The Brave and the Bold #25

DC’s strategy for re-introducing Milestone’s old characters back into continuity seems to involve giving them guest-star appearances in “The Brave and the Bold” — so be it, as y’all are well aware by now, I’m a sucker for the characters from the ’90s classic Milestone Media. In this issue, we’ve got Milestone’s Hardware — basically, he’s Iron Man with a rotten attitude — teaming up very reluctantly with Jaime “Blue Beetle” Reyes to take down an advanced high-tech SYSTEMatic — a powered armor drone working for an international criminal conspiriacy called SYSTEM. Unfortunately, Hardware really prefers to work alone, so even though he’s getting clobbered by the SYSTEMatic, he’s refusing all assistance from Blue Beetle. After Hardware gets his power drained by the SYSTEMatic, Beetle is able to give him a jump-start with his own armor. But will the villain still be too tough for both of them working together? And who’s behind the new redesign of the SYSTEMatics?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good characterization for both characters. I’ve got quibbles about the SYSTEMatic’s power levels and the guy pulling the strings back at SYSTEM, but as long as this issue includes both a Milestone character AND the Blue Beetle, there’s not much doubt that I’d love it.

JSA vs. Kobra #2

The international religious/terrorist organization is back and stronger than ever, as the JSA learns when it becomes clear that the bad guys have successfully infiltrated both Checkmate and S.T.A.R. Labs. And again, Kobra uses misdirection perfectly — while the Justice Society fights off a horde of cultists, a single Kobra operative manages to sneak into a big corporate office and get information about a project that could help Kobra destroy the world.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A bit odd that we see so few members of the JSA — it’s primarily just Mr. Terrific, Power Girl, and Green Lantern — but I do like the idea of a Kobra organization that’s both perfectly competent and screamingly scary.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels #1

Meet Sir Edward Grey, dashing nobleman, detective, and occult investigator. Called in to investigate a series of mysterious murders, he interrogates a man who participated in an expedition with all the victims. The found the shattered skeleton of some sort of animal-human hybrid, and ever since then, they’ve been getting killed off in surprising ways. When a monster attacks and kills the final victim, Grey attempts in vain to apprehend a creature that can be solid one moment and mist the next. Can Grey follow the clues to track his adversary, or is it already too late?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mike Mignola doesn’t often leave the pulp horror genre, so this foray into Victorian detective mystery/ghost story is notable and interesting for that alone. Sir Edward makes an excellent stoic hero, and the murders and setting here are excellently eerie.

Blackest Night #1

We reviewed the prologue yesterday, but DC’s big summer crossover officially gets started with this one.

It’s semi-official pay-respect-to-your-superheroes day in the DC Universe, giving lots of super-people opportunities to visit the gravesides and memorials of their fallen comrades. Earth’s Green Lanterns do a flyover of Coast City, the Kents visit Jonathan Kent’s grave, Flash’s Rogues hold a wake in their secret graveyard, Hawkman and Hawkgirl reflect on their never-ending cycle of death and reincarnation, and the recently resurrected Barry Allen learns how many of his friends have died in the years he’s been gone. But bad doin’s are afoot. A bunch of mysterious black rings descend on Earth and into the Green Lanterns’ mausoleum on Oa. And holy gee whilikers, the dadgum rings actually raise the dead as horrific zombies! Among the confirmed zombies we get here are a gobsmackingly staggering number of dead Green Lanterns, the Martian Manhunter, and Ralph and Sue Dibny… along with a surprise couple of recent deadlings leftover from “Final Crisis”…

Verdict: Thumbs up. So far, so good. I really hope they can sustain this. But for this issue at least: ZOMBIES!

Crossed #6

Our small band of survivors continue their trek north, where they hope they’ll have a better chance of survival. They’re still running into packs of the deranged and diseased serial killers/zombies called the Crossed, and they have to deal with personality conflicts within their own group. We get some flashbacks back to the earliest, most terrifying days of the Crossed outbreak, the group acquires a new canine buddy, and learns that some monsters don’t come with bloody red cross-shaped rashes on their faces.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding characterization work in this issue, along with a genuinely surprising twist. Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows are really doing great work with this one.

B.P.R.D.: 1947 #1

The sequel to the earlier “1946” series focusing on the early days of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense opens with a bunch of captured German SS officers mysteriously getting slaughtered in Nuremberg. Back in New Mexico, Professor Bruttenholm suspects the vengeful vampire, Baron Konig, has committed the murders, and he receives a visit from Varvara, the impossibly creepy, vodka-swilling little girl/demon who appeared in the last series. The BPRD designates four new operatives to travel to France to investigate the killings, which also seem to be tied to a terrifyingly blasphemous opera performed in 1771. But as always seems to be the case in the “BPRD” stories, ominous things are on the way. Can any of the new operatives survive what’s coming?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story by Mike Mignola and Joshua Dysart pops along very well, but the art by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon is just plain awesome.

Green Lantern #43

Wow, this one was just wildly creepy.

We focus on an old GL villain called Black Hand. Always a bit of a creepy kid, he loved his family’s mortuary business mainly because it allowed him to get, ahem, up close and personal with dead bodies. After accidentally acquiring a weapon from the demon Atrocitus that allowed him to absorb power from Green Lantern power rings, he became a supervillain in the strange belief that he should try to snuff out the green energy in the universe. After having a run-in with the Black Lantern power battery, he’s become aware of every important death in the DC Universe and has a voice in his head that tells him he can fix everything. After returning home to kill his family, he commits suicide and is then resurrected by a renegade Guardian named Scar as the first Black Lantern.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Again, wow. Yes, very creepy for Black Hand’s bizarre necrophiliac tendencies, but possibly more disturbing for his murder of his family and his own suicide and rebirth, rendered in close-up, loving detail by Doug Mahnke. Also especially good is the four-page sequence where Hand sees visions of the heroes and villains who have died, and the heroes who have been raised from the dead already. If they can maintain this level of creepy glory, “Blackest Night” may go down as one of the best crossover events ever.

Booster Gold #22

The Black Beetle has managed to kill Dick Grayson as Batman by going back in time and killing him when he was Robin in the Teen Titans. Booster and Skeets rush back to the time of the early “New Teen Titans” series in the ’80s, masquerade as security guards at S.T.A.R. Labs, and save Cyborg from the Ravager, Deathstroke’s son. Ravager gets away, with the Black Beetle’s help, so Booster and Cyborg recruit the help of the rest of the Titans. But instead of the Titans plus Booster vs. a Ravager who’s about to be killed by his own powers, they have to fight Deathstroke, Black Beetle, and a vastly energized Ravager… and the good guys don’t stand a chance.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This title has been through several months of sub-par stories, but this one is quite good.

Well, goodness knows, we all want a better life, don’t we? And what easier yet more unreliable method is there to get a better life than to click on links on a comic book blog? Have at them!

• A bunch of superheroes just ran for mayor of Washington, DC! Better Life Factor: Anything’s better than regular politicians!
• Your Guide to Geek Arguments! Better Life Factor: Now you know what to listen for so you’ll be able to run away before any geek arguments break out around you!
• Results for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Writing Contest! Better Life Factor: The Bulwer-Lytton Writing Contest rocks, and you should go here and enjoy all the winners.
• And a defense of Bulwer-Lytton himself! Better Life Factor: ‘Cause yew needs some larnin’, fool!
• Nearly all of EC Comics’ “Judgment Day” story! Better Life Factor: This is an outstanding story, and it’s nice that EC was able to get this one published before they went out of business.
• The Big Three sci-fi magazines don’t accept e-mail submissions? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Better Life Factor: You can officially say you have more technical know-how than this bunch of supposed sci-fi geeks.
• Best reveal of a movie monster ever! Better Life Factor: This is awesome.

Huzzah! Now we all finally have better lives!

(sniffs) Hey, my new life smells like old socks.

🙁

Well, first, I had some news to tell y’all back on Wednesday, and the LubbockOnline blogs went kerplooey just in time to make my post extra difficult to find. So if you ain’t heard my news yet, go read this.

Now that you’re up to speed on what’s been happening with me — yes, I’m safely moved in here, still working on unpacking my book boxes, sweating like a stuck pig every time I go outside, and starting my first day at the new job this morning. How do you tie a tie again? I can just use a square knot, right?

And now: Comics reviews.

Wednesday Comics #1

This is DC’s new weekly series, and it looks pretty cool. When you unfold the comic-sized magazine, it’s as large as a newspaper, and the stories they have here have some outstanding pedigrees. You’ve got stuff here like Metamorpho by Neil Gaiman and Michael Allred, Adam Strange by Paul Pope, Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook, Supergirl by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, Hawkman by Kyle Baker, and Sgt. Rock by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert. Let me repeat that last one for emphasis — the Kuberts on Sgt. Rock! That one little thing was what got me to commit to getting at least the first issue.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Too many stories to summarize here, but most of these are pretty good, and some of them are very, very good. But while this is a thumbs-up… I’m not planning on continuing to get the series. It’s an expensive weekly series where each story gets just one page per week — I can’t afford to shell out that kind of dough. I wish DC good luck with this, but I’m waiting for the eventual trade paperbacks for these.

Justice League: Cry for Justice #1

So here’s James Robinson’s big “Justice League” story. Hal Jordan makes a big pompous speech and “quits” the Justice League, along with Green Arrow, so they can go look for justice. Or something. Elsewhere, the Atoms — Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi — beat up Killer Moth and his gang in Albuquerque, Mikaal Tomas, former Starman and supporting cast member of Robinson’s classic ’90s “Starman” series, learns that his boyfriend has been murdered, and Congorilla, an old Silver Age character, a white hunter who could switch minds with a powerful gold-colored gorilla (Because shut up, that’s why), must deal with the murders of his ape tribe, his human body, and even the African hero called Freedom Beast.

Verdict: A little from Column A, a little from Column B. I do have some very serious quibbles about a lot of this. I mean, isn’t Killer Moth a giant insect monster these days? Would Ray Palmer torture someone the same way his ex-wife killed Sue Dibny? And pretty please, with sugar on top, could Hal Jordan kindly shaddap? I don’t hate this as much as some people did – I am looking forward to seeing Robinson writing Mikaal Tomas again, and the Congorilla sequence really is outstanding. The bonus material in the back is also pretty nice. But definitely a very mixed bag…

Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #1

Marvel’s lunatic mercenary gets a second ongoing series here, starting out by getting launched out of a space station by the mad scientists of A.I.M. in an unshielded and very hot escape pod and crashing down in the Savage Land. He’s supposed to steal a package for A.I.M., but he doesn’t know what it is. He meets up with Ka-Zar, who directs him to a site where the local cavemen are building a giant statue that looks exactly like him. He meets up with Dr. Betty Swanson, a dishy A.I.M. agent, and his attempts to impress her end with both of them being captured by the cavemen. That’s when they discover what the package actually is — the head of Zombie Deadpool from the various “Marvel Zombies” series.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not sure if Deadpool really needed two different series, but I’m down for anything that involves a crazy wisecracking assassin lugging a zombified alternate-version of his own head around as a sidekick.

There ain’t many things nicer than Friday, especially after a long, hard, stressful week of Workin’ for the Man — or in my case, moving everything I’ve got a few hundred miles away during a July heatwave. And the best way to kick off the weekend? Well, as always, it’s FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Okay, okay, I may be breaking some sort of unwritten rule here, but I’m going with a panel from the same funny-animal comic book series two weeks in a row. Hey, I haven’t had a lot of time to scan pages from my comics lately, so sue me. (Note: Please don’t sue me.) So here we go — from 1983’s Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew #14 by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw! — Pig-Iron belts Armordillo clear into next week:

And our musical accompaniment this week: “Pig Iron” by the Anti-Nowhere League. Everyone have a great weekend!

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.

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.

Young Allies 70th Anniversary Special #1

Just about all of Marvel’s special issues paying tribute to their WWII Golden Age characters and the company’s 70th birthday have been outstanding, but this one is probably the best yet. The main story, by writer Roger Stern and artist Paolo Rivera, focuses on Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s former sidekick and the new Captain Marvel, as he discovers that some of his friends from World War II are still alive. The Young Allies were a bunch of normal kids — a stereotypical Brooklyn tough kid, a smart, bespectacled kid, a chubby kid, and a black kid — who occasionally teamed up with Bucky and Toro, the Human Torch’s sidekick, to fight the Nazis. Anyway, Bucky finds the two surviving Young Allies — Pat “Knuckles” O’Toole, the tough kid, and Wash Jones, the black kid — in a veterans hospital. Knuckles is on his deathbed, and Wash is paying him a last visit. They’re both overjoyed to see Bucky again, still young after all those decades. There’s some reminiscing over their WWII adventures and about their post-war lives. And in the end, Knuckles dies, and a few months later, Wash follows him. They close out the last few pages of the comic with reprints of ads, text stories, and comic about “Terry Vance, the School Boy Sleuth.”

Verdict: Thumbs up. Numerous thumbs up, along with several pinkies and even a couple of big toes. This has got to be the best done-in-one comic I’ve seen in months. The action sequences are fine, but where this story really shines is the small, personal moments, with a trio of old vets sitting around a hospital talking about how their lives turned out, and seeing one of their number through to his final curtain. It’s a beautiful, emotional story, and I hope like heck it wins some awards.

Justice Society of America #28

The Spectre takes Power Girl, Atom Smasher, Damage, and Judomaster back into the past to save Green Lantern, Flash, Wildcat, Hourman, and Liberty Belle from the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Kung, a former Japanese assassin who died in the bomb blast, hopes to sacrifice the American heroes to return himself to life, but can anyone stop him and his army of Japanese spirits?

Verdict: I’m gonna thumbs-down it. The action sequences are fine, but this just felt too needlessly complicated, on several different levels.

Time to let the cat out of the bag — I have finally gotten a job. I’ll be working on websites for the University of North Texas in Denton. I start work on Monday, and the rest of this week is being devoted to getting me moved from Lubbock to Denton.

I guess the obvious question here is: What happens to “Hero Sandwich”? I have good news and more good news: I will be allowed to continue the blog right here at the current LubbockOnline address — no need to adjust your bookmarks. And I will continue writing about comics from a Lubbock viewpoint. I really doubt that Denton or the Metroplex will have a comics scene as vibrant or enthusiastic as Lubbock’s, even with the larger population. And the fact remains, I really want to see the Lubbock Sketch Club, Star Comics, and all the other comics creators, vendors, and hobbyists in Lubbock succeed. Sure, there will still be a ton of comics reviews and national comics news, but the Lubbock comics scene is something I enjoy getting to write about. Can I still do Lubbock justice from North Texas? I think I can… and I’m absolutely overjoyed that the A-J felt that “Hero Sandwich” was something worth keeping around. Many thanks, and much love and affection, go out to all of ’em.

Blogging may be a bit patchy over the next few days into next week — I’m hoping to have a few days’ worth of posts written and scheduled in advance for the rest of the week. However, I don’t yet know when I’ll get Internet service at the new apartment. I might be able to get it turned on right away, and it might take ’til sometime next week. If posts dry up, it just means I’m waiting for the Secret Denton Internet Consortium to turn on my intarwebz.

Denton is an interesting town — I lived here when I was going to college. It’s a wonderfully scenic area, but it’s also painfully, spectacularly hot. They have one of the most beautiful town squares and county courthouses in Texas, if not the entire country, and they have the largest used bookstore I’ve ever seen in my life. They have two different comics shops. And they still sell Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper in grocery stores, which the Lubbock stores told me was no longer being sold anywhere. I’m certainly looking forward to living and working in Denton…

…but yes, I’m also going to miss Lubbock a lot. I’ll miss Rob Mora and everyone else at Star Comics, I’ll miss Will Terrell, Robert Garza, and everyone else at the Sketch Club, I’ll miss Kenny and Derek and everyone at Awesome Books, and the guys quietly peddling roleplaying games at Mad Hatter’s place.

I’ll miss Lubbock’s mild weather. I’ll miss the musical and artistic community. I’ll miss the amazing sunsets. I’ll even miss the occasional “moral panics,” just for the ability to stand in the back of the crowd and gawp at the chaos.

More than anything, I’ll miss my grandmother, my brother, and my niece (okay, she’s a dog, but I’m part dog myself, so it still feels like we’re related). It’s been impossibly wonderful to live in the same city with them for the past eight years, and I’m already wondering how on earth I can possibly survive without getting my grandmother’s groceries or bothering my brother. I expect y’all to take good care of them so I can come visit them every time we have a long weekend.

To sum up: I’m going away, but I’m also not going anywhere. I’ll miss y’all, but we’ll still be able to see each other right here.

This is not a good-bye. And I’ll see you guys tomorrow.  🙂

My List o’ Awesome Links is getting increasingly long and unwieldy, so let’s trim it down a bit.

• A short list of phrases that originated in comic strips.
• Old Spider-Man is old…
• …and Young Captain America is not THAT blasted young!
• Dangit, is there some state law that whoever runs the Texas school board has to be a lunatic science-hating, education-hating hypocrite? Can’t they just pick someone who wants to keep kids educated, instead of going with yet another pathetic theocratic crackpot?
• Hope we’re not too far past Independence Day for me to point out this very cool art essay by Maira Kalman about Thomas Jefferson and Monticello.
• And finally, Dorian Wright finds a Golden Age comic with a black character who isn’t an insulting racist stereotype.

Hope that’ll keep y’all happily clicking away this morning — y’all have a happy Tuesday…