I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space #4 ~ We're past the half-way point, so the tale of Susie's kidnapping is on solid footing by now - solid enough that it can take a bit of a back seat to other matters. This issue the girls go shopping for shoes, Marge and Velma get drunk, and the Captain enters them all in a space race, having taken a liking to a rival pilot, the very 30s-aviatrix-looking Sally Speed. Meanwhile Male Man is still trying to track the pirates down, aided (and nearly murdered) by his assistant Betty. As before the webcomic heritage means every page has its high point, and while the art is heavily stylised, looking almost childish in rendition at times, it's packed full of character, perfect for visual comedy. Oh, and you'll want to check out the I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space website for that Alice/Dr. Wendy comic I mentioned last week - I've read up to date on it now, and it's bloody hilarious.
Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #3 ~ Continuing the WWII storyline from the opening Dogs of War issues, but moving into a new phase of the mission, Robo is on the trail of Nazi mad scientist Skorzeny, with a view to making sure his Laufpanzer (robot tank) project doesn't recover from the setback Robo dealt it in Sicily. We find Robo dropping in on Skorzeny on a train in Croatia, at the same time as a British secret agent, 'The Sparrow' (that's her on the cover), does likewise. The annoying-each-other competetive cooperation between the two (once they stop trying to shoot each other) adds a fresh new taste to the regular Robo goings-on of comedic combat and pulp sci-fi weirdness, and as usual there's solid fact behind the fictional mayhem, with Skorzeny and fellow science-nut Vanadis's opening lament against Hitler's inability to properly manage his 'special projects' having solid historical roots in how the Nazis (luckily) made an utter mess of several weapons technology breakthroughs. All the usual creative team members are on top form, as always; Lauren Pettapiece provides fun art for the four-page backup story, in which Jenkins - the maddest of Robo's present-day mad scientist buddies - goes on holiday, with Clevinger excelling at one-liner comedic writing. There's also three pin-up pages - 'Peace Through Science' is my favourite, but they're all fun and inventive. Including the Free Comic Book Day issue, this is Atomic Robo's tenth issue, and it shows no sign of giving up its 'flawless comic' status.
Justice Society of America #19 ~ One World Under Gog continues towards its inevitable upheaval, where someone finally stands in the way of Gog's supporters and make them put up or shut up. It's a well written scene for what it is, but I can't help feeling it's a little shallow - there haven't been any really big explorations of the choices involved, and let's face it, this is a god walking around. That kind of thing raises big issues. Maybe it'd be thought too slow-paced for a comic book, but I really think there could have been a whole issue of just debating what's going on with Gog before we reached this point, where some of the JSA say 'wait a minute' and some of the others say 'quit arguing', and punches start being thrown. The other weakness is David, or Lance, or whatever his name is/was, who's now Magog - he never had time to grow into a real character before becoming Magog, so the debate about whether he's still who he used to be or not falls flat, in spite of an inspired bit of babble from Cyclone (channelling Willow Rosenberg) about him, which almost manages to humanise him. Her tornado symbol's the wrong colour in one panel, by the way, continuing the tradition that Cyclone can never get through a whole issue without having an art error somewhere. I'm enjoying this storyline as a whole, but I still feel it's jumping the gun - regardless of how it really just followed the earlier JSA title, Justice Society of America is simply too young a title to throw itself into such a big arc.
Mighty Avengers #19 ~ Yet another behind-the-scenes issue built around something from the main miniseries, and this time it's Mar-Vell the Skrull in the spotlight, with Noh-Varr (did I spell those right?) featuring as well. And... well, I found it a bit dull. What we see of Captain Marvel is the bit between him leaving Thunderbolts Mountain, after Norman Osborne talked him into having a crisis of personality about whether he's good or evil, and turning up in orbit smashing Skrull spaceships - and did anyone really need to know what happened? Obviously he decided he didn't like the Skrulls, and all we learn is that this was aided by a couple of Skrulls trying to kill him, big deal. I'd rather find out what's going on with Noh-Varr - not that I know anything much about him, but at least that's a bit of the story I don't already know the outcome of. Mar-Vell's stuff is essentially the kind of thing that ends up in the 'deleted scenes' portion of a DVD - it's a nice sequence, but when you get into the metaphorical movie editing suite, you discover that it doesn't actually serve any purpose to leave it in the movie, other than making it longer. Overall, this would've been better packed down to 8 or 10 pages, and included in another of those four-story one-shots, like Who Do You Trust? - the story here isn't bad, as such, but it's not worth this many pages.
Guardians of the Galaxy #6 ~ I'm still enjoying this, but I'm also still finding it difficult to get to grips with, if I look at it as a comic book like the other main Marvel titles. I think what we've got here is more akin to a novel - and I don't mean 'trade paperback', with six or so issues, I mean novel-length, possibly double-figures in issues for it to really feel sound to read. Maybe it's something Abnett and Lanning are doing on purpose, maybe it's just how their story happens to be playing out, and it's not intentional on their part - I do think it's going to make it tricky for this title to pick up readers. That said, the signs are good that, when it's all over and done with, it'll be a good long-form story. As a Secret Invasion tie-in it's still not really relevant enough to earn the banner across the top of the cover, but the issue's own story is well written and interesting, a mix of personality drama and sci-fi, and the final foreboding revelation has strong potential, if it's allowed to play out in its own time rather than being rushed overmuch.
Hyperkinetic #3 ~ The finale - I thought this was going to be four issues? Well, I guess it was, since this one's 44 pages instead of 22, so maybe sales weren't what Image were hoping for, so they decided to cut their losses and wrap things up quick. If so, it's to their credit that they did publish the whole thing, albeit in a double-size issue rather than two 22-page issues - unlike how Virgin unceremoniously dumped Shadow Hunter (presumably because people assumed it was mindless cheesecake, which could only have been Virgin's fault for shabby marketing, since it was rather excellent). And as it turns out, this US$5 issue is cheaper than the two US$3.50 ones would've been, so it's not a bitter pill to swallow. On the other hand, it'd be a shame if this miniseries were seen as unsuccessful, because this issue really rocks along, with heaps of action and comedy, and some fun ingenuity in how things play out. The jokes are packed in densely, and even if some of them are a bit obvious (although there are a few cute surprises), nothing's dewlt on long enough to become tiresome, so it doesn't matter anyway. Re-reading the issue you can see where the cliffhanger would've been from issue #3 into issue #4, and I don't know how I'd have felt had it had that separation - I think part of what made this so much fun to read was that it packed in 44 pages of story in one hit, rather than spacing things out. Well, every writer has his or her pace, maybe Howard M. Shum's isn't quite suited to 22-page issues - which isn't a criticism, since there's no inherent storyline reason for that being the length of an issue, any more than every TV show is half an hour or every movie 90 minutes exactly. Anyway, I'm getting off topic - this is a good, action-packed finale with lots of laughs along the way (think one of Farscape's more jovial episodes), and based on it, I think the entire miniseries would read very well in trade paperback form - it's light and lively enough that reading it all in one go wouldn't be a chore at all.
Mercy Sparx #1 ~ Odd first issue, this; I'm not sure whether it's assuming readers have read the issue #0 or not. The necessary plot information from #0 is recapped in the course of this issue, but not up front, and leaving out a lot of the character - and this issue happens a year after those events, so Mercy is settled into her life on Earth, and is taking out rogue angels efficiently (more or less). The result is that she comes across as rather cold and unlikeable, since we don't get to see her in better times, when she's not being forced into the role of mercenary/assassin by higher powers - she was a bitch from the beginning, but if you just read this issue, without #0, I think you'd find her crossing the line from 'fun bitch' to 'unlikeable bitch', and since she doesn't really have much in the way of dignity that'd make her a love-to-hate 'villain' (to be later redeemed as she breaks out of others' control), she's left high and dry, without any attractive qualities. That said, the art is attractive, especially Eduardo Medeiros's colours - although there's one bit of really weird super-shadow, hiding a hint of breast when Mercy's half-way through taking her shirt off. Not that I'm demanding to see her boobs or anything, but it really bugs me when a comic tries to be risque but chickens out at the same time; I hope that won't be a recurring thing. Overall, an uneasy start, but the promise of the #0 issue shines a positive light on this one, so I'll be staying with it.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars #2 ~ I'm still really enjoying Clone Wars - a lot more than any of the rest of the prequels - three episodes in and still going strong (Y-Wings, yay! Back when they were cool and new, too), and this title continues to be an enjoyable side attraction. The art is starting to show a bit of weakness - there's a couple of copy-and-pasted panels, and the faces sometimes vary quite wildly: Anakin was nigh unrecognisable for a couple of pages, and Ahsoka, while more consistent, is noticeably off-model throughout compared to her CGI face. On the up side the plot - the Jedi trying to gather intel on the smugglers implicated in the disappearance of the Togrutans last issue - holds together pretty well, with everyone acting more or less sensibly, given that this is aimed at about the same audience as the TV show, 12-year-old or so. There's also another of those bits I liked last issue, where a moment is taken to look at Anakin as a teacher - this time between him and Obi-Wan, discussing his influence on Ahsoka, and thankfully the scene's written calmly and intelligently, rather than just having Anakin be a stubborn idiot (like he was for all of the movies).
