Busy days ’round here, not much time for rigmarole, so let’s just jump right into it. It’s time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from March 2006’s Plastic Man #20 by Kyle Baker. Plas and company are way in the background, ’cause all the action in this one is between Wonder Woman and Ra’s al-Ghul.

Busy weeks and months ahead — anyone willing to sell me a refrigerator, washer, and drier for cheap? How am I ever gonna get moved into that dang house?

Moon Knight #6

I’m basically counting this as the last issue of this series. Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey were only on board for these six issues, and there ain’t no way I’m going to read anything by Brian Wood. So this is it, as far as I’m concerned.

We start out with a short flashback to the very first issue. The NYPD is letting “Mister Knight” take care of a serial killer for them, and after Moon Knight leaves the scene, one of the cops complains about him getting special favors. One of the detectives on the scene tells the street cop to shaddap because he’s a nonentity who’ll never amount to anything. And it turns out this cop, Ryan Trent, has heard this same thing his entire life — and this time, he reacts by getting obsessed with Moon Knight and deciding he’ll become the new Black Spectre, one of Marc Spector’s old villains, so he can kill Moon Knight and take his place. He impersonates a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, practices his dart-throwing skills, kills his girlfriend, and starts rigging up IEDs so he can lure Moon Knight to his death. Can he succeed where everyone else has failed?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This has been such a great series. It’s weird to have so much emphasis on the wannabe supervillain in the final issue, but most of it is designed to emphasize Marc Spector’s strengths by playing them against Ryan Trent’s mental and emotional weaknesses. And whenever Moon Knight finally makes it to the scene, he’s dominant, both physically and graphically. What starts out as a study of Ryan Trent’s darkness ends up playing up the Moon Knight’s strengths through fire and blaringly white cloth. It’s beautiful, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the series as much as I have.

Lazarus #10

Jonah Carlyle thought he could betray his family and win, and when it turned out he couldn’t win, he decided he’d be able to defect to one of the Carlyle’s enemies and win anyway. So he heads for the territory of Jakob Hock, east of the Mississippi into New York City. He expects to be greeted as aristocracy. But Hock territory makes the Carlyle family holdings look like a utopia. In Manhattan, everyone is dirt-poor, propaganda, lies, and drugs are fed to the populace to keep them docile, the police are brutal and murderous, and Jonah Carlyle’s only purpose is to be tortured to harm the rest of his family.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Jonah Carlyle has been a completely unsympathetic douche, and the Carlyle family in general are autocrats. But Hock is running a North Korea-style dictatorship, and what he does to Jonah will make you feel sorry for him, even as you think that the spoiled brat is getting just what he deserves.

Black Widow #9

Natasha invades a ship which she suspects contains information she needs, but she gets on the bad side of Crossbones — at least until the Punisher shows up to save her. He’s planted bombs all over the ship to sink it, so she has only three minutes to search it, avoid hit squads, and find some sort of information she can use.

Verdict: Thumbs down. It just wasn’t particularly interesting, sorry. Great artwork, but an almost entirely forgettable story.

Well, I should start out saying I’ve got a nice chunk of wonderful news — it’s looking quite likely that I’ll soon be able to buy a house and move out of my apartment. It’s been almost a year of looking at houses and getting the best ones sniped out from under me by investors, but, cross your fingers, knock on wood, I think I’m close to being able to close the deal on a nice place here in Denton.

It comes with a bit of bad news — namely, I’m going to be too busy some evenings to get any blogging done. I’ve got documents to peruse, emails to send, old bills to shred, books to pack, and many, many other chores to attend to before I can get moved. And stuff like that is going to have to hold precedence over the blog from time to time.

And I think today is going to be the first time I’ll have to skip a post so I can focus on other chores around the apartment. I’ll try to limit them as much as I can, but sorry to say, blogging will sometimes have to lose out to real life concerns.

For the sake of including some actual content in here, let me toss out the following observations:

• I finally got to watch HBO’s “True Detective” series over the weekend, and thought it was just dang great. Part of it was the fantastic acting and mystery, part of it was the cool hints of cosmic horror, part of it was the rural Lousiana scenery, which I got to see for the first time last Christmas and which I’ve been wishing I could see more of in recent months.
• This roundtable discussion of the Wonder Woman costume from the upcoming Superman/Batman movie is pretty good for the discussion of what works and what doesn’t in the uniform, but it’s also lots and lots of fun for all the tangents about the coolest WW costumes and interpretations.
• The bright side of this is that there’s no way that wastes-of-protoplasm Opie and Anthony will ever make it back on mainstream radio again.

Red Sonja #0

Red Sonja is dead! And left behind is her beloved… husband? Red Malak is a tubby loser who insists Sonja was a delicate princess who loved pretty dresses and flowers. Of course, Sonja soon turns up, very much alive, very much not a delicate princess, and has to deal with the lovesick conman who’s slandered her — and the townspeople who think she’ll pay for his debts.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nicely light-hearted story that still has all the action, mayhem, and general crudity you love in Gail Simone’s Red Sonja stories.

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed #3

In this latest issue of the anthology series, the seemingly demonic Chocolat must protect her hatchlings in 15th century Italy, while during the Summer of Love in San Francisco, a very young Rev. Ashberry learns of the dangers of temptation.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Pretty well-done storytelling — and nicely themed, too, as we get twin studies on the natures of good hiding within apparent evil, and evil hiding out within the appearance of good.

It’s Friday night at last, time for an all-too-brief break from work drudgery, so let’s get the party started with some… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from August 1999’s Detective Comics #735 by Greg Rucka, Dan Jurgens, and Bill Sienkiewicz. One of Clayface’s plots involved manipulating Poison Ivy, and she’s not happy about that.

There we go, kids! Now go enjoy your weekend!

Hawkeye #19

After the Bros made another attempt to take over the apartment building in a recent issue, Clint Barton ended up getting temporarily deafened while his brother Barney got a little bit shot. Luckily, Barney isn’t too terribly injured — other than being in a wheelchair, he’s getting released by the hospital. He’s definitely better off emotionally than Clint is — even though he was deafened as a kid and has struggled with occasional hearing problems in the past, Clint just can’t get a handle on anything. Barney tries to talk to him in sign language, but Clint won’t respond. Can Barney get Clint back in the game in time to help himself and everyone in the apartment building?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice storytelling gimmick, with much of the dialogue being communicated through sign language. I do wish they’d given us a translation in the back, but the visual storytelling is more than good enough to make sure we know what’s going on.

The Manhattan Projects #22

All of our regular characters are apparently being taken off the stage away from Earth. Yuri Gagarin has to flee Russia when it turns out that alien hybrids have taken over the Politburo — and then, after receiving an interstellar message from Laika, leaves the planet with Wernher von Braun to find her. Harry Daghlian leaves for the desert and declares himself an Atomic Messiah. The FDR A.I. plans its own takeover of everything. The Einsteins and Richard Feynman leave to explore the multiverse. Is this the end of the Manhattan Projects?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Well, I know the series is going to continue, because there’s another issue on the way next month. But I do wonder what form future issues will take when most of our protagonists aren’t on the stage anymore. Still, fun storytelling, great humor, and a decent dose of drama, too.

The Sandman: Overture #3

A star has gone mad and somehow, this is going to bring about the end of everything — and hundreds of nihilist alien races are rushing to take advantage of the chaos. Meanwhile, Morpheus and, um, Morpheus the Cat encounter the Furies, who are, as usual, terrible people. They get a new traveling companion, a little blue-skinned girl named Hope. Morpheus scares off some foes in a very unexpected way and tells Hope a story about a princess. And everyone pays a visit to the City of Stars.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A lot of stuff happened — enough stuff that you’d normally spread it out across two or three issues. Hope is a nice perspective character, Dream’s princess tale is just what I want from a comic about the King of Stories — and J.H. Williams III’s art continues to be spectacularly beautiful.

Today’s Cool Links:

• RIP to Dick Smith, one of the greatest makeup artists ever.
• Turns out there are people out there who think homophones will turn them gay.
• The best way to deal with hatemongering authoritarians is to laugh at them.
• Is there anyone left who still believes Hobby Lobby actually cares about pro-life causes?

Groo vs. Conan #1

I just can’t resist the concept. I really loved the old Archie Meets the Punisher crossover from a couple decades ago, mixing serious comics with funny comics and meshing cartooning with dramatic art. So Sergio Aragones’ pea-brained barbarian Groo the Wanderer meets up with Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria — “black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth” — that’s just so weird, and I just don’t care.

While Conan heroically scales a tower, defeats a wizard, and rescues a fair maiden, Groo ends up getting tricked into helping some corrupt politicos and associated troops rout innocent villagers from a beloved local bakery. And wrapped around this story are our writers, Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier, getting mixed up in a riot at a comic shop. Sergio is injured and taken to a hospital, where he’s injected with enough drugs to get him hallucinating that he’s Conan himself and fleeing the hospital to find some evil to fight.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a thoroughly weird story, which means I’m basically required by law to love it.

Daredevil #6

In this Original Sin crossover, Uatu’s exploding eye has revealed a secret from Matt’s past — at some point, his beloved father Battlin’ Jack Murdock beat Matt’s mother, who is now a nun called Sister Maggie. When Matt returns to New York to quiz his mother about what happened, he discovers that she and two other nuns have been arrested after spray-painting peace slogans on the walls of a military base that was testing chemical weapons. But they haven’t been arrested for vandalism — in fact, no one is telling anyone what they’ve been arrested for. No one has read them their rights, and they’ve been given no legal counsel. And a military tribunal has ordered them extradited to Wakanda. Wakanda? What the heck? T’Challa is no longer in charge in Wakanda, and no one claims to know anything about the case. Matt ends up sneaking into Wakanda’s Manhattan embassy to find some evidence about what’s going on — and walks right into a trap.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The usual great writing and art. Thankfully, only a minimum of connection to the Original Sin series, as most of the emphasis is on the mystery of why Matt’s mother has been reasonlessly arrested. And it’s an excellent mystery — it definitely has me looking forward to the rest of this storyline.

Axe Cop: The American Choppers #3

Everyone meets Axe Cop’s real father, who was a general on General Planet and who sent Axe Cop to Earth as a baby to escape the destruction of his home planet. He brings Axe Cop back to life, and the whole team returns to Earth to fight Captain Axe’s evil uncle and Satan himself. They kill Satan twice — and then throughout the universe killing all of the Space Satans.

Verdict: Sorry, but thumbs down. Too self-aware, it repeated too much stuff that’d been done before, Axe Cop’s new origin was a groaner. I thought the most interesting parts were when the characters, who’ve always been focused exclusively on chopping off bad guys’ heads, actually made inquiries about deep philosophical and theological questions. But those moments were few and far between.

Mighty Avengers #12

Long story short: the Mighty Avengers of the 1970s take on the Deathwalkers, ancient wizard-kings, former wise rulers corrupted by human sacrifice. They want to destroy the world, and only our heroes stand in the way. But will Earth’s Mightiest Heroes stand a chance against impossibly powerful sorcerers?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s mostly a slugfest, sure, but it’s a good slugfest.

Afterlife with Archie #6

I’d initially skipped this series, ’cause it seemed like it was going to be nothing more than a publicity stunt series, but the buzz has been excellent, and I finally picked up the first trade paperback of this series. If you don’t know anything about it, the general idea is that Jughead’s dog Hot Dog is killed, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch decides to resurrect the mutt by casting a spell from the Necronomicon. Of course, this goes badly, and Jughead ends up being Patient Zero for a zombie plague. It’s a wonderful series, dark and grim and genuinely horrifying in all the ways a classic Archie story is not.

In this latest issue, we learn what’s happened to Sabrina since the first issue. Her aunts had learned that she’d dabbled in forbidden magic and cast her into a dimensional limbo as punishment. Here, she sees herself as an inmate at a mental institution, fighting delusions of having magical powers. Her fellow inmates include a musician named Erich Zann and an artist named Richard Pickman, and her counselors include Dr. Lovecraft and Dr. Machen — which is a really bad sign for Sabrina. Of course, they’re in league with the Great Old Ones, and as relentlessly pessimistic as this series is, there’s not much hope for Sabrina to get a happy ending…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fantastic art and story, with lots of gloriously creepy stuff going on, both before the camera and off in the background. As much as I’ve enjoyed the zombified terrors of the previous storyarc, I think it’d be really cool for the rest of the series to have to deal with the perils of the Archie Gang facing the mind-breaking horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Goon: Occasion of Revenge #1

The Zombie Priests — yeah, there are more than just one or two — are moving in to Lonely Street, and the Goon, Franky, and all their allies have to face them down or watch everything get destroyed. Wrapped around this story is a tale of a beautiful but sociopathic woman and the vengeful spirit of a man who commits suicide over her love.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great to see a nice long Goon tale again. Some nice new villains. An absolutely excellent showdown scene. Wondering how all of this is going to end up getting tied together, but I also know I’m probably going to love the final result.

Trees #3

Two little storyarcs in this issue, one focusing on Italy, where the tough-minded gangster girl is trying to track down the mysterious vanishing professor, and one in China, where the talented rural artist is told he must get over his fear of the big city and stop locking himself in his apartment.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, there’s actually a lot more to the stories here, but I’d really rather not spoil them. And yes, the entire issue is focused on people having conversations. It’s great to have interestingly talky comics from time to time, right?

Revival #22

Lots of little things going on — Lester Majak catches a ghost; Em discovers her new reviver boyfriend Rhodey mutilates himself for online sickos and has been filming the two of them when they have sex; Dana discovers the secret society behind the troubles in New York and even meets up with murderous reviver Anders Hine; Ramin gets hypnotized; and Sheriff Cypress discovers that his grandson may be in danger from a teabagging militia terrorist.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of stuff going on, and all of it held my interest, moved the story along, and deepened the mysteries surrounding the revivers.

Velvet #6

Knowing she’ll never discover who the mole inside ARC-7 while out of the country, Velvet secretly returns to London, collects a new cache of weapons, makes a few contacts, considers the likely suspects, and makes her move on the superspy headquarters.

Verdict: Thumbs up. More great espionage storytelling. Wonderful characters and dialogue, outstanding action, mysteries, and much, much more.

Soft Apocalypses by Lucy A. Snyder

I review Lucy A. Snyder’s books a lot, and that’s for a very good reason — I love horror, and she writes extremely good horror. She has a new collection out — let’s take a look at it.

This is a nice mix of new material and (slightly) older stuff. We start off with “Magdala Amygdala,” the story for which she won the Bram Stoker Award for last year. It starts out looking like a revisionist zombie story — until it suddenly isn’t a zombie story at all. After that, we get “However…” which originally appeared in a Hellraiser anthology in significantly altered form — the editors thought the original version was too extreme even for the Cenobites. Luckily, the original is what we get here. We get “Repent, Jessie Shimmer!” — a short story featuring the star of Snyder’s “Spellbent” novels.

We also get science fiction, steampunk, shorter slice-of-life tales, comedy — all of them shot through with Snyder’s special brain-skinning style of literary shock-and-awe. A couple of rednecks discuss corporal punishment — but they’re not talking about spanking. A serial killer stalks a new victim, unaware that he’s in more danger than she is. A future apocalypse means bizarre life changes for a woman and her bestial sister. We get plant monsters, haunted paintings, weightlifting vampires, zombie tigers, and much more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is gonna end up being a fairly short review, ’cause sometimes, all you need to say is, yeah, it’s a really good book, and maybe you should shell out some dough so you can read it.

We hear a lot about edgy writers, and they generally come off like preschool kids who shock their classmates by repeating out-of-context cuss words. Snyder doesn’t do grade-school shocks. She doesn’t just tell you stories that get under your skin. She tells stories that start out under your skin, tunnel in deeper to chew on your nerve endings and hollow out a few organs, and only crawl back out into the sunlight after they’ve laid eggs inside your spinal cord.

You like horror? You like horror for grownups, willing to delve into the deeply forbidden corners of our psyches and societies, while still indulging in the occasional fun of exploding vampires? Yes, y’all are going to want to go pick this up.

The Wicked + the Divine #2

Lucifer has apparently murdered a judge with her godly powers — but she claims she didn’t do it, and only god-wannabe fangirl Laura believes her. She overhears Luci asking Amaterasu to get her someone named Ananke. Unable to learn anything about Ananke, Laura bluffs her way into the prison holding Luci and gets an audience. She learns that Ananke is an old woman who reveals to teenagers that they’ve become gods — and Luci makes Laura an offer: help her, and she’ll make Laura the first of her demons. And later, Laura goes to see an underground concert — literally underground, deep in the subway tunnels under London — by the Morrigan. But who they get definitely isn’t the Morrigan.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Beautifully illustrated from cover to last page, with great writing to go along with it. My favorite bits: Laura’s perfectly normal and fairly happy family life, which she apparently hates because she’s young and angsty, and young angsty kids hate the world if it’s not ending; the flashback of Lucifer’s deification, which is horrifying and beautiful and awe-inspiring; and the long, dark trip into the underworld to meet the Morrigan.

Silver Surfer #4

The Surfer is returning Dawn Greenwood to Earth. They meet up with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Gee, they’re in every one of Marvel’s comics lately — it’s like they’ve got a movie coming out or something) who check them for contraband. The Surfer tells Dawn about the days when he was unable to leave Earth as he returns her to her home at Anchor Bay. Everyone is glad to see Dawn back and eager to show the Surfer proper hospitality, but something seems off — might be the way the furniture grows teeth whenever no one is looking.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Gorgeous retro artwork from Mike Allred, of course, and it really is very creepy when we realize something unseen is stalking Dawn and the Surfer.