Previews #249 ~ Comics to look out for:
p69: Batgirl #1 ~ They're keeping the identity of Batgirl a secret for now - if it's someone interesting I may check this out.
p88: Secret Six #12 ~ Wonder Woman guest-stars, and since Gail Simone writes both titles I may pick up this issue just for her.
p145: Dynamo 5 'Post-Nuclear Family' trade paperback ~ A reprint of the first TPB, well worth a look if you haven't already.
Marvel p58: Models Inc. #1 ~ Finally resolicited after vanishing earlier.
p182: Ubu Bubu 'Filth' trade paperback ~ See review here of issue #4.
p208: Farscape: D'Argo's Trial #1 ~ Another D'Argo flashback, might be good.
p219: Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose #54 glow-in-the-dark version ~ Oh I gotta have this.
p224: Hack/Slash annual #2 ~ Sequel to the first annuel reviewed here.
p224: The Art of Hack/Slash ~ Sounds good to me!
p275: Shrapnel trade paperback ~ Contains (click for reviews) #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5.
And merchandise:
p127: DC Dynamics Wonder Woman statue ~ Really an over-zealous minibust, can't say I really like it enough to pay that much.
p129: DC Cover Art Print: Power Girl ~ Looks great, but framed art isn't my thing.
p129: Justice Society of America series 2 action figures: Cyclone and Stargirl, yes!
p222: Barack the Barbarian 'Red Sarah' poster ~ I might, if Sarah Palin didn't tick me off so much.
p334: Star Trek ISS Enterprise (mirror universe) ~ From Diamond Select/Art Asylum, who do great Star Trek stuff.
p334: Star Trek Kirk in Romulan disguise & Spock action figures ~ Ditto.
p344: DC Heroes wave 9: Blue legs on Black Canary? Unattractive.
p344: DC Heroes wave 7: If this shows up (Mattel can't get squat into stores in Sydney) I may finally get a helmetless Big Barda.
p364: Star Wars Oola minibust: Looks good, but no nipples? You can see 'em in the movie. Darned prudes.
Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose #56 ~ Tarot remains on her sister's trail, fearful of what she might be up to having taken the black book and now, according to the oracle she consulted, being on her way to the library where all spells from the beginning of time are recorded - a recipe for ultimate power. This issue is mainly about the journey, with Tarot encountering threats both external, as she ventures along unfamiliar paths, and within herself - it's sparse with dialogue, and is often the case with Tarot issues where that happens Tarot's own narration takes centre stage, explaining her reasoning and feelings as she proceeds on her path. The opening sequence, where after a nightmare Tarot takes the time to renew her connection with the Earth and the God and Goddess, is classic Tarot, very drawn-out in terms of its relevance to the storyline - another comic might've summed it up in a few panels rather than pages - but immersive in its depiction of Tarot's beliefs and values; you either accept that kind of storytelling style, character over plot, or you don't, but as always I'm rather charmed by it. The later encounter with a satyr is also typical of Tarot, being a fairy-tale-style morality piece, but the overall arc of this issue is exploratory rather than preaching - the text and art get to show off their lavishness. Balent, as always, finds ample opportunity for beautiful naked women, but his imagination is up to the more fantastical side of things too, with the leaf nymph being a stand-out fantasy visual.
Wonder Woman #32 ~ Okay, whoa, what? This issue contains, among other things, a big, big shock about the relationship between Wonder Woman and Nemesis, which has left me just hoping it's some kind of ploy, and all will be well in the end. Heh, I remember back when Heinberg started this title, I would've happily seen Nemesis shot through the head to get rid of the daft love-interest thing between him and Diana - and now Gail Simone has built it up to the point where I'm clutching at straws to save it. The 'other things' this issue are mainly the big showdown between Wonder Woman and Genocide, which has the gravitas it needs to work - Genocide, even after all the fairly weighty revelations about her origin, still feels a bit superficial, but the issue doesn't dwell on her, focusing instead of Wonder Woman's psyche as she battles the threat. There Simone is on much more solid ground, producing a powerful narrative from Diana's thoughts as she does battle. The Olympian and Zeus subplot carries on in the background, obviously building to its own big moments later on, but the separation between it and Genocide is better, so it doesn't feel like the two plots are interfering with each other as they kind of did in earlier issues.
Ms. Marvel #39 ~ Issue two of Karla Sofen's tenure as Ms. Marvel, and writer Brian Reed does a very clever thing here: he has Karla pick up where Carol Danvers left off, right before Cru and Secret Invasion and all that derailed what she was doing with her old Operation Lightning Storm buddies. So while this isn't really Ms. Marvel in the comic, the comic is nonetheless about part of Ms. Marvel's story, the stuff with AIM fractured into competing splinter groups, and the Storyteller business, and all that. That gives this issue's story the credibility, as 'Ms. Marvel', that I was worried it would lack without Carol around (and since I'm not really interested in reading about Karla if it's just about her) - along with a cameo by a familiar face - and if things continue in this vein, I don't think I'll mind following Karla for a while until Carol returns (which is now known as inevitable).
Farscape: D'Argo's Lament #2 ~ This flashback series continues to stumble a bit, although its fundamentals are strong - I can still hear D'Argo and Jool's voices in the dialogue, which is one of the keys I look for in any licensed comic, and shows solid writing skills at work. The flip-side is that the art continues to not resemble Farscape very well - it takes advantage of the creative freedom of being able to draw anything, but in so doing it loses the TV show's visual style, and in all honesty the resulting creatures and scenery are pretty drab, so it hardly seems worth the loss. The plot meanders along its convoluted way, but perks up once Jool's back in the picture, and the closing sequence, with her explanations forming the narration for D'Argo's negotiations is fun and characterful, and picks up the interest level just in time for a last-page cliffhanger to come in. All in all, it's a bit shaky around the edges, but it's holding together well enough so far.
Justice League of America #33 ~ I think I'm going to stop getting this, again. I started back up under the misapprehension, as it turned out, that this current League was going to be phased out in preparation for the new League (the Hal Jordan one, with Batwoman, maybe, if DC have the stones not to drop her again), and I wanted to see the lead-up to that changeover. Now it seems that the new League will just be a miniseries, and this one is going to muddle on, I'm left with no real reason to read it, apart from 'Zatanna's in it'. And sadly, she's not in it enough to justify buying JLA - no scorn on McDuffie, who's had to put up with endless and moronic instances of interference from DC editorial, but what we've got here is a bunch of uninteresting characters fighting an uninteresting villain for artificially inflated stakes. I mean, the guy holding the universe together? Betcha a million bucks the universe doesn't fall apart. Even in comic books, there's such a thing as asking too much suspension of disbelief of your readers. Marvel has the right idea - their star team, the New Avengers, is in the hands of the guy who's handling the big crossover stuff, so it can all work together. DC has let the big crossovers (and every minor piece of crap mini-event besides) dictate JLA, with no creative freedom, with the result that it's a non-functional book. I hate to leave Zee out in the cold, but I'm done with this.
Justice Society of America #27 ~ Now, a DC book that does work, because - whether by pleading with them, or threatening to kill them all - Geoff Johns evidently got editorial to leave his JSA characters the hell alone, allowing the characters and their team time and space to be established as a functional comic. Johns is gone now, and Ordway is filling in for a couple of issues - I've said before his art doesn't do it for me, and that's again the case, but it serves to tell the story adequately, and the story he's come up with has its interesting points. The worst of it, so far, is the way Obsidian refuses to communicate, for no apparent reason - as often happens with lazy writing, the heroes' plight is mostly caused by their own arbitrarily obstinate behaviour early on (it's akin to the cliche of heroes mistakenly fighting each other for no other reason than that they just don't bother to stop and talk first), but that's the only real sore point in an otherwise lively issue, and the characterisations - JSA's best element - are mostly on track, although Cyclone's babble-fest does show signs of not being quite as pitch-perfect as Johns wrote her eccentric dialogue in earlier issues; I've always said bad writing could easily turn her from adorable into annoying, but here it's only a little bit bad, so no big deal yet. And at least Ordway remembers that Power Girl is the team's leader; Johns, having set that up, had an annoying tendency to have the old guns, Green Lantern and Wildcat and Flash, just act as if they were in charge, even when she was there with them. Ordway's tenure isn't going to last long, but by the looks of it it'll be entertaining enough.
Avengers: The Initiative #24 ~ It's difficult to judge the direction that this title's moving in, since this issue is almost all about pursuing existing storylines - the Shadow Initiative's op in Madripoor, Hardball and Komodo's messed up relationship, and for what it's worth (not much) Typhoid Mary. Luckily she and her silly costume and dopey personalities seem to leg it part-way through this issue, so now that we know 'Mutant X' isn't anything interesting, with luck we're rid of her for good. Oh, and Scorpion is around, but that's neither here nor there - I kind of like her, but she never appears in anything I'm reading heavily enough for me to really get interested in her. The Madripoor stuff is basically just a fight-laden backdrop for Hardball, but the fights (and Mary) take up too much time for him to get proper screen time, so he and Komodo feel under-used this issue, which is disappointing as this could be the last we'll see of their plotline for a while. Back home the Initiative gets put in new hands, and while I'll be reading with interest next issue to see if this will be the direction I feel this title has lacked from the beginning - it's had some great one-shots and character arcs, but the actual Initiative as an organisation has been written with all the subtlety of a big banner saying THE MILITARY IS INCOMPETENT AND SHORT-SIGHTED!!! - but it could go either way, so if things go wrong it may be this title for the scrap-heap, which would be a shame.
New Avengers #53 ~ The search for Dr. Strange's successor as Sorcerer Supreme goes ballistic as all involved wind up, one way or another, in New Orleans, and start throwing punches and/or ground-to-air missiles. Bendis's usual brand of smart-ass dialogue is liberally sprinkled throughout, but at heart this is just a good old-fashioned superpowers beat-em-up, with quips and fights aplenty, and fun on every page. I'm still not finding the Hood as host to a demon an especially compelling villain - although if that storyline goes somewhere, rather than just being the new status quo for the guy, I might revise that opinion - but this issue, by itself, was just too much fun for me to really be bothered by whether or not the subtleties of the storyline are exactly what I'm after. Sooner or later, inevitably, this whole thing - the Sorcerer Supreme, Norman Osborn and everything - will become serious (or at least, the humour will wear out its welcome), and then I'll be more critical, but I'm not feeling that way yet.
Fathom #7 ~ Plans for diplomatic talks between humanity and the Blue go ahead, with a first meeting in Istanbul, and in a move that's surprising but well-argued, Killian gets to go along. Diplomatically risky, but maybe fortune will favour the bold - I can see the sense in it, as well as the potential perils, so that's got to make it a worthwhile plot move. The arguments put forward regarding the Blue's isolationism, and the reasons for ending it, and solid - and reflect pretty much what's usually wrong with stories like this, where the mysterious aliens/other race on Earth/whatever cling to their isolationist ways out of fear of humanity, even though they wind up causing more trouble that way, so it's a good reminder of why this current title's ambitious direction is a good one. Aspen herself doesn't get much to do - she's involved in the big plays, plotwise, but not really as a central figure - and there's a slightly annoying time-wasting fight between rivals, but it gets resolved quick enough not to derail the issue. This is an in-between issue, really - carrying on what's already been started, but not drawing it to a climax yet - but it's a good direction, and as in earlier issues it's pleasing to see the writers not flinch away from the global implications (to their fictional Earth) of what they're doing.
Guardians of the Galaxy #14 ~ I never thought I'd say this, but Phyla is starting to annoy me - at least, if there isn't anything smarter and more subtle behind her current attitude. I know the pledge she made, but I was hoping the price to be paid would be more interesting than just 'act like a chaotic jerk a lot'; if nothing else, it pretty much guarantees she won't be very effective, since the rest of the team is bound to step in sooner than later. Not being into 'War of Kings' this issue was a bit flat for me - it's a side-plot to the big story, and not caring about the big story, I really don't care about a side-plot - but at least the humour and mayhem count is kept high, and various characters get interesting little bits of business, like Bug's effort at diplomacy. Ultimately, though, it's difficult to imagine the Guardians' plan working (I mean, it's ridiculous - "Please could you put your interstellar war on hold? Thanks."), so it's difficult to be invested in it - hopefully it won't be long before we're back to missions that feel more like they matter.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars - The Wind Raiders of Taloraan ~ This was a bit of a surprise - I recall it being solicited as a 'trade paperback' (and that's what my comic shop told me had arrived, to my confusion), but it's actually a digest, rather than a regular comic-sized TPB. The smaller page size means fewer panels per page, but with 88 pages there's still consuderably more story here than you get from a 22-page comic issue, and writer John Ostrander puts it to good use telling a story that's much more in keeping with the mood of the TV series than the comic issues were - fast-paced and action-centric, but with plenty going on to keep everyone involved, and lots of imaginative sci-fantasy scenarios and side-plots popping up. (He could stand to do a bit more research though, given how sci-fi fans love to pick up on trivia - glitches include the Trade 'Confederation' and 'Commander Ahsoka' (it's her first name, it'd be like the clones saying 'General Anakin'), and that's just the first couple of pages.) Overall it's a fun read, and the art holds up its end well, cartoony but accurate to character models and vehicles, with effective colouring (by Ronda Pattison, of Atomic Robo) helping mimic the feel of the TV show's CGI.
