Daredevil #32

The Jester has lured Matt Murdock into a trap, but he’s frustrated when he doesn’t react the way he expected. The Jester assumes that Daredevil is a sighted superhero pretending to be blind, but since Matt really is blind, his radar sense can’t tell that the hanged dummy is supposed to look like Foggy Nelson, and he can smell the cyanide on the supposed suicide note. Frustrated, the Jester sends in a couple crooked cops to kill him — and of course, they get their butts whupped. Later, Matt’s research with the real Foggy reveals that the Sons of the Serpent might have had quasi-mystic origins, and that sends Daredevil on a visit to Dr. Strange.

Doc Strange tells Matt to visit a small town in Kentucky. Turns out, it’s a hotbed of activity for the Sons of the Serpent, and while trying to stop them from lynching someone, he also runs afoul of…the Legion of Monsters! Can Daredevil make friends with the Werewolf by Night, N’Kntu the Living Mummy, Satana, the Monster of Frankenstein, and the Zombie Simon Garth? Or is he about to join them in undeath?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Even aside from the great story by Mark Waid and the great art by Chris Samnee, there’s just nothing I love more than classic comic book monsters. Especially when we’re getting this close to Halloween.

FF #13

Scott Lang has saved all of the Future Foundation from the machinations of Doctor Doom, Alex Power, and Maximus the Mad by teleporting everyone to a place where Doom can’t track them. Doom is infuriated, of course, and takes his wrath out on Kid Immortus and Ravona. So where is the Future Foundation? They’re hiding in the Impossible Man’s pants. He teleports them all to the Blue Area of the Moon, where Scott gets Uatu himself (and his girlfriend Ulana) to surrender by threatening him with the Ultimate Nullifier. And then a bunch of alternate-timeline versions of Red Ghost and the Super-Apes appear — the kids make friends with all the apes by offering them bananas, and then kick the tar out of all the Red Ghosts. Well, this is all great, but how does Scott plan to stop Doctor Doom?

Verdict: Thumbs up. So many funny moments in this one — She-Hulk’s horror at discovering where they’re all hiding; Bentley-23’s realization that Uatu’s name makes its own pun; the kids’ reactions to word that Uatu has a girlfriend; Uatu needing to visit the bathroom; the entire sequence with Red Ghost; and much, much more besides. Tons of great lines and wonderful art. It’s a grand story and a great lesson on how much fun comics can be when they embrace their inherent sense of humor.

Young Avengers #11

Kid Loki discovers that Leah has allied with Mother and captured Hulkling, and Mother plans to unleash the evil alternates of our heroes on the Earth to wreak mass destruction. In an attempt to build up enough mystical power to break Mother’s spells, Wiccan magically turns turns Kid Loki into Teen Loki — but he’s still not powerful enough. So the new plan is to invade Mother’s home dimension, age Wiccan into the Demiurge, and recruit other teenaged superheroes on Earth to stop the invasion of the Evil Young Avengers. That’s a lot of stuff that can go wrong, ain’t it?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great art, great writing, fun dialogue, desperate situations, awesome characters. I just enjoy every issue of this comic so much.

Like a Virus

Here’s an interesting little supernatural-themed comic that heads a few places you might not expect. It got a lot of publicity as a Kickstarter project of Ken Lowery, Robert Wilson IV, Jordan Boyd, and Thomas Mauer. The story focuses on Felicity, a young woman who has the rare ability to sense spirits and ghosts. She’s staking out an apartment in New Empire City because of a rumor of a suicidal ghost. Once a week, Felicity hears a body strike the sidewalk, but no one else hears a thing. She finally makes it into the apartment, where she meets Marie, an older woman who’s relived her suicide every single week since her death decades ago. Why did Marie kill herself? And can Felicity bring any comfort or release for the spirit?

I don’t actually know if this has hit the stores yet. I’ve had it for a few weeks, but I got it in the mail for backing the Kickstarter. I haven’t seen it in my local comic shop, but that don’t mean it ain’t out there. I’m gonna assume it’s hit the stores, though, and be done with it.

Verdict: Thumbs up. There’s a lot to love here. It’s not really a scary comic — Marie isn’t portrayed as a supernatural threat, just as a lonely and deeply sad woman who happens to be a ghost. It does have a lot of eerie glory, though, especially early on when Felicity is investigating the haunting. But what really drives the comic forward is a meditation on suicide, what brings it about, and how the idea of it seems to worm its way into your life. As Lowery’s postscript states, it’s a very personal work. And despite the heavy subject matter, it was still a lot of fun to read. I hope you’ll pick it up when you see it in the stores.

Pretty Deadly #1

A new first issue — a bit of a horror western, or maybe a western with a few horror elements worked in. Much of the tale is told through a song by some strange traveling performers, about Death falling in love with a woman who tries to kill herself, and leaves him with a baby. And once the performance is over, one of them steals some sort of parchment off an outlaw, who’s soon pursued by a woman in black named Big Alice. And once she learns the parchment is gone, the performers find themselves pursued, too.

Verdict: Thumbs up. An interesting first issue by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios. As always, the first issue is all about setting our stage, meeting the characters, and getting the first hint about what’s up. I hope future issues will be as interesting.

Velvet #1

And another first issue — this time, a spy drama by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. Our setting is 1973, and most of our characters are James Bond-style superspies, working black ops on a black budget with more flair and finesse than anyone else could reasonably manage. And ARC-7’s top operative has just been ambushed and murdered by someone wielding a common shotgun. Such things are just not done, and there’s plenty of suspicion that there’s a mole in the organization. In the middle of all of this is Velvet, a woman who is supposedly the organization’s secretary, the secret lover of almost all the operatives, and an even more secret operative herself. When a retired operative is eventually identified as the murderer, Velvet has her doubts and starts her own investigation — and soon finds herself set up and framed by whoever is killing ARC-7 operatives…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Action, intrigue, fantastic dialogue and characterization. And holy wow, is Epting’s art absolutely fantastic here. Just gorgeous, gorgeous work. Classic ’70s espionage thriller in comic book form — might wanna add this to your pull-list, folks.

Mask of the Other by Greg Stolze

Man, it’s getting closer to Halloween, and I’ve barely reviewed any good horror stories yet. So here’s this fun novel, a keen mixture of military fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos, by Greg Stolze.

The story jumps around a lot in time, though we follow a small team of soldiers/mercenaries — Rick, Dirty John, Hamid, Doug, and Bandit — for most of the tale. We follow them throughout the Middle East, Japan, Australia, America, and Turkey as they come into contact with the powers and horrors hidden where no one knows to look.

Among other things, we discover Saddam Hussein’s secret occult weapons program. We watch over a monstrous being buried in Turkey, completely immune to every attempt by the Turkish army to destroy it and perfectly content to look for a way to seep out of its underground prison.

We tag along as an American rock band visits an isolated Japanese island to film a music video — and is quickly devoured by something hidden in the ruins. We witness the destruction of an Afghan village and a company of private security consultants because of a single unorthodox, terrifying weapon.

And we get to see what happens when the things hidden in the dark corners of the world meet the terrors from beyond space — and who survives the chaos.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an outstanding book, exciting, terrifying, bizarre, and just plain fun to read.

Gotta give a lot of credit to how great the characters are in this book. Our team of mercenaries are wonderfully appealing characters — Dirty John is probably the most fun, but you feel a lot of affection for all of them. And even the minor characters are strong, too. The doomed rock band, as well as their entourage, are outstanding, as are the star-crossed lovers in Turkey, the crusading investigator tracking the soldiers, and pretty much everyone else we meet.

We get three different monstrous threats — I won’t spoil who they are, because it’s more fun to see how they get introduced. But they’re presented in such unique ways that you may not immediately recognize them — in fact, there’s one that I suspect may be completely original to Stolze’s fiction. I don’t remember reading anything like it in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, but perhaps it’s just disguised very well. But it’s great to look at these Mythos monstrosities through less jaded eyes. It’s makes them stranger, more original, and scarier.

And the terrors here aren’t limited to the supernatural. These guys are soldiers, and they have to deal with IEDs, snipers, ambushes, and most terrifying of all, bureaucracy. It’s a great blending of otherworldly scares with gritty, real-life perils.

It’s a vastly fun book, perfect for anyone who needs some offbeat Halloween chills. Go pick it up.

Batman ’66 #4

Batman and Robin fly to England when they realize that one particular hat-obsessed criminal is committing crimes there. After they deplane (to enthusiastic, screaming crowds), the Dynamic Duo (and Alfred, supposedly here on loan from Bruce Wayne because of his expertise driving in London’s streets) meet up with Detective Inspector Gordon of Scotland Yard but are just barely too late to stop the Mad Hatter from stealing the Crown Jewels! A frantic chase through London ensues, with Batman dangling from underneath a gigantic, hovering chapeau. In the followup tale, there’s more crime afoot in London, as the Clock King is up to no good from his secret headquarters inside Big Ben!

Verdict: Thumbs up. If the ’60s Batman series had a much, much larger budget, I’m pretty sure they would’ve done an episode where Batman went to England and chased down a bunch of flying hats. Lots of funny stuff going on here — it’s been a lot of fun to read this series.

Hawkeye #13

Clint Barton is in mourning over the death of his friend Grills and having trouble holding things together. Putting together a funeral, talking to the cops, fighting supervillains with the Avengers, losing his “sidekick” (Kate Bishop doesn’t really count as a sidekick, does she? She’s a lot more level-headed than Clint is…), losing his dog, meeting up with his ne’er-do-well brother — and he still doesn’t realize there’s an assassin stalking him.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not a lot of action this time out, but a ton of outstanding characterization as Matt Fraction and David Aja put our sad-sack hero through the emotional wringer. I love the way this series so consistently surprises us and defies expectations. Hope you’re enjoying reading it, too.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Snell has a good idea — how ’bout a lot fewer variant covers on comics?
• This is probably the most epic commercial for a bus ever.
• Nice to see that the textbook publishers are finally pushing back harder at the deranged anti-science goons on the Texas State Board of Education.

Baby, it’s mid-October, it’s the weekend, and we need some comic-book violence to get things started right. Break into your secret stash of Halloween candy, children, ’cause it’s time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from October 2010’s Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice by Evan Dorkin, Mike Mignola, and Jill Thompson, as Hellboy, with ample encouragement from the monster-fighting pets of Burden Hill, goes to town on a monstrous golem!

Boom indeed!

That should do it for us for this week. I’ll see y’all back here on Monday.

Batwoman #24

We know the background of this, do we not? J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman became the latest in a very, very, very long line of comics creators who announced they were going to leave their current comic because of ongoing, insulting, useless, and relentlessly dorky interference from DC Comics brass. While they planned to stay on the book ’til Issue #26, DC decided to go the childish and spiteful route and throw them out the door at Issue #24. Which is where we are now.

So the D.E.O. has decided they want to know who Batman is, and they’re going to use Batwoman to find out his secret identity. First they unleash a bunch of Gotham City’s supervillains on the city. After the Bat-family clears the villains out, Batman goes after Director Bones, and Batwoman steps in to fight the Dark Knight. Meanwhile, Hawkfire is invading one of the D.E.O.’s safehouses so she can rescue Kate’s sister, the former (maybe current) supervillain Alice. And it pretty much ends there, with no real resolution.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nah, I don’t blame Williams and Blackman for the fact that we may never learn how this was going to end. What we get here is good stuff. Lots of action and drama, suspense, two different fast-moving storylines, nice art from Trevor McCarthy, too. It’s a good comic, and I wish it’d been a good comic in the middle of the creators’ final storyarc, instead of an awkward ending. I don’t know if the storyline will be continued. If I were new writer Marc Andreyko, I think I might be tempted to just leave it unfinished, rather than screw with someone else’s story.

Anyway, this is the last week I’ll be buying DC’s mainstream comics. I’ve decided to keep reading Vertigo books — most of them are at least creator-owned — as well as “Batman: Li’l Gotham,” which has the benefit of being funny, cool, and starring characters from before the Reboot. But everything else, including some series I really enjoy, like “Batgirl” and “Batman ’66,” are being left behind. As I’ve said before, I’m tired of seeing creators, characters, and readers disrespected by this company, and I’d rather do what I can to reduce the monetary support that company gets from me.

Of course, I still picked up some other DC books this week, and I’m more than willing to review them while I still can…

Wonder Woman #24

Well, that’s certainly a nicely heavy metal cover, isn’t it?

Apollo has called the other gods together, and since Wonder Woman killed the God of War last issue, that makes her the new God of War now. There’s quite a lot of the kind of backstabbing intrigue we’ve come to expect from gods. The First Born is kinda pointlessly imprisoned right there in front of everyone, and Hera is all weepy over being mortal. There’s really not a whole lot that goes on.

Verdict: Ehh, it’s really not a bad comic at all. I enjoyed most of it just fine. It’s just — there really isn’t a lot that goes on, unless you really groove on gods playing mind games with each other.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Bill Watterson doesn’t give very many interviews, so you’ll probably want to read this one.
• DC is just embarrassingly bad when it comes to answering challenging questions from fans.
• Behold, a horror movie where everyone doesn’t act like idiots!
• This might be one of the best Bad Lip Readings ever, just for how far they go to turn “Game of Thrones” into a teen Ren Faire comedy.

Ghosted #4

Jackson Winters and his crew of heist-artists need to steal a ghost out of the notoriously haunted Trask Mansion, and they’ve hit on the idea of getting one of their number possessed by a ghost so they can walk the poor schmuck out of the house and then get him exorcised to hand the spirit over to creepy rich bastard Markus Schrecken. Unfortunately, the guy who gets possessed is Robby Trick, the only member of the crew who can perform an exorcism. Even more unfortunately, one of the reality show videographers, Joe Burns, has already been killed by the ghosts. And even more unfortunately, Anderson Lake, the security consultant, is working against everyone. And worst of all? The sun has set, and all hell is going to break loose.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent, spooky, hard-boiled stuff. Great characterization and dialogue, fun art, and an increasing sense of doom. Just what I need in my horror.

Batgirl #24

Barbara Gordon is in disguise trying to save her boyfriend, but he’s just been shot by Commissioner Gordon. She manages to escape, after beating the snot out of a couple dozen cops and soon learns that Knightfall is behind the increase of super-weapons in the hands of gangs — she lets the gangsters kill each other, then mops up the few who are left. And now Knightfall and much of Batgirl’s rogues gallery are after the Commissioner. How can Barbara stop them all by herself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story is really keen, the art is gorgeous, and I’d love to see how it all turns out. Of all the mainstream DC books I’m going to miss when I drop them from my pull list in the next week or two, this is probably the one I’m going to miss the most.

The Manhattan Projects #15

We have only one character in this issue: Oppenheimer. Or rather Evil Oppenheimer, Good Oppenheimer, and their armies of alternate Oppenheimer clones, all waging schizophrenic war within the mind of Oppenheimer. The Good Oppenheimers are trying to control Oppenheimer’s mind through innovation, while the Evil Oppenheimers work to defeat them through assimilation. Which side will win?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A weird issue, even by this comic’s standards. But it’s excellent, it’s violent, it’s funny, and it’s going to make the future issues even weirder.

Today’s Cool Links:

• If you love Superman, you’ll love this video, created by Bruce Timm himself.
• We don’t have anything to fear from zombies, because the animals are on our side. By the way, the animals are also terrifyingly likely to kill us anyway.
• Ahh, so that’s how the grandmasters play chess!
• These “Breaking Bad” Halloween costumes made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Coffin Hill #1

Today, Eve Coffin is a heroic Boston cop who just captured a serial killer known as the Ice Fisher — until she has a run-in shortly after her great success with a furious former friend with a gun. And ten years ago, Eve was the pampered punk-rock daughter of the scandalously wealthy and notoriously rotten Coffin family. While her family preferred more mainstream debauchery, Eve had a fondness for the occult, which leads to her spending a dark night before Halloween hanging out with friends and reading from an old spellbook. But the next morning, Even woke up covered in blood and dead rodents to find one friend mysteriously vanished and another completely insane. And now, fresh from the scandal of being shot in the head by a friend, Eve has returned to her family homestead on Coffin Hill.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A cool story from Caitlin Kittredge and a wonderful shot of horror to start the Halloween season. A nice merging of misguided youth, wealthy decadence, and cop drama, too. And weird, weird, weird, so much creepy, low-grade weird, like a really quiet turn-of-the-century New England ghost story. Outstanding art from Inaki Miranda, too.

Red Sonja #4

While Dark Annisia holds the town captive and kills anyone who tries to escape, still insisting in her delusions that the town is afflicted with the plague and that vengeful ghosts offer her counsel, Red Sonja is being dragged back from the wilderness to be cured. But blinded by fever, will she be able to fend off an attack by sea-going savages?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action, drama, artwork — just an all-around fun fantasy comic. Never thought I’d be enjoying this so much.

Watson and Holmes #4

Pinned down on a roof by a sniper, Holmes, Watson, and drug-dealing preacher Darius Rice are in deep trouble. But with the preacher dead and the final piece of the puzzle in place, Holmes must deal with a bit of brutal blackmail from the mercenaries who want the case buried. Is there any chance to both survive and solve the mystery?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Some more excellent twists on the mystery, along with plenty of drama and great dialogue. And I’m glad to see it looks like this series will continue — both of our heroes have set up shop in familiar 221B Baker Street and are ready to take on more cases…

X-Men #6

Grrrarr, crossovers!

It turns out the X-Men from the future are actually the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Wolverine gets stabbed in the stomach by a son he apparently had with Mystique — and his healing factor has gone bye-bye, so he could actually bleed to death. Future Jean Grey and Future Xavier brain-zap multiple X-Men, Jubilee goes vampire to fight ’em off. Psylocke bashes Future Iceman to pieces. Cyclops’ band of mutant supremacist X-Men show up with the real Future X-Men, and learn that one of them is actually Shogo, Jubilee’s adopted kid, grown to adulthood.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Grrrarr, crossovers! And I don’t believe that Molly Hayes would ever turn evil.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Not a good weekend for the New York Comic Con. First they got caught hijacking attendees’ Twitter accounts, then they refused to act on attendees’ reports of organized racist and sexist harassment. The NYCC is going to have to clean house — even small conventions are working to reduce thuggery, not enable it.
• I surely can’t be the only person who’s worried that DC is bringing Stephanie Brown back just so Dan DiDio can kill her, right?
• A beautiful and unique motion comic, for free, about the experience of falling asleep in the car as a kid.
• This Pokemon/King of the Hill mashup is glorious.
• Stupid book censors are going after Neil Gaiman in New Mexico. The TV station is in full “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” mode, but the comments are, for once, quite sensible.
• Together at last — comic books and lamps.
• So much apples and poutine and stringcheese and pickle chips and chocolate thingies…

If it’s Friday, and if it’s approximately evening, that’s enough for me to declare it to be time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS! And if it’s October, that means I’ve got some nice monster-themed fights to share with you, too.

Tonight’s battle comes to us from February 1984’s Swamp Thing #21 by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben. The classic tale “The Anatomy Lesson” revamped the Swamp Thing’s backstory and served up a frightful buffet of creepiness and terror, as the venal General Sunderland suffers an unpleasant encounter with an angry plant monster.

Yeah, General, that is probably not the best choice of words to offer to an infuriated monster that’s just had his worldview flipped over on him.

Important lesson: Don’t shoot plant monsters in the head and expect that to kill them. Also, don’t leave important research papers around for swamp monsters to read. Come to think of it, if you have a swamp monster in the building, don’t hang around and wait for him to get angry about something.

Rocket Girl #1

Here’s a brand new series, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, written by Brandon Montclare and illustrated by Amy Reeder. Our main character is Dayoung Johansson, a 15-year-old rocket-pack-wearing cop from the far-future world of 2013 who has travelled to the distant past of 1986 to save the world from a timepocalypse. The problem is that the crime being investigated was apparently committed by Quintum Mechanics, the company that invented time travel and saved New York City from financial ruin. Can Dayoung survive the high-crime world of 1986 armed with just her rocket-suit and a head full of moxie?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Beautiful art by Amy Reeder, which is a good reason to buy the comic all by itself. The story is very cool, too — the weird time travel, along with the bizarre alternate-future/present Dayoung comes from, are both a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing what other badassery she’s going to get into.

Astro City #5

I don’t know why you — yes, you. You specifically! — are working with the Broken Man. He doesn’t seem at all stable. He collects all these strange storytelling artifacts, and then he gets mad when you watch the stories that unfold. The monster-fighting G-men and their battles against the eldritch horrors all around us? He gets mad at you right when you get to the good bit. The strange tale of Lord Saampa, the Serpent’s Tongue? He gets mad at you right when you get to the good bit. He finally allows you to watch Dame Progress, steampunk crimefighter, as she pursues the terribly nimble Mister Cakewalk in pursuit of a stolen jewel. What does the Broken Man want with you anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellently weird story, great art, fun characters. I’m really not sure I like the Broken Man at all, but his artifacts are a great way to tell a bunch of different stories. It’ll be fun to see how they all connect.

Batman: Li’l Gotham #7

Aquaman is in trouble. Oh, of course he is. And he asks Batman for help. So Batman gets a fancy wetsuit, Damian gets an underwater mecha. And Oracle gets an even bigger underwater mecha. In our second story, it’s the Fourth of July, and the Joker is organizing a party for all of Gotham’s villains. All they have to do is steal all the fireworks they can, and they’ll make the biggest boom ever. Can Batman, Robin, and Nightwing extinguish the party in time?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very cute and quite funny. Babs Gordon driving a giant mech is muy cool.

Worlds’ Finest #16

Huntress is stuck doing a lot of crimefighting solo, because since her run-in with Desaad, Power Girl’s powers have been extremely unreliable. Who’s the mysterious energy-wielding acrobat who keeps setting fires at high-fashion events? What’s wrong with Karen’s powers?

Verdict: Ehh, I dunno. The art is pretty darn nice, but for the most part, this is just very by-the-numbers, uninspiring stuff. The series needs a lot more WOW moments, or a return to the fun character interaction, which has fallen off a lot in recent issues.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Meet the dad behind BatDad.
• The Oatmeal points out that Christopher Columbus was just a terrible, terrible person.
• ROCKET ATTACK! SHOOT DOWN MARAUDING INFIDEL!
• You gotta admit — he makes a lot more sense than Ted Cruz.