Busy, busy, busy, no time for cutesy intros, so here’s FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!
Tonight’s battle comes to us from February 2011′s Power Girl #19 by Judd Winick and Sami Basri, as PeeGee faces off against Ace, the robot powerhouse from the Royal Flush Gang.
And that’s my second groin-injury FNF in as many weeks. Do I get a prize for that?
Well, alright then, it’s Friday, and that’s awesome. But it’s impossibly hot, and that’s not awesome. That’s so very not awesome. And there’s not a durn thing we can do about it, other than try to stay air conditioned and shaded and hydrated. But we can lessen the agony of all this heat with… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!
Tonight’s battle comes from January 2010′s Justice Society of America #33 by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, and Jesus Merino, as Power Girl faces off against a villain called Blue Moon, whose strength waxes and wanes with the phases of the moon.
That’ll do it for me. See you guys on Monday!
Time to kick off a new round of Friday Night Fights? Let’s get things going with a classic.
Tonight’s battle is from February 1978′s Showcase #97, by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton, and Joe Orlando. Power Girl vs. random thugs? I think we know who wins that one, right?
Head over to Spacebooger’s joint and pick out your favorites!
Let’s jump right into it — tonight’s edition of Friday Night Fights comes to us from October 2009′s Power Girl #4 by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner, as Power Girl tangles with a giant lizard!
There we go — see y’all again on Monday!
Daredevil #2
Daredevil finds himself under attack by Captain America, who wants to arrest him for various long-ago crimes. He manages to convince Cap that he was under someone else’s control during that time and tells him he needs to go prove a man’s innocence. Matt’s investigation soon uncovers evidence that all of Ahmed Jobrani’s previous attorneys had been threatened off his case, and when he learns that Jobrani planned to spend his settlement money to buy back his old electronics shop. And when Daredevil goes there to look around, he finds the sonic-powered villain Klaw — but why are there so many of them?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Top-notch superheroics and freakin’ awesome artwork by Paolo Rivea and Joe Rivera. Love the dialogue and action, love the characterizations. Did I mention how much I love the artwork? I just love the artwork.
Power Girl #27
Final issue of this series. And I like the way we see a lot of elements of PeeGee’s older stories brought back, even if just for one issue. After beating up some robots who had been “programmed to reject stratagems from old “Star Trek” episodes,” (Noice one!) Power Girl discovers a holographic message written for her. It warns that three dangerous situations have been set up — and she has only 60 seconds to deal with ‘em. She has to rescue her JSA teammate Cyclone, keep a villain called Typhoon from killing a random little girl, and keep Da Bomb (from the awesomely funny JSA #39 in 2002) from wrecking the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Can Kara save all those people in time and stop the bad guys behind the plot?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Not necessarily the farewell for the character and her awesome supporting cast that I would’ve preferred, but the story is good, the humor is excellent, the personalities are fun, and I had a good time reading it. I would’ve liked seeing Terra or Vartox or her horrible, horrible cat — but I liked getting to see Da Bomb, who I always thought was hilarious.
Zatanna #16
Zatanna hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately, thanks to all the shows she’s been performing. When she finally gets the chance at some extra shut-eye, she gets a visit from a magic-using kid named Uriah, from Limbo Town, the same place where Klarion the Witch-Boy hails from. Uriah says he wants to be Zatanna’s apprentice, but when she turns him down, he’s off like a shot exploring his way through Zee’s mansion ’til he finds her library. After he finds the magical Book of Maps, he leads her on a chase through a dozen alternate worlds. Will she be able to stop him before he causes some serious havoc?
Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. This was really kind of a crummy farewell to the character, with too much emphasis on Uriah and not enough on Zee or any member of her supporting cast. But it looks like this title became one of DC’s red-headed stepchildren when they decided they’d stop supporting it, so it’s been passed around from one creator to another an awful lot…
Today’s Cool Links:
I gotta say — last week was one of the best single weeks for comics I’ve enjoyed in quite a while. I felt like every comic I picked up was grand fun and worth reading and re-reading.
This week was the exact opposite. Lots of stuff seemed competently written — but nearly all of it just simply bored me. There were some bright spots here and there — I’ll review them next week — but on the whole, just depressingly boring stuff.
So let’s get after it.
Power Girl #26
Dark Confession: Even though I still hate Judd Winick, I finally went and read the trade paperback of the “Power Girl” comics he worked on. Hey, I was depressed that there’d be no Power Girl in the DC Reboot, so I decided I’d give it a shot. And it was pretty good, so I figured I’d give the last couple issues a shot.
In this issue, PeeGee attends the first ever Power Girl fan convention, filled with tons of girls cosplaying as her. She looks on it as an opportunity to encourage young women to have positive self-images, to confront low-level evil where they can, and to uphold general feminist principles. The whole convention gets highjacked into outer space by a space alien disguised as a convention-goer — her planet is under siege by invaders, and she wants to duplicate Power Girl’s powers for herself. Of course, there’s a chance that the other fans can help Power Girl stop the villain.
Verdict: Thumbs down. It was entirely competent work, but — dangit, it was just boring.
Rocketeer Adventures #3
More pulp-action tales starring the Rocketeer and his girlfriend Betty, with stories by Ryan Sook, Jonathan Ross, and Tommy Lee Edwards, pinups by Stephanie Buscema and Joe Chiodo, and a prose story by Joe R. Lansdale, illustrated by Bruce Timm.
Verdict: Some outstanding art here, but ultimately thumbs down. It was boring.
Tiny Titans #42
Bizarro Supergirl makes her first appearance. She gets romanced by Match, while Beast Boy dodges rocks thrown by Terra all issue. We also get a brief glimpse of the Bizarro Tiny Titans.
Verdict: Thumbs down. What, even my beloved Tiny Titans? Yes, thumbs down. It was boring.
Criminal Macabre/The Goon: When Freaks Collide
Well, “Criminal Macabre” is about a guy named Cal McDonald who hangs out with a ghoul named Mo’Lock, and they hunt monsters. Both of them get kidnapped to some kind of otherworld at the same time as the Goon and Franky, famed for their drinking and face-punching, get kidnapped to the same place. While the Goon and Cal beat up on each other, Franky and Mo’Lock go exploring. Will beating up hordes of monsters give all our heroes their chance to go home?
Verdict: Thumbs down. There was a nice “Little Rascals” gag and a nice final-page reveal — but on the whole, it was boring.
Batman: Gates of Gotham #3
Well, there’s a lot of historical stuff about Gotham, and some guy trying to blow up the city because his ancestors got a rough deal, and the various members of the Bat-family squabbling and working together, and I’m not sure there’s much else I can say about it.
Verdict: Thumbs down. I mean, it’s all perfectly well done, and just about any other time, I’d probably be enjoying this. But I just plain thought it was boring.
Avengers Academy #16
I missed an issue of this one somewhere down the line. The Academy members have been dragged into the Fear Itself crossover. The Absorbing Man and Titania have acquired magical hammers that give them godlike powers and mostly over-write their personalities with the minds of ancient gods. But the Absorbing Man has somehow shaken that off, and he’s giving some serious whupass to Hank Pym. Elsewhere, Veil is trying to save a little girl’s mother, but how will she react when victory is stolen from her at the last moment?
Verdict: Thumbs down. It was boring.
Today’s Cool Links:
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to do a year-end retrospective list — it’s always too difficult for me to pick out a list of things I enjoyed the most out of 12 whole months. But what the heck, I’m gonna try it today.
This list is strictly listed in alphabetical order. I can’t claim it’s a list of the best comics — I haven’t read all the comics, after all — but it’s the list of the 15 comics that I enjoyed the most.
American Vampire
Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, and Stephen King came together to re-invent the vampire for the rough-and-tumble American West. Outstanding characters, close attention to setting, and rip-snorting horror make this a must-read for anyone who loves non-sparkly bloodsuckers.
Batgirl
The adventures of Stephanie Brown as the newest Batgirl are full of great humor, great action, great dialogue, and great characterizations. This is one of the best superhero comics around.
Batman and Robin
Grant Morrison’s triumphant run of Batman comics had its most epic stretch in these stories of Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne, as well as Alfred, Dr. Hurt, and the Joker. The scale of Morrison’s storytelling here was breathtaking.
Blackest Night
Possibly the most successful crossover storyarc in years, this grabbed readers’ imaginations and didn’t let go for months. Even better than its commercial successes were the overall excellence of the plotline. At its height, there was nothing as good as this story about zombies, power rings, and emotions.
Crossed
I’m not a fan of the new series, but Garth Ennis’ original Crossed miniseries was the most harrowing, brutal, relentless, depressing, and terrifying horror comic to hit the stands in a long, long time.
Daytripper
This was, without a single doubt, the best comic series of the entire year. Nothing else came close. Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon deserve to win so many awards for this one. If you missed this series in the original run, you should definitely keep your eyes open in the next few months for the trade paperback.
Detective Comics starring Batwoman
Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III didn’t create the character, but they crafted her best stories. While Rucka brilliantly fleshed out her backstory, personality, and supporting cast, Williams took the stories and created some of the year’s most beautiful artwork and design.
Hellboy in Mexico
This story of, well, Hellboy in Mexico was my favorite, but I also loved all of the other collaborations between Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and fantasy artist Richard Corben. These two meshed together creatively in ways that very few creators are able to do, and all of us readers were the beneficiaries.
Joe the Barbarian
Grant Morrison’s fantasy story is both epic and mundane in scale, which is really quite a trick — Joe is in diabetic shock, and he’s hallucinating that his home and toys have turned into a fantasy kingdom. But what if he’s not really hallucinating?
Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit
The second chapter of Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Donald Westlake’s crime fiction is a beautiful tribute to Cooke’s retro-cool art sensibilities and the pure fun of good pulp crime novels.
Power Girl
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner created the best version of Power Girl ever for a year’s worth of funny, smart, sexy, exciting superhero stories. These creators loved this character, and you can tell that in every story they published about her. I still hope they’ll be able to come back to this title eventually.
Secret Six
Far and away DC’s best team book, Gail Simone has hooked us a bunch of people who are extremely likeable and also completely crazy and prone to trying to kill each other from moment to moment. This shouldn’t work as well as it does, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s colossal fun to read every single month.
Strange Science Fantasy
Scott Morse’s retro-pulp series packed a heck of a lot of audacious fun into six short issues. This was a treat visually, emotionally, intellectually — even on a tactile level, what with the heavy, rough paper it was printed on.
Thor and the Warriors Four
The Power Pack go to Asgard. I didn’t really expect much of it, to be honest, but readers were treated to godlike quantities of humor, excitement, whimsey, and awesomeness, thanks to writer Alex Zalben and artists Gurihiru, and to Colleen Coover’s excellent backup stories.
Tiny Titans
Probably the best all-ages comic out there right now. These comics are smart and funny and cute and just plain fun to read.
Aaaaand that’s what I got. There were plenty of other comics that just barely missed the cut, but these were nevertheless the ones that gave me the most joy when I was reading them.
So farewell, 2010. And hello, rapidly onrushing 2011. Hope you’re a better year for all of us, and I hope we can all look forward to plenty more great comics to come.
Now y’all be safe and have a good time tonight, but call a cab if you need it — I want to make sure all of y’all are here to read me in 2011.
We’ve got another short break before our regular Friday Night Fights make their triumphant return, but there are other kinds of violence in the world, including the violence done to the fragile male ego when cruelly shot down by incognito but freakin’ awesome superheroines!
From October 2009′s Power Girl #4 by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner: Power Girl goes to a movie, gets macked on by (gasp!) the guys from “The Big Bang Theory” (!!!), and reacts by terrifying them with dating advice (and being alarmingly tall and gorgeous):
Wow, gotta give Howard credit for being able to maintain proper eye contact.
Quite seriously, that right there is probably my single favorite moment from the entire “Power Girl” series — and that was a comic jam-packed with awesomeness. If you haven’t read it, go hunt down the trade paperbacks, fer cryin’ out loud.
Power Girl #12
Power Girl is visiting Terra’s underground home in Strata. They visit the local spa, which has the side effect of completely dropping all emotional barriers — something Kara isn’t sure she’s all that wild about, since she’s used to keeping her emotions more under control. After meeting Terra’s family and eating dinner with them, she heads back home. Back on the surface, Satanna does the nasty with Dr. Sivanna (Um, yuck?) in an attempt to get him to help her kill Power Girl, but Sivanna don’t care — he got his jollies, and he has her thrown out. Power Girl gets back to her apartment, gives her horrible, horrible cat a proper name, settles her debt with Fisher, beats up an offended alien, throws ’70s-style sleazeball Vartox off the planet, and gets some good news about her company.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Just tons of awesomeness going on here. This is pretty much Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner saying farewell to all these characters, so the good guys get good endings, and the bad guys get bad ones. We get cheesecake, we get action, we get humor — all of this title’s strongest points. We get lots of Amanda Conner’s brilliantly expressive artwork and all those really cool details that you might miss on first glance — the stuff Kara almost eats in Strata, the laser pointer she uses to play with her cat — and all those wonderful facial expressions and body language. Only thing I had my doubts about was the sequence with that Strata spa — looked like they’re trying to set up some future lesbian subplot for the benefit of Judd Winick.
Officially, this title is going to continue, but I’m considering this the last issue. Palmiotti, Gray, and Conner are moving on to other projects, but colossally hacky writer Judd Winick is taking over the comic with the next issue. It’s depressing that DC considers him someone they want futzing around with their intellectual properties. Aside from his deficiencies as a writer, the biggest problem with Winick may be his shallow grasp of drama — the only items in his bag o’ tricks are killing characters, throwing in new subplots about homosexuality, and afflicting them with HIV. Ain’t nothing wrong with those in moderation, but Winick’s got no grasp of moderation — just ham-handed, clumsy overkill on his obsessions.
The “Power Girl” comic is probably going to go through a severe personality change and a steep drop in quality — and I’m not going to be there to watch the disaster. Let’s let this last issue be the character’s coda — at least until Palmiotti, Gray, and Conner make it back.
Wonder Woman #44
Astarte, the sister of Wonder Woman’s mother, Hippolyta, is now the captain of an alien ship that survives by raiding planets, killing their entire populations, and mulching them down into a biological gruel for everyone to eat. And she’s raised Theana, her daughter — Wonder Woman’s cousin — to be a cruel and merciless killing machine. Back on Earth, Achilles, Steve Trevor, Etta Candy, and everyone else try to fight off the invaders, but it may all be for nothing if Wondy can’t figure out a way to beat her cousin and defang her aunt’s treachery.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action and characterization, lots of subplots getting wrapped up, and lots of old favorite characters making one more appearance. Nicola Scott’s artwork is, as always, fantastic. Writer Gail Simone has occasionally stumbled on this comic, but she knocks this one completely out of the park. And next issue is going to be her last one here, which is a big disappointment. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the upcoming writer’s abilities, but for now, it’s great to see Simone working near the top of her game.
Today’s Cool Links:
Power Girl #11
It’s the next-to-the-last issue of this great series (Oh, sure, the series name will continue, but without Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, or Amanda Conner — and with one of the worst comics writers in history taking over the title), and it just keeps getting better and better.
The Ultra-Humanite has transplanted his brain into Terra’s body. Big deal, right? Power Girl is a lot stronger than Terra is. But wait, no, Terra could crack New York City apart with ease, and when it comes to beating PeeGee up with boulders or lava, Ultra’s up for that, too. Can Power Girl find Terra’s brain? Can she find someone to put the brains back where they belong?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Pages and pages and pages of knock-down-drag-out fightin’, all of it awesome, mixed in with actual smart dialogue and strategy and characterization. Ultra-Humanite/Terra makes for a great global-level threat, and Power Girl breaks out some serious brutality and badassery. And as always, brilliant and beautiful artwork by Amanda Conner. Why she’s not on the A-list of every comics company on the planet, I have no idea…
Tiny Titans #27
Our entire focus of this issue is on Raven, her dad Trigon, and Kid Devil. Raven gets stuck babysitting Kid Devil and brings him home with her to hang out at her house for a bit. And her dad, a red-skinned, horned demon, is completely won over by the pint-sized, red-skinned, horned demon. Trigon keeps assuming Kid Devil is a harmless little tyke, which leads to several amusing incidents of minor injuries and property damage.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Just three main characters this time, and it’s all funny, and it’s all cute. I didn’t expect it to work so well, but it turned out just fine.
Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #1
Not sure why they’ve started re-numbering this series, but here we are anyway. The Avengers have gone to talk to everyone from the UN to the FBI to S.H.I.E.L.D. to the White House, making their case for everyone to let them serve as an independent, unaffiliated team. Meanwhile, an unknown party has begun creatively vandalizing famous statues around the world — adding extra arms to Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue and a set of giant wings for the Statue of Liberty. Who’s behind it? Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants, who are now threatening to start blowing up buildings, too. Can the team take out the insanely powerful Master of Magnetism when some of their most powerful members have to be off pleading the team’s case to the authorities?
Verdict: Thumbs up. A very nice story with a wonderfully clever ending and great character work. There are lots of great moments for characterization here — Black Widow’s strong disagreements with the team’s decisions, Sue Storm’s homesick phone call back to the Fantastic Four, the struggle between Nova and Thor for the last donut. It’s outstanding stuff, and not the sort of thing you expect to see in an all-ages comic.
