I’ve still got a handful of comics to review from last week, but things unexpectedly came up last night and gave me no time to write up some proper reviews. So instead, let’s just take a moment to thank our lucky stars that the age of 2,000-pound rodents is over.

Uruguayan scientists say they have uncovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent ever found, one that scurried across wooded areas of South America about 4 million years ago, when the continent was not connected to North America.

A herbivore, the beast may have been a contemporary, and possibly prey, of saber-toothed cats — a prehistoric version of Tom and Jerry.

For those afraid of rodents, forget hopping on a chair. Its huge skull, more than 20 inches (50 centimeters) long, suggested a beast more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) long and weighing between 1,700 and 3,000 pounds (750 and 1,350 kilograms).

Although British newspapers variously described it as a mouse or a rat, researchers say the animal, named Josephoartigasia monesi, actually was more closely related to a guinea pig or porcupine.

“These are totally different from the rats and mice we’re accustomed to,” said Bruce Patterson, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago, adding that it was the biggest rodent he had ever heard of.

An eight-foot-long guinea pig. Imagine finding that in your pantry sometime…

 

The Goon #20

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about “The Goon” before? I should’ve been reading this years ago!

Background? The Goon is a big tough guy who beats the snot out of monsters from time to time. Franky is his buddy, and he has Little Orphan Annie eyes. Honestly, I think that’s all the background you really need.

Our story this time? Well, we got a moron named Ralph, and he gets eaten by monsters. His mother asks the Goon and Franky to find him, and they go looking in the burlesque house where he was last seen. After the Goon beats up a gorilla, they discover the monsters — a couple of harpies who the Goon had previously destroyed. Also, an undead magician who whines about how much pain he’s in. After this, there is a great deal of fighting.

This is classified as a horror comic, but the monsters here are awfully mild. Honestly, the entire focus of the book is humor. And this is a very funny book. I counted about a dozen gut-buster laughs in 22 pages, which is a mighty good average for any comic book.

And since so much of the story is set in a burlesque house, creator Eric Powell got to do a lot of research and interviews with burlesque performers, which he shares in the letter column. So hey, burlesque!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seriously, this is such an utterly fun comic. I’m still madder’n heck that I missed out on it for so long.

The Evil Dead #1

You’re not reading that wrong — Dark Horse Comics went and made a comic book of the greatest low-budget horrorfest ever filmed in Morristown, Tennessee.

The plot? If you’ve ever seen “The Evil Dead,” you know it already. Ash and some of his friends go to a cabin in the woods, play a tape recording of a transcription from the Necronomicon, and bad things happen.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s a fairly direct re-creation of the 1981 movie. But it’s an excellent re-creation. The artwork is really interesting, and perfect for a horror comic. I don’t know how many issues are planned for this series, or if they plan on deviating much from the movie plotline — but I don’t really care. I plan on picking up every one of these.

(And for the horror obsessives out there — I think this is definitely an adaptation of the original movie, not “Dead by Dawn” or “Army of Darkness.” So far, there’s none of the slapstick that dominated the other movies, plus some of the dialogue from the first movie has already been quoted. Of course, it’s always possible that this comic will do a bit of mix-and-match of the three movies. In fact, that would be pretty dad-gummed awesome.)

The Spirit #12

Ladies and gentlemen, hats off. This is Darwyn Cooke’s final issue of “The Spirit.”

The series will continue, of course. But Cooke is moving on. And he’s given us a whole year’s worth of truly excellent comics.

Our plot this time is based on a couple of stories by the great Will Eisner, the guy who created “The Spirit” back in 1940. It focuses on the Spirit and his first love, Sand Saref, from their childhood friendship to their animosity later in life, and on a plot Sand has gotten involved in with the criminal mastermind, the Octopus, and a mad scientist named Dr. Vitriol.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Darwyn Cooke’s art is just so beautiful. Part ’40s retro cool, part modern action movie. The splash page with the title is just a wonder to behold. Go get it. Get all of these that you can.

And I’m certainly not dropping this comic yet. Sergio Aragones and Mike Ploog are taking over the writing and artwork in a couple of issues, and I have high hopes for what they can do.

Is there anything in the universe that gets the heart pumping hard and fast like a little Friday Night Fights? Anything at all? Anything? Not likely! Well, okay, I can think of one thing that’s likely to get the blood pumping faster. Just one thing. But seriously, who could ever manage to combine Friday Night Fights with Friday Night F– What’s that? Tonight’s fight is from 2001’s Love and Rockets, Vol. II, #3 by Gilbert Hernandez? Wow, LosBros Hernandez are into the chin-hockey, too? Well, let’s see what we’ve got —

Uhhh.

Whuuh.

I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten what I was talking about.

Friday Night Fights? Seriously? Whatever. ‘Cause that pic is just, just…

Listen, I, uh, I gotta go over here for a while. Don’t follow me.

Hulk #1

The Hulk is back, but he’s not the big green goliath we’re all familiar with. It starts off with Doc Samson, She-Hulk, Iron Man, and Gen. Thunderbolt Ross investigating an unusual murder in Russia. From the looks of it, the Abomination was attacked by the Hulk, beaten senseless, and then… shot to death with a handgun?!? Unfortunately, the investigation is interrupted by Red Guardian, Darkstar, Crimson Dynamo, and Ursa Major of Russia’s Winter Guard, which, of course, leads to the inevitable fistfight. Things settle down when a lone survivor of the attack is found — a traumatized little girl who is only able to say the word “red.” Meanwhile, longtime Hulk ally Rick Jones finds himself mysteriously lost and shirtless in the Alaskan wilderness, while Samson and Ross decide to track down some answers about the Hulk by turning to the world’s foremost expert on the Hulk — Bruce Banner, still safely in custody in Nevada.

Verdict: Thumbs up, with a ton of criticisms. First: We don’t actually see the Hulk at all — just some flashbacks. Second: killing the Abomination? He’s pretty much the main Hulk villain. Everyone knows he’ll be back by Issue #6. Third: I don’t understand the animosity between Doc Samson and She-Hulk — last time I remember seeing them together, they seemed to get along fine. Seems like poor characterization. However, for all those criticisms, I still enjoyed the issue. There’s not much question about who the Hulk is this time, but it should be entertaining finding out what turned Rick into a big red musclehead.

 

Well! Spider-Man! “One More Day!”

What a screwup that was, huh?

For you non-comics people in the audience, Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided that he didn’t like Spider-Man being married to Mary Jane Watson. They’ve been married since 1987, and a bunch of Marvel insiders decided pretty quickly that they didn’t like Spidey being married. They felt like it made him too domestic, less of a sad-sack hero. I don’t agree, but I guess they’re entitled to their opinions, no matter who wrong-headed they are.

So Marvel was stuck with a married Spider-Man for 20 years. In all that time, they couldn’t think of any way to make Spidey un-married. It never occurred to them that they could have the characters divorce. Can you believe that? Frankly, there are times I suspect that comic book creators have something wrong with their brains.

Anyway, finally, Marvel decides they’ve got the perfect way to un-marry their most popular character, and they kick off a four-issue storyarc called “One More Day” to get the job done. What did they do? What was their surefire, perfect, can’t-fail idea?

They had Spider-Man make a deal with the devil.

The background is that Spidey had revealed his secret identity as Peter Parker to the whole world. Someone tried to kill him and shot his Aunt May by accident. Peter couldn’t accept that his aunt could die, and Mephisto — Marvel’s version of Old Scratch himself — shows up and offers to save her life, in exchange for retroactively nullifying their marriage. And they actually agree to it. “Oh, sure, we’ll potentially damn our immortal souls just to give Peter’s elderly aunt a few more years of life. What could possibly be the downside to that?”

Let me repeat: There are times I suspect that comic book creators have something wrong with their brains.

So now, Peter and Mary Jane aren’t married. Peter’s a 30-year-old unemployed loser living in Aunt May’s house, and he’s got his secret identity back.

The big problem for Marvel is that this was an unbelievably bad idea. Fine, fine, they don’t want Spider-Man to be married — but in that case, just divorce him. There’s absolutely no reason to have your most popular, most marketed character shaking hands with the Prince of Darkness. Heck, Marvel’s even sanitized Ghost Rider to get rid of his demonic origins (True story — they now say he turns into a biker with a flaming skull because he’s possessed by an angel. Wha?!) so why have kid-friendly Spider-Man cutting deals with the Adversary?

Possibly worse, from a comic-book standpoint, is that it throws a major kink into Marvel’s continuity — and Quesada himself had bragged that the loss of Spidey’s secret ID was going to be permanent, with long-lasting effects. Now, not only is the secret identity back, but 20 years’ worth of stories may have disappeared into the Gulfs. Marvel claims everything turned out mostly the same, but it’s not like Mary Jane spent the last two decades sitting around doing nothing, and writers who aren’t familiar with the subtle differences between pre-Mephisto and post-Mephisto are going to make some pretty big mistakes pretty soon. And the last time someone did a major retroactive refit of Spider-Man’s continuity, they called it the Clone Saga — the least popular storyline of any Spider-Man comic ever.

The assumption going ’round with most Spidey-fans is that, as soon as Quesada gets shown the door, someone will work out some way to undo “One More Day” — they may not bring back the marriage, but they’ll certainly work out some way to erase the deal-with-the-devil aspects of the story and just give them a normal, mundane divorce.

And it’s gotten a lot more people talking about Joe Quesada — and not in any good ways either. People are saying a screwup this monumental is proof that he’s been running the company for too long. I expect him to announce his retirement sooner, rather than later. Sure, they’ll say he’s leaving “to explore other storytelling opportunities” and “to spend more time with his family.” But everyone will know the truth.

I love the stuffing out of this cover, so I’m posting it a bit larger than normal, so we can all groove on its awesomeness.

The Brave and the Bold #9

This whole issue is nice — it’s got three different stories about DC Comics characters, both mainstream and obscure. The stories are all connected, even though they seem, at first glance, to be completely unrelated.

Our framing device is the Book of Destiny… but its pages have come to life, animated by the malevolent power of the mysterious Megistus, to attack the Challengers of the Unknown! In fact, June Robbins reads all these stories while the book-monster is trying to kill her…

Our first story focuses on a team-up between the Metal Men and Robby Reed, the kid with the hero-creating “H-Dial” in “Dial H for Hero.” A robot dragon (mindlessly chanting “ME-GIS-TUS”) is attacking the city, and the Metal Men are powerless to stop it — until weak, stuttering robot Tin gets the H-Dial and turns into a superhero called Manbot the Mighty!

Next, we travel back to World War II, as the Blackhawk squadron and the Boy Commandos try to find the mystical Orb of Ra and fight off mummies serving Megistus.

And finally, in the present day, Hawkman and the new Atom battle the Warlock of Ys, a wizard and Z-list supervillain trying to curry favor with Megistus.

Verdict: Thumbs up. All three stories are great fun, and the characters and plots are first-rate. George Perez’s art is awesome, as ever. The ongoing mystery about Megistus is still going strong, and it’s just getting more interesting as more evidence of his/her/its plots through the years are revealed.

There are times I wish they’d publish the Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans a bit more often, but of course, they have to find a new host every month and compile a new list of articles and blog posts. Still, whenever they get a new one published, it’s always worth reading.

Lots of interesting articles this time about comics, games, movies, TV, and books, including pieces on “The Black Dossier,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “World of Warcraft,” “Countdown,” the Anita Blake novels, “BioShock,” “Mass Effect,” “I Am Legend,” “Doctor Who,” and much, much more.

Go check it out.

Blue Beetle #22

Hot on the trail of the evil alien race called the Reach, Jaime and Danni Garrett, granddaughter of the original Blue Beetle, go diving into an active volcano to find proof that the Reach are up to no good. They run into Tovar the Lava King, a mighty warrior prone to a lot of hollering about “Less talk! More VENGEANCE!” What’s Tovar’s place in the Reach’s plan? What does Tovar do when he finds out what he’s expected to do?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The Reach storyline is advancing very well. There’s a lot of cool stuff with Jaime’s family. And Tovar is a fun character — I hope someone can figure out a way to bring him back someday.

Green Lantern #26

Who are the Alpha Lanterns? I dunno. They don’t bother telling us in this issue.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Come on, don’t tease us with a cover that promises one thing while delivering a bunch of disconnected soap-opera blather.

The Umbrella Academy #4

In the wake of the battle against the Terminauts, the Academy family continue to squabble amongst each other, little suspecting that Vanya, the powerless, unheroic sister, has gone over to the evil Orchestra Verdammten. The diabolical Conductor claims that Vanya is the most powerful and most dangerous member of her family, and he proceeds to torture her to try to bring out her full potential. The eventual result: Vanya is transformed into la Viole Blanche, or the White Violin, a woman who can kill with music. Is she going to destroy the Orchestra Verdammten? The Umbrella Academy? The entire world? Why not all three?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is still one of the best comics to come out in the past year, and you’re missing out if you don’t read it.