Well, after this weekend’s angst over the economy, you’d think I’d be completely uninterested in dealing with finances, but no! As it turns out, I decided to go ahead and get my taxes done. Wasn’t too bad — as always the biggest pain was spending half-an-hour entering in all the info. Still, I’ll be getting refund — enough to pay another month’s rent — so it was all worth it.

And speaking of taxes…

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #32

Wait, what’s superheroics got to do with taxes? Well, the Avengers owe them — in fact, they owe a lot of back taxes and penalties. Isn’t there some accomodation that can be made between the Avengers and the IRS? Well, sure — all they have to do is track down a bunch of supervillains, like Whirlwind, Man-Bull, the Absorbing Man, Bullseye, and Oog, and get them to pay their taxes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Funny stuff. The Hulk keeps getting lost, Man-Bull can’t figure out the tax code, Oog, a giant hairy monster, strolls around New York City in a beret, and Luke Cage can’t get his momma to leave him alone.

Adventure Comics #0

Basically, this is a reprint from Adventure Comics #247 in 1958, with the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, along with a short story about Lex Luthor trying to escape from prison with a reprogrammed Brainiac.

Verdict: Thumbs up. For one thing, it’s just a dollar. Just a dollar! Second, it won’t do you no harm to read the first appearance of the Legion, even if it is an extraordinarily silly Silver Age story. Finally, the backup story, though ultimately completely forgettable, does reveal something very interesting and ominous about the Guardians of the Universe and the soon-to-appear Black Lanterns.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1

This is a comic series based on the new “Brave and the Bold” cartoon on Cartoon Network, with Batman teaming up with other characters from around the DC Universe. This issue starts out with Bats helping Aquaman take out Carapax, followed by Batman traveling to London, where he and Power Girl fight a giant monster created by Lex Luthor.

Verdict: I’m going to give this a thumbs up, because the story was fine and it kept me entertained, but I probably won’t be picking up future issues of this title. I can’t say it really appeals to me very strongly. Still, I do love the characterization of Aquaman as a very jolly but somewhat dim egomaniac.

The Brave and the Bold #20

Green Lantern and the Phantom Stranger are still investigating the strange goings-on at a distant alien planet where something slaughtered a whole city of people. They find a single survivor, from a species that instantly wraps itself in an indestructible cocoon whenever it’s startled. He says the culprit was a godlike monster called the Purge, which seeks to exterminate all life on the basis of a really twisted belief in peace, love, and harmony. The Phantom Stranger gets victimized by a dream-creating plant that really shouldn’t have been able to affect him, GL gets ambushed by another Green Lantern who’s been taken over by the Purge, and back on Earth, a corrupt corporation is planning on killing a sick child who may be the only person able to save the universe.

Verdict: Thumbs down. This one is an absolute indecipherable mess from beginning to end.

The Spirit #24

The Spirit is on the trail of someone who’s killing off Vietnam War vets. Obviously, this is all going to lead back to something that happened to them in ‘Nam, so the Spirit takes a trip to Asia to do some snooping. Will the Spirit be able to discover who the killer is in the Cambodian jungle, or is he going to wind up with a bullet in his back?

Verdict: Ahh, thumbs up, but just barely. The mystery is fine, but it’s a shade predictable, and I like the Spirit better when he’s prowling the mean streets of the big city…

Justice Society of America: Kingdom Come Special: The Kingdom

Again, whoaaa there, DC, let’s try to get those titles a little under control, a’ight? Less is more, ya know?

The blessings of Gog are showing their downsides more and more. Sand is able to sleep through the night, but he’s lost his predictive dreams that let him prevent murders. Dr. Mid-Nite has his regular sight back, but he’s lost his special sensory abilities that made him such a great doctor. Starman is sane, but he’s really unhappy about that. Damage is handsome again, but his vanity and egotism have gone out of control. And Citizen Steel hasn’t been granted his wish yet of being able to hug his nieces and nephews again — and I hope he doesn’t, ’cause all of the other wishes haven’t really turned out well.

What else? Stargirl and Atom-Smasher give Damage a stern talking-to, which he completely disregards. Cyclone is wearing a witch hat now, which seems a little goofy but still kinda cool. Starman has a new and fairly unpleasant job. Sand learns that Gog’s presence on Earth has a pretty darn good chance of destroying the planet. And Gog craves what all gods crave.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mainly because it finally feels like the story is moving forward. This storyline has gone on way, way too long, and I hope they get it wrapped up very soon, and with as few characters needlessly killed as possible.

Captain America #44

Bucky’s past as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed Soviet agent, are coming back to haunt him. Batroc the Leaper is causing trouble, and a mysterious Chinese villain appears to have Bucky’s number.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I like the way they’re handling Batroc as something other than a buffoon, but right now, this is an espionage comic, and most espionage comics just don’t interest me.

The Brave and the Bold #19

The Phantom Stranger brings Hal Jordan to a private hospital that’s housing a bunch of children who were deformed during a drug trial. One of the children has begun writing in a wide variety of languages, many of them completely alien, many of them telling about far-distant catastrophes and galactic disasters. GL and the Stranger travel to Sector 3897 to assist the Green Lantern there with cleanup from a disaster that destroyed a city. It soon becomes clear that the disaster was caused by magic — magic connected to the deformed children on Earth, according to the Stranger.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Green Lantern and the Phantom Stranger aren’t the most obvious team that pops to mind, but they do seem to go together fairly well. I also like the details of the planet GL and the Stranger visit — very strange, very alien, ver much unlike Earth. And the cliffhanger at the end is excellent — I am eagerly awaiting the next issue of this one.

The Age of the Sentry #1

This is the origin and early adventures of the Sentry, Marvel’s Superman clone, told in a retro, Silver Age style. We get some great little tidbits here and there — a super-powered corgi, a villain named Cranio, the Man with the Tri-Level Mind, who has three brains, the Mad Thinker disguising him as a beatnik movie director, and the Sentry beating the Devil in a fiddle-playing contest.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Kinda similar to Alan Moore’s “1963” series or the retro Mighty Man stories they used to put in the back of some “Savage Dragon” comics. Not real happy about this being an ongoing series — this is the type of thing that’s fun once in a while but gets really tiresome if it goes on for long…

Young X-Men #6

In the aftermath of the first storyline, the team comes to grips with Wolf Cub’s death, Ink’s betrayals, and the whole team getting completely suckered by Donald Pierce. Rockslide punches the holy living snot outta Cyclops, Blindfold leaves the team, everyone gets a few clues about Graymalkin’s origins (it appears that he’s one of Charles Xavier’s ancestors), and Anole returns to join the team.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Pretty good stuff, good characterizations, nicely escalating team tensions. Not real thrilled with Blindfold leaving, since she was one of the most interesting characters in the book, but I’m hoping she’ll be making a return before too long.

The Brave and the Bold #17

Obviously, in this issue, we’re getting a team-up between Supergirl and Raven. Supergirl has voices in her head from her father telling her to kill Superman, so she goes to Raven for mystical help getting rid of her father’s programming. Raven takes her to Azarath to learn how to meditate. Meanwhile, a young urban revolutionary has inherited superpowers from his mysterious vanished father, and he plans on killing a whole lot of people.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The art is… weird. Not bad, just weird. And dang it, I just cannot take Raven’s alter ego seriously. The quiet, emotionless empath from the old “New Teen Titans” comics now spends her non-superhero time as a barely-dressed, fetish-wear goth-punk? Next you’ll be telling me that DC brought Barry Allen back to life…

Okay, heading back to work today, so that means it’s time to get some comics reviews done.

 

PS238 #33

Poor Tyler Marlocke is still in three places at once. He’s in a stasis pod in the school’s basement because he’s been infected with an alien virus; he’s running around in a cloned body, which is being operated by remote-control from within the stasis pod, because if the alien student Prospero even suspects that Tyler is still infected, he’s going to destroy the Earth; and he’s existing in a quasi-dimension in the Castle Beyond Space and Time, where he has to decide whether the cosmos will continue to let humanity have superpowers.

Meanwhile, Cecil Holmes, the alien-obsessed student with the magic overcoat, has been taken on a field trip by Kent Allard, who’s secretly the Revenant. He’s taken Cecil to see if he can figure out whether a group of corporate CEOs are aliens — Revenant suspects that Cecil has a superpower of his own, namely the ability to sense whether or not someone has superpowers. Unfortunately, the CEOs are all supervillains, and they’ve figured out who Revenant is.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s weird how great a character Cecil has become, ’cause when he was first introduced, I just couldn’t stand him. His scenes with the Revenant are just wonderful. The rest of the book is worth buying, too. Y’all get this one put on your pull-list, okay? It’s definitely worthy of a larger readership.

 

The Brave and the Bold #16

While Batman is out of town, Superman is keeping watch over Gotham City. Commissioner Gordon has asked him to try to track down an underworld auction, but he runs into Catwoman pulling a big heist so she can get a large enough stake to be allowed to attend the auction in question. The main item up for bid: the map to a certain hidden cave near Gotham. Of course, Supes decides he’d better attend the auction to keep the Batcave’s location safe, but of course, no plan is perfect, and things get a lot more chaotic.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great banter between Supes and Catwoman. I especially love the mild-mannered disguise Selina puts together to let Superman attend the auction incognito.

 

1985 #4

The supervillains of the Marvel Universe have invaded the real world and are busy slaughtering as many people and causing as much chaos as they can. Toby and his dad make a narrow escape from the Lizard, then join the evacuees trying to get out of town. Dad goes back to find Toby’s mom, who’s still hiding out in her house, and Toby decides to snoop around the old Wyncham mansion, where the invasion seems to be centered. But what can a kid do to stop a horde of supervillains? Well, he can always call for backup…

Verdict: Thumbs up. The chaos of the situation is very well-realized. I love Dad’s reactions when the Lizard threatens Toby — it’s not exactly comic-book heroic, but it is real-world realistic. Toby going dimension-hopping looks to be fun, too.

The Spirit #19

We get a trio of stories in this issue. First, the Spirit recounts how he bested a childhood bully and earned a lifelong friend. Second, Spirit tries to track down a one-handed criminal called El Leproso who may have turned over a new leaf. And finally, a comic book writer has been murdered, and three different artists claim sole responsibility. Can the Spirit figure out who the true killer is?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is really a lot better than most of the Aragones/Evanier “Spirit” stories have tended to be, and I think the shorter stories are what’s responsible. Instead of trying to pad out 22 pages with lame jokes, we get shorter, more compact stories. I approve wholeheartedly, and I hope they keep the comic going in this vein.

Green Lantern Corps #26

Our core Corps members have been captured by the yellow-ring-powered Mongul and implanted with fear-inducing Black Mercy plants. Mongul lectures Mother Mercy about trying to betray him, then leaves like a sucker, while Mercy frees the GLs again. A terrific battle ensues, but the victory is finally won by the smallest of the Green Lanterns, Bzzd, an intelligent alien insect. Unfortunately, things don’t turn out so great for Bzzd, and the latest rings from both the Green Lanterns and the Sinestro Corps both seek out Mother Mercy…

Verdict: Thumbs down. Mostly a slugfest. We lose good characters like Bzzd, Mongul, and Duel. It all ends up feeling like I wasted my time reading it.

The Brave and the Bold #15

The cover just shows Hawkman and Nightwing, but Green Arrow and Deadman are also included in this team-up. Nightwing sends nearly all the world’s superheroes off to fight Trigon, but it’s just a ruse to get them off-planet when he hears Deadman’s story about Annuttara and his ghostly assassins. Yeah, Deadman is still alive — Green Arrow hadn’t really killed him, he just shot him and threw him off a mountain to give him a chance of getting back to warn the world’s heroes. But Nightwing doesn’t like the risk of getting a bunch of superheroes possessed and killed by ghosts, so he sends everyone away except for Hawkman, whose experience with past lives makes him an expert on ancient civilizations and ancient magics (Really? Whatever).

Meanwhile, in Nanda Parbat, Green Arrow is being horribly tortured and deformed by Annuttara, but Nightwing, Hawkman, and Deadman (who’s able to take solid form inside Nanda Parbat) attack, take out the ghost assassins, and try to free the imprisoned Rama Kushna. But they may have no chance of success after Nightwing throws himself off a cliff…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good story, good teamwork. And I thought it was pretty cool how Nightwing and Deadman, both former circus acrobats, got to trade some carnie lingo back and forth…

RASL #2

Hrm, I get the feeling this is a story that’ll be a lot better when it’s collected into a single volume, rather than doled out one at a time in the single issues. Rasl (that’s apparently our dimension-hopping protagonist’s name) spends some time with his hoochie-mama, talking about alternate-universe Picassos, maze mandalas, and, well, hoochie. But someone is trying to track Rasl down, and they don’t care who gets hurt.

Verdict: I ain’t gonna give it a hard thumbs down, because I am enjoying Jeff Smith’s art a lot, but this series is just not interesting to me.

The Brave and the Bold #14

Boston Brand, better known as the superhero ghost Deadman, enlists Green Arrow in a fight against the Ghost Killers of Nanda Parbat, a band of spectral assassins created by Siva Anuttara, a death-worshipping monster who’s actually managed to capture Rama Kushna, the powerful god-spirit who runs Nanda Parbat and helped train Deadman. The big problem is that Green Arrow doesn’t have any ghost arrows, so all he and Deadman can do is run.

Verdict: Honestly, thumbs down. The team-up woulda been interesting if only there was someone Ollie could fight, and I also felt like GA acted out-of-character at the end.

Tangent: Superman’s Reign #4

Batman, Hal Jordan, Black Lightning, and Black Canary manage to make their way to the Tangent universe to join Flash and a bunch of Tangent heroes. John Stewart has been captured by Tangent’s version of Superman, who’s taken over the world. And it turns out that the Atom the heroes previously liberated from Superman isn’t the real Atom at all, but a secret operative.

Verdict: Thumbs down. It’s just going on too darn long, and it’s not giving me nearly enough entertainment. I’m dropping this one.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #24

Jeff Parker’s writing this comic again?! Holy Words-I-Am-Not-Allowed-to-Say-on-this-Blog!

Well, this is part of Marvel’s all-ages line, and it features Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Storm, Giant-Girl, and Ant-Man. In this issue, Marvel’s Mightiest Team can’t stop hating each other. Any little disagreement will lead to knock-down, drag-out brawls until, a few minutes later, no one can even remember what the fight was about any more. Not even taking out a Hydra base cools ’em down. Will they ever manage to find out what’s causing them to rage out on each other? Even if they do, will they be able to keep from killing each other just for kicks?

Verdict: Thumbs WAY up. This is the funniest comic I’ve read in ages. We get the triumphant return of Karl the Henchman, Wolverine eating tater tots with his claws, Doc Samson’s psychoanalysis of the team (including his bwah-ha-ha funny notes on Spider-Man and Wolvie’s bwah-ha-ha reaction to a familiar Rorschach inkblot test), jokes about Storm’s hair, tons of hilarious Spidey one-liners, and great dialogue like “Captain America was the one who started it — with his corn!” and “Ow! You shot that little nerd right in my eye!” This comic is drop-dead, soda-snorting funny, and you need to go read it right now.

Green Lantern #31

More of the re-telling of Hal’s origin, as he pays his first visit to Oa, gets put through GL boot camp by Kilowog, and earns the right to be a Green Lantern. Besides that, we get a few more details about pre-giant-head Hector Hammond and Sinestro when he was still a Green Lantern.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before, but it’s well-done, so I’m happy with it.

The Brave and the Bold #13

The cover pretty much says it all — Batman and Jay Garrick vs. a horde of evil robot samurai.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s Batman and Jay Garrick vs. a horde of evil robot samurai, fer cryin’ out loud!

Final Crisis #1

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Not buying it, not reviewing it. I’m sick of pointless, stupid crossovers. I’m tired of comics companies killing off characters because they think they need shock value to sell comics. I’m tired of being asked to spend hundreds of dollars every summer on crossovers that are driven solely by marketing. And I don’t care if it’s written by Grant Morrison — I still think I can live without reading it.

Verdict: Who cares?

 

The Brave and the Bold #12

It’s the final chapter of this progressively more and more epic storyline. Megistus has stolen Green Lantern’s power battery, leaving Hal without any way to recharge his power ring, and he’s taken it to the sun, turning it from yellow to green, depriving both Superman and Ultraman, his evil duplicate from Earth-3, of their powers. Megistus has stolen a variety of magical items and used them to attract a red cloud of radiation across the universe that has the same effect on all biological life that Red Kryptonite has on Superman — uncontrollable and painful mutation.

The Challengers of the Unknown borrow Wonder Woman’s invisible plane to fly all of them up to the sun to do battle with the mad alchemist. Once they get close enough to the sun, GL is able to leech away enough energy to power up his ring and let enough solar energy through to give the Kryptonians their powers again. While Megistus knocks Superman and Ultraman around, the Challengers try to shut down the artifacts, and GL tries to free Metamorpho and Firestorm from captivity. Supergirl and Power Girl join the fight, while on Earth, Flash, Wonder Woman, and the Teen Titans work to save people from the red cloud. But stopping Megistus and neutralizing the red cloud is going to require some sacrifice before it’s too late…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nicely energetic and dramatic ending for this storyline. If I’ve got a complaint, it’s that we didn’t end up seeing all of the guest stars this series has spotlighted in the previous 12 issues. I know it would’ve made for a really large and unwieldy story, but I think it would’ve been fairly cool to see Batman, the Legion, Lobo, the Metal Men, and the Silent Knight in here somewhere…

 

Captain America #37

The Red Skull continues his plans to destroy America from the inside, as one of his stooge politicians announces a third-party bid for the presidency. Meanwhile, Bucky Barnes, the new Captain America, recovers from his recent injuries and gets into a fight with Clint “Hawkeye” Barton. After some weird dreams about Bucky and Cap fighting in World War II, Bucky meets up with Cap’s old friend the Falcon, who promises to give Bucky a chance to find his feet as a superhero. And finally, Carol Danvers Sharon Carter runs into someone who may be the resurrected Steve Rogers — but is the old Captain America now a pawn of the Red Skull?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The Skull’s conspiracy continues to expand in devious ways, building up a nice, nasty challenge to the fledgling Cap. Oh, and Bucky’s dream, where he and the original Cap yell things like “Look out for the Internet!” and “Let Bob Hope text her for you tonight at the USO show!”, is pretty gleefully wacky.

 

Powers Annual 2008

Much of this issue is actually written by “Powers” illustrator Michael Avon Oeming. We get another look into Walker Christian’s prehistoric past, when he served as the chieftain of a tribe of cave-dwelling early humans. He gets to fight a boar, a bear, and an early metahuman, and he gets himself some sweet, sweet lovin’ from a bikini-wearing cavegal.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Nothing against Oeming’s writing, but so help me, we’ve seen Walker-as-a-caveman before, and even with the thong-wearing cavegirl, this story wasn’t interesting enough to warrant going way back there again.

(Correction made — thanks to Jeff in comments for the tip.)

The Brave and the Bold #11

DC’s epic team-up book continues, as the Challengers of the Unknown find themselves facing the evil alchemist Megistus himself, possessing the body of Metamorpho. What does he want Green Lantern’s power battery for? Meanwhile, why is Clark Kent beating the crap out of Steve Lombard and laying the liplock on passing blondes? Because he’s not Clark Kent — or at least, he’s the evil Clark Kent from the mirror universe, also known as Ultraman. After a brief struggle between Superman and Ultraman, the mirror-universe version of Mr. Mxyzptlk, called Mixyezpitelik, shows up and fills them both in on the crisis at hand — a red ion storm is on its way to Earth. It’s capable of causing horrific, random, and agonizing mutations in all forms of life, and Megistus is dragging it to our world. To stop him, Superman and Ultraman have to travel to his hidden HQ inside the sun itself. Not really a problem for a couple of guys who get their powers from the sun — but what happens if Megistus manages to change the sun…?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I tend to enjoy any stories featuring DC’s mirror universe.

The Spirit #15

The Spirit is on the trail of a band of diamond smugglers, and wicked femme fatale P’Gell is up to no good at the Ms. World Supermodel pageant in Paris. Could the two be connected? Oh, of course they are.

Verdict: I hate to say it, but thumbs down. There are too many lame gags, too much slapstick, too much cartooning. I like my Spirit stories to be a bit light-hearted, but this is just too much.