Holy abalone, kids, it’s a three-day weekend! You don’t know how bad I’ve been needing this, especially the way the last few months have gone. So heck, let’s jump right into our weekend with some… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from September 2007′s Birds of Prey #108 by Gail Simone, Nicola Scott, and Doug Hazlewood. (from one of the BoP collections that DC has inexplicably allowed to go out of print, which means I’ll probably never get a chance to read the full storyline. Why, no, I’m not particularly happy about that at all.)

The modern version of Spy Smasher, one of Babs Gordon’s rivals from college, has been trying to take control of the Birds away from Oracle and reckons she now has Barbara right where she wants her. Babs doesn’t have her operatives, she doesn’t have her computers, she doesn’t have her Eskrima sticks, she doesn’t even have her wheelchair. But none of that matters, because Barbara Gordon is one of the DCU’s foremost badasses.

There we go, people, if that chunk of righteous pain-bringin’ skull-thumpery can’t get you through a nice three-day weekend, you got problems that not even comic books can solve.

Batgirl #20

Believing that she’s killed her psychotic brother by throwing a batarang through his eye, Barbara Gordon is all but ready to give up her Batgirl identity and actually cuts the Bat-logo off her costume. But she doesn’t get to enjoy a very long retirement — there’s a new Ventriloquist in the DCU, a young nutbag named Shauna Belzer. She’s got a little talent for ventriloquism, but she’s telekinetic — and she’s desperate to be a star. She tries out for an “America’s Got Talent”-style show, gets made fun of, murders one of the judges, and kidnaps another. And when Batgirl tries to stop her, she gets her butt whupped — by the puppet. That just can’t be a confidence-builder.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m not real sure we really needed a new Ventriloquist — has there ever been one better than Arnold Wesker? But Shauna Belzer is indeed pretty nutty, and the telekinesis bit is a nice twist on the formula. I would like to see some more done with the idea of Barbara giving up the Batgirl identity — after all, she spends most of this issue running around in her Batgirl costume…

FF #7

The Future Foundation has been pulled into the Negative Zone by the Wizard and his new Frightful Four — himself, Blastaar, a hypnotized Medusa, and Bentley-23, the Wizard’s young clone, who actually has absolutely no interest in being a part of his progenitor’s makeshift family. The entire Future Foundation, adults and kids, work together to face down the villains.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s mostly a slugfest this issue, but it’s a very nice slugfest, and this series hasn’t been real heavy on the comic-style slugfests lately. Even then, we still get some great character moments — Bentley’s rejection of his father for his new family, Scott Lang’s attachment to the children and terror that they’ll be hurt, and Darla’s willingness to help her friends overcoming her lack of battle experience. Another great issue — y’all need to be reading this.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Allie Brosh is back, and she’s got an incredibly important new essay for you. This is really required reading for anyone who doesn’t suffer from depression — it’ll help you understand what may be going on with your friends and family who do have to deal with it.
• A guy who loves Nightwing fell in love with a girl who loves Batgirl, and they had the best wedding ever.
• Sometimes the best heroes are real heroes.
• Why didn’t they just close the doors and drive off? Who wouldn’t want a free otter?!
• I’m a terrible person, and this image made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Hawkeye #9

I’m way, way late to the party on this comic, which has gotten justified raves from almost everyone. I caught up recently, thanks to the just-released trade paperback, which you should totally go read if you haven’t previously been reading this book.

Well, Hawkeye is in trouble again, and once again, it seems to revolve around the Russian gangs he tangled with in the previous issues of this series. There’s a woman from his past, Penny Wright, who’s gotten him in over his head, and the other women in his life, including the Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, and Kate Bishop, do their best to find out what’s going on and to keep the “bros” off his back.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun retro art style, great dialogue and humor, and nice action, too. I’m really sorry I wasn’t reading this book from the first issue.

Batgirl #19

Barbara’s psychotic brother, James Jr., is working to make his entire family’s lives as miserable as possible. Babs reveals a lot of the family secrets to her roommate Alysia, including the fact that her boyfriend is a psycho and that Babs was formerly paralyzed by the Joker, while Alysia reveals that she is transgender. James lures his mother, father, and Batgirl to the local amusement park and sets about trying to kill them — how successful is he going to be?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action and suspense. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of James Jr. in the future — he’s simply been too wonderful a villain to discard.

There’s only one element of this story that I have to thumbs down, and that’s the bit with Alysia revealing that she’s transgendered. I’m not disappointed that she’s transgender — as Gail Simone has said in the many articles focusing on this issue, it’s probably way past time that comics start looking at this issue with more clear eyes. No, the problem here is that this comes out of nowhere. There’s never been any hint that Alysia was transgender or had any kinds of secrets she was hiding. It pretty much comes across as Simone deciding someone needed to be transgender, so she just went with the closest character available. It was like Judd Winick took over the writing on that one page. It was just immensely clumsy and badly done, and it was irritating to read it, because Simone is a far better writer than that.

Anyway, we’ll have to hope Alysia gets to be better written in future issues, or we’ll end up revisiting this plenty of times.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Going behind the scenes in the shutdown of Paragon Studios.
• Universally hated Internet “lawyer” Charles Carreon finally gets his comeuppance.
• I’m starting to think that Fox just isn’t happy unless they’re making fandom unhappy.
• I’m sure you’ve seen this KMart ad already, but it is pretty glorious.

Well, it’s been another long, hard, horrific week, and we only get two days off, then we all have to go back and do it all over again for another five days. This is a far-from-ideal situation, but we gotta make do with what we got — two days of relative freedom, all started off with a little… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s fairly epic battle comes to us from April 2002′s Batgirl #25 by Kelley Puckett, Damion Scott, and Robert Campanella, as Cassandra Cain squares off against Lady Shiva! Let’s take a look at this awesome brawl through a whole bunch of full pages, okay?

That’ll do it on this end of things. Y’all go have a great weekend.

Batgirl #18

Batgirl survives — barely — her close call with Firefly, all while Gotham’s citizens try to pull her out of the wreckage — and her psychotic brother tries to find her to kill her. Barbara learns from her father that Damian Wayne is dead, and James Jr. calls her to threaten her. He misses the chance to kill his mother, and Batgirl goes after Firefly and then tries to track James down.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story is fine, and the tension with James Jr. is handled well. But it is a bit annoying that the cover promises much mourning about Robin’s death, only to deliver a couple of pages in which no one sounds particularly sad. (And it’s not like this version of Batgirl ever had much to do with Damian anyway — that was all Stephanie Brown…)

Sledgehammer 44 #1

Here’s a story from the Hellboy universe’s World War II. Mike Mignola and John Arcudi tell the tale, while Jason Latour and Dave Stewart illustrate. It focuses on a small group of dogfaces in occupied France who are called on to help support a guy in powered armor who’s been airdropped in to fight the Nazis. While he meets with initial success, you can always trust the Nazis to have a much larger mecha on their side. Even if the good guys can survive that onslaught, can they escape from the Nazis — toting the powered-armor Sledgehammer in a wheelbarrow, no less — without getting captured or killed?

Verdict: Thumbs up. But I’m a complete sucker for fightin’ robots in WWII.

People, I don’t have much of anything I want to blog about today, so I’m just gonna sit here and deliberately stir up trouble.

What I am about to reveal here is the complete, objective truth.

For example:

Who was the best Green Lantern?

Answer: Kyle Rayner.

No, definitely not Hal Jordan. He’s always been a shallow, generally uninteresting character. “Fearless test pilot” isn’t a personality all by itself, and the people out there who seem to freakin’ worship Hal strike me as some of the weirdest people on earth. Yes, that includes the “Hal’s Emerald Attack Team” fanatics and Geoff Johns. As for the rest of them, Guy Gardner’s generally fun, but he’s mostly a gag character. I like John Stewart, especially in the Justice League cartoons. Simon Baz is too new. But Kyle, the last Green Lantern, uncertain, awkward, crab-masked, completely aware of his own fears, freelance artist with the no-yellow-impurity power ring? Kyle was the best.

Who was the best Flash?

Answer: Wally West.

Definitely, definitely not Barry Allen. Having a crew cut and a bow tie makes him the *worst* Flash. Wally was funnier, cooler, more interesting in every possible way — and of course, he was far, far, far faster.

Who was the best Robin?

Answer: Dick Grayson.

Really, I guess the best answer would be “Anyone but Jason Todd.” Because I really like all of the Robins. But Dick was the first Robin, he was Robin for the longest time, and he eventually ended up being the best possible Nightwing, so I’m giving the circus kid the crown.

Who was the best Batgirl?

Answer: Stephanie Brown.

Not to take anything away from Barbara Gordon or Cassandra Cain, because they were pretty cool, but as grim and gritty as the Bat-verse generally is, it was just plain awesome to get to read a Bat-title every month where the lead character wasn’t an emotionally-crippled basket case. Steph was fun and funny and had the best dialogue.

Who was the best Aquaman?

Answer: Bearded, hook-handed Aquaman.

Because I don’t care who writes him, the clean-shaven, orange-shirted nonentity from “Super Friends” just sucks on every possible level.

Who was the best Hawkgirl?

Answer: Kendra Saunders.

Mostly because I liked the idea of a Hawkgirl who, at least initially, didn’t want to be the back half of “Hawkman and” — she didn’t love Hawkman, and she wanted to be her own person. She was even in relationships with people other than Hawkman. Eventually, she fell in love with Hawkman in a way that felt more organic, realistic, and worthwhile, and that was fine with me. She certainly didn’t deserve to get exit-stage-lefted the way she did…

Who was the best Green Arrow?

Answer: The one with the beard.

I liked Connor Hawke, but he’d never be the equal of his dad. And Ollie without a beard just looks like a dork, so he’s gotta have the ridiculous beard.

Who was the best Hulk?

Answer: Angry green stupid Hulk.

I liked the Professor Hulk, actually. And the Green Scar was cool. Joe Fixit is always fun. But angry green stupid Hulk is the strongest one there is.

Who was the best Spider-Man?

Answer: The Peter Parker married to Mary Jane Watson.

Because Spider-Man isn’t Otto Octavius, and he doesn’t make deals with the Devil.

What are the best zombies? Fast or slow?

Answer: Slow zombies.

To quote Max Brooks: “Ha ha, there are no such things as fast zombies!”

So there we go, friends and neighbors, all the mysteries of life cleared up. Go on about your business, please.

Batgirl #17

In the aftermath of the just barely completed “Death of the Family” crossover, Barbara Gordon is busy identifying members of the Joker’s gang through a bunch of mugshots, her mother is in the hospital with a finger sliced off, and her psychotic brother James Jr. is looking to get his own twisted revenge on Batgirl. While Batgirl and the cops put the hurt on the Joker’s stooges, someone starts targeting them with rockets, all while James Jr. taunts his sister. Who’s behind these new attacks?

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. Sorry to say, this one just wasn’t all that interesting. Even James Jr., usually an awesomely evil character, just comes across as bland.

Ame-Comi Girls Featuring Supergirl #5

Supergirl has just arrived on Earth, already too late to keep Brainiac from attacking. The Manhunter robots agree to pardon Supergirl and Power Girl if they’ll help stop Brainiac, but they’re vastly outnumbered by Brainiac’s drones. Some other heroes, including Steel, Robin, Catwoman, and Flash, arrive to help, but Power Girl must head for the center of the planet to shut down one of Brainiac’s secret computers. Supergirl heads for Brainiac’s ship but gets contaminated by Black Kryptonite. Can anyone stop her from destroying Earth’s heroes?

Verdict: Thumbs down. The story was just plain loopy-weird, and the artwork was the exact kind of manga-inspired artwork that I really, really dislike. Sorry, but I just didn’t enjoy reading the story.

Batgirl #16

Well, the Joker wants to marry Batgirl, and he’s got a horde of henchmen holding guns on her to make sure she goes through with the ceremony. But once he pulls out a chainsaw and announces his plan to cut off her arms and legs, she thinks better of it and starts trashing his lackeys. And then James Gordon, Jr., Barbara’s psychotic brother, shows up, brandishes some hand grenades, and tells Batgirl that he’s already freed her mom. That leaves Batgirl free to really cut loose on the bad guys. Will she be able to keep herself from killing the Joker? Or is she about to get hit with a double-dose of betrayal?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action, drama, suspense, characterization, so very many double-crosses, and a completely nerve-wracking cliffhanger. Is it any wonder why Gail Simone is DC’s most popular writer?

Freelancers #3

Val and Cass have discovered that the kung-fu orphanage where they grew up, the House of Little Fortunes, has been taken over by the unscrupulous Drachmann and their rival Katherine Rushmore, who’ve turned it into a fast-track ninja factory. Our heroes are outmatched — until Drachmann raises the stakes by telling them what happened to their old sensei…

Verdict: Thumbs up. The action is really good. The humor is really good. It may be a bit predictable, but to be honest, I didn’t mind too much. It’s a kung-fu epic — one does not expect the old sensei to make it to the final reel.

Captain Marvel #9

It’s a very, very busy day for Carol Danvers — and most of it involves perfectly mundane chores. At least until a crisis with dinosaurs on the loose derails her To-Do list, forcing her to reschedule everything…

Verdict: Thumbs down. I guess it’s a kinda cute “Day in the Life” story, but it’s really just a bit too mundane. And worse than that is the art. Ye gods, the artwork is horrific. I haven’t seen art this bad in a mainstream comic from the Big Two in a very, very long time. Bad form, Marvel.

Batgirl #15

Well, we now know that we’re looking at the last few months of enjoying Gail Simone’s take on Batgirl — or apparently, on anything else DC Comics is publishing. Ya see, DC is run by stupid people. And either they don’t like phenomenally-popular and extremely-talented creators who are producing critically acclaimed comics that sell well — or they just don’t like yucky girls. I know where I’m placing my bets. And I also know that Gail is going to land on her feet — she’s just too good not to get more work from more intelligent comics publishers.

So in this issue, Batgirl is facing off against the Joker — with her mother’s life on the line. The Joker has her mom tied to a chair with a five-pound nail bomb strapped underneath, and the price for Barbara’s mom is — Batgirl’s hand in marriage? Can Barbara keep him from killing her mother? Can she keep herself from killing the groom-to-be? And what other horrific surprises does the Joker have in store for her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A wonderfully dark, suspenseful story. For once, Batgirl is the one dispensing the savage beatings — even if, ultimately, she’s not in control of the situation at all. I still hate the Joker’s stitched-on face, but he’s as crazy and dangerous as he ever has been. We also get a short appearance by Barbara’s psychotic brother, who may actually be on her side for once.

Love and Capes: What to Expect #5

Thanks to the kind of accident that’s only too common in comic books, Mark and Abby have switched bodies. That’d be a problem any time, but it’s particularly rough now, since Abby is now the most powerful male superhero in the world and Mark is now pregnant. A lot of adjustments have to be made — Mark has to get used to food cravings, being unable to sleep comfortably, and being panicked about the potential for having to give birth, while Abby… well, Abby gets to drink coffee again. Will they ever get back into the correct bodies again?

Meanwhile, Darkblade and Amazonia have a serious crisis in their relationship. Amazonia is being named queen of her interdimensional homeworld — and that means she can never go to Earth again. And Darkblade knows he’d never be able to live on Amazonia’s mostly crime-free world. Is their relationship doomed?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This was a really, really good comic — both storylines are really strong, with the bodyswitching as the more comedic and the Amazonia/Darkblade story being, obviously, a lot more dramatic. But there’s a lot of story here, it’s all enjoyable and satisfying to read, and you won’t regret coming along for the ride. This is really one of the best comics out there.

Ame-Comi Girls Featuring Duella Dent #3

Most of this issue is devoted to the origin of Duella Dent, the Ame-Comi universe’s version of the Joker. The daughter of a career criminal, his death spurred her to embrace chaos as a lifestyle. Batgirl tries to stop her, but she’s vastly outnumbered by Duella’s supervillain allies. But when they learn that Duella is working with Brainiac to destroy human civilization, Cheetah takes a powder, and Catwoman tries to help Batgirl escape. Meanwhile, Steel and the Flash are about to enter the battle, too, but will they be too late to save Batgirl?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Duella’s origin is really pretty good — probably the most enjoyable part of the whole story. One doesn’t often see an origin in which the death of a genuinely loving parent inspires someone to turn supervillain instead of superhero. In addition, the action is good, the dialogue is good, and the whole thing is pretty entertaining.

Today’s Cool Links:

• There’s a brand new Filmography 2012 video from GenRocks. The others have been great — so go watch the new one.
• DC wants to turn Captain Carrot into a Rocket Raccoon ripoff. No thanks, guys, just give us the Zoo Crew Showcase instead, please.
• There are good ways and bad ways to shut down an MMO. Glitch showed us how to do it right.

Batgirl #14

Barbara Gordon’s mother has been kidnapped, and Babs has now gotten a mysterious call from someone who claims to know the inside story. He keeps her occupied on the phone long enough for the kidnappers to come after her, too — and then she unleashes maximum pain on the trio of thugs. After that, the caller, who knows her secret identity, tells her where to find her mother… and the Joker. Can Batgirl save her mother and stop the Joker? Or does the Clown Prince of Crime have something terrible in store for her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The Joker is thoroughly twisted (though I really can’t stand his new “Oooh, lookit us, aren’t we dark and hardcore” tattered-and-stitched-on face). The mysterious caller (who isn’t that mysterious, if you’ve been paying attention to the last few years of Batman comics) is wonderfully menacing. And Batgirl gets to be an absolute badass, which I’m always in favor of.

Punk Rock Jesus #5

As Chris, the supposed clone of Jesus, continues his infuriated tour as the lead singer of the Flak Jackets punk rock band, he earns angry denunciations from the New American Christians and meets up with Thomas, the former IRA terrorist turned security goon — and he offers to serve as the Flak Jackets’ new security manager, because he’d promised Chris’ late mother that he’d keep him safe. So the Flak Jackets get more and more popular, the protests get more and more vehement, and the potential crisis point gets more and more explosive — Chris decides he wants to take the band and his atheist message to Jerusalem.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Beautiful art, great storytelling, wonderful action. It’s great to see even more of Thomas’ backstory — as interesting as Chris’ story has been, Thomas really has felt like the real star of this book.