by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Rodney Buchemi

Note: if you’re following the meta-story, read X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas 2 before reading this issue.

A quick recap tells us Amatsu-Mikaboshi is responsible for killing Zeus and sending the Olympians to Earth. Athena strikes out with most of the “neutral” Olympians in her attempt to form a force to go against Hera. We get to see Mikaboshi kill the Kree deities, although I think that could have been an entire issue in and of itself if handled correctly. I wonder if they will be brought back as easily as the rest of the Marvel characters later. If so, it kind of diminishes Mikaboshi’s threat.

Hercules goes to meet Hebe, and finds her in a lip-lock with Peter Parker. After the requisite fight, everyone makes up. The traditional Pak/Van Lente humor is present throughout the issue, and the art was nicely handled, such that I flowed through the book without being distracted or disappointed. That tends to mean it wasn’t awesome, because I tend to stop and look twice at art that is particularly impressive, but if it’s good enough to help the story flow so well, I certainly have no complaints.

Hera starts her plan of using mortals in key positions of power as thralls, and Spidey brings in some New Avengers backup. We follow the fun to Incredible Hercules 138 in a couple weeks.

The second feature has Phorcys, the creator of the sirens, calling Venus home to do her job of securing him human food. It’s nice to see Jeff Parker utilizing legends and myths just as well as the Pak/Van Lente team. Gabriel Hardman does a good job on the art here, and boy is he getting around a lot lately. The Agents of Atlas show up and put in a good fight, but can’t seem to make much progress.

The feature ends at a good stopping place, although it is right in the middle. This is where the Agents of Atlas become a back-up feature in the Hercules title. On one hand, it stinks that we can’t get a full Agents story every month, but if the quality can be successfully adapted to the shorter page count, I’ll take some good Agents stuff wherever I can get it.

Captain America: Reborn 4

by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice

The threads are coming together! Hank Pym and Reed Richards get a message from Cap via Vision, and learn that the nano-particles in Sharon Carter’s blood are basically a way to track Cap down through time. Unfortunately, Osborn handed Sharon over to the Red Skull, and is now in Latveria, where Doctor Doom has been helping Arnim Zola out in repairing or re-creating a variant on Doom’s time machine.

The art is still nicely cinematic, lots of big pictures and splash panels, but the Hitch/Guice combination really has an added dimension, and brings out some more “worldly” details than we normally get from Bryan Hitch’s work. I’d definitely like to see these two collaborate again sometime. Cap is hurting from his ordeal through time, but when he gets to the end of it, he seems to have some sort of sudden battle with the Red Skull. When Cap gets up off the table, it’s the Red Skull inside his body.

We’ve seen this type of stuff before with the Skull, including being in a cloned body from Cap in the past, but it is still a little chilling to see it happen this way. And since the series is over in one more issue, we know it won’t be dragged out like Dark Reign has been.

House of M: Masters of Evil 4

by Christos N. Gage and Manuel Garcia

The end of the road, with a nice manipulation from Magneto involving using Nitro to blow up innocents, a facet of the Civil War that is mimicked somewhat here in the House of M dimension. The Hood allows his group to disperse, knowing that Magneto’s forces are coming for him. Garcia’s art is good, but he does slack off a little, giving us some drab brown backgrounds in too many places.

The showdown is fun as the Red Guard comes in to tackle the super-powered foes, and the end was pretty much assured. Easily half of the group stayed to try to give the humans time to escape the massacre, and the deserters like Wizard and Chemistro are now helping the resistance. Titania was thrown to safety at the last minute, and now serves as the traveling witness, much like WW II survivors, making sure the story stays alive.

While it was easy to see where the story was heading, it was a good take on things, and some good match-ups and ideas sprinkled throughout the entire series. Good job by all involved.

The Torch 3

by Alex Ross, Mike Carey, and Patrick Berkenkotter

The Thinker didn’t do as good a job as he had thought in wiping out Jim Hammond’s personality. It feels like it’s wrong to see the original Human Torch killing innocents; you want to believe that heroes have personalities strong enough that they will not do things that they would never willingly do in the first place. Here, though, he is under someone else’s control, and they order the pointing and the shooting, and Hammond obeys.

The Thinker has a master plan involving the Horton cells. By studying Toro, he has learned that the cells can be absorbed by humans. Now he has whipped up a batch of modified cells that he can use to control everyone else. The first thing he doe sis order the irritating thorn in his side, Toussaint, to shoot himself.

Toro breaks free and helps Hammond to shake off the evil control, and they break up the batch of cell solution. The Thinker takes the setback surprisingly well, and teleports out, planning to set up shop somewhere else and continue with his plan. The spilled solution infects Toussaint, the fish life, and even reaches Namor and some Atlanteans! It’s a cool twist, and I’m eager to see what happens next.

Ultimate Comics Armor Wars 1

by Warren Ellis and Steve Kurth

Unlike the two regular titles, this mini-series still has “Comics” in its title. I have no idea why they do these things. Probably just to irritate the anal retentive people like myself. Skipping over Justine Hammer making out with Tony, we track a Doctor Faustus down, who has hijacked Tony’s technology. Speaking of anal retentive, they left the ‘s’ of off “paintings” just before they meet the good doctor, showing that the legions of editors, sales and marketing people, letters, etc., just cannot proof-read a comic anymore these days. It would be nice if just one week went by where DC and Marvel could spell all their words correctly. If you want to do story nonsense like claiming your ship has no weapons and then shoot missiles out of it (-cough-Ellis-cough), you can, but please at least try to get the words down correctly.

The issue is a little boring, which is why I have to spend so much time on the nit-picky stuff. They show off Tony’s new repulsor weapon once and then get another name, and follow it to a guy named Bram Velsing. Ellis peppers the issue with his traditional sardonic wit, but it can’t save the purple Iron Man that comes out attacking at the end. The original Armor Wars was so much better than this.

Leave it to Marvel to spend all that time cleaning house, only to take an old story, slap “Ultimate” on the front of it, and give us a watered-down re-run. What, exactly, is “ultimate” about any aspect of this? I’m disappointed that this is all Ellis could come up with.

X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas 2

by Jeff parker, Carlo Pagulayan, Gabriel Hardman, Chris Samnee, and Carlos Rodriguez

Wow, but that’s a lot of artists for one issue. The battle is fun and the art is great. It’s still a regular cliché story of the two teams fighting at first, and then making friends. The fun part is that Namor is the one who plays peacemaker for a change. There a re a couple of plot points that they se as places to change the artist, and it works well within that structure.

The second part of the issue has Aphrodite holding Venus captive. The rest of her team arrives to the rescue, and there is an awesome joke in the middle where she asks, “Why does this happen to all my statues?” I think it’s worth the purchase for that joke alone. This is where Aphrodite gets the idea to bring in Phorcys, which picks up in Assault on New Olympus 1.

I would have been happy to keep buying the Agents’ regular series, but if this treatment helps to raise their profile and interest in the group, then I’m all for it. (I’m still storing these two issues behind my regular Atlas series, alpha-order be hanged!)

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Mark Guggenheim, Marco Checchetto, Luke Ross and Rick Magyar

Adi Granov has a great cover for us, and thankfully this is the last issue of clone nonsense we have to put up with for a while (I hope). This is all Guggenheim’s brainchild, this idea that Peter should be involved with a murder mystery. Ben Reilly is supposed to be more believable as a murderer because he’s a clone, according to the writer. Except we all pretty much knew Raptor was responsible for killing his own family. Kaine is inconsistent and a waste of time for the entire issue, and Peter comes to the same conclusion all of us did: Peter is no killer, and Ben couldn’t be either. Gee, that took two seconds to figure out, and how many issues did you spend on it?

The art is okay, but the ending of this story is lame. He is standing right over Raptor and then webs him up. The police arrive, and Kaine has slipped away… and webbed-up Raptor is gone too?!?! Even Screwball, who was supposed to be unconscious, has woken up and left in the space of two seconds. The story was lame enough to begin with, but this takes the cake. Wasting our time with a story where the conclusion was blatantly obvious and therefore not entertaining is one thing. Having no ending to your story so you just have all three villains magically disappear when we turn the page is amazingly lame. And if Kaine is degrading, why doesn’t he just die already?

Big waste of time. I want to take Granov’s cover, slap it on a different story, and get a do-over for this issue.

Astonishing X-Men 32

by Warren Ellis and Phil Jimenez

A nice exciting cover starts us off, and inside the Bio-Sentinel launches missiles out of its fingers that unfold to reveal themselves as Brood! Very neat visuals throughout the entire issue, and whenever Storm gets some screen time, she looks magnificent. The Beast snags the Sentinel with a grappler and actually makes it water-ski out of the harbor. We also get to see Wolvie go a little berserker, and it comes across better here than most other places I’ve seen it recently.

Armor has been changed under different writers, so gone is the polite girl who defers to her elders, and some of her original pattern of talking. She is mostly just another Kitty/Jubilee stand-in, without some of the uniqueness of her first appearances. Still, her power is cool and visually interesting.

There is a slight break in the story, because the rescue ship Beast and Brand are on is not supposed to have any weapons. A few panels later, some missiles are launched at the Sentinel’s head, and it causes a reaction that results in an explosion. I have to assume that the missiles are supposed to be some kind of fire retardant or anti-biological vaccine. I have to assume, because the writer doesn’t bother to tell you what they are. He also doesn’t take any time to explain how a rescue ship with no weapons still can have missiles.

While the dialogue is cool and the art is great, this title has a couple problems. Besides small slip-ups like the missiles-but-no-weapons things, the title is always late. That leads to another problem, in that Brand basically reveals the beginnings of Necrosha here. In the rest of the Marvel universe, Utopia has already happened, Emma can’t use her telepathy and the reanimated mutants have already attacked. So yet again, we’re stuck reading things out of order because creative teams can’t keep to a monthly schedule. Marvel should pace things out better ahead of time, or start firing people. It’s one thing for a self-contained story to be late, but when you’re working on a meta-story, timing is more important than it was in the old days.

And in the old days, many people who were late got fired.

Doctor Voodoo 2

by Rick Remender, Jefte Palo and Gabriel Hardman

Voodoo has been left stranded by Doctor Doom in a dimension with magically-immune man-size frogs. He suffers a mystical attack from Nightmare, but manages to get away. Upon his return, he is met by the Son of Satan, Daimon Hellstrom. I feel a little cheated later, because the cover with blood dripping out of the pentagram on Hellstrom’s chest is awesome, but it’s really just Nightmare in disguise, getting access to an area by duping Voodoo.

The simplistic rendering of Hellstrom also is underwhelming, but I want to give the story a chance to play out, because it’s reading well so far, generally speaking. The art is not a bad choice for this comic, but I must admit, I would be interested to see a rotating artistic team on this book, giving us a chance to see a few different ways of portraying the magical realms. Not my favorite comic this week, but good enough to buy.

Nova 31

by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Andrea DiVito

Darkhawk is now a man on a mission, trying to hunt down the evil Raptors (and why didn’t an editor tell Guggenheim not to use the code-name Raptor when the storyline here was started such a long time ago? Lousy editors! But I digress…). As they spend way too many times telling us, the planet where Nova is chasing him down is about to be destroyed. Nova catches up to Darkhawk and tries to get him to open up, explain why or how there is a video of him killing Lilandra. Then we flash back a few hours.

This is one of my favorite scenes, with an experienced trainer showing the Nova Corps members how to better use their powers. We get to see Rich learn a thing or two just by watching, and it is hilarious. He is the leader, and acts like everything is going according to his plan. However, we see here that no matter how may wars he has fought in, no matter how many times he has vanquished an enemy, he still has a lot to learn about using his powers. Makes you wonder why the Worldmind was such a slacker in training him, but that’s a small issue.

DiVito’s art is great, giving us a nice flow and exciting action, as a Kree archaeologist finds a gemstone and is taken over by a Raptor, who then attacks Darkhawk and Nova. Then the planet breaks up. Whoopsie.

Ah, I’m sure they’ll be fine. Still, it’s good stuff.

Ultimate Spider-Man 4

by Brian Bendis and David Lafuente

I’m not sure what the deal is with naming this title, but as of issue #2, they changed the indicia to drop the “comics” out of “Ultimate Comics Spider-Man.” We are now just “Ultimate Spider-Man” again (same for their Avengers title). The story stinks, as MJ is hit on by her manager, and a gangster rides up flashing a gun, trying to pick up on MJ. It’s totally random, but the Hood shows up and saves her. Isn’t it nice that in the big city, this one guy was around at the exact time needed to save MJ? Hey, maybe he’s stalking her!

The hood is red, but MJ tells Peter it’s a black cloak. I have no idea why. Then we get into teenager angst, the whole why-did-you-break-up-with me, or a variant on it. The art goes completely south at this point, not even trying to show us any backgrounds. The faces are incredibly simplistic.

I want more than this. This is not “ultimate.” This is what you call “basic.” And it cost me $3.99?!?! Ouch.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

The Great Ten 1

by Tony Bedard and Scott McDaniel

Characters created by Grant Morrison during 52 are getting their own series, explored by Tony Bedard. The good news is that Bedard has had a good record for most things he has written, and his run on R.E.B.E.L.S. is great, although it doesn’t have the best sales. While I applaud his willingness to explore areas a little off the beaten path of the main DCU, unless he hits the ball out of the park, this will also fare poorly in sales. Although I like the premise, I think they have made a mistake in choosing the artist.

Marvel made a similar mistake with the Immortal Weapons, and in the old days made a similar mistake with the mini-series for the Imperial Guard. Instead of giving the art duties to someone who could flesh out the characters and give them each a solid definition, the other half of the creative team is Scott McDaniel. While McDaniel’s style has its own merits, there is a definite looseness of a cartoony quality that implies you should treat the subject as a cartoon, and not with due seriousness. That can work well when emphasizing the acrobatic circus whimsy of someone like Dick Grayson, but to introduce a new series like this?

Much of this first issue is character introduction and showing us the history of Accomplished Perfect Physician and his tension with the other members of the team. It reads fairly well, although some of the dialogue still has a distinctly Western flavor, mixed in with other attempts to represent Chinese speech. The cover artist is a better style, and they put out this comic with the understanding that using such a style might prove attractive and have experimenters pick it up, but to have that go away and go to such a different style is counter-productive. I’ll hang out for a few issues, but there are times when the artist has the wrong style for a particular job, and this is one of those occasions.

Secret Six 15

by John Ostrander and J. Calafiore

Oh, wonderful day! Ostrander gets his mitts on Deadshot again. There is always a risk with a guest writer. You want them to write an excellent story, but you’re hoping they don’t show you up too much. The fact that this issue was my favorite of the entire series only serves to highlight how inadequate Simone has done with this title. What does it mean when a focus on one person for the entire issue of a title meant to showcase six people specifically works better? Add to that the fact that the character chosen harkens back to a better, more successful time of a better series, Suicide Squad?

The Suicide Squad had an identifiable theme, it was the comic version of the Dirty Dozen: you take some crooks, send them on an impossible mission, and if you survive, you get out of jail. Compare that theme with the philosophy behind Secret Six. What philosophy, you say? Exactly. Secret Six has no idea behind it. There is no secret to the group, and no reason why there should always be six of them. There is absolutely no reason for the characters to stay together. But let’s leave all of that unpleasantness behind and get back to this excellent issue.

Richard Craemer is back to act as councilor at Deadshot’s request, and we learn that Deadshot doesn’t want to commit suicide as much as he might have wanted to in the old days. Instead, he feels an urge to kill everyone around him, all the time. The one drawback is that he actually hasn’t killed as many people as he had the opportunity to kill, so maybe he’s a little more in control of himself than he admits.

Ostrander takes us on a trip down Deadshot memory lane, and brings back his sordid family, his start at being a villain, and his encounter with Batman. Craemer puts the clues together and explains that Deadshot was always the bad brother, but his good brother died, and Batman is associated with his dead, good brother. Floyd is still tying to find a way to punish himself, because he knows he’s gone bad, and he projects himself onto everyone around him. If he puts himself in their place, then each person is no longer a victim, but someone who deserves to be killed.

It’s a good story delving into the mind of a complicated person, and it’s a refreshing change of pace to see that kind of exploration of the motivations behind somebody’s actions that has been missing from this title the entire time. Calafiore’s art attempts to be as gritty as the mood calls for, but he falls short. It’s almost there, but he does his own inking, and it is much too light for the needed atmosphere. Yet another case of not being exactly the right person for the type of job needed, although he does a good job overall.

This might be the best place to quit the series: now, while you have actually read a good issue!

Superman: World of New Krypton 9

by James Robinson, Greg Rucka, Pete Woods and ron Randall

Jemm comes in with guns blazing, so to speak, and Kal-el calms him down. Superman’s reputation and experience with different people seems to be the only source of order and reason around, as most of the Kryptonians, for all their newfound strength, are still afraid and lashing out. Jemm makes a solid point about how the Earth-people have been a pain in the past, but even they haven’t rearranged the orbits of planets!

The line-work is still a little light in places as we follow the rest of the story. It consists of a bunch of little pieces, all of it filled with good characterization, and a cliff-hanger involving Adam Strange. Man, it really seems like every time they turn around, there’s a new potential threat. No wonder the Kryptonians are paranoid. The view we are getting of relations among races in the DCU is not very pleasant, but it does make for interesting stories.

Warlord 8

by Mike Grell

Mike Grell takes over to conclude his story about the Forgotten. The changes in perspective involving Travis Morgan are awkward, and may pull the reader out of the flow of the story. One second he is fighting primitives, the next he is walking with Shakira. The views end up converging until the Warlord is fighting enemies in both places, and one of the forgotten deities reveals herself, and claims to have been at his side even during his youth.

The issue tends to slow down a little as we are exposed to yet another flashback to his origin and first series, but Grell’s artwork is compelling enough that I can forgive him. I do hope that this is the last time for a while that he spend so much time doing a recap. Morgan wakes up as Shakira takes him away. Was this all just a dream? Or are the efforts of the Warlord guided by a god-like creature that is using him to assert control over Skartaris? It is almost left up to the reader to interpret the end, but it will be interesting to see if this theme is revisited later in the series.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Gail Simone and Aaron Lopresti

I tend to cover a lot of the week's issues in one post, but every once in a while, a comic comes out that is so bad, it deserves study. This is a case study on how NOT to do a comic book.

The cover is yet again reminiscent of the old let's-tie-her-up-by-a-man kind of theme, but isn't actually part of the story, violating one of the basic duties of a cover. The first page shows Diana waking up, and they try to make it seem like there's more by splicing her sleeping form into three panels, but that's just a flimsy attempt to disguise the fact that they don't have much going on here. The next page, they go for titillation, showing just a hint of her areola in the mirrored reflection of Diana, which only raises the question of how Disco-corny is Diana to have a mirror like that in front of her bed? WTF? Are we at Green Arrow's house or something?

Ares is back, and apparently can't be bothered to use his magic powers to fix his face. He's had it sewn up with shoe leather and what-not, purely for an alleged grisly effect upon the reader. It's pure visual theater, and kind of silly. You think Zeus or Apollo would be caught dead (pun unintended) like that? Maybe he's supposed to take pride in his scars, but I wouldn't be so proud if Diana dropped me so easily in one hit like that. It's cheap.

There is still not much happening, for even as Ares talks, he contradicts himself. He wonders aloud if he is dreaming, and perhaps he is the one who killed Diana... just before he stands and admits what really happened. Thanks for wasting our time with those senseless panels that convey nothing. The god of war has turned into the god of bad Freudian interpretations. He then contradicts himself further, as he declares how much she will suffer. Only in the next page he declares that she serves him the best, since she is always in combat with something or other. Well, if she's his best servant, shouldn't he give her a bonus? Why does he want her to suffer?

Ready for more bad writing? Persephone shows up to say, "She has returned!" By "she," Persephone actually means the entire horde of Bana-Mighdall Amazons that Simone awkwardly shoe-horned into a terrible issue of the other title she writes, Secret Six. Persephone corrects Hippolyta with a "They" as if Hippolyta was the one who used the wrong pronoun in the first place instead of Persephone. Who would have thought the day would come when the Amazons have suffered so much, they don't even have a good grasp of basic grammar anymore?

The contradictions continue as what's-her-name (the forgettable bald woman that they never bother to tell me her name so far, so why should I bother to pick up an older issue and look it up?), claims insult to the idea that Diana left three gorillas behind to defend Hippolyta. See, that honor is hers alone. So of course, the next thing she does is order that Hippolyta (the woman she claims to want the honor of defending) is to be bound and marked. Can't wait to see what she does to people she doesn't have the honor of protecting...

Wait, it gets worse. Diana puts on her costume and equipment in an awkward, out-of-order panel depiction that just screams to have the theme music from the Rambo movies playing, and isn't it so nice to know that her gorilla companions sleep the same way humans do, on a couch with a nice bed sheet to cover his body... which is already covered by the natural warm fur of a gorilla! And it's not patronizing at all, the way she pets his head as she goes by, someone intellectually advanced from the hidden gorilla city. I'm sure he would appreciate that if he were awake. Hey, at least she didn't show Diana feeding him a banana!

Diana goes to the island to take her mother away, and Donna Troy flies from out of nowhere to tackle her. Diana instantly knows (without any explanation how) of the effect that Genocide had on Donna, and that is why Donna is attacking her. No explanation as to how Achilles or the still-un-named bald woman managed to reach Donna and have her in position at the precise time that Diana would show up. It's all just the greatest, most wonderful coincidence, isn't it?

In the space of one page, Diana goes from thinking about how proud she is of Donna as a warrior, to chastising Donna for using the same tactic twice in a row. Well, which is it? Is Donna an awesome warrior? Or a mess-up amateur? Is this because Diana trained her poorly, or did she pick up her "bad habits" hanging out with the Titans? I can't remember any other comic that had so many contradictions going from one page to the next. It almost takes intent to craft a story as contradictory as this one has been, and it's not even over yet!

Somehow, again unexplained, Diana realizes that the presence of her magic lasso near Donna is what is causing Donna's aggression. Diana tosses her lasso in the ocean, and Donna immediately, magically, recovers and acts like a normal person. Finally, Hippolyta tells me on the second-to-last panel that the bald lady is Alkyone, and she married Achilles, who is walking around like a whipped puppy already, taking her orders. Way to proceed with that new storyline. You know, the one where Zeus decided the male warriors should be in charge now? That lasted for what, one issue?

Ug. This issue puts the Ug in Ugly.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

That’s just one little way the pop culture phenomenon feeds on and devours itself, sports fans. The real reason for this bonus column is that a main focus of the entire episode involved comics. The murder victim goes by the alias "Crow," and the subsequent investigation reveals that he was a gifted artist, and was developing his own graphic novel. When Castle and Beckett first see his art, Castle makes a comment about Frank Miller, and the female detective Beckett asks whether he's talking about "early Frank or Dark Horse years."

Now, most of us realize that Beckett is probably not really into comics, and that a writer put those words in her mouth, but we all still have to agree with Castle: "That is the sexiest thing I have ever heard you say!" The geek crowd went crazy on Twitter over it.

Crow's friend and associate, Damon, was the letterer, and Castle picks up on the coroner's report that the stake driven into Crow's chest had Indian ink on it, which is used by comic book letterers, which steered them to looking into Damon. What they found was a dead Damon, actually murdered on the same day as Crow. The graphic novel was then used even more to find additional clues to help them piece everything together: a partially-hidden folder in Damon's place had some press clippings about a dead woman, and it was the same image of a woman that Crow had been drawing throughout his entire graphic novel. A photograph of a tree where the dead woman was found matched a depiction of a tree in the graphic novel, so they were able to figure out that Damon recognized the specifics of the tree and/or the woman upon coming across Crow's artwork, and that was when their collaboration started.

CASTLE SPOILERS

These events led to the whodunit part, which was Crow's nanny. She originally killed the woman so she could become closer to the husband, and Crow was there when it happened, a witness to the event at two years of age. Eventually his memories became expressed through his art, and he discovered the truth. The nanny killed Damon when she figured out what it meant that they were working together, but failed to find Damon's evidence. Then, at the cemetery where Crow's mother was buried, the nanny had taken a stake and dipped it in the Indian ink from Damon's place in an attempt to make it look like Damon killed Crow. Phew!

The Castle show itself is fun and funny, and has the right mix of humor and tension for a police procedural. A normal show is entertaining, and I imagine most fans of Firefly have already found the series. But for those that haven't, I highly recommend it.

This episode in particular is a blinding example of the things I have been writing about recently. Sequential art is an American-originated topic, but still followed by a only small niche of the U.S. population, relatively speaking. That has been slowly changing over the past twenty years, but we may be hitting a key point, where the trickle turns into a flood. Not only are comic book characters being used as pop culture references and jokes in a manner that increasingly takes center-stage in television, but the behind-the-scenes aspects are also being given notice.

In this case, the Castle episode quickly introduced the idea of comics, and showcased not something like Superman or Batman, but educated the viewer on aspects of graphic novel production. Potentially more important, they also showed how the creativity from artistic expression can give deep insight into the creator's mind and feelings, if people can be bothered to look close enough.

The execution of this episode was excellent. We know that a majority of the current crop of producing talent in movies and TV were weaned on comics, sometimes from birth. If they can continue to weave all of these different aspects relating to comics into their work, that will be a good thing for everyone. The slightly insidious part of it is this: many of the viewers will still never think to pick up a comic or graphic novel themselves, but they will absorb some knowledge anyway through osmosis, simply by watching it on one of their favorite TV shows.

In other words, all of America will slowly be turned into a little bit of a comic book geek... and they won't even realize it.

Bwah. Ha. Hah.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Mark Guggenheim, Marco Checchetto, Luke Ross and Rick Magyar

This review is going to be short and sweet: the entire issue is used so Spidey can fight Kaine, and Peter can then learn that Raptor has taken his relatives and Harry Osborn hostage. This is Guggenheim’s swan song, and it’s not very good, unfortunately. The art is pretty great, and the artists go all out to make this an exciting comic, but this story is supposed to be a murder-mystery, and Guggenheim thought it would be a good idea to propose that Ben Reilly might be a murderer.

It’s all well and good, except for the fact that Kaine makes a much better prospect to be a murderer. Anyone who has read the Spidey-clone stories of old would know instantly that Ben Reilly doesn’t have it in him to be a murderer. As lousy as those stories were, that much was clear to the reader. So from day one when I picked up this story, I wondered who may have killed Raptor’s family, maybe the guy himself, but I knew it wasn’t Ben. Which lessened the impact and suspense of the entire story before it even got started.

Now Guggenheim wastes a ton of time on a fight, and we aren’t really told why the fight is even necessary. Not to leave any insult unturned, we also have to take in yet another reminder of the Mephisto boondoggle, successfully blending two of the worst Spidey stories into one. All I need now is to see them advertise for a Mephisto/clone mini-series. Since Kaine is also a clone of Peter’s, the memory wipe that erased Peter’s identity from everyone else’s mind didn’t take on Kaine. How many people already know his secret ID in this Brand New Day? When MJ made the deal that Mephisto would wipe EVERYONE’S memory?!?

What, Mephisto is powerful enough to save Aunt May when no other science or magic can, and he can involuntarily wipe the memory of the world, but he can’t do any mental reconstruction ON A CLONE?!?!?!?!

Just when I thought they couldn’t mess up their own ruin of a Mephisto mistake any further. Worst Guggenheim story ever. He writes much better television, I would advise he stay there and do that. Please don’t come back to comics. Ever.

Dark Wolverine 79

by Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu and Stephen Segovia

I’m of mixed emotions about Segovia’s art for this issue. On the one hand, it’s good for depicting the down-and-gritty, bloody fighting that goes on. On the other hand, his proportions are off on the people, he characters don’t look that good even when they’re not bleeding, and there is almost no worthy background art to speak of.

The story feels like a holding pattern. Osborn feels that Daken needs some good PR, so he has arranged for some minor villains to be taken down. Moses Magnum gets the drop on him, and it goes downhill from there. After an attempt at blackmail on Osborn, our unstable villainous mastermind calls Daken in again. Not the rest of the team, mind you, just Daken, who was defeated by them. He has decided that it’s Daken’s mess (even though Osborn was the one who set everything up). Daken takes a ton of verbal punishment form Osborn and agrees.

Next time, there will be cameras again. Is Daken supposed to hold back or not? Will he hold back if he’s supposed to? And how long will he take Osborn’s grief? It’s not a bad story, but it feels a little detached from the rest of Wolverine’s universe, and not entirely part of the Dark Reign meta-story either. After the past few issues where we learn Daken can manipulate others, and seeing how adept he is at doing just that, it feels almost like discontinuity to see him marching around solo at Osborn’s beck and call. It can fit if you squint, but the entire time, you’re waiting for Daken to pop his claws in Norman’s chest.

Wolverine: Origins 41

by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite

Logan’s new plan is to destroy Romulus’ power base, and he goes to ask for help from the Hulk. Bruce re-introduces him to his son Skaar. The story was okay as far as it went, and then Skaar kicked him out of the ground and onto a tree far away, with the tree sticking through his back and out the front of his stomach. It makes for a great visual, but we all know that Wolverine has adamantium bonded to his skeleton, and there just ain’t no way, even if you’re Daniel Way, that you can make us believe the tree trunk got through his body and avoided all the bones.

So the attempt at spectacle succeeded, but at the cost of the believability of the story. Which, in comic book land, is saying something. We’ve seen Logan’s healing factor on overdrive, we can believe he’ll survive and heal from this. We can’t throw out all our knowledge of basic anatomy. At the end, Bruce agrees to help Wolverine after all. Which renders the whole Skaar-kicking thing moot, and a waste of our time. These “heroes” spend way too much time beating on each other and then shaking hands for my comfort. If anyone kicked me onto a tree, you can bet as soon as I could stand again, I’d be peeling out their insides. I wouldn’t be so quick to accept their help. This round of comics this week just feels like a bunch of loose plots strung together in an attempt to create some sort of visual shock, but there’s no writing skill that helps to tie them together into a coherent story. Well, not a good coherent story, anyway.

X-Men: Legacy 228

by Mike Carey and Daniel Acuna

The art style that is uniquely Daniel Acuna’s looks great when he depicts the nowhere-land that Emplate calls home. I’d like to see a story with his art that calls for a ton of those types of freaky environments. The depictions of the X-Men trying to recover Bling!? Not as awesome. Also lame: a character with an exclamation point as part of her name. I refuse to use it after this, so I’ll just call her Bling and leave it at that. The “!” is just stupid. Rogue takes Hope’s powers and heads after Bling, but Emplate’s little helper has some interesting guard dogs that can affect Rogue’s “trance” form.

The form of this issue feels wrong. After the brilliance of Xavier’s journey and the development of Rogue, we’re wandering off to an area of re-runs, where a repeat villain can mysteriously come out of nowhere after a long absence, penetrate the heroes’ security with ease, and basically just beg to be defeated in an issue or two. Granted, not every issue can have significant meaning, and this may turn out to be a fun romp, but with all of the New Mutant and X-Force villains being revisited, I was hoping the Gen-Next ones would be skipped.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Brian Bendis and Mike Deodato

Whatever failings this issue might have, the one-page splash of Ares cutting the Man-Thing in half is worth the price of admission alone. The cover is a little weird, because every member is present and looking scared, but Noh-Varr has been MIA for a while now. Inside, Karla makes flirting gestures with Bullseye, but why is Ares looking scandalized? He’s an immortal who has probably had more booty than anyone this side of Hercules.

Most of the issue is this team bickering with each other, and a lame spot about Gargan reacting badly to his new medications, which leads to him being sidelined. The sentry goes in to investigate some mysterious disappearances in a dinosaur-themed town, but he overloads or something and appears to blow up. So we have the most powerful hero sidelined yet again. Is anybody else as bored as I am with how little they can think to do with the Sentry?

Seriously, he’s child’s-play to mess with mentally, and every issue he can be taken out of play. They don’t treat Superman nearly as lame over at DC, but it has become a running joke that the first step in a new Bendis plot is to take the Sentry off the board. Except for Deodato’s wonderful art, the issue is almost boring.

The final page is cool, with Osborn at least blacking out, and getting a vision of Enchantress, the recently-banished Dormammu, the Molecule Man, and I think a giant-sized Beyonder. Is that the Dragon from Moondragon on the left? And why is Osborn naked? This is a hard issue to judge on its own, so we’ll just have to tune in next issue.

If they can just figure out how to write a title with the Sentry effectively, this entire series would be a lot better.

Invincible Iron Man 19

by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca

Pepper breaks the Black Widow and Maria Hill out of custody, but the art is lazy for most of it. Blank walls with no decoration. The fight with Iron Patriot and Iron Man is similarly lazy, with the colorist trying to make up for the fact that they are in a desert, again with nothing substantial for backgrounds. Even when the scene switches to a newsroom, a glance at a cubicle shows one lonesome desk plant amidst monitors that are too small, and the same cup of pencils is moved from the left side of a newsman to behind his right shoulder. It’s almost as if they paid the artist half-rate, and so that’s all he’s giving us.

The plot is simple: Osborn takes out a mentally-retarded (no offense, that’s literally his equivalent mental state right now) Tony Stark, and is about to kill him, but he is informed that they have live coverage, so Osborn orders him arrested instead. Pepper and the others get away easy, setting us up for the entrance of Thor, since any end-of-life decision has to be made by Donald Blake, as Tony’s physician. All I can say is: IT’S ABOUT TIME THIS STORY WAS OVER!!!! I was SO bored, and the ending was entirely predictable. The art has gotten progressively more boring as well, so there hasn’t been much to recommend. Hopefully the next issue will signal an about-face for the title, giving us somewhere new to go and new subjects to cover. The entire setup was so unlikely, made up of a Rube Goldberg contraption of multiple locations for something that anyone else would have set up to take care of in one place in one issue.

I feel like someone wrote a decompressed story and then shoved me into a malfunctioning time machine that froze for a year, and I still have to wait a month to see if everything has been properly thawed out.

The Mighty Avengers 30

by Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage and seanChen

Henry Pym steps outside the universe, and meets Eternity. Eternity then declares him to be earth’s Scientist Supreme. We are use to magical items and large abstract ideas being anthropomorphized, so the idea of Eternity we can buy. But treating science the same way? It’s a little weird. I’m not sure if Dan slot is just pulling our leg or not, but I’m going to give the idea some time to grow on me. It could be fun.

The Young, Initiative, New and Mighty Avengers team up to attack the Unspoken, but they aren’t doing too well. Chen’s art is slowly getting better, but for people like us who are used to seeing mass gatherings of heroes depicted by masters of the page such as George Perez, Chen’s mass scenes leave a little to be desired. There are no little side conversations, no particularly meaningful match-ups in the people standing together, etc. I’ll give him this, though, he does appear to be trying a little to give each person an individualized face.

The series continues to hold humor and adventure, and the best line this month in comics comes from Osborn to the Sentry, as Hercules steps through a door from Avengers’ Tower back to the Mighty Avengers’ HQ: “Bob, I want that door thrown into the sun.” Slott seems obsessed with retro-fitting Hank Pym so he comes out as the grand savior. It may be an example of the pendulum swinging to far from one side to the other, as Bendis and company took great strides to paint him only as a loser wife-beater who deserved to rot in prison for the past few years. I’d prefer something in-between, but Pym is due for some redemption or justice on the page by now.

The one thing that could make this story a little better is to accurately quantify exactly what the Unspoken can do. “Everything” is a little too convenient and sparse, as far as explanations go.

Thunderbolts 137

by Rick Remender and Mahmud Asrar

A new creative team comes in, showing Iron Fist captured by Osborn, and brainwashed into opposing any enemies of the current regime. They flash back to showing how he was captured, and then cut to an attempt to capture Luke Cage. The rest of the Thunderbolts team is sent in first to soften him up, but Iron Fist has to step in.

Pay attention next, because Osborn is spending an awful lot of time setting up some dominos to cover a Luke Cage project folder, while the Ghost arranges for both Cage and Iron Fist to escape. Osborn tries to use the folder to convince the traitors to step forward, but it appears that when nobody steps up to take claim, Osborn has nothing to hold over anyone. It is strangely amateur of him to pull a bluff like that, and lessens the impact of the story.

The Ghost reveals that if the brainwashing had been successful, the current team of Thunderbolts would have been killed and replaced. Asrar does well with the art. I wouldn’t put him in my top ten list, but he does reasonably well with what he’s been given. Not nearly as good as the cool Francesco Mattina cover, though. The bit with the folder setup by Osborn felt unnatural, so this isn't a home run, but it's close to the quality of the past few issues.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by James Robinson and Mark Bagley

The steady spiral downward continues with this title. We start with the cover, and yet another ode to the missing trinity. It’s been a subject harped on for months –not by us, but by the characters in the book itself- that the big three are MIA. Did we really need to drum the point home with yet another tribute to them? Then you have John Stewart unconscious, even though he appears nowhere inside the book. So we don’t get truth in advertising in yet another cover of JLA.

Inside, we start with the death of Blue Jay, an obscure mash-up of Hawkman and Atom from another universe. Then we pick up with a discontinuity: everybody is injured from a fight we haven’t seen. In an attempt to plug events into Robinson’s Cry for Justice mini-series, we have to put up with (yet again!) this issue coming out before the mini-series which shows us the events that take place prior to now. If things were going to be this bad, they should have put out another filler issue.

What about the rest of the story itself? Also sporadically contradictory. Vixen spent so much time reaffirming her commitment to continue the past five or six months, to see her open a meeting by asking why they bother at all feels like a re-run. How much longer do we have to put up with her asking this same question? To take our minds off of the sameness boring of it all, Despero magically shows up to attack them in their old HQ.

Despero is doing another villain a favor, and he gets spirited away before a late-comer, Zatanna, can banish him or contain him. Despero will now die in R.E.B.EL.S. Annual #1, already out on the stands. Here’s the weird thing: Zatanna asks why the team is in the old cave HQ, when Vixen said she already put out a call for her to show up there. So why does Zatanna have to declare that she’s been “searching high and low” for them, when Vixen said she already invited her to the (CENSORED) meeting!?!?

As if the writing wasn’t bad enough, we then have to put up with Robinson putting phrases in Zatanna’s mouth like, “For real?” To make it worse, she doesn’t offer to heal Vixen or Plastic Man with her magic, she just stands there and tells Plas how awful he looks. Way to help, Z.

Next issue, Blackest Night takes over, and the internet is already aflutter with the question of how much the corpse of the original Doctor Light will talk about his new super-power of rape, and arguing over if it counts as necrophilia if the reanimated corpse is hitting on you. Oh, and Zatanna is also unconscious on the cover, even though she’s the one that showed up and saved everybody.

Bagley’s art is his usual standard, and even if I prefer Ed Benes or Howard Porter, he does an okay job. It’s mostly the writing that makes this comic the worst JLA I’ve read in years. The editors are messing up all over the place, and let’s face it, this is one writer who needs a lot of babysitting. He’s not getting it. At least he didn’t throw in any sexual references this time, but that’s because he already made Green Lantern and Green and Red Arrow quit, so maybe he ran out of male chauvinists to have talk about that kind of thing.

One of the most embarrassing issues of JLA ever.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Chris Yost and Dustin Nguyen

Chris Yost steps in to spot Mr. Dini, but he makes Huntress a one-note wonder. I can relate to her thinking: she’s mostly just a person going up against superhuman threats, and in the heat of battle, it makes perfect sense to defend yourself, even if it involves lethal force. However, they go one step further with this character. Helena doesn’t belief in redemption or rehabilitation, and focuses on a more permanent solution.

The slight problem I have with this is that they pound it home almost every page, until she comes across as bloodthirsty as the Punisher. There are shades of belief in this matter, but they really go overboard with her willingness –scratch that, her eagerness- to kill.

For the rest, the colorist gives us red “crisis” skies the whole time, which I don’t like, and the subplot involving a priest takes a strange turn when he asks for a sign, and Huntress and Man-Bat crash through the church roof. All of a sudden a disembodied voice tells this guy, who has been nothing except compassionate and faithful the entire time… to kill them. It doesn’t make much sense.

Marc Andreyko and Jeremy Haun handle the Manhunter feature, which focuses on Dylan. I only know that’s his name because I read the Manhunter series, but they don’t bother to identify him, which is lame. The story itself is better than the main feature, as Two-Face has his hooks into using Dylan, and Dylan relates how he was sucked into this particular Gotham freaky kind of life of crime. What does it say about this second feature that the first time I liked it, the main character wasn’t the main focus?

Blackest Night: Superman 3

by James Robinson, Eddy Barrows and Alan Goldman

Fire doesn’t stop the Black Lanterns nearly as well as it did in the Batman mini-series, but Krypto settles the deal with Lois Lane-2, and anytime you can show a dog with heat vision, that’s just ultra-cool. Robinson continues to mis-use his own voice, dumping it into each of the characters, to the point that Superman doesn’t sound like his normal self. Thankfully, he lets Barrows use his excellent pencils to tell a lot of the story, saving us the pain of too much dialogue.

The rest of the story is pretty cool, with killer art the entire way, and a resounding defeat for all of the bad guys. Chalk up another winner for the Blackest Night story.

The Brave And The Bold 28

by J. M. Straczynski and Jesus Saiz

Straczynski opens his run on this DC title with a Flash story that feels very much like his classic adventures. A science mishap sends him back to WW II with a broken leg, and he stumbles into the Blackhawks. Saiz does well on the art, giving us some excellent facial expressions for all the characters.

The key stopping point for Flash is that he took an oath not to take a life when he put on his costume, to the point that the Blackhawk leader threatens to kill him if he doesn’t join in the war effort. As a result, Barry takes off his uniform and puts on combat fatigues, and for the next few weeks, he becomes an American soldier. It is a good answer to the age-old question of when is it okay to kill, especially for someone who is supposed to be heroic and find a better way.

A very good start for Straczynski. Oops, his second issue for this title (thanks for the correction below). It felt longer than a month, but last time he did Batman and Dial H for Hero, and that was a good one too.

Outsiders 23

by Peter Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin

Man-Bat is a beast over in the Batman title above, but here he is with full intelligence in the swamps. I like the art better here, with Pasarin doing well to portray the menace. Unfortunately, we still have to live with Tomasi treating Katanna like a regular American, as opposed to the Japanese national we’ve always seen. She speaks with no unique character. Then she jumps underwater with a mouth-breathing unit, and still manages to call out Halo’s name at the same time. The depiction of the underwater environment is not that different from above ground, and can cause confusion if the reader isn’t paying close attention. They could have portrayed that better.

Man-Bat comes from out of nowhere to prose an alliance with Killer Croc, which makes no sense to me. Creeper has also lost his previous nonsensical gibbering, and now is acting more like Plastic Man. Although the art is good, this title needs a kick in the rear. Perhaps the Blackest Night knocking down their door next issue will shake things up.

Supergirl 46

by Sterling Gates, Greg Rucka and Jamal Igle

This entire issue is basically one big running fight with Reactron, but every time he gets the upper hand and is about to kill someone, he drops them and goes to attack someone else. It gets to the point that he’s powering up to kill Lois, and somehow he doesn’t bother to shoot. Instead, he turns around to grab Supergirl and Chris. Hello! What happened to the power-up in his right hand the panel before? The art is cool, at least.

Although the fight choreography could have been better, Thara transforms into the Flamebird manifestation and really take down Reactron. He gets shrunk down into a crystal for Supergirl to take to Krypton for justice. It makes for a solid middle part to his big story.

Superman/Batman 65

by Peter Johnson, Matt Cherniss, Brian Stelfreeze, Brian Haberlin, Kelley Jones, Joe Quinones, and Federico Dallocchio

The cover is cool, with the Super/Bat symbol dripping blood on a gravestone, but the insides are a letdown. Scarecrow somehow manages to infect Batman, superman, Joker and Lex Luthor, and make them all dream their own little personal nightmares. For some strange reason, we have red skies again for the backgrounds all over the place, but not nearly enough good detail. It’s a simple little story, but without much explanation. Just a timing thing to let a handful of artists try some weird stuff for Halloween. Very forgettable.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

Early in the morning Thursday, October the 15th, I spotted a teaser segment on comic books. I tend to flip through five news channels until I get news instead of commercials, so the TV was on MSNBC when they announced a politician would be featured in a comic book. Since I have a day job, I taped it and then played it back when I got home that night. These teaser segments tend to be topics that they think are interesting, and often pose a question. They tease the viewer for a number of news segments, and then much later they cover the story and allegedly the viewer has toughed it out through all the boring parts to get to this neat story they have been waiting to see.

It doesn't work. Most of us move on and forget about it, because we know it will take forever for them to actually get to the story, and we have lives. In this case, I forwarded past several segments, spotting them continuing to tease this story three or four times (thank you, Mr. DVR). When they finally got to the story, it was not anything worth waiting for. Setting aside their archaic practice, their last-millennium style of journalism that assumes they can make us sit and endure an entire hour's worth of boring drivel before getting to the good stuff, their segment was actually drivel itself.

Showing that they could not possibly grant the topic the same respect with which they treat movies or television, they started by playing the theme song to the old campy Batman TV show... for the entire segment. The tease was all about a comic parody of Michelle Bachmann. It's actually a series being put out by the Dump Bachmann blog, an effort to convince voters to vote her out. The first issue of the comic quoted her actual statements, while the second veered off into the authors implanting crazy things into thought balloons for her. None of this was actually mentioned by the news report. If you want substance and actual analysis, try checking the folks at talkingpointsmemo.

No, the MSNBC tele-journalists, all three of them, quickly moved from saying that Bachmann had a comic out based on her (this was the tease for an hour or so), and went directly into mentioning other political figures with a comic book treatment, showing covers of Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy. I was hoping they might mention why people might be interested in these comics, but they distilled it down to an immature talking point: trend or talker. I had written an article back in August that covered my own thinking about this emerging trend, but these three just called it a trend and made little jokes. The female reporter talked about the political comics and made a weird comment about their humorous content, as if any or all of them were "funny books" made to amuse. In point of fact, all of these comics were made for serious reasons. The Blue Water comics were produced to give information and insight into characters, and the Bachmann comic was purposely designed for political purposes to help defeat a politician in an upcoming election.

What's weird is that I know somebody who watches the entertainment shows on TV, the ones like E! that cover movies and TV and celebrities. While their hosts are always upbeat and chipper to the point that you want to shove them into a wood chipper, they still concentrate on talking as fast as they can to deliver the news. Maybe it's even gossip, but whether the gossip turns out to be true or not, you can bet they had people trying to do some digging and see how much truth there was to it. They don't play a campy TV song for their entire news segment on any one topic. Anyone hoping to learn any legitimate information about the Bachmann comic was at a loss, because after advertising it for a little over an hour, they spent less than fifteen seconds to discuss it before they used it as an excuse to have a 'trend or talker' subject for the morning. They never even mentioned Bachmann's political affiliation, or why the comic was being produced.

This isn't the first time the news has gotten things wrong about comics or pop culture. I've covered some of the more obvious comics mistakes in the past, and even took Katie Couric to task when she gave a Warner Brothers tagline to a Disney character. But at MSNBC, they weren't even trying. So I'm using my ability to rant (it just might be my super power) for this column to highlight the mainstream media's continuance of their pattern of fading importance, and their inability to even recognize that their own actions are contributing to their slide into oblivion.

Remember the old reputation of reporters? They had fact-checkers, they had hard-hitting investigators who asked tough questions, they had Pulitzer-prize winning people of high intelligence that uncovered the truth and told people what they needed to know. This new internet thing was pablum for the masses, something of inferior value, because anyone could use it to say anything they wanted. Where was the validation? Where was the massive budget to pay for people to make sure that the end product was the truth? The internet was a sewer! Wikipedia was a joke! But as time marched on, the internet started kicking butt.

You can argue about whether it began with Drudge leaking news during the Clinton era or when Dan Rather lost his job over a hoax memo, but you might think the media people would learn from this; instead, the entire week became nothing but one humongous reminder of how lousy the press is at their job. MSNBC’s little comic book hit job would probably not be considered worthy of notice compared to the other two errors. Evidently the media also falsely attributed a racist comment or two to Rush Limbaugh (setting aside the argument of whether he is a racist or not, the specific alleged quote was not made by him in this particular case). They also got taken in by a guy who said his son was in a balloon, except for the small fact that he wasn’t. And that balloon experts were saying there was no way he could be in there. Except the media didn’t bother to call a balloon expert and have them on TV anywhere. This week, they figured out it was a publicity stunt, which means that one man can successfully bamboozle the entire nation's press for the whole day.

So if you only had a few seconds in front of the news channels this week (thankfully I was away from the TV and working most of the time, so I don’t have the full story on the other two incidents), you would think that a kid had been carried away by a balloon, a radio host who had an interest in buying a football team made a racist comment, and comics are funny books, including the ones that focus on political figures, and deserve campy background music and jokes. All of which is false. The coverage of all of these topics was poor. The comic coverage is admittedly of lesser importance than the impact that proper reporting would have had on the other two stories, but they all serve to put more nails in the coffin of legitimate journalism versus we little people on the internet.

As I mentioned regarding Couric's faux pas, the folks on the internet have a genuine interest in what they choose to cover; I don't have to worry about "filling dead time" by talking heads, desperate to avoid a day or two of silence, let alone two seconds of airtime. We get our facts right more often, we make a better effort to contact sources directly to settle conflicting reports, and the world is spending a lot more time reading our stuff than watching you. This week, you only reinforced your image as uninformed, lazy, gullible people who condescend towards the subjects you cover, oblivious to the fact that you are losing ratings, viewership, and money.

I actually prefer to write about almost anything other than this type of topic, but I find it hard enough to let so many misrepresentations of our hobby stand without being corrected. If this keeps up, I’ll have to create a name for this series, which seems to be taking on a life of its own, as once a month the media decides to cover something in the comic world in a big way, but with mistakes that are just as big as the coverage. I understand "it's just comics," but if they're getting all of these small details wrong, what else are they telling us that's also incorrect?

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Peter Tomasi and Ardian Syaf

Tim’s father and Dick’s parents make the dynamic duo fall prey to the manipulations of the Black Lantern enemies, but their attacks are far more mental than physical. Perhaps because these non-powered heroes rely more on their unemotional intellect than the physical powers, the bad guys resort to a more mental approach, causing both of them to lose their cool reserve and let their emotions ride free. That is exactly what the bad guys need to power themselves up. Only the timely arrival of Etrigan, possessed by Deadman, saves the new Batman and Robin.

The art is great, some of the best I’ve seen by Syaf. The fact that Damian brought Commissioner Gordon to where Alfred could help puts a little trouble into the idea of maintaining a secret identity, but I’m sure they’ll write it off as Gordon being woozy and out of it. The solution to the problem is innovative: Batman and Robin encase themselves in ice, the Black Lanterns cannot locate the two subjects, nor feed on their emotions, and so take off in search of other prey. Deadman possesses each one to enable the breakout from the ice. A handy advantage that should be used elsewhere in this meta-event.

This was a very satisfying mini-series. Good marks for both story and art.

Detective Comics Annual 11

by Fabian Nicieza and Tom Mandrake

The beginning is a little awkward, with the Question and Batman trading words in an attempt to bring the reader up to speed on what’s going on from the Batman annual; it reads as too forced, too much unnatural exposition. Madrake does well with the art, even if he does resort to a few too many of his regular tricks when drawing. The swirly mist effect has been overdone by him in just about every environment he has drawn the past few years.

Long story short, they rescue everyone and Azrael sort of plays a key role, while Grayson points a finger at Azrael and complains about him not doing it the right way. The tale is average, which is a problem. The aim was to interest people in the new Azrael series, but he was not involved enough to bring out anything exciting. I don’t see how this will generate much interest.

The backup feature was terrible! The transitions are murky, and we’re just dealing with a wannabe vampire, who manages to get away at the end. The art by Kelley Jones is despicable, with almost no line-work on some panels, and even poor coloring choices. It’s not a complete story; we do not really learn who this villain is, nor the main motivation. Will is be pursued somewhere else? Stories in annuals should have an acceptable beginning, middle, and end. This story had a lousy middle and no end.

JSA vs. Kobra 5

by Eric Trautmann, Don Kramer, and Neil Edwards

Yet another reason to love Don Kramer’s art style: he has no problem drawing more than a dozen heroes on the same page, and doing justice to them all. Neil Edwards helps out, and they try to spread the love around as much as they can with a large cast. The writers of Uncanny X-Men could take a few hints from these guys on how to showcase a large cast of characters.

The JSA has gone on the offensive, taking out some hidden Kobra bases. Part of the problem with this is that the new head of the organization wants to weed out the old driftwood from his brother’s organization anyway, so he doesn’t mind the losses that much. He does sacrifice Ariadne so he can slow the team down, though. Jason runs away to the capital of the USA, just about ready to launch into his ultimate agenda. The suspense is still going strong, and Trautmann has given his readers a reason to tune in for this entire series. I have high expectations for the last issue.

Secret Six 14

by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott

Hey, remember in the old days when Wonder Woman was bound or tied up somehow and helpless? Well, just in case she hasn’t been humiliated enough in her own title lately, they have been sure to show her tied up spread-eagle, right where a monster can come lick her. Said monster immediately stops and goes off to kill some others first. You know, if I was a monster, I would probably feel pretty secure about eating what was in front of me first, and then hunting down the others for dessert, but maybe that’s just me.

Scandal has reversed course, and instead of pleading with Bane to take his venom drugs, she takes them instead. Simone repeats herself by having the “good guys” rush at the guards, and the guards are so intimidated to see women running at them firing weapons, they start praying instead of fighting. You know, just what they did last issue. So nice to see her shaking things up a bit. Notice how the guys in Batman or Green Arrow never wet their pants when seeing huge muscle-bound guys pummeling them to bits, or pointing razor-sharp arrows their direction. But in this prison, for some reason, any female running at you is reason enough for you to bow down and make peace with your maker.

Rag Doll takes care of the leader of the prison, and Deadshot comes to the rescue of the people he had been sent to kill. I have long since stopped trying to make any sense out of what Deadshot or any other character will or won’t do; I know each one will do whatever is necessary at the moment, including attack their teammates, but will never do enough to kill any of them. Which is just cool enough to make the book predictable and boring.

Whoops, spoke too soon! The head of the prison is about to die, but he gets on the vid-cast system and explains that the Amazons attacked America, and were “properly” imprisoned. According to him, if they run to escape, they will be hunted down and their entire civilization destroyed. Rather than thinking that this mortally-wounded guy is off his rocker, especially considering that more than just these Amazons attacked America and Paradise island is still standing, they all decide to commit suicide instead of return to prison. Gutless wonders. What happened to the fighting Amazon spirit? “Ooh, the scary man about to die just held a video conference! I don’t want to fight anyone anymore. Let’s just kill ourselves now instead of fight!”

Wait, it gets worse. Wonder Woman walks in on a woman about to kill every other Amazon in the room and calls her brave. In five sentences or less, maybe 35 words, she convinces Artemis and everyone else not to kill themselves. Wow, isn’t she impressive? Give me two minutes alone with them, I bet I could convince them to kill themselves all over again. Writing this bad makes me want to scream.

Wonder Woman lets the Secret Six go, for no obvious reason, because they’re all wanted killers, and she could order the Amazons to take them down easy. For a woman who just killed a demon and saw fit to kill Max Lord, the idea of arresting six wanted murderers isn’t enough to take them down? They helped out a little; well, some of them helped out a little. Most of them stood around and watched people die. Whatever, she gives them a break. Then Bane elects himself leader and tells Scandal she’s off the team.

Finally, Deadshot sits there with the dying old guy and claims he “tricked” Deadshot into shooting an escaping slave lady in the back. This was back in issue 10. The guy announces a prisoner is escaping, and Deadshot volunteers to shoot her. He does so. Deadshot shoots an unarmed, fleeing woman in the back on a stranger’s say-so, and then announces that “She ran, I shot.” How is there any trickery involved in this at all? Lawton could have cared less about her. Four issues later, he cares?

Worst-written comic for the entire week. Is there anyone out there who can justify this? What happened to Gail Simone’s talent? Is there anyone willing to defend the story as anything passing good? What am I missing, how is this book still being published?

The Shield 2

by Eric Trautmann and Marco Rudy

The sense of the military continues as the Shield and Magog, Army and Marines, butt heads. Even with that, they do manage to get through the situation all right. The fatalistic attitude of the kid Shuja matches the culture as I have studied it, and with the small number of people from the Middle-East I have known. The coolest parts are left for the illustrations; the reader isn’t beat over the head with them. For instance, the suit is programmed to scan and identify threats compared to known villains. They let the art tell that part of the story well, without too much exposition.

The real menace is revealed as Gorilla Grodd! Mingling Magog into this title along with Grodd ups Magog’s exposure as well as the Shield’s, and helps to embed the Shield into the fabric of the DC universe, something which is needed for each of the Red Circle characters. Unfortunately, I still can’t say anything nice about the Inferno back-up feature, and the price makes this comic a “borderline drop” for me each month. It needs to be very good each time, because the first time I hear myself saying “Meh” after I put it down, odds are I will cancel it due to the price and the lack of a good second feature.

Titans 18

by Bryan Q. Miller and Angel Unzueta

Any time you see Bryan Miller’s name on a comic, be aware you’re in for an average reading experience. Unzueta does great on the art, at least. Not too much for backgrounds, which is a limitation. We are reduced to seeing Raven fight her fellow Trigon siblings, because nobody in the entire DC writing stable has managed to come up with any personal villains that Raven can face off against. With all of Raven’s abilities, what does she do? She turns into a version of Nightcrawler, with red ‘bamfing,’ and fights the dude physically.

Raven’s subsequent analysis of her fellow members is a little off, showing how little miller understands the characters. The truth is, Raven has been tampered with so many times, she is almost unrecognizable from the intense, interesting character that Wolfman and Perez created. She has been reborn closer to a normal 16-year-old, all uniqueness drained. We have a super-hero who has been part of the Titans family forever, and just now we are supposed to believe her major problem is loneliness. All after the past few years of her constantly telling Garfield she doesn’t want to date him, like a broken record? So she doesn’t want to be lonely… but she’d rather not hang out with Garfield. Must really cheer up his ego!

To make matters worse, she still ends up asking the same question at the end, and after an entire issue of focusing on her, we still aren’t told what she’s going to do. Why bother?

the Unwritten 6

by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

The American judge takes advantage of a French claim to ditch the Tom Taylor case in a funny moment. Tom has been framed for murder. Mike Carey has fun incorporating the modern technology we live with into the fabric of Taylor’s environment, capturing the bulletin boards and instant messaging and forums perfectly. He puts in snarky counterpoints from forum members, and even includes misspellings, on purpose, to reflect the true nature of people typing fast on their keyboard and hitting the send button during what passes for normal real-time conversation on the internet.

The next interesting scene shows Lizzie Hexam making contact with her “handler” via books in a library, with the directions appearing in the middle of classic novels. I wish half of the DC and Marvel artists were as inventive with a piece of a story as this one communication method was. Meanwhile, Tom finds another geographic literature fact: the prison is built on the site of the battle from the Song of Roland, when the Basques massacred Charlemagne’s Franks. Then Tom’s tattoo reappears on the back of his hand. Later, parts of the Tommy Taylor novel come to life and find Tom.

Peter Gross handles the wide changes in atmosphere and time amazingly well, providing an excellent variety in one issue. The threads of story are coming together, and some readers are impatient, but I find the pace to be excellent for a monthly periodical.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

by Greg Pak, Fred van Lente, and Reilly Brown

This time the opening sequence recaps events from Thor's point of view, and the view is obscenely funny! Pak and Van Lente have taken the story into the realm of absurdity, but many comics do that to us. Just try to recap the current status of Zeus and keep a straight face. Wolverine's history is more convoluted, but not nearly as amusing. They have taken the weird facts that have led to the current predicament and presented us with a story that simultaneously hints at high adventure with great stakes, while remaining grounded in the most pedestrian frat boy humor. Even the narration panels start having fun with you, claiming for a second that Fandral the Dashing is really Forbush Man.

Reilly's art goes along with the mood, giving us clear visuals of the characters, but having fun with the facial expressions to relay the light-hearted antics. Hercules, while dressed as Thor, actually delivers a purple nurple during the fight to the real Thor. The real Thor, dressed as Hercules, wins the fight as he must, with a good swift kick to Herc's groin and a wedgie. Warning to the reader: if you attempt to take this book too seriously, you will not like it.

Even in defeat, Hercules is victorious. He loudly proclaims that the man in front of him, Hercules, has defeated Thor, in a struggle that will resound throughout the nine worlds for all eternity. Malekith finally shows up to sic Grendell on the both of them, only to fall immediately to child Zeus, lest you think the plot might get too dark and serious. Then Queen Alflyse takes Hercules away, now with the full knowledge that he was dressed up as Thor, to 'punish' him. In spite of the simplistic humor (the wedgie and such), you really do have to laugh out loud at the hysterical actions, and enjoy the fact that even the mighty Thor has become entrapped in the absurd dilemmas that only Hercules could manage to whip up. This is a tale that could have been written straight, and in terms of continuity, any future writer could flash back to this event and add a more serious mood to it, but as it is, it's just pure fun.

The Marvels Project 3

by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting

Steve Epting's art is silently stealing the show, with his depictions of Coney Island and other locales, giving us a clear picture of Marvel history at the time, and also giving us some realism at to how things actually looked back during WW II in real life in many locations. The plot itself is still grasping lightly on each of the characters, with a couple pages devoted to each.

The highlight is actually a re-telling of the first duel between the original Human Torch and Namor. The little added detail of the Germans' attack on Namor's people, and his ignorance of the divisions among surface men, help to give the reader a better understanding of Namor's motivation, and it fleshes out his character, removing the simplistic evil attitude from when the story was first told. The needlessness of it adds a new dimension of tragedy, while the characters involved also reminds us of the original Busiek/Ross Marvels mini-series. The timing is nice, with Alex Ross involved with another tale involving Toro and Hammond over in The Torch right now, which comes on the heels of the Avengers/Invaders mini-series, and Hammond's recent problems as a deactivated android in Captain America's title. Also, they insert another reference to the Twelve, spending a page to bring up the robotic Electro, another small piece of the Marvels Project.

Pieces are all we see, even by the end of this third issue. The overall project has not been fully defined, and it is still uncertain if there is an official project underway, or if this is the story of how it came about. The scenes in previous issues with FDR tend to lead us to believe that the project is underway, backed by the U.S. government, but perhaps has not grown to envelop all of these different sources just yet. I find the pacing to be very good, so that even if it might seem a little slow, you can still be entertained by what they have shared with us so far. That said, I do hope they pull the pieces together next issue and let us see more of the overall concept.

Uncanny X Men 516

by Matt Fraction and Greg Land

Our mysterious attackers have kidnapped Scalphunter and forced him to transport five Predator X’s onto Utopia, while these same people are claiming they are not mutants themselves, but want to save all mutants. The coloring is distracting for the rest of the issue, as a conversation takes place where there should be blue sky, but it is always distorted by energy signatures and such. Folks, while sometimes you need to keep things interesting, there are occasions where you can sit back and just let us see a blue sky, you know.

Half the fans will probably be upset at what happens next. Magneto shows up and bows to Cyclops, while Xavier wants to attack Magneto right away. Why? Why any of it? None of this meshes well with anything that has been written recently, especially all of the excellent Mike Carey stuff over in the Legacy title. Still, Magneto has been tampered with and rebooted so many times since Xorn, they can get away with anything. Evidently he is not supposed to have an ego anymore. Fine.

Fraction continues to butcher another Carey story where Beast was refused by the High Evolutionary. Presto change-o, the Evolutionary took Magneto under his wing and did stuff instead. Xavier’s aggression is unwarranted, since the guy is supposed to be a relative blank slate, and had a less-than-bloodthirsty interaction with Magneto prior to this.

The art is Greg Land, but it’s a sloppy Land. The level of detail is nowhere near what it used to be. The large cast of characters is being ignored, with a focus on Cyclops and three or four others. It’s like a default holding place for mutants, to keep them out of the way during Dark Reign, and that’s about it. While the introduction of Magneto could have been mildly interesting, the way it was handled was very poor, designed as an attempt to shock readers. Much of the choreography was reminiscent of the last few times Magneto has appeared, during weddings and funerals, always in front of the entire mutant crowd. It was to the point that I felt I was reading an old comic from the ‘90s. But with less impressive art.

Web of Spider-Man 1

by J.M. DeMatteis, Val Semeiks, Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Sean McKeever and Stephanie Buscema

Why, oh why, did I pick up this comic? The main story focuses on Kaine, one of the worst characters ever introduced into the Spider-Man mythos. Not only that, but the story is basically about his inner struggle. Ptheh! It’s like they took everything that should have been cut out of a movie, and released it as a special DVD on its own. Semeiks’ pencils can’t save the fact that Spider-Man doesn’t actually appear in this story. Here’s an idea: when you launch a new series about Spider-Man, why not HAVE THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THE COMIC?!?!?!?

Okay, I’ve trid to calm down. The next feature is based on Spider-Girl, the alternate future daughter of Peter Parker. Her series had a rabid fan following, but sales have always been low. I can understand the desire to throw her over closer to the main universe, at least by osmosis, but remember the problems we had with the Ultimate universe being too similar to the regular one? This is the same thing. This wasn’t my first exposure to Spider-Girl, but I found myself hoping it would be the last. What did I have to look forward to? A Man-Bat rip-off, a slight variation on Green Goblin (way to be original), and the Spider-character wanted by the police. Why exactly is this supposed to be exciting new adventures? The entire thing reads like Spidey and Green Goblin had a sex change. Ron Frenz was okay on art, but it couldn’t save anything.

The final story is actually the best, a light-hearted comedy involving Frog-Man. Drawn by the granddaughter of the legendary John Buscema, her cartoony style fits right in with something out of Loony Tunes, which will fit right in if the Disney/Marvel merger goes through. Still, $3.99 for the comic? There is nothing here that commands the attention of any continuity-minded folks, and I can only recommend it if you’re already a fan of Spider-Girl.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

Squad K lures the three fugitives out of hiding, and General Lane has forced Reactron to be put on the team. When Chris realizes during the fight that part of the frame-up is to make everyone think the Kryptonians have sabotaged Metropolis’ sewers, he surrenders. While that might have been a good idea if there were uncorrupted officials involved, Reactron takes the opportunity to kill members of Squad K so he can get his claws on Supergirl.

Pere Perez is one of the few who can do inks and pencils both. The backgrounds are serviceable, and you can tell the directions were followed to display the scene. It’s a good job, but not stellar. Another, more famous Perez has a habit of adding extra stuff in wherever he can, and Pere could have doe it here and there in places, but didn’t. Still, at least the dual pencils/inks job wasn’t a disaster like it usually is with other artists.

The Captain Atom feature finally starts to make sense, a little. Steel’s niece, Natasha Irons, has helped to spring Cap Atom from his brainwashers, and we learn that we are in Mirabai’s magical realm. He was used to kill any opposition to Mirabai, so we have yet another hero who has tons of blood on his hands due to mental/magical coercion. Major Force shows up at the end, presumably to bring Cap Atom back under control. Cafu is still the artist, and we still have these bland scenes with precious few details, and the art alone tells me this is not enough. I know DC will be switching out the backup features that aren’t performing well. I hope they finish this story and put somebody else in here. I miss Mon-el already.

Adventure Comics 3

by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul

Krypto’s acting a little weird, pulling over Conner’s rogues gallery and dumping them on the school lawn, like an animal that wants to play fetch with humans. Conner gets the idea to try to track down Luthor via his scent, but Lex has done something to prevent that from working. Conner uses Krypto’s nose for the next best thing, and tracks down Tim.

Johns does well with the interaction, using the plot to have Tim explain his recent actions that play a part in locating Bruce Wayne. They also bury the hatchet quickly about Tim kissing Wonder Girl, and still basically talking like a couple of teenage friends. Tim breaks down a little, covering his recent problems with thinking Spoiler was dead, losing Conner, his dad, and Bruce.

The story is just as much about Tim as it is about Conner, but this one issue has done better than all five issues of the Red Robin series so far to explain Tim’s motivations and process of thinking. It also paid off with the acquisition of a damaged black box, which might get him closer to tracking down Bruce, than anything else in the last six months. Maybe we should try to get Johns to write just one more monthly title…

The Legion feature focuses on Polar Boy and Sun Boy, but the light-hearted camaraderie we felt from Polar Boy we experienced in the Legion of 3 Worlds mini-series is missing here. It may just be due to his being grumpy that his reputation on his home planet still describes him as a Legion reject. Clayton Henry gives us average art, with facial expressions that come straight out of a “how to draw” book. They are after Cryo King, someone also from Tharr, who is a reject from the Legion of Super-Villains. The bad guy tries to kill Sun Boy, thinking it will get him into the group.

Then a big problem hits the story. Cryo King had a map on him that depicts Superman’s time period, and Cryo King, smug in his handcuffs, reveals the Super-Villains also have an espionage squad in the 21st century. Excuse me, but if the dude was rejected from membership, how in the world would anybody have told him such a precious secret? The entire point of this story was that the dude was REJECTED from membership. When I tell someone they can't join, I don’t turn around and hand him a treasure map and tell him top secret information! Perhaps he stole it, but they should have mentioned it. As it stands, the final four panels ruin the entire story. Amateur type mistake.

Batman 691

by Judd Winick and Mark Bagley

Two-Face can’t quite figure out that it’s Grayson in the Batman suit, but he’s found his way into the Batcave and pummeled Grayson for a while, until Alfred, wearing a Batman hood, shoots Grayson with some adrenaline. Somehow, Bruce was always able to maintain some protections around the cave, including protection from magical detection. Which is a problem, because Bruce is famous in most comics for being dubious about magic, and not trusting it. But for some reason, without Bruce around (presumably to call up Zatanna and ask for a spell refresh?), all the protections have died out. It’s pretty weak, but then again, it is Winnick writing, so what can you expect?

Bagley gives us the meat for this story, doing well with the art. The average writing is barely good enough to keep the ball rolling, but Dick does manage to convince Two-Face that it really is the original Batman in the suit, mostly because Batman has managed to beat him again. Like I said, it’s fairly weak, but what can we do? Black Mask springs him immediately from prison transport, but lets him leave Gotham City in exile, instead of killing him for not working for Black Mask. It’s a strange decision for Black Mask, because he’s enslaved all the other villains and put explosive implants in them, but he’s rather nice to Two-Face. All you can do is suggest the dude was in a good mood, I guess. They really need to switch out writers.

To top it all off, they decide to shut down the Batcave and move everything out, and Alfred declares, “it’s what he (Bruce) would have wanted.” Please. To finish the absurdity off, Dick is pulling apart the display case with the Robin suit in it. You know, the one Jason Todd wore? Well, he coincidentally discovers that the base of the display case is “not COMPLETELY hollow,’ and pulls out a flash drive that has a case file on the deaths of Dick’s parents. In the display case for remembering the death of JASON TODD.

Sigh. I take it back. It’s not average writing, it’s downright awful. Even Bagley on the title can’t keep me from wondering how much longer I can stomach buying it.

Booster Gold 25

by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund

In a way that reminds you of classic stories, Dan Jurgens reveals his old-school story-telling style and spends a couple pages recapping all the recent events, so he can bring us back to the original motivation Booster had for invading the Batcave in the first place. Then we have a conversation with Rip where they make sure to show us the clues on the chalkboard multiple times, and very clearly. The concepts they hint at are steeped in DC continuity, but look cool. They also take care to show us the note in the upper right to buy milk and toaster tarts, so of course I’m sure that will be a crucial plot point later on. Heh.

Booster’s luck is awful as always. He avoids Grayson by arriving earlier, but Damian finds him, which still brings Dick-Bat running. Dick agrees to let Booster have the pictures of his ill-fated attempt to save Barbara Gordon from the Joker’s vile attack, and Booster breaks the rules a little to let Dick see his parents alive in the past one time.

It’s time for another rank amateur mistake, though, because a young Dick Grayson is depicted with his parents in a very nice cabin, all by themselves. Except Dick and company were part of a traveling circus, and nowhere in the 60 years+ of history, have we ever seen the gypsy circus performers have a place to settle down and call their permanent home. The whole point of a traveling circus (especially from that time period), combined with the history we have been given, is tat they went with the circus where the work was. True, you can shove it aside and claim they were very successful, or say it was a cabin they rented in the woods once, it’s not a devastating mistake. But it would have been truer to the history of the Graysons to have shown them in a setting closer to that of the circus environment itself, and maybe even surrounded by their extended circus family.

Mike Norton gives us some quick art for the Blue Beetle feature, a final showdown that has Jaime beat down Black Beetle, who then claims he is the future version of Jaime. It’s not enough of a gripping tale, and you sort of find yourself asking “so what?” at the end of it. They also try to get cute with the time travel, but they mess it up.

The first time is done right. We see the end comment of Black Beetle, hitting Blue Beetle from behind. Then we get to see Black Beetle’s opening statement and watch him fade out in front of Jaime, fading to the past where he can hit him. The mistake comes when he does it a second time: Instead of seeing him fade out later so he can say something and then let us hear the “end part” first from Jaime’s linear temporal perspective, they have Black Beetle fade out first before he says anything! Then we get to see that Black Beetle has teleported in time behind Jaime again, but he’s saying the second part of a phrase, and then stays in the same place to say the first part. Jaime turns around and smack shim, because his enemy already time-teleported before, so the guy somehow said his sentence backwards standing in the same place. It’s amateur hour in DC titles this week, as these little mistakes can jar the reader out of the experience. If the writer and artist had been on the same page, this wouldn’t have happened, but the editor should have caught it anyway.

Green Lantern Corps 41

by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason

Patrick Gleason impresses me each time with his artistic ability to creatively show the newest gruesome attacks by the Black Lanterns. Every member of the Corps is going all-out against other, previously-deceased Lantern fellows. A lot of the references make sense only if you checked out the Blackest Night Tales of the Corps mini-series, which gave us a lot of the history on opponents of characters like Arisia and Killowog.

What might be another amateur mistake happens on the last page, as an Indigo Lantern shows up to help take out the gruesomely-resurrected children that had been taken from Kryb. He says the “vial abominations” must now feel their own pain. That normally should be “vile,” but I suppose it could be an attempt at clever verbal wordplay, a reference to the babies as coming from a test tube vial. Given the trend this week, I tend to think it’s yet another rookie spelling mistake. Anyone out there know otherwise?

R.E.B.E.L.S. 9

by Tony Bedard and Claude St. Aubin

The Omega Men successfully infiltrate the Starro forces, with their modified Starro parts attached to their bodies to blend in. It only works for a little while, though. Amusingly, Admiral Xylon of the Dominators hangs up on Kanjar Ro and leaves his planet at the mercy of the Starro invasion.

Adam Strange shows up to rescue Kanjar Ro, and together with Captain Comet, they join Dox’s crew, recognizing the galactic nature of the threat. Things turn grim at the end, when Starro’s powerful lieutenants manage to locate Dox’s current base. Next issue feels the effects of the Blackest Night event. Hmm, I wonder which threat is worse…

If you're on Facebook, they created a fan group for this title, check it out.

Red Robin 5

by Chris Yost and Ramon Bachs

We are side-tracked by Tim relating some strange story, as it was told to him. It is supposed to be important later, but it is awkward, the choice of using Tim as the narrator for that part. Writers need to learn that just because times have changed, that doesn’t mean you have to lock yourself into the current fad of having all narration come from the main character. It is actually okay to have “neutral” narration every once in a while. Yost’s choice is poor here.

Tim wakes up after being kidnapped by ninjas, and the artistic hints are there to clue in the reader that Tim is alive and injured, although Tim himself leaps to the conclusion that he has been resurrected by a Lazarus Pit. So much for any remnant of the idea that Tim was a great detective. Yost is slowly destroying this character.

After wasting our time with scenes of a dead/reliving spider death-girl and Tim’s own stupid reactions, Tam Fox is simply marched in to see that Tim Drake was the person under the hood of the Red Robin. The contriving Yost had to do to get Tam Fox in the right place at the right time for all this to happen really stretches belief. Then Tim decides to join the league and help take down the assassin(s) that has been killing them off.

The worst part is the decision Tim has made, after being injured and generally been an all-around useless, incompetent person. Somehow he thinks he can bring down the League from the inside. Without Batman. Or backup. The art is passable, but it’s like they just really don’t know what to do with the character. I feel like we’re just eating up time until we can finally get Bruce Wayne back, and they want us to feel we HAVE to buy this title to be part of that. Well, the art and story both better improve if they want us to stick with this. As it is, the entire storyline is forgettable.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.