Nomad: Girl Without A World #1 ~ This is a quirky little thing - there's an editorial reference to Captain America #600, but I haven't read that, so this is all new to me. Luckily it does a good job of introducing itself, and in next to no time the basics are laid out: 'Nomad' is Rikki Barnes, who was Captain America's sidekick in a parallel world (the role filled by Bucky in our world). She's now stuck here, with not much of a life but making ends meet - working a crummy job for rent money, attending school where she's got a friend, fairly normal. She's also trying to meet Captain America - she knows he's not the original, but displaced from her world, she needs to meet him anyway - and meanwhile there's something weird going on at her school with some of the students and a monster in the basement. All in all this is a pretty straight-forward story based off an interesting idea, and it's written and drawn well. Rikki isn't annoyingly teen-girl-ish - like Bucky at her age, she's a soldier in her own youngish way - but nor is she Mary-Sue-ishly competent. She's down to earth but capable, and this issue gives her an introduction that has me curious to see what'll happen next. So I've found a new heroine - nothing amazing yet, but a promising start, so yay.
Domino Lady #2 ~ Nothing really new to report this issue that I didn't observe on the last one - but it's a good comic, so I don't mine repeating myself. Domino Lady is a classic crime noir comic with a mischievous twinkle in its eye, as its heroine uses daring, determination, and sex to get the evidence she needs to see justice done. As I said with #1, it's refreshing to see a seductress portrayed as a confident and, all considered, healthy character - obviously she's got a few bats in her attic, as people don't just become costumed crime-fighters for fun, but allowing Domino Lady to use (as is the catchphrase) "sex as a weapon" without making her seem damaged or pitiable in so doing is unusual, and makes this comic rewarding, as well as giving Domino Lady herself a strong sense of sexy panache. As before there are two stories, for 27 content pages total - one is stand-alone, with Domino on the trail of a blackmailer aboard a zeppelin (cool), the other concludes the two-parter begun last issue, and has quite a dramatic finale to it. Good work all round, I'm definitely becoming a fan of this comic.
Models Inc. #1 ~ Bit of a weird one, this - I figured I owed it to myself (and my readers, all three of you) to check it out, but I had my suspicions that it wouldn't be my kind of thing, and this issue seems to back that up. Millie the Model - Millicent Collins - returns along with a bevy of girlfriends, and most of the issue is spent chatting about dresses and dating and interpersonal rivalries and god I'm bored. Okay, that's not fair, it's just that this is really not my thing - I honestly think the 'world' of fashion is a load of crap, and 99% of it only exists to perpetuate itself, rather than create anything that the real world actually needs or desires, no matter how much fashion tells us we should desire it. So, fair enough, I'm not the target audience; however, when things do eventually get serious (someone gets murdered), the model on the scene behaves incredibly stupidly - Jesus woman, if you find a discarded gun, don't just pick it up. Honestly. The backup story guest stars someone called Tim Gunn - presumably no relation to Tommy Gunn, who plays the villain in Digital Playgrounds' Pirates series - and it's kinda silly too. I will say that both stories have good art, and it's nice to see Chili Storm, a lesbian who the story treats in pretty much exactly the same way it would if she were straight. Aside from the dumb crime scene reaction, it doesn't strike me as a bad comic - it's just entirely wrong for me. But if fashion is your thing, I guess taking a chance on this issue wouldn't be a bad idea.
Secret Six #13 ~ Just keeping track of Wonder Woman, and since she's pretty much unconscious for most of this issue, there isn't a lot to report. The Secret Six side of things is well written, as I've come to expect from Gail Simone, and it's no hardship to read the issue through even though I'm not really a follower of the characters; there's also Artemis and her lot, so it's not an unrewarding issue, but to find out what happens to Wonder Woman I guess I'll be reading the next one too - I can live with that.
Seeing as I don't have much to say on Secret Six, I might as well use the space (not that there's a limit on space in an online column, but work with me here) to look at the DC Nation page this week, where Dan Didio waxes lyrical about Wonder Woman. It's nice to have a DC Nation page say something I actually give a damn about reading for once. The idea is that issue #45 of the current Wonder Woman title will be the 600th issue, counting all three Wonder Woman titles as a single run, and DD is putting it to readers to decide whether to renumber that issue or not - if 600 fans send in postcards, they'll make that issue #600, or something. Now granted I don't really care what they do with the numbering, but it's nice to see one of DC's best titles get some public recognition, especially since Gail Simone and Aaron Lopresti are mentioned specifically as the creators behind its current quality - never a truer word said, they're doing great work. So I guess I'll be looking for a cute postcard to send - like I say the issue number doesn't matter to me, but it's a chance (however minor) to stand up in support of a comic I love, so why not? (The address printed on the DC Nation page is 'Dan Didio, c/o DC Comics Inc., 1700 Broadway, New York NY 10019)
Farscape: D'Argo's Trial #2 ~ I'm sorry to report that I was right - when I reviewed issue #1 of this mini, I worried that the flashback would crowd out any significant exploration of what happened with D'Argo between seasons three and four, the timeframe from which the flashback is being had. Well, this issue consists almost entirely of that flashback, with only the first page even showing D'Argo in the 'present', on the hunt for his wife's killer Matcon Tal. It's not that the flashback is bad - on the contrary, it's well-written, well drawn, and meshes very nicely with what we saw of these events on the TV show, but that last bit is the whole problem. As interesting as it may be to see the discrimination D'Argo and Lo'laan suffered first-hand, or the medical efforts necessary for them to have a child, and his early years, everything that matters about this sequence of events was shown on TV, largely in 'Mental as Anything', the episode where D'Argo and Macton finally come face to face. There's simply no need to see more - not unless this is going to reveal something new, and that episode was so well-written that I'd say it shouldn't be altered in any way. I'll continue to buy this miniseries, for completeness's sake, because I like Farscape a lot, and because even if it is redundant, it's well-presented - but I very much hope future flashback-oriented stories will be better planned.
Moon Knight Saga ~ Another of Marvel's 'Saga' comics, the free one-shots collecting a potted history of its subject with art from all eras of comics and summaries of the stories. This one, naturally, is all about Moon Knight, and is presented as if he's narrating it personally to you - it's not a character I have any interest in (the last time I read it was a single issue that crossed over - very vaguely - with Civil War, and I found it rather dense and inaccessible, but that was a long time ago), but since it was free I thought I'd pick it up, just in case I ever had a need to know something about Moon Knight; this'd be more fun than just checking wikipedia.
