I ain’t got time for no clever intros! It’s time for the weekend, and it’s time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from August 2003’s Justice League Adventures #20 by Jason Hall, Rick Burchett, and John K. Snyder III. The Psycho-Pirate is messing with the JLA’s minds and emotions, and that means someone’s going to get a superpowered finger upside their skull.

(Grr, inability to erase stuff cleanly in Photoshop…)

You kids get out there and enjoy the weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Daredevil #31

After Foggy Nelson hands out some Daredevil T-shirts to some of his fellow cancer patients in a lesson about spreading courage to others who need it, he accidentally reveals to Matt Murdock that he basically hired Kirsten to take his place at the law firm, which frustrates Matt, since she dumped him not that long ago.

But the bulk of our story happens in the aftermath of a sensational trial elsewhere in NYC. A socialite was charged in the murder of a black teenager in her building, and tensions are high after the jury acquits her. Soon afterwards, the district attorney gives a statement on the courthouse steps and denounces the jury, revealing their names and addresses and encouraging people to murder them. But Matt’s superhuman senses can tell the broadcast was tampered with — the attorney has been framed, and the city primed to explode with violence. Matt suspects the Sons of the Serpent are behind the attack, and he has to try to defuse the riots and protect the jurors and the prosecutor. Though Hank Pym is able to assist with some super-scientific wizardry, it falls to Daredevil to track down the villain responsible for doctoring the broadcast.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I think we can just accept at this point that the art is beautiful and the writing is excellent, right? It’s a nicely “ripped from the headlines” story with plenty of action and tension, a nice guest-starring slot for Hank Pym, a fine resolution, and an intriguing cliffhanger. Definitely worth reading.

The Manhattan Projects #14

President Kennedy has decided to take the Manhattan Projects down once and for all, and he enlists the sadistic and ruthlessly efficient General Westmoreland to do the job. Soon enough, Feynman and Einstein are drugged, General Grove’s battlesuit has been remote controlled, Minister Ustinov loses his robot body, and von Braun and Gagarin are captured while they’re unable to access their equipment and robotics. Even worse, Laika is lost in space somewhere, and Oppenheimer is making his ultimate plans, while his multiple personalities get more and more chaotic. Is there any hope for the bad scientists?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This series probably needed a good shake-up — the scientists had gotten just about everything they wanted, and they needed something new to struggle against. And Westmoreland definitely looks like he’ll be a good antagonist, at least until someone blows his head off.

Wonder Woman #23.1

I wasn’t expecting to get any of DC’s Villains Month comics, but the local shop saved this one for me, since Wonder Woman is still on my pull list. They even got me the fancy 3-D cover, which is very shiny and lenticular.

The Cheetah has been broken out of Belle Reve Prison and is killing off her family. A U.S. Marshal named Mark Shaw (referred to more than once as a “manhunter“) is in pursuit and tries to warn her aunt, Lyta Minerva, who runs a cult dedicated to the Amazon ideal of the Goddess of the Hunt. She soon turns on Shaw so she can hunt him across their compound and reveals how Barbara Minerva became the Cheetah.

Verdict: Ehh, I dunno. The story by John Ostrander and the art by Victor Ibanez are just fine, but it’s ultimately another dumb crossover and yet another of the all-villains month events that DC does every few years. The comic is a good read, and it’s interesting, but is it something that has a lot of re-read value? Not really.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Can you stand another article on the ongoing trainwreck at DC Comics? Go read this.
• Fangoria offers their picks for the top evil clowns.
• This article on the rotten conditions being inflicted on university adjunct instructors is incredibly depressing, but you should read it anyway.
• This probably won’t kill off Whole Foods — but it will at least kill off people using the word “Namaste.”
• Ever wanted to see the point of view of an eagle in flight? Watch this video.

Ghosted #1, #2, and #3

I’ve heard some recommendations of this one, but figured I’d never manage to get it. I hate getting in on a series halfway through, and I figured there was just no way I’d be able to get all the issues of a series after it was already three issues in, right? Nope, I managed to pick up all three issues yesterday, so let’s see what we got.

Basically, it’s a caper movie. Jackson Winters gets broken out of prison by a creepy rich bastard so he can pull off a daring heist in a limited amount of time. The catch? He’s not stealing cash, gold, jewels, bonds — he’s supposed to steal a ghost.

See, the creepy rich bastard is Markus Schrecken, who has a vast and impressive collection of occult artifacts, and he figures a real live ghost would complete the collection wonderfully. And he thinks the infamous Trask Mansion, once home to a large family of psychopaths who murdered almost a hundred people, should be chock full of ghosts worth stealing. But the mansion is due to be demolished in days, so he’ll have a very short deadline to deal with. So once Jackson agrees to the scheme (because if he didn’t, he’d go right back to prison), he starts to build the team of experts he’ll need to swipe a specter.

Schrecken insists that his security expert, a dishy, deadly blonde named Anderson Lake, go along on the heist to keep Jackson honest. The rest of his team includes: Oliver King, keen-eyed skeptic with a knack for sniffing out the truth; Robby Trick, down-on-his-luck stage magician and occult black marketeer; Jay and Joe Burns, professional ghost hunters and reality-show stars; and Edzia Rusnak, psychic and professional medium with a few dark secrets hiding under her skin.

The Trask Mansion is plenty creepy, and though Jackson isn’t sure he even believes in ghosts, its reputation is dire enough that he insists that no one stays in the mansion after dark. And even then, there’s a lot of scary, deadly stuff Jackson and his team are going to have to deal with. Are they going to be able to capture a ghost? Will they ever learn what Schrecken’s game is? Can they trust all the other team members? Will they even be able to survive?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a ghost heist story. It’s a GEIST. Am I all up in this? Yes, I’m all up in this.

The characters and dialogue are very well done. The writing and art are nice. The mood is there — and I’m not just saying it’s spooky, ’cause it is. The mood is tense and scary and suspenseful, and every time someone goes off on their own, you worry about what’s going to happen to them, because that’s the right kind of mood for anything set in a haunted house.

But it’s also got heist-movie style. As part of the agreement to pull the heist, Jackson specifically demands a nice, tailor-made suit. “’50s style,” he says, “Something Sinatra would have worn.” Yeah, this thing has heist-movie style all over the freakin’ place. And because we know how all heist movies go — perfect planning except for one little detail that causes the whole scheme to blow up — we know it’s not going to end well, and there’s going to be ghosts everywhere.

Halloween is just a month away, and I’ve been craving some high-quality horror. And the perfect horror for Halloween ain’t aliens or zombies or vampires. It’s haunted houses. And this definitely fills the bill. Go get this one, folks.

Astro City #4

This standalone issue focuses on Martha “Sully” Sullivan, an older woman with telekinetic powers. She’s not a superhero or a supervillain — she works in the movie business, helping make special effects look convincing. There are quite a few folks like her — superpowered people who are better suited to civilian jobs, either because their powers fill an employment niche or because they simply have no interest in doing hero-vs.-villain stuff. Sully knows superstrong people who work in construction, telepaths who work as employment consultants or DJs, fire controllers who work as glass blowers. But someone is targeting Sully and her friends, planning to make them work toward world conquest. Can anything save these low-powered civilians?

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, a great Astro City tale. Sully is yet another in a long, long line of cool characters Kurt Busiek has created for this series, and the story highlighting her and the other “Sideliners” is fun, unexpected, clever, and satisfying.

Watson and Holmes #3

Watson and Holmes take a break from solving mysteries to get lunch — with Sherlock’s big brother Mycroft, a heavy, suit-wearing, somewhat mysterious rich guy. He asks John to keep an eye on Sherlock and help rein in his obsessions. They also discover a photo of a tattoo on the arm of a dead mercenary involved in the murders — and John recognizes it from a design worn by some kill-crazy corporate soldiers in Afghanistan. And they soon find themselves being pursued by those same mercs while they try to save the life of the final victim on the hit list — Darius Rice, a local preacher and secret drug dealer. And they locate the preacher just in time to get ambushed by the mercs. What hope do the two of them have against a squad of professional killers?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really outstanding story going on here. Characterization, dialogue, action, mystery, and much more — and it’s still got that great Sherlock Holmes vibe going for it. This is a really fun comic, and I hope y’all are getting to read and enjoy this one.

Owls of the Ironwork Isle #2

It’s been a while since the first issue of this one came out, so let’s review: We’re in a steampunk version of London, following the adventures of Lady Penelope Ayre, a leader of the Owls, a team of secret agents dedicated to protecting the city from all possible threats. Queen Victoria plans to levitate the city with the miraculous aetheric generator, and shadowy forces have taken the announcement as an excuse to attack, and Penelope’s adoptive mother is killed and framed as a conspirator. From that point on, it’s an all-out battle/chase scene between the Owls and the many high-ranking soldiers and officials who are attempting to take control of the city.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mad props to writer Stephen Phillips and especially to Lubbock’s Will Terrell, who provides the fantastic black-and-white art. This is full of high-energy action, suspense, and drama, fun dialogue, and extremely charismatic artwork. I hope y’all are able to pick this one up.

X-Men #5

Arrgh, crossovers! The bane of a comic fan’s existence! This is part of the “Battle of the Atom” crossover, where the time-traveling X-Men of the past meet the X-Men of the present and then run headlong into the X-Men of the future. Arrgh, time-travel crossovers! The other bane of a comic fan’s existence!

So the future X-Men, who include monster versions of Beast and Iceman, much older versions of Kitty Pryde, Jean Grey, and Deadpool, Charles Xavier’s grandson, and an all-grown-up Molly Hayes, say that the time-traveling original X-Men are going to wreck the future unless they return to the past. And most of the X-Men have basically decided the younger X-Men shouldn’t be in the present anyway — but original Jean Grey and Cyclops decide they don’t wanna go, so they steal the Blackbird and go on the run. Pretty much the whole issue is chasing Scott and Jean around.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Arrgh, crossovers! So destructive to fun comics!

Batman: Li’l Gotham #6

This issue focuses on both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Damian and Colin hang out, make fun of the old Robin costumes, and then go out to fight crime together, with Colin stealing a spare Bat-costume and using his muscle-growing powers to impersonate the Dark Knight. Later, Colin takes flowers to the nuns who raised him, and Damian gets to spend quality time with both Batman and Talia. In the second story, Commissioner Gordon and Barbara Gordon go out for a Father’s Day dinner, but have to share a table with Ra’s al Ghul and Talia, which makes for a pretty tense meal. The rest of the Bat-family, meanwhile, tries to make dinner for Alfred, which makes for a pretty tense kitchen…

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s adorable and funny — and it’s set in the pre-reboot universe, so it’s something all sensible comics fans can enjoy.

Today’s Cool Links:

• More commentary on the ongoing trainwreck at DC Comics.
• Seriously, Bob Kane really was the worst.
• The headline says it all: The world’s largest walking robot is a fire-breathing dragon.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, kids and other kids, it’s long past time to get the weekend started. To be honest, I would’ve been pretty good starting it on Tuesday or even Monday. But it’s finally here, and that calls for a celebration — namely: FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from March 1983’s The Avengers #229 by Roger L. Stern, Al Milgrom, and Joe Sinnott. She-Hulk has temporarily lost her powers after a run-in with the Radioactive Man, and Hawkeye decides to help her out by being a colossal douche.

Yes, Hawkeye, it’s always smart to taunt someone until they get mad enough to turn into an enormous green rage monster.

Mighty Avengers #1

The Avengers are all off in outer space dealing with some intergalactic threat, which makes Thanos figure he can invade Earth ’cause the Avengers aren’t around to stop him. Of course, there are plenty of other heroes running around the joint. Which brings us to the newest incarnation of the Heroes for Hire — Luke Cage, White Tiger, and Power Man (who’s a completely different guy — a smartass teenager nowadays). But that team only lasts ’til the Superior Spider-Man shows up, talks some smack, and convinces White Tiger to take a hike.

Elsewhere, Monica Rambeau is back in town, now wearing a new costume and calling herself Spectrum. She has a mysterious, shadowy benefactor, too. Aaaaanyway, Thanos’ minions finally attack New York City — does this ragtag band of do-gooders stand a chance?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun dialogue, action, humor, and drama. Excellent characterization, too. This is a darned interesting group, and I’d really like to read more about them as quickly as possible.

Oh, but I do have some serious quibbles. First, the art. Hey, it’s by Greg Land, who is infamous for tracing other people’s art and photos. Looks like he’s up to the same gig here, with lots of weirdly awkward facial expressions and poses that you just know look like that because he copied them somewhere else. Why does Marvel still employ this guy? Does he have some serious blackmail photos of Joe Quesada?

Another thing that bugs me is the way Monica Rambeau looks in this. I’m not a big fan of the new costume — I actually liked the look of the jacket she wore in her previous appearances. But new costumes show up all the time for B-list characters, and really, this costume isn’t all that bad. But I do think her hair is a more serious problem.

Look, “Mighty Avengers” is pretty much getting marketed as Marvel’s “Black Avengers” comic, much like Brian Wood’s new “X-Men” book was billed as the “Female X-Men” book. It’s got more African-American characters than any mainstream superhero book has had since Milestone’s glory days.

Among the female characters we know of, Spectrum is black, White Tiger is Hispanic, and She-Hulk is, regardless of her skin color, Caucasian. And all three of them have straight hair. I might be able to excuse it if Monica had ever been depicted with straight hair, but in her most recent appearances, she had cornrows. And taking your only African-American woman and giving her chemically-straightened hair isn’t really the most enlightened thing to do. I’ve got to assume Monica’s hair has been straightened because the women Land traced had straight hair, but that’s just another reason not to use Land as your artist.

The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys #4

Red and Blue, the porno droids on the run from BLI, are trying to make it out of Battery City. Their power will shut off once they pass the city limits, but they figure they’ll be able to die together. Elsewhere, Korse’s secret — he’s fallen in love — is revealed, and his lover has been killed. Now he’ll be taken away to be reprogrammed. And the Girl is stuck in the desert, forced to hang out with the rotten Val Velocity as he barrels down the road into paranoid psychosis and self-destruction. Can any of them survive BLI’s crackdown?

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the storylines are really picking up and turning seriously enjoyable. Great art, great storytelling, great characters — excellent pop/sci-fi comics, and it’s worth picking up.

Red Sonja #3

Sonja is wandering the wilderness, burning with fever as the plague begins to overwhelm her. Forced to surrender to an enemy in the last issue to protect innocent villagers, she’s been cast out and humiliated — and she’s beginning to hallucinate as the plague starts to destroy her mind. She sees her long-deceased father and relives the nightmare of her childhood when sadistic raiders destroyed her family and village. Will the hopelessness of her past predict her own doom?

Verdict: Thumbs up. More excellent storytelling and art. Sonja’s childhood is simultaneously incredibly grim and grandly badass, and the latest cliffhanger is very nice, though I’m pretty sure we know how it’s going to turn out…

Today’s Cool Links:

• ShadowWing Tronix has some thoughts on superhero marriages and superhero social lives.
• An excellent long-read on the outstanding “Clue” film from 1985.
• Looks like Grand Theft Auto has decided they wanna be on the side of the immature manchildren.
• These Power Ranger cosplayers are all awesome.
• This re-telling of “The Little Mermaid” is very, very rude, and very, very funny.
• Work to live, people. Never live to work.
• This article about adoptee-trafficking is genuinely sickening stuff.

I think it’s very, very well-established at this point that DC Comics does a lot of extremely stupid things.

I was willing to forgive a lot. Honestly, I think I was much too forgiving. But running J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman off of “Batwoman” — the most astoundingly beautiful comic book on the stands today — and then spitefully cutting their run even shorter? That’s too stupid. That’s too malicious. And I’m not going to forgive it.

When Williams’ and Blackman’s final issue of “Batwoman” comes out, I’m dropping nearly all DC Comics off my pull list. That’s probably about a month or two away, so we’ll have plenty of DC books to review for the next few weeks.

There are some of their comics I’ll keep buying. I completely refuse to drop “Astro City,” which I’ve been reading long before it was published by Wildstorm or Vertigo and which I consider one of the best long-running superhero comics out there. I suspect I’ll keep reading “American Vampire,” but since it’s going to remain on hiatus ’til March 2014, that may not make a lot of difference.

But I’ll give up “Batgirl” and “Batman ’66” and “Batman: Li’l Gotham” and “Wonder Woman” and all the rest of them. It’ll suck, because I’ve been a DC fan since I was a little kid. I love a lot of those characters. I love a lot of these creators. It’ll suck, and I may be miserable about it.

I’ll give myself permission to buy DC books when I see them at the used bookstore, where I know DC won’t get my money. I give myself permission to buy DC’s “Showcase Presents” collections of old comics, as well as all-ages books like “Tiny Titans” or “Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade,” especially if I’m buying them as gifts. I’ll give myself permission to buy an occasional DC book — this isn’t a hard boycott, obviously. But I’m done feeding so much of my money and attention into that sick, bleeding, rabid beast.

I think there’s a time to say things have gone too far, that things have gotten too bad, that comics fans should stop supporting a company that doesn’t respect readers, creators, characters, or stories.

Get rid of Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, and Bob Harras, and you’ve got a good chance of getting me back. Otherwise, I’ll buy books from Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, Boom, Red 5, Archaia, First Second, and just about anyone else.

I’ve got no illusions about this. I’m one guy, and the money I spend on comics is insignificant, even within the far-from-profitable comics industry. I’m one guy with a blog that has fewer than 20 readers a day. I’m one guy, and this will have absolutely no effect on DC.

But I’ll do it anyway. I’ve had enough. The line, at least for me, must be drawn here. This far, no further.

And I’ll remind y’all — and any Time-Warner execs who just happen to blunder onto this blog — that I know how to fix DC Comics, and when the global megacorp finally gets tired of watching their highly profitable and marketable trademarks getting devalued, I’m available to help get the ship righted.

Another dreary week is finally in the rear-view mirror, and our all-too-short weekend is upon us. You ready to get going? Let’s kick things off with… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s brawl comes to us from October 1989’s Suicide Squad #34 by John Ostrander, Kim Yale and John K. Snyder III. Need to go on some misguided trip to a cosmic hellhole like Apokolips? You’ll probably want to bring Superman with you. If you can’t bring Superman? Just bring Amanda Waller instead.

That’ll do it for this week — y’all have a fantastic weekend.

I don’t think I’ve got any choice but to drop back to a lighter blogging schedule this week.

First, you know how many comics I bought this week? NONE AT ALL. It doesn’t help that all of DC’s books for the whole month are going to be these useless villain profile comics. DC does this every couple of years, and they just seem to get more and more pathetic. Anyway, I’m not going to reward them with any pity sales, and Marvel didn’t put out anything I was going to read this week, and nothing else looked interesting. So here we are — no comics.

And on top of that, I’ve got a list of Things I’ve Got To Do as long as your arm. And I’ll never make any progress on any of them if I spend the next week wracking my brains trying to think up something I care to blog about.

So in other words: Light blogging this week. We’ll do Friday Night Fights later today, and if anything pops up that I feel really needs my random chitchattery, I’ll blog about that. But I ain’t gonna knock myself out if I don’t gotta.

So I’ll see ya when I see ya.