Wonder Woman #10

The wedding of Hades and Wonder Woman is about to begin — and Hades has Wonder Woman’s neck in a noose made of her own Golden Lasso, demanding that she tell him the truth of whether or not she loves him. She says yes — and it’s true! But the wedding’s still off, ’cause she’s pissed that he didn’t trust her and was willing to kill her because he was incapable of trust. Diana steals a horse, and there’s a great chase through Hell as Hades tries to corral or kill her. Can Wonder Woman escape the power of a god?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good action, dialogue, art, characterization. Just about everyone gets their little moments to shine, but Wondy, of course, gets the best ones. And she’s still wearing that awesome wedding dress/suit of armor that she had last issue, too.

Batwoman #10

Another huge bucket of competing storyarcs — We get to see Killer Croc transformed from supervillain to monstrous urban legend; we see the Medusa organization strike a blow at the D.E.O.; we see Jacob Kane make a heartbreaking confession to his still-comatose niece Bette Kane; and we see Batwoman discover a terrible secret about one of her allies.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The art is still pretty much the best you’re going to see in any comic books today. The writing ain’t that bad either. To be honest, I’ve been enjoying Jacob Kane’s storyarc the most — it’s had a lot more resonance for me than any of the superhero punch-ups in the rest of the book. Although if we get to see some more spooky emphasis on Gotham’s other urban legends, I’ll be pretty happy with that, too.

The Unwritten #38

Fiction has disappeared as a concept from the human mind — with the exception of Tom Taylor, who is the only person left on the planet who can still channel stories. The police in Australia are on the hunt for a Tommy Taylor cult that’s causing disappearances, and Detective Sandra Patterson finds Daniel Armitage, a patsy she can send undercover into the cult’s hiding places to learn their secrets. And Daniel finds one doozy of a secret, too…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Still not seeing our main characters much, other than Savoy, but Det. Patterson makes a good protagonist in their stead. I’m also digging the slow buildup of details about how doomed the world is without stories, particularly the suicidal writer who can’t think of anything fictional anymore…

Snarked #9

The Walrus, the Carpenter, Queen Scarlett, and Prince Rusty have finally found the dreaded Snark Island. But of course, one of the big problems with Snark Island is that it’s got a Snark on it, and no one wants to mess with a Snark. It’s has plenty of other problems, too, including treacherous cliffs, deadly traps, and a Lion and a Unicorn who are guarding the king’s prison. Once they persuade the Lion and the Unicorn to let them pass, they discover that they king not only doesn’t want to leave his cave, he doesn’t even remember his own daughter! Plus the monstrous Snark is still out there on the island somewhere…

Verdict: Thumbs up. This was a joy to read from beginning to end. Characterization, humor, danger, dialogue, artwork, you name it. Go get it, people, come on.

Daredevil #14

Matt Murdock has been captured and imprisoned in Latveria, home of Doctor Doom — but his captor isn’t Doom, it’s Chancellor Beltane, Minister of the Bank of Latveria, and he’s not happy that Daredevil stole the Omega Drive with all the secrets of the world’s Megacrime organizations. Beltane hits him with some kind of gas before Matt makes his escape, but while he’s on the run, he realizes that the gas is slowly eliminating his senses. Can Daredevil escape from Latveria and get help before all his senses disappear permanently?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding action and dialogue. Seriously, it’s amazingly thrilling stuff, and nice and tense, too, as Matt’s amplified senses vanish one by one. All that plus a cool twist ending that leaves me very interested in where the next issue will go…

Avengers Academy #32

Juston Seyfert, the kid with his own reprogrammed Sentinel robot, joins the main cast in this issue, as he has to deal with various people who are unhappy about there being a Sentinel at a school where there are several mutant students. X-23 tries to get Juston to shut it down, and he tells her that, despite its tendency to occasionally bellow “Destroy all mutants!” most of its other directives override that one. Juston discovered that it’s not actually possible to erase that part of its programming, and rather than destroy what he thinks is a living mind, he’s chosen to make sure that its “destroy all mutants” directive is its lowest priority.

Meanwhile, the Avengers vs. X-Men war is still going on, and the X-Men have basically won because the Phoenix Force has bonded with five mutants — including Emma Frost, who shows up ready to destroy Juston’s Sentinel — the last Sentinel on the planet. Will the students try to stand against one of the most powerful, destructive beings in the universe? Should they even try?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good dialogue and characterization — it’s nice to learn more about Juston, who’s been a background character for the past several issues, and we also continue to get a good focus on X-23’s hellish past and how she’s dealing with that. I have one serious complaint — the art is pretty alarmingly horrendous. Everyone’s poses look mostly unnatural, and every female character has the exact same body type and stance. It’s just astonishingly unattractive, and I hope they get the regular artist back very soon.

Time to kick off a new round of Friday Night Fights? Let’s get things going with a classic.

Tonight’s battle is from February 1978’s Showcase #97, by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton, and Joe Orlando. Power Girl vs. random thugs? I think we know who wins that one, right?

Head over to Spacebooger’s joint and pick out your favorites!

Dark Horse Presents #13

This month’s highlights include Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Noto rebooting Ghost for the era of paranormal reality TV; Carla Speed McNeil’s always-amazing “Finder: Third World”; John Layman and Sam Kieth looking at android psychology in the ongoing battle against xenomorph aliens; John Arcudi and Jonathon Case’s deformed detective in “The Creep”; Steve Niles and Christopher Mitten sending the heroes of “Criminal Macabre” up against a horde of werewolves; and much, much more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of fun stuff this time, particularly “Finder,” “The Creep,” and “Aliens.” The “Ghost” reboot was interesting, at least for a first chapter. There were a few stinkers in this issue, too, but on the whole, it’s still worth reading.

Alabaster: Wolves #3

Dancy Flammarion has a new benefactor — the ghost of the werewolf girl she killed in the first issue! She drags her out of the burning church and helps nurse her back to health, but Dancy doesn’t trust her. She demands answers to her questions about her former guardian angel, and Dancy tells her about the time the angel guided her to a werepanther she had to kill, and about the panther’s cruel owner.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good, creepy fun. Moody, good dialogue, excellent characterization. I loved this all the way through.

B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth – The Devil’s Engine #2

Estranged BPRD agent Andrew Devon, flighty precognitive Fenix, and Bruiser, Fenix’s dog, are out walking along a deserted highway, the lone survivors of the colossal train crash that stranded them out in the desert. They finally locate a semi truck they can use for transport — only to discover there’s half a dead body inside. And then they get attacked by giant monsters. They manage to flee, but there’s not enough gas to get them far. Is there any hope for them? Meanwhile, the Nazi bastards running Zinco are working hard to get their old diabolical, world-ending tricks going again.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent apocalyptic action. Outstanding monsters and tension. Just an all-around great comic. It’s amazing how good nearly all of the BPRD comics have been for the last few years.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, there is a new Where the Hell is Matt? video. The perfect thing for getting through any lousy day.
• Get to know the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon, and learn how one of the organizers went crazy and tried to throw her out of the race.
• Graffiti artist/raging douchebag spray paints over a Picasso painting, pretends it was some sort of tribute to Picasso, and is probably going to do hard time. Let’s hope art restorers can repair the damage.

American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #1

Huzzah, a new “American Vampire” miniseries, written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Dustin Nguyen. Somehow, I’d missed that this was coming out, so it ended up being a nice surprise on my pull-list last week.

It’s 1954, and Agent Hobbes of the vampire-hunting Vassals of the Morning Star meets up with an irritating American tourist named Tommy Glass, who actually knows a heck of a lot more about vampires than he should. In fact, he knows about something mysterious and terrible that the Vassals keep locked up somewhere very safe, and he has a well-thought-out plan to set it free. The resulting disaster forces Hobbes to travel to Paris to seek the assistance of former agent and half-vampire Felicia Book. What’s the new threat facing the world? And do Hobbes and Book have any chance of stopping it?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wonderful writing and art, of course, with an interesting and off-kilter villain in Tommy Glass and an even more interesting one teased at the cliffhanger. I’m now looking forward to this one quite a bit…

Batgirl #10

Batgirl lays some smackdown on some low-rent car thieves targeting the parking garage in a building hosting a fancy black-tie society gathering. But the last thief ends up stepping in a bear trap someone left outside a doorway. The event security shows up and take the thief into custody. And what’s the black-tie event about? A wealthy debutante named Charise Carnes is hosting a fundraiser to help clean up Gotham, and Lois Lane is on hand to quiz her about her project — and about the rumors about her involvement in the deaths of her family years ago. Carnes was cleared of the crime, but one suspects she may be less than innocent, what with the man she has hidden away and chained in a cage, and what with Batgirl’s discovery that the bear-trap victim is still being held in the building, with his leg cut off, and what with the fact that her bodyguards are all costumed super-criminals. Can Batgirl face all of them down?

Verdict: Thumbs up. While the identities of the villains were pretty obvious from their first appearances — and who on earth has event security wear formal dresses to an event? — I really enjoyed this issue a lot. Batgirl was a lot more competent than she’s previously been depicted, and the villains, calling themselves the Disgraced, are all plenty fun, with interesting motivations.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #10

After an attack by giant insects, S.H.A.D.E. determines that one of its undercover agents — Crowly, stationed in Untropolis, a quasi-interdimensional, monster-filled sister-city of Metropolis — may have been responsible for the incident. Frankenstein and the Creature Commandos are dispatched through the deadly border between dimensions. Can they track Crowly, apprehend her, and find out what’s going on?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The action is pretty good, Frank’s dialogue is great (the rest of the characters are honestly a bit drab), and the graphics for Untropolis are quite fun, but what I really enjoyed this for was the mystery of what kind of strange visions Frankenstein is having. Are they about his past? Or is this something altogether different? I’m mystified by it, but still enjoying it.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The Hero Initiative is seeking donations to help cover the funeral expenses for Robert Washington III, late writer of “Static,” “Shadow Cabinet,” and other comics.
• That crazy lawyer who hates the Oatmeal still hates the Oatmeal and is still really, really crazy.
• Because he just won’t stop drawing, here are 40 more of the worst Rob Liefeld drawings.

The Massive #1

In the first issue of this new series (though it got some short previews in previous issues of “Dark Horse Presents,” the ecology of the planet is finally falling apart due to environmental damage, leaving billions of people starving and dying. Into the chaos of this new world sails a small ship called the Kapital. Its crew used to be part of a radical environmental group called the Ninth Wave, but their old mission has mostly solved itself — not a lot of whalers around anymore, and mass fishing operations have disappeared. Of course, that’s not a lot of comfort in a world where everything’s dying.

The crew of the Kapital — Callum Israel, Mag Nagendra, a woman who just goes by the name Mary, and a few others — have new missions — survive, and try to find their sister ship, a larger vessel called the Massive, which vanished mysteriously during a storm. The crew of the Kapital doesn’t think the Massive has been destroyed or sunk, because they keep getting brief radar signals that appear to be the Massive, but they’ve never managed to track down or communicate with it.

Unfortunately, there’s a great deal of desperation in the world, and the Kapital must keep an eye out for marauding pirates — and though Callum Israel wants them to remain a pacifist ship, the rest of the crew recognizes that they don’t have that luxury anymore. Can they avoid their enemies, find supplies, find their sister ship, and still have a chance to save the earth?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A great set-up for a new series. Excellent mood, too, with the ever-present and ominous fog helping to bring home the idea that the Earth’s environment and atmosphere have undergone critical and potentially deadly changes. We get some small background on the current state of the world, but most of the emphasis here is on characters, dialogue, and plot developments. And the art’s nice, too. So this one goes in the Win column

Saucer Country #4

There’s so much stuff going on in this issue — Governor Alvarado’s ex-husband recounts his outlandish post-hypnosis memories of his abduction by aliens, but Professor Kidd recognizes the name of the hypnotherapist — a UFO fanatic and publicity hound who may have implanted false memories under hypnosis. The governor’s bodyguards clash with the Secret Service. The hypnotherapist has some shady contacts with a paranoid talk-radio host and a conspiracy-minded ex-military man.

Verdict: Thumbs up — really, this issue felt like a bunch of tiny stories that were there mostly to advance the main plot — no serious developments or action sequences or freaky stuff. But I still liked it. Sometimes, you just gotta do an issue that’s a little slow for the sake of plot advancement. Besides that, the dialogue is nice, the characterization seems very good, and I’m still quite happy with how things are going.

Batman #10

Spoilers if you haven’t seen this issue. Not that I’m sure it matters, ’cause everyone’s talking about it. But spoilers anyway.

The Court of Owls is almost completely shut down, leading to the Batman tracking their inner circle to their hideout — and arriving to find all of them dead by poison. So that’s the case wrapped up, right? Maybe not — Bats realizes he’s missed a clue, and it leads him to a long-deserted insane asylum just for children, closed after scandals about child abuse. And there, Batman finds the supposedly dead Lincoln Marsh, who injected himself with the Talon serum so he’d be able to resurrect himself.

Lincoln tells Batman that his mother had been injured in a car accident before he was born, and his parents secretly placed him in the children’s home, which had a good reputation when he was a child, in order to keep him safe from the family’s enemies. But when his parents were killed by a lone gunman in Crime Alley, he was forgotten and suffered years of abuse and neglect until he was taken in by the Court of Owls. He tells Batman that his real name is Thomas Wayne Jr., and he’s the new Owlman.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a good story, with good action, great tension and mood, nice dialogue, and a pretty good twist. I’m not all that bugged by Bruce Wayne having a long lost brother — Superman’s supposed to be the last Kryptonian, and no one complains about all his relatives who’ve survived. The “legend of the Bat” wasn’t too badly damaged when everyone thought Dr. Hurt might be Bruce’s father, and I don’t see Thomas Wayne Jr. as a particularly bad plot development. My only concern is that there are a lot of revelations going on lately about the Bat family — the deaths of the Flying Graysons kept Dick Grayson from being turned into a Talon, Dick’s own great-grandfather is a Talon, Mr. Freeze’s Nora isn’t actually his wife, etc. They need to slow the shocking revelations down, or they’ll lose their ability to shock.

The Amazing Spider-Man #687

Dr. Octopus is mentally controlling the Avengers as they attack Spidey, the Black Widow, Silver Sable, and the temporarily turncoat Mysterio. After Mysterio finally deactivates the Octobots with an electromagnetic pulse, the rest of the Avengers go to work trying to stop Doc Ock’s satellites before he can use them to burn the Earth to a cinder. Spidey and Silver Sable head for Ock’s secret hideout to keep him from activating the satellite web, but run into Rhino, who’s willing to let the world be destroyed because he still hasn’t gotten over his wife’s death — and he’s willing to make sure that he and Silver Sable drown. Spidey runs on to confront Dr. Octopus, but he may not be strong enough to escape the villain’s new and improved robot arms. Is there any way for Peter to save the world and make sure no one dies in the catastrophe?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good story, good action — heck, there’s a lot packed into this issue. It feels like it’s a double-sized comic, but it isn’t. Any time you can make a regular-length comic feel like an annual, that’s pretty dang good.

Demon Knights #10

After foiling a bunch of pirates who sail the seas on top of a giant sea monster, our heroes get into the main story. They’ve traveled to a town under siege by giant, savage monsters — and they all seem to be coming from the ancient ruins of Camelot! As they ride toward the old castle, they’re attacked by a giant wolf which, when defeated, turns into a normal wolf. All the animals around, in fact, appear to have been changed into giant monsters. When they finally reach Camelot, they discover it’s been turned into a foreboding citadel, and they’re attacked by the resurrected corpse of King Arthur himself! But before they can do anything about the zombie king, all the team but Madame Xanadu are themselves changed into giant monsters!

Verdict: Thumbs up, even if only for Vandal Savage’s hilarious line: “Look! It’s a pirate sea serpent! That is something I have never shouted before!“

Worlds’ Finest #2

Most of this issue is a slugfest — Power Girl and the Huntress vs. a radioactive monster called Hakkou. In fact, Hakkou makes short work of both of the heroines almost every time they meet, and it seems that he has some kind of connection to their old home on Earth-2. Speaking of Earth-2, we also get plenty of flashbacks to Karen and Helena’s early days after escaping from that alternate Earth, as they get adjusted to their new home and try to figure out how to get back to where they came from. But do they ever stand a chance of leaving Earth-1 behind, or will Hakkou finish what Darkseid’s armies started?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s not great comics, but it’s pretty good comics. The art by both George Perez and Kevin Maguire is lots of fun, the battles are nice and actiony, and the flashbacks are enjoyable. Of course, Power Girl’s costume is still just atrociously bad. I feel sorry for whoever designed it. Or whoever eventually gets blamed for it.

Justice League International #10

What a mishmash. The JLI — down Rocket Red, Ice, Fire, and Vixen, but having recently added Batwing and OMAC — tries to track down the terrorists who’ve been behind a lot of the hits they’ve been taking. They knock out some of the bad guys, but they still get stomped after one of the villains manages to take control of Booster Gold’s and Guy Gardner’s weaponry.

Verdict: Thumbs down. This one is just getting irritating. It was never a really strong comic, but one of the things that I thought made it so interesting was the unusually large number of women who were team members. By now, three of the four of them have been fridged, and they look like they’ll stay fridged ’til this comic gets cancelled. But I don’t think I’ll stick around to see — this title has stopped being even vaguely interesting to me.

iZombie #26

Gwen has been convinced by Amon that she needs to help kill everyone in Eugene, Oregon in order to save everyone on Earth from the coming of the elder god Xitalu. She’s trying to give Ellie and Scott a chance to make their escape, but she can’t locate them anywhere. Ellie and Frankenteen get cornered by the vampire paintball girls, the Dead Presidents and the Fossors battle mind-bending horrors together, Scott’s grandfather gets unmasked as a chimpanzee, leading Scott to turn into a were-terrier in front of everyone. And just as the end shows up over the horizon, Gwen finally locates her long-lost brother.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Is it okay to call this “soap opera on an apocalyptic scale”? Whatever it is, it works great. Common drama really gets cranked sky-high once the end of the world is coming.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Wow, DC is just unable to resist the temptation to put their foot in it these days. They really thought that Catwoman cover looked good? I don’t buy it — this is Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns engaging in Marketing-through-Trollbaggery.
• It’s really very strange to me that there are people who really, seriously hate the idea of women having an online presence or daring to speak their minds. What’s wrong with these people, and can we get them some medicine to fix them?
• The Oatmeal vs. asshole lawyers? The Oatmeal always wins.
• This site promises to point out where your mouse pointer is. It’s absurdly genius.
• And seriously, Nickelback sucks.

So DC has solicits up for their September comics, including their new zero issues. And one of them is the Green Lantern comic pictured above, with the new, so-far unnamed Green Lantern.

And yes, that looks like a new African-American Green Lantern wearing a ski mask and waving a gun around. Oh, Geoff Johns, your casual racism is why everyone must love you so.

A few hours after that image was made public, DC said, whoa, wait a minute, he’s not black, he’s actually Muslim.

So he’s still a marginalized and often despised minority wearing a ski mask and waving a gun around. Also, observant Muslims don’t have tattoos, like this guy sports on his arm. And he still looks black. So no matter what, it’s still insulting and racist!

Some days, I don’t know whether the people running DC are just unusually oblivious racists (and sexists) or if they think trolling their readers and trying to get people to hate them is smart marketing. “Hey, everyone’s talking about us! Success!” Too bad your comics don’t sell so well, guys.

Now how long before DC renames their “Stormwatch” comic to “Stormfront”…?

Popeye #1

Long, long years ago, I went through a period where I was really, really into Popeye — and not the familiar Popeye cartoons, but the very old “Thimble Theatre” comic strip by E.C. Segar, the one that included characters that rarely made it into the animated cartoons, like Castor Oyl, Ham Gravy, the Sea Hag, Alice the Goon, and others. So a Popeye comic by IDW that features a ton of old characters, written by Roger Langridge? Yeah, I’m all over that.

First things first: That cover? That cover is pure win.

The story focuses on Castor Oyl, Olive’s brother, hitting on a scheme to find a mate for Eugene the Jeep, a small highly magical creature, so they can sell baby Jeeps to solve the family’s money troubles. Of course, they hire Popeye to take them to the semi-mythical Land of the Jeeps, and Wimpy tags along to keep from having to pay his debts to Rough House, the owner of the diner. They are pursued, of course, by Bluto, who tries to stop them by various dastardly schemes. And when they finally make it to the Land of the Jeeps, what they find is not what they expected.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is so blasted much like reading old Thimble Theatre comics. It doesn’t hurt that artist Bruce Ozella does a great job of replicating the look of Segar’s cartoons, but Langridge in particular seems to be channeling the style of those old comics.

Popeye #2

And the second issue has Popeye butting heads with Olive’s new beau, the famous actor Willy Wormwood. Popeye can’t match Wormwood for sophistication, style, or brains. Wormwood is obviously a villain — how can Popeye and Wimpy get Olive to see the truth? Plus a backup feature about Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle, brilliant scientist and inventor, as he pursues his twin quests of inventing a pill to make your feet two sizes larger and getting a little peace and quiet.

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the stuff I said before still applies. If you haven’t been getting these yet, give them a try. They’re good fun.

Avengers Academy #31

The X-Kids and the Avengers Academy kids finally figure out that Sebastian Shaw isn’t trying to kill anyone — he just wants to escape and to help the X-Kids escape. And the Academy students are really mostly okay with that — they don’t see the value in forcing the mutant students to stay as prisoners. So while Tigra and Hercules are generally in agreement, the campus is wired with cameras, and they can’t just let them walk away, so there has to be a fake fight for the cameras.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I really don’t get the necessity for a fake fight at all. It was pretty obvious everyone was pulling their punches, and everyone got up afterwards and waved bye-bye. So anyone watching certainly wasn’t fooled. I liked the camaraderie between the students and Hercules’ hammy over-acting, but the complete silliness of the fake fight ruined it all for me.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Womanthology creator Renae De Liz could use a hand up.
• The CBLDF has a short history of comic book burnings in America.
• The footage for the new Sim City game looks really, really good.
• Speaking of video games, I hope this movie is as good as the trailer makes it look. And I hope there’s lots of footage of Q*Bert.