maybe it’s new to you, too. Colleen Coover talks women in comics, both as creators and characters.