Another week, another $25 well spent on the funny books. What have we this week, you say? Well funny you should ask....
Civil War: Front Line #4 (Marvel) - Three ongoing comics in one, and an excellent supplement to the tightly written Civil War. If only House of M had more exposition like this. The first story interests me the least. Two journalists running around, one with no-name heroes I couldn't care less about, and the other being stalked by the Green Goblin. It's so-so. The better story of the three is the tale of poor powerless Speedball, getting his ass kicked in prison because of his involvment in the Stamford incident. Never thought I'd pay hard-earned money for a comic about a C-List character getting beaten up in prison, but here we are. Finally, the Sleeper Cell story is very intriguing. The whole idea of Atlantis Invading is a good one to me, and I'm anxious to see where it goes. I could do without the final pages of this book that compares the events of Civil War to actual historical battles. It just cheapens what the battles were fough for and makes Marvel look extremely pompous. Still, good stuff. "B"
Civil War: Runaways and Young Avengers #1 (Marvel) - There's no way I wasn't going to buy this, being a fan of the respective titles crossing over here. But it's not written by Runaways mastermind Brian K. Vaughn or Young Avengers uber-scribe Allan Heinberg. And that really shows. The runaways aren't as clever or witty as they usually are, and a few of them seem outlandishly out of character. (Why is Xavin a prick now?) The young Avengers aren't as heavily featured so their inaccuracies aren't as perceptible. Still, while not the worst comic ever (it's pretty solid, actually) I can't help but wonder what Vaughn or Heinberg would have brought to the table. "B"
Wolverine #44 (Marvel) - Woo. More Civil War. But this is by far the best Wolverine I've read since Mark Millar's "Enemy of the State" a few years ago. I was at first pretty mad that generic vaguely powered villains had entered the fray, but, surprise surprise, they're part of the Atlantean Invasion building over in Front Line. Very nice cross-promotion storytelling guys. And you don't even need to read one to enjoy the other. That's the way I likes my books; tightly editted, wonderfully written, and filled with blood and violence. I'd say I hope Marc Guggenheim didn't stop writing this title for a good long while, but he's being replaced by Jeph "I'm the Fucking Man and I used to work for Lost" Loeb. It's a good future for Weapon X. "A-"
X-Men #189 (Marvel) - This on the other hand does suffer from the vaguely powered villains syndrome. I do not care at all about Carey's team of uninteresting Mexican supervillains. What's worse is that they seem to be non-mutant but non-human, an idea that has been done to death and never particularly well. I'm probably giving up this book until this arc ends. Chris Bachalo's hideous and unintelligble art doesn't help. "D+"
New Avengers #22 (Marvel) - More Civil War! (Last one of the week though...) It makes me sad that so soon after launching the New Avengers that they're being split apart. It was a nice little team book that had some flaws but also had some kick ass moments in it. New Avengers annual springs to mind, as does the beginning of The Collective arc (not so much the very confusing 'return Magneto's powers' ending.... but i digress). Anyway, this issue focuses on Luke Cage, who if you don't know, is a hard-hitting black guy with unbreakable skin who fights for the hood. So you can kind of guess that he's anti-registration in the whole Civil War thing. Iron Man shows up to push his buttons and a huge fight with SHIELD ensues. Perfectly readable with some very nice touching moments between Cage and his neighbors as well as with his family. Good shit. "A-"
Action Comics #841 (DC) - Ugh. I just started reading weekly Superman comics and I'm already going to have to stop. I can list off a great deal of reasons why this sucks. One, Fabian Nicieza is involved. Two, half of the issue is about Nightwing and Firestorm, who I don't care about at all. Three, absurd alien robot spiders appear out of nowhere and they speak in broken English and go about stealing famous chruches to sell to some giant extraterrestial Auctioneer. Good luck with that. "D"
Fifty Two: Week 12 (DC) - I guess it had to happen sometime. When you have a book that's being told every single week for a year, the creative team is going to lose steam at some point. It's not that this issue isn't good, it's just kind of bland. Lots of build up and not a lot of payoff. Sure, some new superchick named Isis joins the Marvel family, but... meh. Why do I care? I do like all the Elongated Man stuff, though. Slow building, but he's a character who gets a bad rap and he's being well portrayed here. I just want to see something of use happen. "B-"
Batman #655 (DC) - This, however, is quite the opposite of the other DC books I picked up this week. Let's see, it starts with Commissioner Gordon getting poisoned, the Joker gets shot in the face, there's two Batmans for a second, Alfred teaches Batman how to be Bruce Wayne, and we end with a child who claims to be Bruce's son. And it's written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Andy Kubert. Yeah. It's fucking good. "A"
That's all for now, people who aren't reading this. Enjoy.
