Bomb Queen V #6 ~ Last issue I was worried that there was too much made-up conspiracy and not enough solid satire, and in the finale... well, unfortunately, it's almost fully devoted to the conspiracy, and it just doesn't seem very interesting. Sure, as a technical exercise, it makes sense and fits with what we've been told already, but it's kind of like a detective story where the big reveal relies on some piece of evidence we've never heard of and has no real-world relevance - "The butler did it... because he was being mind-controlled by aliens!" Bomb Queen and New Port City are pretty much irrelevant, and serve only as a backdrop for the two remaining staffers of... oh, whatever their blog is called, I've forgotten... to run around like amateur detective-superheroes saving the day, thanks largely to bursts of all-too-convenient competence and a really really implausible deus ex machina. Sure Bomb Queen has always sported super-science and gadgets, but this time it smacks too much of inventing a 'wrap up the story' button and pushing it because otherwise you're painted into a corner. I still had a bunch of laughs at the issue - BQ's still funny and vicious on a surface level - and DeeRail is cute in a retro-fun kind of way, but I really hope the next Bomb Queen miniseries is about more than finding invented solutions to invented problems (and that the bloggers stay the hell out of it - they really proved to be quite boring).
Fathom #6 ~ This title's now firmly passed the point of no return in revealing the existence of the sea-dwellers to humanity - which is a good thing, as my only real worry was that somehow they'd chicken out and put the genie back in the bottle with some contrived plot device. Now heads of state and news channels are fully aware that there's another race, a superpower even, on the planet, and the implications for this story are really interesting and far-reaching. This issue itself doesn't really excel - we get probably the most predictable idea first, as Aspen and Finn get spotted as Blue and chased by a frightened and angry mob - but overall the story is still on the right track, daring to dip into international politics rather than just confining itself to a standard hero-vs-villain story with no larger ramifications to worry about.
