Batman #676

First, niiiice cover. Ladies and gentleman, former Lubbock resident Alex Ross! Everybody give it up for Alex! Wooo!

Okay, this is the first issue of the new “Batman: R.I.P.” storyline. We get to meet the Black Hand for the first time — it’s basically the opposite version of the Batmen of All Nations from one of Grant Morrison’s previous storylines. We get to see the new version of the Batmobile — it apparently has a great stereo! We get to see Batman give a homeless guy a couple hundred bucks. We see Bruce Wayne hanging out with Jezebel Jet and receiving an ominous invitation from… the Black Glove! Uh-oh! And even worse — we see the Joker, and he’s got very, very nasty plans in store.

Verdict: Thumbs up, with a lot of the thumbs-upping going to that super-scary Joker interlude at the back of the book.

Booster Gold #9

In the new timeline where Maxwell Lord rules the world, Booster and Blue Beetle are re-assembling the old Justice League International, including Mister Miracle, Guy Gardner, Fire, Ice, and the Martian Manhunter. But Guy’s power ring is almost out of power, and Superman is still in Max’s thrall. Is there any way for the good guys to win?

Thumbs up, but I’d really like this particular storyline wrapped up soon.

Gemini #1

An interesting character concept. Gemini is an acrobatic superhero who has no idea he’s a superhero. He’s funded and controlled by a government agency that lets him live as a normal schlub most of the time, activating his superhero persona whenever he’s needed. We get to see him take on some supervillains, vegetate through his boring job, and finally lose his head during a domestic disturbance call. We also get acquainted with the government technicians who help keep him functioning from day to day.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Interesting debut here, let’s see how it all turns out.

 

Tiny Titans #3

More all-ages fun from Art Baltazar and Franco. As far as I can tell, every page of this comic was pure 100% awesome. The first page features Robin in a child-seat in the back of the Batmobile. After that, we get Beast Boy Puppy, the most adorable version of Jericho ever, Beast Boy’s elephant, and a bunch of rocket-propelled penguins. Not sure I like the idea of Dr. Light as a schoolteacher, but this is obviously out-of-continuity, so I guess it’s okay.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It really is colossal fun.

 

Booster Gold #8

In the severely altered present, Maxwell Lord and his OMACs rule the world, and Superman is under Max’s mental control. Booster and Ted Kord join up with the Resistance — Green Arrow, Hawkman, Pantha, Wild Dog, and Anthro. We know this is doomed from the git-go, right?

Verdict: Thumbs up, mainly because I’m amused by a superteam that included Pantha, Wild Dog, and Anthro.

 

B.P.R.D.: 1946 #4

The first year of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense continues, as Professor Bruttenholm persuades the demonic little girl Varvara to let him actually interrogate a Nazi prisoner instead of just slaughtering him. He learns the origins of the Nazi vampire project and discovers where the rest of the vampire hybrids are being stored. The Russians and Americans rush to destroy what’s left of the project, but instead discover some villains familiar to Hellboy fans…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Any comic book that ends with a deactivated cyborg giraffe, a Nazi head-in-a-jar, and a bunch of Nazi cyber-gorillas is a comic that I know we can all enjoy.

Booster Gold #7

Booster and Blue Beetle (that’s the Ted Kord version, the one who got killed before Infinite Crisis and who has now been saved thanks to Booster’s time-meddling) are on the run from hordes of OMACs who are running the world and who have killed most of the world’s superheroes. Luckily, because Max Lord used some Ted’s technology to build the OMACs, Ted has a backdoor into their systems to make them ignore him. But they’ve still got plenty of OMACs to fight their way through — and even worse, Max’s mind control still has Superman doing his dirty work for him. Let’s hope the Resistance can save Booster and Beetle in time. Meanwhile, Booster’s rotten father gets rescued from the distant past by the futuristic Blue Beetle from the last few issues, now revealed as a villain called the Black Beetle — and they’ve got some very powerful allies with evil plans in the works.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Buuuuuut not as much of a thumbs up as previously. Everything’s really just a bit too frantic this time, and though everyone wants us to think of the evil Time Stealers as a serious bunch of badasses, they really underwhelmed me a bit. But like I said, it’s still a thumbs up. It’s great to see Ted Kord in action again, and to get reminded that he was a lot more than a “Bwa-ha-ha” stooge.

Countdown to Mystery #6

I’d lost track of this one for a while and have been trying to get caught up. We’ve got two different stories right now — first, Kent Nelson is a homeless, alcoholic doctor in Las Vegas who’s become the latest possessor of the Helmet of Fate. He’s trying to get a grasp of his new powers, overcome his addictions, and keep his semi-steady job picking up trash in a motel parking lot. But when he makes an accidental side-trip to Hell, is he going to get out alive? Our second story follows the Spectre, his host, Crispus Allen, and Bruce Gordon, the former and now current host of Eclipso. Eclipso continues his schemes to corrupt superheroes — this time adding the Huntress to his current group of Plastic Man, the Creeper, and Dove.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Some good, creepy stuff in here. Dr. Fate’s trip to hell and his encounters with a demonic version of the Justice Society are thoroughly nasty, and his reaction after getting out is pretty darn close to what I woulda done, too. As for the Eclipso story, it’s a bit more of a standard comic-book-villainy plot, but Huntress’ much angrier disposition after getting Eclipsed was very well done.

Astro City: Beautie

One of my very rare complaints about Kurt Busiek’s brilliant “Astro City” series? He comes up with all these wonderful, interesting characters, and then they only appear in a single issue, or in the background of several issues. We’ve only ever learned a bit of trivia here and there about MPH or the Gentleman or the N-Forcer. And one of the characters that has attracted the most interest is Beautie, a life-sized Barbie doll with superpowers.

So finally, Busiek has put together an entire double-sized comic focused on Beautie. Distant and aloof, she’s obsessed with learning her origins, looking at dolls in toy stores, and collecting fashionable clothing. She’s irritated by many men after years of having to deal with clumsy attempts to pick her up — after all, she’s not anatomically correct — and she actually feels more comfortable hanging out in gay bars, where the guys don’t try to pick her up and where she feels that she’s met a community of fellow outsiders. But as she gets closer and closer to discovering her origin, she begins developing mysterious memory troubles. What’s happening to her, and will she ever be able to make the right connections to learn who created her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one was big, big fun, and I hope Busiek does some more of these character specials to clue us in on some of Astro City’s other interesting characters.

Booster Gold #0

Holy moley, how long has it been since we’ve seen an honest-to-Graud Zero issue? And one of the coolest story ideas we’ve seen in ages — this is an actual crossover with the old “Zero Hour” miniseries from way back in 1994. Booster and the various Blue Beetles, including the resurrected Ted Kord, Jaime Reyes, and Dan Garrett, meet up with the Zero Hour villains, Extant and Parallax, while traveling through time. There’s a brief battle before Booster and the Beetles end up with a wrecked Time Sphere in the 25th century — Booster’s home time, actually. Booster briefly considers trying to keep his younger self from throwing the game that got him banned from football, and talks about the loss of his sister who followed him to the past and tried to be a superhero like her big brother.

Eventually, everyone steals another Time Sphere from a museum (and we meet a younger version of Skeets, too) before escaping back to their proper time periods. So everything’s okay, right? Ted Kord is alive again and is gonna help Booster safeguard the timestream, right? Well, maybe not. Max Lord’s OMACs may have something to say about all that…

Verdict: Thumbs up. How many times can I say that this series is surprisingly awesome? Every time I read a new issue, I end up underestimating how much I’ll enjoy it. The Zero Hour twist to this issue is also awfully fun. If you’re not reading this, please start. It’s an excellent comic, and I hope it lasts for years.

The Umbrella Academy #5

There’s a lot of stuff going on here. Number 5 effortlessly kills a bunch of mysterious villains in a diner, implies that he had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, suddenly acquires a fondness for Hargreeves’ monocle, has disturbing visions about the Academy’s uplifted chimpanzee caretaker Pogo, and faints. Spaceboy and the Rumor have a quiet moment together, then Rumor uses her powers to get a liplock with Space — which is kinda creepy, since Rumor and Space have spent their whole lives thinking of each other as siblings. And Vanya, now operating as the destructively musical White Violin, does a very bad thing to a very nice person. Next Issue: The End of the World.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Ye gods, I love this series. The characters are just so wild and weird and vibrant — when Vanya makes her move, you don’t know whether to be mad at her, sad for her, or hopeful that she can somehow pull herself out of this part of her life. You should be reading this now, and if you don’t get with it, I’m gonna come to your house and hit you with boulders, I swear it.

Booster Gold #6

Booster defies Time Master Rip Hunter’s wishes and goes on a mission to save Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle who died prior to the Infinite Crisis, with three other Blue Beetles — Dan Garrett, the Golden Age Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle of today, and a mysterious Blue Beetle from the future. And things appear to go swimmingly — Booster and the Beetles manage to stop Mazwell Lord before he can shoot Ted. But can they really get away with disrupting the proper timeline? And is Rip Hunter planning to use Booster’s own ancestors to get back at him?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is just a great series, and no one was expecting much of anything from it.

The Flash #236

The Flash and his kids save the JLA and save the world from the invading aquatic aliens, but they have to sacrifice their connection to the alien “Planet Flash” where they’ve occasionally traveled.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Okay, remember how bad the last issue was, with that insanely retch-inducing garbage about the JLA getting into “warrior-rage mode”? Well, that one was so cosmically bad, that its unholy stink reached forward in time to infect this comic. If any of y’all are ever in the same room with writer Mark Waid and a whiffle bat, please strike the former with the latter. Tell him I said “Hi.”

Booster Gold #5

Booster has a steep challenge this time — he has to stop the Joker from shooting and paralyzing Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon. Wait, wait, didn’t that already happen waaaaay back in 1988 in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s “The Killing Joke”? Does that mean that Booster has a chance to go back in time, prevent Barbara’s paralysis, completely pre-empt the entire “Birds of Prey” series, and more? Is Booster about to have an impact on DC’s real continuity?

Well, no. The Joker may not have any powers and may not be considered much of a fighter, but he gives Batman fits on a regular basis, so he’s a lot better than Booster can take on. But he tries over and over and over, until Rip Hunter finally tells him that it’s just not possible to stop the Joker — his shooting of Barbara Gordon is something that’s completely unchangeable.

Also, we finally learn who Supernova’s masters are: the immortal Ultra-Humanite, interstellar tyrant Despero, and time-traveling fascist Per Degaton. And we get a good look at Rip Hunter’s Time Blackboard, which reveals various clues about the DCU’s future…

Verdict: Thumbs up, I think. I don’t know that I’m happy with the idea of letting the Joker shoot Babs Gordon over and over, from Booster’s viewpoint, but the characterization seems good, there’s good action, good intrigue, and and it never hurts to be reminded of what a complete rotter the Joker is. And I love the fact that so much of the art recreates the look of Bolland’s art in “The Killing Joke.”

Booster Gold #4

Booster has just crashed Rip Hunter’s Time Sphere into a Cosmic Treadmill being driven by the Silver Age Flash and Kid Flash. Booster and Rip follow the trail of the renegade Time Sphere back to Central City, and they find themselves facing a former Time Master named Rex Hunter, along with an evil Skeets and the secret bad guy who is now wearing the Supernova uniform. The Flashes both vanished — they’ve stopped existing because they’ve gone back to the night that Barry Allen got his powers, and Supernova installed a lightning rod on his building to keep him from being struck by lightning. Can they save the Flashes, save the future, and stop the bad guys?

So far, every issue of this comic has surprised me with how good it is. I don’t know that my expectations for it have been low, but it does seem to be the kind of comic that stays below the radar. Half the people who should be reading this are probably passing it up because they can’t imagine a good comic with Booster Gold as the star. But all the time-travel shenanigans plus all the superhero action and banter are really producing some excellent stories. I think this is definitely one you should be reading.

Verdict: Thumbs up. And next issue’s gonna be one you’ll definitely want to read: Can Booster stop the Joker from paralyzing Barbara Gordon?

“Sure!” WHAMMO!

The Brave and the Bold #7

The new storyline starts off with Wonder Woman and Power Girl fighting a horde of mummies. Once they’re dispatched, Power Girl accidentally reveals, while touching Wonder Woman’s magic lasso, that she’s heading for the Fortress of Solitude to kill Superman. Whuh?! Well, PG’s been hypnotized by someone — a short investigation leads the two heroines to the supposedly-destroyed-but-secretly-hidden Library of Alexandria. There, they run into the rotten Dr. Alchemy, an old Flash villain, who manages to transfer his mind into Power Girl’s. From there, Alchemy ambushes Superman at the Fortress and turns the whole place into Red Kryptonite, which brings about a thoroughly grody sequence where Supes mutates rapidly through a bunch of gross-and-drippy alien forms. Wondy ends up saving the day, but no one can figure out why a minor Flash villain like Dr. Alchemy would come up with a scheme to take out Big Blue.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Red Kryptonite is a darn fun plot device, though it’s been a while since we’ve seen it used as lightheartedly as it used to be in the Silver Age. The character interplay is pretty good, and George Perez’s artwork is as dandy as ever.

Powers #26

Quick recap: Former superhero Christian Walker lost his powers and became a cop, paired with Deena Pilgrim. They spent several years solving murders of super-people. Pilgrim accidentally got superpowers from a supervillain, and they burn her up unless she kills people. Walker, meanwhile, was chosen to become an intergalactic super-cop protecting Earth. In this issue, Pilgrim is on the run from the law, is apparently Patient Zero for the Powers Virus that’s been killing people all over the city, and she’s madder’n heck at Walker because she thinks he lied to her about his powers. Meanwhile, mysterious drug pushers (or powers-pushers? Can’t tell yet, but they’re muy mysterioso) are victimizing kids all over the city.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Whoa, Deena’s gotten way scary. I got a bad feeling this storyline isn’t gonna end well for her. And by gum, I think this is the first “Powers” issue in at least several years where no one got nekkid and no one got bloodily dismembered. There’s still swearing galore, so you know it’s still Bendis doing the writing.

Booster Gold #3

Some bad guy’s stolen the powerful Supernova costume from Booster’s 21st century ancestor, and they plan to use it to kill Superman! But Rip Hunter, Time Master, discovers that they have a very devious plan — they’re going to kill the doctor who delivered Jonathan Kent’s great-grandfather, leading to his death during childbirth. As a result, the Luthors find baby Kal-El and Lex ends up killing him as a teenager. So, Booster and Rip have to travel to the Wild West, where Booster gets drunk with psycho gunfighter Jonah Hex, and Skeets gets to ride a horse (not an easy thing for a hovering robot the size of a dinner plate). Booster saves the doctor, gets back to Rip Hunter’s time machine, and then crashes into a couple of guys on a Cosmic Treadmill.

Verdict: Another thumbs up. The art is fun, the story is fun, and this series hasn’t made any serious missteps yet.

Death of the New Gods #1

Actually, this is one comic I absolutely refused to buy. DC kills off a whole boatload of Gentleman Jack Kirby’s characters. Why did I skip this one?

Because DC Comics has spent the last couple of years wallowing in cheap deaths of good characters for nothing more than shock value, hoping for some “Death of Superman” media coverage and a short-term boost in sales.

Because none of these shock-value comics have been worth spit, and I don’t expect this one to be any different.

Because relying on nothing but shock value is a good way to get your readers completely bored with shock value.

Finally, and maybe most importantly — because the New Gods were created by Jack Kirby. You don’t use cheap shock value as an excuse to go mess with characters created by the King of Comics, and that’s all there is to it.

Ya know what’s nice? Lazing around all weekend and not writing on the blog. I listened to two CDs I hadn’t listened to in years, I enjoyed the beautiful weather, I visited my grandmother, my brother, and my niece, and it was awfully nice. Unfortunately, that brings us to yet another Monday, and it puts me even farther behind on my comics reviewing, so let’s get a few of them done real quickly.

Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Parallax

It’s not really about Parallax; it’s really about Kyle Rayner. He’s trapped in his own head, watching Parallax use his body to wage war on the GL Corps, drawing on walls to distract himself. Parallax shows up from time to time to taunt him and make monster faces. Kyle stays trapped, but he’s not beaten yet.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Kyle really is a wonderful character, and it’s been a long time since we got to spend enough time with him, especially when the story is written by Ron Marz, the guy who created Kyle.

The Flash #232

Wally’s been dragged under water by weirdo aliens, and his kids are on their own, trying to find their way home and fight off the aliens. There’s more, but — ugh, man alive, this one was just dull. Put me to sleep and everything.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Nice art, but gyaah, so boring.

Booster Gold #2

Booster gets Rip Hunter to agree to help save the late Blue Beetle if Booster will help him save time. First mission: go back in time to when Sinestro was still a good Green Lantern and somehow keep him from talking to future Green Lantern Guy Gardner. Just talking to Sinestro will cause Guy to become a GL and die earlier and allow the Sinestro Corps to be formed earlier and conquer the galaxy. The problem is that Sinestro is way, way, way out of Booster’s league. How can he stop someone so much more powerful than he is?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a good, clever, well-written story. I’ve already heard people say this book reminds them of some of the stuff DC was producing in the mid-1990s, which isn’t a bad thing.

Blue Beetle #18

Are you reading “Blue Beetle”? If not, you’re missing one of the best superhero comics out there right now. And if you’re not reading it, I’m gonna have to come to your house and hit you with a Chrysler until you wise up. So wise up.

So Jaime is visiting a private space launch facility with his friends Paco and Brenda because his scarab tells him that the evil aliens, the Reach, want to knock a rocketship down. Meanwhile, the Teen Titans are visiting the same facility because Batman wants to make sure the ship makes it safely to orbit. They have the traditional “We’re all good guys, so let’s fight” thing, then intergalactic psychotic badass Lobo shows up, planning on demolishing the rocket before it launches. Mayhem ensues.

This comic is just jam-packed with awesome sauce. Kid Devil evacuates a room full of scientists by putting on his demon act and threatening them for teaching evolution. Everyone makes fun of Wonder Girl’s and Supergirl’s costumes. Paco and Brenda get to launch a rocket. Jaime gets an offer to join the Titans. And there are multiple, multiple funny lines. This is a comic that is made of win, and if you aren’t reading it, you are made of lose.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not one thumb. Not two. Eighty. Eighty thumbs up. Seriously.

Booster Gold #1

In the aftermath of the “52” megaseries, Booster Gold feels like he’s poised to make a big comeback and become the acclaimed hero he’s always dreamed he could be. The Justice League may be willing to let him join, his reputation is slowly improving, and things are looking up… until time guardian Rip Hunter shows up and tries to convince Booster to help him fight menaces in the timestream. Someone is targeting the world’s superheroes for elimination, and plans on using time travel to kill them in the past. But in order to save history, Booster will have to make everyone in the world think he’s an incompetent dork. Will Booster’s sense of heroism be able to overcome his ego?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A bit talky, but it’s hard to deal with complicated stuff like temporal theory without ladling on the dialogue. The characterization of Booster and Skeets are perfect, and the entire thing is wonderfully high-concept. We also get some intriguing but cryptic hints about DC’s future, thanks to some of the notes scribbled on Rip Hunter’s blackboard.