Man, I got home really weirdly exhausted last night, so I didn’t have time to write but one review before I had to hit the hay.

 

PS238 #31

Ohh, I loved this one. In the aftermath of the alien invasion and the Las Vegas mini-epic, there are some big changes in store for everyone at PS238. First, their hometown has become Superhero Central — renamed Wonderburg. After the school was ground zero for an alien invasion, just about every superhero team has established a base there. The evil Praetorian Academy has moved in, planted bugs inside the school, and started recruiting former PS238 students. Principal Cranston is under a magical curse that causes other people to read his mind instead of vice versa. Tyler Marlocke is in three places at once — in stasis to keep him from spreading an alien xenovirus, walking around in a clone body (so alien student Prospero will think Tyler’s cured and won’t destroy the planet to stop the virus), and inside the Castle Beyond Space and Time, where he has to decide whether or not humanity gets to keep having superpowers. And the whole thing ends with the most jaw-droppingly shocking cliffhanger I’ve seen in ages.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good gravy, this was good. Just absolutely amazingly good. Clears the board of everything familiar and safe and sets up a new status quo full of way more threats, dangers, and intrigues than before. And there’s still a very strong character-based feel to the storytelling — we get some great bits of characterization from Victor Von Fogg, Angie Sinthousy, special guest star Mr. Extraordinary, Miss Kyle, and especially Tyler. Aaron Williams is doing a fantastic job with this comic — if you aren’t reading it yet, start soon.

 

PS238 #30

It’s the conclusion of our mini-epic set in Las Vegas. Everyone gets moved into the luxurious Masquerade Hotel and Casino — the Flea has gotten a ridiculously large suite, thanks to the Revenant’s credit card. Miss Kyle tries desperately to relax, while the kids are put to work around the casino. Zodon tries to track down a secretive card-counting ring, the Flea sends his insects out to do surveillance, Julie Finster gets some training from the security team, and Poly Mer pulls duty as the casino’s new sign. Julie takes on a superstrong bruiser, and she, Zodon, and the Flea battle the mastermind behind the scheme. And in the end, Julie gets a new costume to replace her old worn-out one, Zodon gets store credit in the galleria, and the Flea gets a suitcase full of candy. Happy endings for all!

Verdict: Thumbs up. This comic is such grand fun, and it’s great to get a nice spotlight issue for Julie Finster, who is really a very charming character, even with her hard-luck life and insecurities added on. Zodon is also fun this issue, as his “Barry Ween Chip,” which replaces his profanity with random non-swears, really gets a workout.

One of the things I’m coming to enjoy most about this series is the fairly realistic outlook it has on superpowers. Of course superhero parents would enroll their kids in a superhero school. Of course casinos would have metahuman security teams. Of course supervillains would prefer running casinos where they could make money legitimately without worrying about getting beat up by superheroes. Of course there would be businesses solely devoted to selling new costumes to super-people. I don’t know why an independent humor comic can get away with this stuff while it completely escapes the notice of Marvel and DC…

 

PS238 #29

Last issue, Poly Mer and Julie Finster, thinking their favorite teacher, Miss Kyle, was quitting her job, decided to follow her to Las Vegas and talk her into staying on at PS238. They brought along reluctant stowaway Zodon, and were followed by the Flea. Of course, Miss Kyle isn’t leaving — she just needed a vacation. They’re all being tracked by the evil Centurions, and the vigilante hero Revenant is providing the Flea with a cash card to cover his expenses.

In this issue, the Flea uses his card to stock up on flashy Vegas-wear and candy. Everyone ends up in the Masquerade Casino, a casino just for superheroes. Zodon tries to win a bunch of money by cheating at blackjack, but gets caught by casino security. And everyone else tangles with the Centurions.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I was prepared to dislike the Vegas issues, but they’ve been excellent. Sure, we’re not following all the kids back at the school, but we’re getting some great characterization of the Flea, Poly, and Julie. The Flea’s spending spree is good and funny, as is Poly’s “chewing gum.” And in addition to Julie’s angst over her powers being unoriginal (she’s the 84th person on earth to manifest super-strength, super-speed, flight, and indestructibility), she’s also too poor to afford a really nice super-costume and is starting to question whether she wants to be a superhero at all. All that plus an announcement that Hero Games is going to publish a pen-and-paper RPG based on “PS238.” So there’s lots of stuff going on, and it’s still a darn good comic. Pick it up.

 

The Trials of Shazam #10

Freddy Freeman and Sabina have about half of the powers of Shazam now, and they’re trying to track down Mercury to get his power. Unfortunately, Sabina has a head-start and is tearing through a bunch of magical information brokers to get his location pinned down. And it all comes down to… Mr. Tawky Tawny, the sophisticated talking tiger?!

Verdict: Thumbs up, solely for how awesome and fun Tawky Tawny is. Urbane wit and major mystical face-punchitude? Why didn’t someone dig him out of mothballs sooner?

 

PS238 #28

The elementary school for superpowered kids is on a break, so Ms. Kyle, one of the beloved teachers, takes a long-overdue vacation in Vegas. Two of her students, stretchable Poly Mer and superstrong Julie Finster, think she’s quitting the school and have stowed away, along with the reluctant-to-help evil supergenius Zodon, to try to talk her out of it. Meanwhile, the Flea is tracking some bad guys who want to kidnap Zodon.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Weird, wild, funny stuff with gobs of personality behind it. I wish a heck of a lot more people read this comic.

 

Green Lantern Corps #18

Sodam Yat — member of the Green Lantern Corps, Daxamite who gains superpowers under Earth’s sun, and the new bearer of the mega-powerful Ion symbiote — takes on Superboy Prime. There’s a great deal of hitting, interspaced with flashbacks to Sodam’s rotten childhood among his xenophobic species. But mostly lots of hitting. Lots and lots and lots of hitting.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The thing is, this much hitting is boring.

 

PS238 #27

This one doesn’t come out often enough, so let’s recap the basic premise. It’s about a secret elementary school, located about three miles underneath a normal elementary school, that’s designed to educate metahuman children in how to use their superpowers. One of the main characters, Tyler Marlocke, is the unpowered son of two superheroes — he gets to attend the school because his folks are positive he’s going to manifest powers, but Tyler has taken up crimefighting as the sidekick of a Batmanesque hero named Revenant.

Anyway, in recent issues, Earth was invaded, with PS238 as a major focus of the aliens’ attacks. Tyler was infected with a virus that would soon cause humans to mutate into the alien invaders, so he was put into a stasis field until he can be cured. Meanwhile, the aliens have caused a cave-in at the school, trapping the school’s doctor, the mysterious Principal Cranston, and the still-unconscious Tyler.

Well, this story also functions as an origin story for Principal Cranston. The stasis field is having a strange effect on Tyler, as he keeps having strange dreams that he’s Principal Cranston — in his previous job as President of the United States. It turns out that the headband Cranston wears is a power dampener, designed to shut down his very powerful telepathic and telekinetic powers. He was forced to wear it to keep from being impeached for using superpowers to gain political office, and that the founding of PS238 was another condition of Cranston’s release.

On top of that, we also get several excellent cliffhanger moments. Will Tyler recover? Is Moon Shadow dead? Is a favorite teacher quitting the school? Future issues will reveal all, I’m sure.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s always been very heavily implied that Cranston used to be the president, but the full background is very entertainingly told here.

I picked up a couple of different comics recently that had stories about alien invasions. Let’s give ’em a spin and see how they turned out…

 

Green Lantern #23

The Green Lanterns stuck on Qward have to fight their way home. Hal Jordan briefly puts on a whole bunch of Sinestro rings, but he doesn’t really know that much about manipulating fear, so he gets disarmed fairly quickly. They lose one of their number, an alien named Ke’haan, to an attack by the Anti-Monitor, but they’re able to recover the powerful Green Lantern entity called Ion.

Meanwhile, the Guardians of the Galaxy decide to rewrite some of the rules that govern the operation of the Green Lantern power rings — first, they now allow Lanterns to use lethal force against the Sinestro Corps. And finally, Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner return to Earth to enlist the aid of more superheroes, but discover that the Sinestro Corps has followed them home.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not entirely happy with the story. It could have been simplified a bit, and we’ve seen, so far, mighty little of some of the promised villains. But it’s still got more good stuff than bad stuff.

 

PS238 #25

Aliens are invading Earth! Superheroes are busy fighting against the invaders, as are the teachers and some of the students at PS238. Unfortunately, the aliens have fixated on powerless Tyler Marlocke (who nevertheless adventures as the mostly-hapless technology-based kid-hero Moon Shadow) as the key to their invasion. They’ve engineered a virus that, when injected into Tyler, will turn him into a typhoid mary who will spread a DNA-altering disease around the world — all future humans would turn out looking just like the aliens. Can everyone prevent Tyler from being injected with the virus, or is the Earth doomed?

Verdict: Thumbs up, but just barely. This book is at its best in straight-forward lighthearted shenanigans, and this story is just way, way too serious.

I didn’t pick up many comics this week — probably could’ve grabbed a few extras, but I was feeling a bit cheap. So let’s get us a trio of quick reviews out of the way.

 

PS238 #24

Well, Tyler Marlocke is stuck in an interdimensional wasteland, thanks to teleporting bully Charles Brigman, now a student at the evil Praetorian Academy. Tyler’s in big trouble because he’s the only student at PS238 who doesn’t have any superpowers, and Charles is pretty darn ruthless. Anyway, Charles finds out that Tyler’s parents are some of the most powerful superheroes on the planet, and he panics and runs off. Tyler also meets the other person stranded on this rock — a convenience store clerk who also happens to be a robot.

Meanwhile, half-angel/half-demon Malphast and conspiracy-minded goofball Cecil take up the quest to rescue Tyler, which involves travel through evil dimensions, deals with both of Malphast’s parents, and Cecil picking up far too many funny mutations.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The entire comic is very entertaining, but Cecil turning into a trenchcoated Cthulhoid monster pushed it way, way over the top. If you’re interested in offbeat, funny superheroics, check this series out.

 

Countdown #43

Well, we’ve got the funeral for Bart Allen, and it’s boring. We’ve got Monarch offering to let Forerunner lead his armies, and it’s boring. We’ve got Holly Robinson hanging out with Amazons, and it’s boring. We’ve got Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and one of the Monitors arguing about going to look for Ray Palmer, the missing Atom, and that’s boring, too.

Verdict: Thumbs down. It’s boring.

 

Outsiders #49

This one’s the conclusion of a fairly lengthy crossover with the “Checkmate” series. The Outsiders and Checkmate try to save Nightwing, Captain Boomerang, and Sasha Bordeaux. Boomerang apparently spent all last issue getting tortured by the evil Chang Tzu, and Bordeaux is getting tortured this issue. Nightwing pukes up a very small cutting torch he’d swallowed before this whole thing (because you never know when you’ll need a cutting torch, I guess. Or maybe Nightwing likes to swallow cutting torches. Super-people are weird.) and he and Boomerang rescue Bordeaux, with an assist from Batman. Later, Nightwing announces he’s quitting, and Batman is taking over the team.

Verdict: Thumbs down. It didn’t make sense that Nightwing would listen to a teammate getting tortured last issue and not barf up his fancy cutting torch to escape then. It didn’t make sense that Boomerang wouldn’t kick him in the butt for not trying to rescue him before. Plus, there are just too many characters to keep track of, what with all the Outsiders and all the Checkmate crew, too.

Here’s the most interesting thing I found in this issue: a preview for the new Outsiders team.

 

For the uninitiated, it looks like the team is going to consist of Batman, Katana, Catwoman, Metamorpho, Grace, Martian Manhunter, and Captain Boomerang. Observations: Catwoman and Martian Manhunter are big surprises for this team; Thunder off the team is a big disappointment; I think this will mark the first time that Catwoman has been on a non-supervillain team; Katana is still wearing her painfully ugly new costume — surely I can’t be the only person who hates that completely ridiculous outfit…

You know what a crossover is, right? For comics fans, it’s when Superman and Spider-Man meet in a comic book. For non-comics fans, it’s when the cops from “Law and Order” meet up with the cops from “Law and Order: SVU” — when characters from one show (or comic or movie or book) meet characters from another show (or comic or movie or book), that’s a crossover.

“Freddy vs. Jason” = crossover. “Aliens vs. Predator” = crossover. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is one big crossover for animated cartoons. And Richard Belzer, the guy who plays John Munch on “Law and Order: SVU,” is the TV crossover king, since Munch has appeared in “Homicide: Life on the Street,” several different versions of “Law and Order,” “Arrested Development,” and “The X-Files.”

Anyway, comics have lots of crossovers, too. Batman meets Spider-Man, the X-Men meet the Teen Titans, Wonder Woman meets Witchblade, Archie meets the Punisher. They happen once, then never get mentioned again, because if Superman mentions that time he met the Fantastic Four and kicked Galactus on his tushie, Marvel will get mad and want to get paid for it. Nevertheless, there have been a Guatemalan metric ton of comics crossovers over the decades.

And from time to time, real people will show up in comics. Presidents will often make appearances in comics, as will some prominent scientists, sports stars, musicians, media personalities, and even particularly prominent comic book creators. But I’m aware of very few instances of a real-world celebrity making appearances in completely different comics just a month apart.

Sure, a president might show up in a Superman comic one month, then in an Avengers comic the next. But it doesn’t happen often.

And I certainly never expected it to happen with actor/writer Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

But here he is in John Kovalic’s “Dork Tower” #36:

 

And here he is in Aaron Robinson’s “PS238” #23:

 

“PS238” is set at an elementary school for superkids, so Wheaton has somehow managed to score himself some superpowers — in this case, telekinesis, which he claims to have used to make the spaceships fly around on “Star Trek.”

There’s also this angry confrontation with an evil genius wearing a pimp costume.

 

An evil genius in a pimp costume denouncing a telekinetic “Star Trek” actor? That’s what comics are all about, baby.