Besides all of the comics below (and above in the photo) I picked up X-Men vs Agents of Atlas #1 this week - I forgot to get it last week - and it's fairly entertaining, with lots of the sly humour the regular Atlas title slips in. Still, I have to confess I'm still not quite feeling the 'wow' of Agents of Atlas - it's good, very good in fact, but it still hasn't given me anything that's really magnetic, that I really need to read more of. And, as you can see, I picked up Liberty Comics #2, more or less on principle - so far I've just browsed through a couple of the stories in full, and glanced at the others, but the ones I've read are good work, and there's a huge variety of art styles on show, all (so far as I can see) good quality in their own manners. And thirdly, Secret Six #14, which concludes Wonder Woman and the Amazons' guest appearance - as I've said all along with this title, it's not for me personally based on the characters, but there's no denying the quality.
And just before we move on, thanks to Approbation Comics for the preview PDF of Chaos Campus, and likewise Red 5 Comics for Beautiful Creatures and We Kill Monsters.
Chaos Campus: Sorority Girls vs Zombies #6 ~ Okay, so Paige is possessed by a demon (the magical malevolent-grinning sort), Brittany is possessed by a demon too (the more traditional Exorcist kind, with the bad skin and vomiting and head-twisting and lewdness, although as Jamie points out, that last bit is her anyway), and Jamie and her trusty wrench is stuck with a bunch of black people (who, as they well know, have bad survival prospects in slasher movies) in a house that's evidently trying to eat them. Just another day at the office for the girls of E.A.Z.Y. sorority really, although this issue really sparkles with creepy-demonic-presence-movie references, keeping the comic fresh by broadening its range beyond just making fun of zombies. This issue is hot off the virtual presses, but keep an eye on IndyPlanet's Chaos Campus section where it'll be showing up for sale real soon.
Beautiful Creatures #2 ~ Part two of two (but like part one it's double-sized, so effectively the story is four issues' worth of comics) continues in the vein of the first, mixing various flavours of pre-current-era mythology with light-hearted fun, while still keeping just enough of a raw, real edge to make the characters involving. All four of the girls get their 'monster forms', accompanied by flashbacks of their former selves, while they work their way back to the source of the attacks on them, and discover/remember the thousand-year cycle of warfare they're now unwittingly a part of. The art really works well for this story, with the un-inked pencils giving it a soft, fairy tale feel, but the colours keeping it nice and modern.
We Kill Monsters #4 ~ Okay, wow... I did not see that coming. Big surprise this issue, as Jake and Andrew take on a giant monster rabbit, with the suggestion that things are getting seriously surreal. Despite the somewhat light-hearted visual style of the art, there's a lot of clever framing and staging of scenes that gives a really creepy, suspenseful tone to goings-on, and when it's time for fisticuffs the action is punchy as ever. It all rests on the final two issues now - we're ready for the big revelation (whatever it is), but the lead-up has been good and solid, so I'm feeling optimistic.
Batgirl #3 ~ Stephanie's first arc as the new Batgirl concludes here, nice and quick for a new comic, and I really appreciate that - not because I don't want to read more (I do), but because it's refreshing to have a fast-paced, punchy story, rather than a five- or six-parter that can drag on a bit. The only down side to this issue is that Steph self-narrates a bit obviously, spelling out the concept the story is playing with out loud to Scarecrow as she fights him - but that's forgivable, since a) she's semi-affected by hallucinogens at the time and doubtless feeling a bit woozy, and b) it's a well-written sequence that really delivers the message the comic wants to push. With Oracle being presented as such an integral part of this title - her 'oath' scene near the end of this issue is really good - this is a comic I won't be skipping any time soon.
Nomad: Girl Without a World #2 ~ Nomad's investigation into the weirdness at school takes a break - since she got beat up by a monster last time - but she doesn't waste her time either, dealing with a radical anti-nationalist, meeting Falcon, and though not intervening, observing said weirdness as it continues. Rikki (Nomad) continues to be written as a very likeable character, a dash of old-school everyman's-hero (kid version), who despite her occasional downer moments (and this issue springs a doozy on her) is rather refreshing in her determination to suck it up and get on with the business of heroing, whatever it takes. I like the art too, it's teen-cool-ish, but conveys expressions very effectively, so that it's not difficult to get involved in the character-driven dialogue scenes.
Farscape: D'Argo's Trial #3 ~ This issue moves beyond the events we've actually seen before in the TV show as flashbacks, but nonetheless there's little here that's truly new - knowing what we know from the show, it's pretty easy to figure out what happened in the interval between D'Argo finding his wife's body and winding up a prisoner of the Peacekeepers on board Moya. And although what we see here is decently written, and Jothee's character is semi-new in that we never really saw him in a situation like this until he was much older, you could really just have guessed the events for yourself, based on the show, and been not far off. The art plays a couple of nice tricks though, visually interleaving past and 'present' for Macton during the flashback sequences in an interesting way.
JSA vs Kobra: Engines of Faith #5 ~ The momentum builds here, very effectively - there's still story to be told, including this miniseries's trademark 'duelling narrations' from Mr. Terrific and Jason Burr - but it's not just making time until the finale, there's a genuine sense of events moving faster in the lead-up. There's also action aplenty, as the JSA are more or less all on the same wavelength and kicking butt - Damage gets a great moment. One minor down side, though, is that this far in, there doesn't seem to be anything really new being said about the subject of the comic, faith - the heroes have faith in general-purpose heroism, each according to their own, the bad guy has his messed-up beliefs, and that's about the size of it; with the writing so taut and well thought-out on a storytelling level, I was hoping for a bit more of a philosophical point, which I imagine would've had to have come through by now to be effective. Still, this is good comics, no argument there.
Detective Comics Annual #11 ~ The good news is that the main story, despite being a multi-parter begun elsewhere, is very easy to get into, with exposition covering all the important points, yet efficiently minimised so that it doesn't get in the way of actually moving the story forward. Disappointing, though, is the Question, and I think this is something in general about her, not specific to this issue. I've read all of Gotham Central and loved it, 52 likewise, but since the end of 52 I just haven't really felt there's been much Renee Montoya to the Question - it's as if she's abandoned her actual identity and is now just the faceless detective, which while appropriate, I guess, is a real shame, since it means there's really no uniqueness to her character any more. The backup stories consist of a brief but cute 'lil Gotham' bit, and the second half of a short story featuring Oracle and some freaky vampire woman called the Looker - it's not as easily accessible as the main story, but it does have highly eye-catching art, so points for style.
