Archive for Secret Six

Black Monday

BlackestNight3

Blackest Night #3

We start out with Jason Rusch, the new Firestorm, and his girlfriend Gen, who is his current co-pilot in the Firestorm fusion matrix. She wants to talk marriage — he doesn’t. From there, we switch to the Flash and Green Lantern fighting against the Black Lantern Justice League — the undead versions of the Martian Manhunter, Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, Firestorm, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl. Hal and Barry are soon joined by the Atom, who stowed away inside Hawkman’s Black Lantern ring — they speculate that the rings are channeling energy to somewhere else in the universe, that certain people are being resurrected specifically because their reappearance would elicit strong emotional responses, and that the rings function as organic computers that animate the dead — as the Atom puts it, the dead aren’t wearing the rings, the rings are wearing the dead — though the zombies act somewhat like they did when they were alive, it’s all a put-on by the rings themselves.

Luckily, the Purple Lanterns — or as they call themselves, the Indigo Tribe — finally make their appearance. They are powered by compassion, and their staffs are able, when combined with the energy of any other color of power ring, to disrupt the black rings’ connections to the hosts and dissipate the bodies — in fact, they’re able to put down Ralph and Sue Dibny that way. Hal, Barry, Ray, and the Indigo Tribe meet up with Firestorm and Mera at the Justice League HQ, but they’re surprised by the rest of the Black Lantern Justice Leaguers. Ronnie Raymond manages to separate Jason and Gen, re-fuses with Jason, and uses his knowledge of chemistry to turn Gen into NaCl. After that, another bunch of black rings come in and resurrect the dead supervillains in the JLA’s basement.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Probably the most fun about this series so far is seeing who else gets turned into a zombie — in this issue alone, we get treated to walking-dead versions of Dr. Light, Copperhead, Alexander Luthor, Madame Rouge, Maxwell Lord, the Psycho-Pirate, the Unknown Soldier, Rocket Red, and Osiris. Not a bad turnout this time.

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Secret Six #13

The Six are still stuck on Smyth’s slaver island — Scandal, Bane, Jeannette, and Artemis trying to free the Amazons, and Catman, Deadshot, and Ragdoll left guarding Wonder Woman on behalf of Smyth and staring down the crucified demonic horror called Grendel. Ragdoll tries on Wondy’s boots, Scandal confronts a bunch of guards and gives them 30 seconds to call their loved ones — and the guards DO, and it’s kinda heartbreaking, ’cause she kills ’em all anyway. Catman goes rogue and frees the captive Amazons, and Grendel gets loose.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This was kind of a weird issue — it seems that pretty much everyone was having visions of one type or another. Jeannette sees everyone wearing old period clothing, Scandal relives her childhood, Deadshot imagines himself killing everyone, Bane is having happy, weepy memories of his life in prison, Ragdoll is unusually spacey, even Wonder Woman is making cryptic pronouncements. Something even stranger than normal is going on here…

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Raiding the Booster Club

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Booster Gold #23

The award for most eye-catching cover of the week goes to this issue of “Booster Gold.” When was the last time you saw DC or Marvel do a photo cover on one of their mainstream books? It don’t happen often. (And no, no idea who the cover model is. Might be Dan Jurgens’ wife, maybe? Or daughter… How old is Dan Jurgens anyway?) (UPDATE: Luke in comments informs us that the cover model is Blair Butler from G4TV’s “Attack of the Show.” Feh, you media-savvy youngsters! FEH!)

Aaaaanyway, Booster and Skeets have completely failed to save the Teen Titans, so they take the late-arriving Raven on a trip into the future (How’s that supposed to keep the Titans from getting killed? Quiet, you!) to see what the ultimate result is — the four-eyed interstellar demon Trigon the Terrible takes over the world and kills the JLA! It’s all part of a scheme by the evil time-traveling Black Beetle and his mysterious benefactor to do, um, something evil. Meanwhile, Booster, Skeets, Raven, and Rip Hunter meet up with the alternate-future versions of Zatanna and Kyle Rayner, who are part of the rebellion against Trigon. Booster sacrifices himself to keep the rebels’ base hidden, but ends up facing Trigon all by himself.

Our second feature, of course, stars the Blue Beetle, who is running around with his friends Paco and Brenda battling a robot disguised as a woman named Maria. She was built by your standard robot-building mad scientist, who considers her his masterpiece because he gave her the ability to feel emotions. But Maria hates having emotions, and she wants her “dad” to take them away. Can the Beetle stop Maria and her army of killer robots before it’s too late?

Verdict: It’s not that bad, all things considered, but the plot is a lot more illogical and random than seems to be normal, even for your stereotypical comic book. Running around in the future isn’t going to keep the Titans from getting killed in the past, so why even bother?

The Blue Beetle story, of course, is pure thumbs-up. Very funny dialogue and great action. The Beetle should have never been cancelled.

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Secret Six #12

Wonder Woman shows up on Smyth’s slaver island, and she thinks the Secret Six have killed former fill-in Wonder Woman Artemis (She’s actually okay, but Wondy doesn’t realize that). While it initially looks like none of them can go toe-to-toe with Wondy, Jeanette eventually manages it, despite getting beat like a rented mule, when she fully activates her powers as a banshee, turning into a carbon-copy of the Silver Banshee, making Wondy relive Jeanette’s gory death-by-botched-decapitation, and reducing the Amazon to a drooling vegetable. And even that isn’t the scariest thing on the island — before long, we meet Smyth’s horrific patron.

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, excellent dialogue and art, but the creepy factor really gets cranked up high in this one. Jeanette’s transformation and her memories of her death are pretty disturbing, and Smyth’s crucified but still scary friend is unnerving, just by his sudden appearance.

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Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels #2

Sir Edward is on the trail of the monster that attacked him and is murdering people around London. While investigating another murder, Grey finds himself invited to the rotten side of town to meet a man called the Captain, a low-rent, barely legal occult detective. The Captain has an inkling about what’s going on, and he takes Grey to meet a medium — the real deal, able to summon an ectoplasmic spirit guide, who offers a small lead in the case and gives Grey a warning about a mysterious spectral figure stalking him. But Grey has other mysterious stalkers to worry about — the demonic bloodsucking monster is still on the prowl.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very moody, spooky scenes on display throughout here. The medium and her spirit guide are simultaneously wholesome and creepy, and the suspense level gets turned up nice and high by the end.

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Aliens vs. Predators

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Astro City: The Dark Age, Book Three #3

Years ago, someone killed Charles and Royal Williams’ parents. They finally know who he is — a high-ranking member of the criminal Pyramid organization. Royal used to be a spy within Pyramid, but a close call had him running for safety, so Charles has now infiltrated the organization on behalf of the high-tech espionage agency E.A.G.L.E. Pyramid is spying on most of the superteams in the country, including the Apollo 11, a bunch of former astronauts turned alien superheroes. But when Charles and Royal finally confront their parents’ killer, will a cosmic disaster prevent their revenge?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The stuff with Charles and Royal is fine, but the real fun this time is all about the Apollo 11. These guys are utterly freakish, like a cross between the Doom Patrol, Ultra the Multi-Alien, and a ’50s sci-fi comic — and I really want to read a whole lot more about Commander One, Encephalon, Nihil, Shrff, Strangeling, L.G.M., Ichthyos, Kahoutek, Aquarina, Arthro, and Gas Giant. This really does seem to be what Kurt Busiek does best with this series — introduce these once-off, throwaway characters that make you wish someone would put them in a nice long comic series all to themselves.

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Secret Six #11

We start off with a short confrontation between the Six and the slavers — Deadshot wants to carry the body of the woman he shot, and the slavers want to treat her like baggage. Smyth, the slavers’ leader, defuses the confrontation and later explains his view of world history: all of mankind’s greatest accomplishments were created by slavery, he says, so he wants to see slavery re-implemented worldwide, but with a twist — slaves would be chosen by lottery, so there would be no injustice of enslaving the poor or minorities. And what are his slaves on the island building? The world’s largest prison, designed to hold ever prisoner in the entire world. Meanwhile, Artemis, a stand-in for Wonder Woman in the ’90s, has been captured and brought to the island as a metahuman slave — she and Jeanette seem to have a past history, but Jeanette decides to rescue her and the other Amazons held prisoner on the island, just because she doesn’t like slavery. And this leads directly to a fight within the Six itself — Jeanette, Bane, and Scandal on one side, because they don’t want to work for slavers, and Catman, Deadshot, and Ragdoll on the other, because they don’t want to break their lucrative contract.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent characterization all around, from Deadshot’s insistence on respecting the woman he killed, to Smyth’s twisted logic behind his pro-slavery utopia, to Jeanette’s reasoning for rescuing Artemis, even down to Catman’s willingness to work for people he hates because he gave his word of honor that he’d do so. Artemis’ speech to her jailers was also especially cool. All in all, just a very fun and awesomely morality-obsessed comic, even if it’s focusing on a bunch of supervillains.

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Where Walks the Cyber Bear!

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Buck Rogers #1

I wasn’t actually planning on picking this one up, but I flipped through it and found one specific thing that guaranteed I’d be bringing it home.

This is essentially a new, rebooted origin for Buck Rogers, the swashbuckling sci-fi pulp hero who got his start back in the late ’20s. Much of the story is fairly familiar — hot-headed pilot Buck Rogers is accidentally put into suspended animation aboard his experimental spaceship and wakes up several hundred years in the future. Not knowing where (or when) he is, he crashlands his ship in a convenient stretch of forest and is rescued by Colonel Wilma Deering. Unfortunately, they’re both stuck in a hunting zone used by an organization called the Pack, and they both get attacked by one of the Pack hunters…

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Let that soak in — a cybernetically enhanced grizzly bear with a raygun.

Yes, welcome to your shiny, futuristic new home in Awesometown.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, yes, the cyber-bear is fun, but as for the rest of the story… I’m cautiously optimistic. So far, the writing is solid and the art is solid. Can they keep this going, with or without awesome cyber-bears? Let’s hope so.

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Secret Six #10

The Six get hired by someone claiming to be their old benefactor, Mockingbird, to escort a large and dangerous-looking box to a jungle compound. It quickly becomes clear (to the readers, particularly, if not the team itself) that the folks who just hired them are particularly cruel slavers, willing to execute any number of their workers just to punish a single rebellious slave. Of course, the Six aren’t really very nice people — they’re doing the job so they can get paid, not because they want to work with fine, upstanding citizens. But do the slavers have some unpleasant plans for the Six themselves? On top of that, Scandal Savage and Bane continue to grow closer, and the extremely weird romance between Deadshot and Jeanette keeps getting weirder.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Our main villains’ ruthlessness is demonstrated very brutally in the first four pages of the comic, and again, more unexpectedly, in the last two. These are definitely rotten customers, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that a few of them get entertainingly killed before the end of the storyarc. Also, excellent dialogue and characterization for Bane, Scandal, Deadshot, and Jeanette.

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20th Century Analog Boys

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910

The first part of a new chapter in the literary-themed adventure series from Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill focuses on the early part of the 20th century. The current League includes former vampire victim Mina Murray, the rejuvenated Allan Quatermain (masquerading as his own son), immortal sex-changing warrior Orlando, ghost-hunting detective Thomas Carnacki, and reformed thief A.J. Raffles. They’re on the trail of a bunch of occultists, led by a fictionalized version of Aleister Crowley, who are trying to bring about the end of the world. Added on top of all this are the daughter of the late Captain Nemo, who becomes known as Pirate Jenny, and a brutal killer (who may actually be Jack the Ripper) named Jack MacHeath, who is better known as Mack the Knife. In other words, a large chunk of this story is based on Bertolt Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera” — and yes, there are characters who actually break out in song during the story. Frankly, this is extremely weird. It all ends with a terrific slaughter, but with the prophesied apocalypse seemingly scheduled for many years in the future.

Verdict: I hate to say it, but thumbs down. While Jenny was an outstanding character, and her storyarc was very satisfying, the rest of this felt like Alan Moore was thumbing his nose at me. Sure, okay, Alan, you’re vastly smarter than I am, there’s no denying it. But do ya have to rub my nose in my own intellectual inferiority?

Secret Six #9

In one of the “Battle for the Cowl” crossovers, Batman is seemingly dead, and the criminals of Gotham City are going wild. A band of kidnappers have targeted the children of wealthy citizens, but Catman and Bane both decide to help stop them — partly because both of them would like to try to take Batman’s place. And Ragdoll is tagging along, because he, disturbingly, has decided that he wants to take Robin’s place. None of the trio is much good at leaving any of the kidnappers alive, but they do manage to save the children and their families — and they all get off some excellent one-liners.

Verdict: A big thumbs up. This one is a huge amount of fun, the action is absolutely top-notch, and like I said before, the one-liners are primo. Ragdoll gets the most, especially when he discovers that everything he says ends up sounding perverted, but Bane and Catman get their share, too. This one’s definitely worth picking up, even if you’re not into the “Battle for the Cowl” storyline.

The Human Torch Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1

Marvel is putting out a whole series of comics focusing on their Golden Age characters to commemorate their 70th birthday. This one, by Scott Snyder and “Atomic Robo” artist Scott Wegener, focuses on the Human Torch from the 1940s — unlike the more familiar Torch from the “Fantastic Four” comics, the Golden Age Torch was an android who was able to set himself on fire. The first story is pretty straightforward — the Torch rescues a woman from a sewer monster, but its venom means he has to discard his human-looking skin. Finding himself despised as a robot monster, the Torch has to decide whether to stay inside where his appearance won’t horrify people, or to go out and save lives anyway. The second story is a reprint from an old “Human Torch” comic, featuring the introduction of the Torch’s sidekick Toro.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a charming story, with wonderful illustrations. The reprint is a nice bonus. Definitely worth a read.

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Evil Wins Again!

I have lots of books I could review, but I really want to start out with the best comics of the week.

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Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #5

Linda Lee gets her secret identity as Supergirl busted again when a time-traveling Supergirl from the future accidentally reveals everything to Linda’s former best friend Lena Luthor. Meanwhile, Supergirl’s evil clone Belinda Zee gets a hand in realizing her true destiny as “Supergirl #1” by the evil principal. Belinda starts turning her schoolmates into Bizarros, Lena mind-controls the rest of the students and helps Lex Luthor break out of jail and ambush Superman. Belinda gets hold of Supergirl’s communicator that she uses to talk to her mother back on Argo, but gets a nasty surprise when the woman she recognizes as her mother doesn’t recognize her at all. And the teachers at school all reveal their secret identities.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Holy guacamole, was this one fun. Belinda Zee and Lena Luthor finally go full-on villain, and it’s completely hilarious. The time travel stuff was a bit out-there, but it’s a small price to pay for stuff this awesome.

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Secret Six #8

Even for a book as offbeat as “Secret Six,” this is an unusually offbeat, weird, and funny issue. Scandal goes grocery shopping and runs into a tall, gorgeous redhead named Liana — the stripper/Knockout-lookalike who she met at Jeanette’s casino. There is a great deal of chemistry there. Meanwhile, Jeanette insists that Deadpool go on a date with her, but he’s nervous about her intentions, so he wants a chaperone. Though Ragdoll is extremely eager to come along, Scandal proposes a double-date — with one caveat: Deadpool isn’t allowed to kill anyone. So there are tangles with a vengeance-seeking neo-Nazi, a bunch of arrogant fratsters dressed as the Blackhawks, and even more neo-Nazis, plus an all-girl band dressed as Power Girl, the most focused bathroom tryst ever, and much more, including the infinitely-wonderful glimpse we get into Ragdoll’s “Tiny Titan”esque dreams.

Verdict: An extremely enthusiastic thumbs up. A very funny issue, with outstanding dialogue and excellent action. “Ragdoll Dreams” is probably the standout moment, but there’s really not a single weak moment in this entire comic. My only regret is that Nicola Scott wasn’t on board to draw this issue — but even then, fill-in penciller Carlos Rodriguez does a wonderful job with the characters here. Seriously, if you didn’t pick up this comic this week, go back to the store and get one now. You won’t regret it.

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Hail Britannia

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Captain Britain and MI-13 #11

Dracula has declared war on Great Britain and made his first attack against MI-13. Captain Britain and Pete Wisdom have escaped injury in their exploding car, but one of their backpacking friends is killed. The Black Knight and Faiza Hussain are stuck in freefall from 10,000 feet up, but Faiza actually manages to heal their injuries as they hit the ground. Faiza’s family, in the meantime, has been targeted by Dracula, and Spitfire’s dead vampire son has come back from the grave to drag his mother into Dracula’s service.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’ve got some quibbles with the depiction of Dracula, but I’m a bit of a purist for the glories of the “Tomb of Dracula” series from the ’70s. Other than that, there’s nothing but win going on here. The interaction between Spitfire and her son is excellent, Dracula’s taunt at his old foe Blade is much appreciated, and Pete Wisdom’s leadership is wonderful to watch. This comic is huge fun.

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Secret Six #7

Deadshot has apparently tried to kill most of the team, but he botched the job on all of them, and now they’re chasing him down to get revenge. Meanwhile, Tarantula, riding along with Deadshot with Bane unconscious in the back seat of the limo, figures out the truth — Deadshot’s an expert assassin, and if he’d wanted his teammates dead, they’d be dead. Everyone finally meets up in Gotham City, with the addition of all the supervillains who’ve been trying to kill them, plus Junior, Ragdoll’s creepy sister, plus the Mad Hatter, plus Huntress, Grace, and Lady Blackhawk. And then Bane finally breaks out his stash of Venom, and things really go nuts.

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, great interaction between all the characters. Tarantula is just great here, as is Mad Hatter. And it was pretty cool seeing how Bane looks at the world once he’s got Venom in his system. Gail Simone and Nicola Scott are doing outstanding work with this series.

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Little Green Girl

She-Hulk #37

The Man-Elephant is back (snicker) and he’s gotten a lot more powerful — powerful enough to knock the She-Hulk around easy. Only thing is, it’s not She-Hulk, it’s her Skrull pal Jazinda in disguise. Where’s Shulkie? She’s getting bailed out of prison by Mallory Book, her old nemesis at Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, and having happy reunions with her old friends at the law firm. And it looks like she’s going to get her law license back again, so she’s leaving the bounty hunter biz. About time, too.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This title is about to be cancelled, so they’re trying to return things to the old status-quo as quickly as possible, so this is a somewhat clumsy switcheroo. However, I still enjoyed how it was done (and the very welcome reappearance of Mallory Book makes it clear that she was too good a character to be abandoned for so long). Not sure how many issues are left, but I’m looking forward to at least one more courtroom escapade before this title goes away.

Secret Six #6

Well, Ragdoll’s sister is the extremely twisted and creepy and mutilated and naked Junior. Eww. Ewww, ewww, ewww. The Six release Bane and, for whatever reason, don’t kill Junior, though they know she’s going to be gunning for them for as long as she can. After the team leaves, Jeanette tells her story — she’s a banshee, made immortal and attuned to death when she was a servant of the notorious Erszebet Bathory, medieval serial killer and vampire. We also learn that the Mad Hatter, a former member of the Secret Six, is now plotting nastily against them. And at a roadside rest stop, Deadshot makes some very, very surprising decisions.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not sure what I think of Jeanette’s weirdo origin story, but wow, Deadshot sure does drop a big reminder that these guys are all supposed to be villains, not superheroes. Can’t wait for the next issue.

The Age of the Sentry #5

Marvel’s tribute to Silver Age lunacy continues. In our first story, we visit the distant future as Sentry and the Guardians of the Galaxy (a weird combo of Marvel’s original Guardians of the Galaxy, DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, and a bunch of modern-day characters with a futuristic retrofit). The team has been instructed to help assist a pregnant planet. A what?! Yeah, it makes no sense, but that’s the Silver Age for ya. In the second story, the Sentry’s life is manipulated by shadowy children, who send a robot Sentry to break up his date with Lindy Lee, and try to set him up with the Sentress. Finally, we discover the identity of the mysterious and half-glimpsed parent who’s been telling his son stories about the Sentry’s adventures.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Any story that includes the Boy Blob, the Interstellar Mailman, fruit-pie-loving hippies, and a stoned Dr. Strange has got to be worth reading.

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Faces of Distraction

Got the car back. Another $350 bucks down the tubes. And actually, I gotta take it to another joint later today for a more minor procedure, but still, here goes another few hours without the car, and another few bucks into the abyss. And on top of all that, I got another couple of job rejections yesterday. So this is what my life is like these days — shovel a few hundred bucks out the window, get turned down for jobs, read the news about another half-million people losing their jobs, and try to find something new to distract myself from thinking about how awful things are.

Luckily, new comics = awesome distraction factor!

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Birds of Prey #126

First of all, could I just say that I do not like DC’s “Faces of Evil” covers? Something a tad more colorful, por favor?

Anyway, it’s the next to the last issue of this series. The dastardly but extraordinarily nerdy Calculator has gotten on the bad side of the Kilg%re, a living computer program who’s allied with the Silicon Syndicate. Basically, the Calculator blundered and gave Oracle access to the Syndicate’s secret Internet — the Syndicate is unhappy, but is going to give him three days to kill the Birds of Prey before they kill him. Can Calculator figure out a way to come out on top? Well, yeah, that and more. And with Calc’s newfound power, do Oracle and the rest of the Birds stand any chance against him?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice focus on the Calculator and the Syndicate, and Calc’s scheme is enjoyably baroque and twisted.

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Green Lantern #37

Hal Jordan and the lone two Blue Lanterns are racing to save Sinestro from being executed by the Red Lanterns. The Blue Lanterns want to save Sinestro — Jordan would kinda like to kill him himself. But he gets ambushed by the blood-barfing Red Lanterns and imprisoned with Sinestro. The demonic Atrocitus pronounces prophecies that Hal will eventually rebel against the Corps, but the Sinestro Corps soon attacks, and Hal finds himself in the crossfire between the Red, Blue, and Yellow Lanterns. Hal tries to save Laira, a former Green Lantern turned Red, but Sinestro kills her. Jordan is enraged by her death — and you know how much the Red Lanterns love rage…

Verdict: I think I’m gonna thumbs-down on this one. I’m really tired of the blood-vomiting Red Lanterns. And I’m not that fond of the Blue Lanterns either. And now that Hal has gone from a Green Lantern to a Red Lantern, with the Blues wanting him as their leader… Hey, do ya reckon, Hal is going to be wearing all seven of the power rings by the time this is all over? Aw, gee, did I figure out the big surprise already?

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Secret Six #5

The horrific Junior is going to kill Bane by throwing bricks at him. Five hundred bricks. But Bane is not without resources — namely, that even chained up and seemingly helpless, he’s really, really good at killing Junior’s henchmen. Meanwhile, Jeanette, the Last Victim and the owner of the Nocturne casino, forces Cheshire to give the rest of the Six the antidote to the poisons they were exposed to last issue. Then they all beat the snot out of the supervillains stalking them through the casino. Finally, they go to find Bane, and we get the revelation of Junior’s identity.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good stuff going on with Bane, and I really do like Jeanette. Not sure how thrilled I am with Junior’s true identity — I kinda liked the character as a shrouded and mysterious creep. Also, the actual disrobing part of it probably requires brain bleach, which I can no longer afford…

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The Monkey of your Dreams

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #2

The Umbrella “family” is tearing itself apart from the inside — Kraken is mad at Spaceboy for getting depressed and getting fat while obsessing over TV, the Seance ignores everyone now that he’s a celebrity, Number 5 is missing… and Hazel and Cha-Cha are in town. They’re a couple of loons wearing cartoon animal heads. They’re baaaad news.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s still wonderfully loopy. Hazel and Cha-Cha are creepy as heck. I’d like to see the family do something other than argue, but we’ll see what’s coming.

Birds of Prey #125

The Birds are running a two-pronged mission — while Babs and Black Canary distract the Caretaker, a member of the Silicon Syndicate who is an obsessive collector and sadistic kidnapper, by pretending they’re going to destroy a super-rare sports car he wants to buy (he responds by sending masses of hired assassins after them), Huntress and Infinity sneak into his hideout to free his captives.

Verdict: I’m gonna give it a thumbs down. There are a few nice moments in it, including that great Frank Quitely cover, but on the whole, it’s entirely forgettable.

Secret Six #4

The Secret Six — actually just the Secret Five (Catman, Deadshot, Scandal Savage, Ragdoll, and Bane) plus their hostage, Tarantula — are in possession of an actual Get Out of Hell Free card. Every supervillain in the world wants to take the card from them, and impossibly-creepy mastermind Junior has put a bounty on all of their heads. The whole team is at each others’ throats over the card as they ride cross-country in, of all things, a stolen ice cream truck. Junior kills a priest, mainly for kicks, partly because he has no idea how confession is supposed to work. Bane is weirdly attracted to Scandal. When everyone gets to Las Vegas, they meet up with the owner of the Nocturne Hotel, a mysterious superhuman called the Last Victim, who has a fondness for old French fashions and lollipops. But is it already too late for everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent dialogue and characterization, dandy plot, gorgeous artwork, evil and entertaining villain, outstanding cliffhanger. Get it, read it, love it.

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