Supergirl #56

Supergirl has kidnapped her Bizarro double, Bizarrogirl, so she can return her to Bizarro World. But when they get to Bizarrogirl’s home, they learn that something has cracked the whole cube-planet open, and everything’s in chaos. Well, more in chaos. After a green space monster eats Bizarro Luthor, Bizarro himself shows up and reveals that something called the Godship is behind all their troubles. It crashed into the planet and periodically sends out space-monster drones to eat people — the drones then get processed to provide the ship’s fuel. Supergirl goes out to check out the Godship — and discovers that it’s not a ship at all. And it won’t be easy to beat it.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It ain’t perfect, but I love this comic’s blend of humor and superheroics. The Godship is plenty impressive, and I like the way the Bizarros aren’t being portrayed as solely dim-witted buffoons. The artistic style is great, too — it’s so nice, after the last few years, to see a Supergirl who’s not drawn to look like a hooker.

The Avengers #5

Time appears to be broken bad, and while the Avengers in the present mostly sit around and gawp at the ongoing disaster (except for Thor. Thank Thor for Thor! He zooms right out and hits Galactus with his hammer), the small group of Avengers in the future have a lot more to do. Future Tony Stark has stripped out all the electronics and armor out of Regular Tony Stark to keep Ultron from using his armor to spy on them. Future Tony Stark and the Maestro reveal that time breaking is all the fault of Kang — he was trying to defeat a super-advanced version of Ultron and kept twisting time to bring in more and more heroes and villains to help him until he finally fractured time good.

Future Tony has a big Rip Hunter map of the Avengers’ future, and he realizes that he has no idea who Noh-Varr is — which means he’s could be the key to stopping time from breaking. The Avengers suddenly find themselves shot back into the past, Groundhog Day style, at the moment a few issues back when Apocalypse and his Horsemen attacked. Can the Avengers figure out the clues they need to prevent the disaster? And who will they have to ally themselves with to stop it?

Verdict: Thumbs up, with reservations. I loved all the future stuff, even when it was chaotic and crazy. I really disliked the stuff in the present, particularly the way that everyone except Thor limped around staring goggle-eyed at a bunch of cavemen and dinosaurs and whimpering that they had no idea how they could help and the whole world was just ruined and how can any of us go on? The whole thing made me want to smack the tar out of a bunch of whiny superheroes. And Bendis’ dialogue was downright weak this time. But yeah, even with all that going against it, I still enjoyed enough of the story to feel happy with it.

The Flash #5

I didn’t actually buy this one. I’ve been feeling unhappy with the way it’s been going, so I flipped through it in the store. General summary: Flash fights the Rogues and also the future versions of the Rogues, who are all cops. They want to arrest him because they say, at some point in his future, he killed one of the future cops. At some point, for no real reason I could see, Captain Boomerang gets a bunch of White Lantern powers.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The random “Hello, White Lantern!” thing was bizarre. The way the future cops are wanting to arrest Barry for a crime he hasn’t committed yet — and if jailed, will never commit — is stupid. But you know what really chaps my hide about this? This comic about the Fastest Man Alive is incredibly slow and boring. I doubt that I’ll be reading any more of it.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Reactions from the comics world about the news that Wildstorm was going to close. It really is kinda cool how many really, really excellent comics they produced over the years.
• Bully remembers the times Marvel superheroes have made guest appearances on TV…
• I’m a sucker for sad stories about pets. And when they’re written by Warren Ellis? I’m a sucker for those, too.

The Avengers #4

Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and Noh-Varr travel to the future to try to stop whatever time anomaly has been caused by their children. What they find is, apparently, a bunch of superheroes and supervillains fighting Ultron in the Destroyer’s body. Back in the present, the rest of the Avengers run into Killraven and his pet Devil Dinosaur, who are on the run from war tripods from futuristic Mars. While Thor takes care of the Martians, a bunch of axe-wielding gangsters from the turn of the last century start fighting in the street. And then the WWI biplanes show up. And more dinosaurs. And zeppelins. And, um, Galactus. Things aren’t much better in the future, where the Avengers’ kids take down the time-traveling Avengers. And when they wake up, they learn that the Maestro is running things, along with future Iron Man, who wants to do something awful to the present Iron Man’s face with a big, jagged hook.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good story, good art, some fun dialogue. I’ve got some quibbles with the way the Avengers in the present seemed mostly to stand around inside a building and watch the chaos outside. I mean, Thor is pretty good with the Martian tripods, but couldn’t the street-level heroes be taking care of some of those guys running around with axes?

Spider-Girl: The End

The end of Spider-Girl?!

Okay, we start out in the future, with an elderly Auntie M telling a bunch of kids about the last adventure of Spider-Girl — May Parker, the near-future daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker, who inherited her dad’s spider powers and tries to balance her career as a superhero with a normal life as a high school student. Well, a few years back, May learned that she, like her dad, had a clone out there. April jealously wanted all the great stuff that May had, and turned to a symbiote to help her get it. Unsurprisingly, this made April — who now called herself Mayhem — all kinds of unbalanced and crazy, and in one final confrontation with Spider-Girl, when Mayhem’s recklessness caused a huge fire, May threw April to safety before dying in an explosion.

With storytime over, Auntie M sends the kids away, and we learn the rest of the story. Auntie M is actually Mayhem, and May Parker’s death made April even more dangerous, and as she killed both supervillains and superheroes, the government finally okayed a process to bond a bunch of soldiers with symbiotes, in the hopes that they could be used against her. Unfortunately, they turned out to become a lethal army dedicated to wiping out humanity, leaving Mayhem as one of the few heroes who could stop them. But now, there’s a plan to send Mayhem back in time to stop her younger self from killing Spider-Girl. Does the plan have a chance to work? Maybe not if the process accidentally traps April inside a wall…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wonderful art and story. Lots of excitement, great fight scenes, and plenty of the excellent retro Silver-Age-style teen angst that makes the Spider-Girl stories so fun. I don’t know if this is really the end of Marvel’s unexpectedly long-lasting Spider-Girl stories or if Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz can persuade Marvel and readers to give her yet another chance. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that she’ll be back.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Superman and Einstein vs. the Nazis!
• Too many Flintstones!
• Archie really is the perfect example of why comics should avoid fad marketing.

PS238 #45

There’s a lot of stuff happening in this issue. Ron “Captain Clarinet” Peterson and Tyler “Moon Shadow” Marlocke are on the run from Dax-Ra’s guards. They manage to evade them and finally meet up with Ron’s father, Earth’s mightiest superhero, Atlas, who isn’t pleased to hear that Ron has been stripped of his powers or that Dax-Ra is plotting against him and his family. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the new substitute Atlas is Forak, an exiled Argosian engineer whose powers are vastly weaker than the original Atlas’. Besides that, he’s got no stomach or talent for crimefighting, Julie “84″ Finster has been assigned to try to teach him about superheroing and how to handle life on Earth. Of course, they run into trouble when they get kidnapped by a supervillain who wants to hold them for ransom. Can 84 get Forak to start thinking like a hero and not a whipping boy? Can Atlas get the kids safely back to Earth?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice art, nice storytelling, and unexpectedly high stakes for an all-ages comic. Aaron Williams always brings the fun with this book.

The Avengers #3

World-conquering super-mutant Apocalypse has just made the scene, along with his newest crop of Horsemen — the Scarlet Witch, Red Hulk, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Obviously, these are Horsemen from an alternate future, since Wolverine and Spidey are current Avengers trying to stop Apocalypse’s rampage. They’re able to run the villains off after a pitched battle, but the problem now is that more timelost threats are appearing, and a small group of Avengers needs to travel into the future to stop their own children before they destroy the space-time continuum.

Verdict: Jeez, I dunno. The best parts were Spider-Man barely saving an armor-less Iron Man and Spidey later realizing after the fact that one of the Horsemen was supposed to be him. And the thing is, though those were pretty fun, they actually felt out-of-place in this all-fighting most-of-the-time issue. There are times I think Brian Michael Bendis should leave superheroics alone and just concentrate on stories with lots and lots and lots of dialogue, because he clearly loves that the most.

Today’s Cool Links:

• I never thought I’d feel sorry for the Teabaggers ’til now. An Oregon GOP group has gone and stolen a slogan from the merciless, unforgiving, and moderately evil hacking group 4chan. Expect chaos.
• This is funny but might be a bit rude. A zoologist meets up with a confused but amorous parrot while actor/comedian Stephen Fry makes wry commentary.

Reed Gunther #4

President Grover Cleveland has received alarming reports of monster attacks all over the nation, so he calls out the fearsome Special Agent Mundy to take care of the situation. Meanwhile, adventuresome but somewhat dim cowboy Reed Gunther and his pet bear Sterling have just arrived in New York City, where Sterling is immediately mistaken for a monster, and that leads to a frantic chase, as Reed and Sterling try to both take in the big city sights and avoid getting shot by monster-hunters. And it all ends with Sterling in Mundy’s custody, and Reed with no guns, no where to stay, and no pants. Can Reed track down where Sterling and the monsters are being held? Can he get free from Agent Mundy? And does he still have a chance of finding Starla and the evil Mr. Picks?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Ye gods, this one was a lot of fun. Lots of very funny lines from Reed, lots of great shenanigans around the city, great depictions of 1880s NYC, excellent action, the grand comic reappearance of Grover Cleveland, and a bonus pinup by Stan Sakai!

Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! #17

This one’s a break from all the heavy, serious stories of the past several issues. Aliens are abducting cows all over the nearby countryside, and Billy is assigned to help investigate the story for WHIZ news. Mary tags along, and they soon discover that, despite the local farmers’ lame attempts to disguise their cows as human beings, the abductions continue. After changing into Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, the heroes confront the alien responsible and learn his surprising reason for his cow-napping spree.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very cute, very humorous, and very fun. This is what this comic should be about all the time.

The Avengers #2

The Avengers meet up with their newest member, Marvel Boy, an interdimensional Kree warrior named Noh-Varr, and ask them to build them a time machine so they can try to keep their future children from destroying the universe. What Noh-Varr builds is a time viewer that lets them see a number of different alternate futures, including the world of Spider-Girl, the Days of Future Past, and the Age of Apocalypse. They get to see their kids execute Kang the Conqueror, and then time apparently breaks. And before Marvel Boy can get to work on a new time machine, Wonder Man busts in, bellows some threats, knocks everyone around, and then vanishes. After that — hey, look! It’s Apocalypse and a brand new bunch of Horsemen!

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’ve got some concerns about Wonder Man’s out-of-nowhere attack, but I’m also thinking this is either a mind-control situation, or a Wonder Man from the future. Other than that, the dialogue is okay — maybe a bit strained in places, especially when Spider-Man tries to wisecrack, the action is pretty good, and we’ve got some interesting conflicts being set up.

Today’s Cool Links:

• I’m a total sucker for Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine.
• A new batch of comics from Kate Beaton, including an Aquaman sketch she’ll be auctioning to raise funds for Gulf Coast cleanup.

The Avengers #1

I’ve never been that big on the Avengers, but seeing as how DC’s “Brightest Day” is collapsing in its own filth, I thought I’d check and see if Marvel’s “Heroic Age” is going to work out any better. And since Marvel is focusing most of its “Heroic Age” on a multitude of new “Avengers” titles, that means reading some “Avengers” titles.

This one is going to be their centerpiece — Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, recruits Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America (the Bucky Barnes version), Hawkeye, and Spider-Woman into the core Avengers team, with Maria Hill in charge of the day-to-day operations of the team. The only person who turns him down? Wonder Man, who has decided that the Avengers were ultimately at fault in all the world’s recent troubles. So the team gets together, exchanges some small talk, Iron Man worries that he’s gonna kill Captain America again… and then Kang the Conqueror shows up.

Kang is on his way to getting spanked hard by everyone until he pulls out his doomsday weapon — in fact, it’s a literal doomsday weapon that Tony Stark thought of several years back and decided never to build. Now that he’s got everyone’s attention, Kang tells them why he’s really there — in the future, Ultron finally took over the world and wrecked everything. But the Avengers’ children managed to defeat Ultron when no one else could, and they’re now running the world with as much ruthlessness as any supervillain. And if the Avengers don’t figure out some way to get into the future and defeat their own children, he’s going to come back and activate Tony’s doomsday device.

Verdict: In general, thumbs up. The story’s fine, the get-together backchat is fine, the art by John Romita Jr. is freakin’ awesome. But this is a Brian Michael Bendis comic, and the guy’s got some serious weaknesses (Snell does more than his fair share of documenting the atrocities). Will they come into play here? Well, we’ve got one person acting badly out-of-character (as in Wonder Man, who’s apparently about to decide to start attacking the Avengers), and we’ve got a few pages of iffy dialogue (a lot of the stuff that works fine in a comic like “Powers” doesn’t work very well in superhero comics where everyone does killer banter). Because it’s Bendis, I’m sure we’ll eventually get a lot more random character retcons and I’m-too-lazy-to-try-harder screwups. But for now, it seems to be working out fine.

Avengers Academy #1

Christos Gage and Mike McKone start up a new Avengers book (there are probably going to be at least a half-dozen by the time they’re all done) focusing on new teenaged heroes. Hank Pym, Tigra, Justice, Quicksilver, and Speedball are the primary instructors of the new Avengers Academy, designed to help train the next generation of superheroes.

We meet Veil, who can turn into poison gas and who is slowly dying as her body loses cohesion; Hazmat, a girl whose powers and personality are poisonous; Mettle, a skull-faced kid with a metal body; Finesse, a girl with zero social skills who can learn new fighting techniques, skills, languages, and everything else in the blink of an eye; Reptil, a kid who can shapeshift into different dinosaurs; and Striker, a guy who can generate electricity and who’s desperate for fame and fortune. And it turns out that all of the kids have an unusual secret in common…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A slow-moving issue, mostly because nearly the entire thing is devoted to introducing us to all these new characters, as well as getting us on board with the new status quo of the Academy’s teachers, especially Speedball, who is a lot less happy-go-lucky than he used to be. Still, despite the slow pace, I enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for decent character work, and we’re getting some good personalities drafted together, as well as some interesting conflicts set up for the future. Let’s hope they can keep the good stuff coming.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Chris Sims picks out his 18 favorite Batman panels.
• Dr. Watson is scary.
• The random Warren Ellis Twitter generator makes me giggle.