If you pay attention, comics will teach you many important lessons, and this week, we learn that even a man wearing what is essentially an extremely garish quilt can be taken down with the judicious application of a kick to the face.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle when it comes to the Internet’s Most Uniformed Comics Reviews!

Here’s what I got this week…

And here’s what I thought about ’em!

Comics

Age of the Sentry #3: Jeff Parker makes me jealous.

This probably doesn’t surprise anyone; if you’ve ever met Jeff Parker, you know that he’s tall, handsome, and unfailingly nice to his fans, whereas I’m more like an extremely high-strung tree sloth. That’s not where the jealousy comes from though–or at least, not most of it. No, that comes from the fact that Parker writes the comics I wish I could write. There’s not an issue of Age of the Sentry yet that I’ve been able to read without thinking “man, I wish I’d thought of that,” and this time out–with its story of super-powered mountain men who strike it rich to become Hillbillionaires–is no exception.

But here’s the thing: The book’s so darn good that the jealousy doesn’t last too long before I’m back to the joy and amazement that comes with reading the Apex of the Artform. And it’s not just Parker, either: Cowriter Paul Tobin and artist Colleen Coover–or to use their Official Celebrity Couple Name, Pauleen Toover–bring more than his share of the fun to the second story, giving us something I honestly never thought I’d see: A team-up between the Sentry and Millie the Model. It’s just phenomenal stuff, and it’s shaping up to be one of my favorite series of the year.

Amazing Spider-Man #578: Given the amount of time I’ve spent reviewing the last few issues of Amazing, it should probably have become pretty apparent that I tend to think about Spider-Man stories more than just about anything else I read. Although to be fair, that’s also a function of the fact that they come at the beginning of the alphabet, so I get around to reviewing them while I’m still awake and before I descend into sentences like “Zatanna good, like legs and magic stuff.”

Even so, I do tend to take the Spider-Man books a little more seriously than other titles, not only because he’s been one of my favorite characters since I was a kid, but because I truly believe that when he’s good, he’s the best. And this one is a textbook example of how to do Spider-Man right.

For starters, there’s Mark Waid, who–besides being, you know, Mark Waid–is a guy that I’ve been wanting to see on a Spider-Man book since he did a great Spidey/Torch bit during his phenomenal run on Fantastic Four with Mike Wieringo. It’s no surprise that a guy with his track record knows how to put together a fun comic, but he manages to pull off the neat trick of hitting all the familiar beats of a classic Spider-Man story–from the way Peter Parker has to ditch the buxom, red-haired model on the subway to the thrill of the last-page reveal–while still keeping everything fresh and exciting.

But again, just like last week’s issue, the real star here is the art. Marcos Martin is a treasure, folks, and while everybody already knew that from his work on the Paper Doll story with Dan Slott, he’s still in top form here, doing pages with everything from a wondeful, kinetic sense of motion and timing–watch for the burger on page three–to his detailed, claustrophobic subway crowd. He’s great, and while his art alone would make the book worth reading, the way he pulls off every beat of Waid’s scrpit is just a joy to read.

Again, you might want to take that with a grain of salt, because like I said: my emotions about Spider-Man stories tend to get a little more extreme than they probably should. When they’re bad, I hate them, but when they’re good, I don’t think there’s a whole lot out there that’s better. And this is one of the latter.

Firebreather #3: And speaking of things that I love to an almost irrational extreme, we have Phil Hester and Andy Kuhn’s Firebreather, which, as far as teen super-hero books go, is right up there with Impulse and Invincible as one of the best. In case you haven’t been reading it–or you’ve missed it when I’ve talked about it before–the premise of Firebreather is one of those great high concepts that I love: What would happen if a rampaging, kaiju-esque dragon mated with a normal human woman and they had a kid who was trying to lead the life of a normal American teenager?

Don’t get me wrong: It’s a crazy idea, but Hester’s scripts work with it amazingly well, and the best part is the clash between how Duncan’s mother and their normal suburban life, and the upbringing he gets from his world-conquering monster of a father. It’s… Well, it’s not exactly played straight–there’s a lot of inherent comedy in that sort of thing, and Hester doesn’t let it go unremarked by any stretch of the imagination–but even with its built-in strangeness, it’s presented in a way that feels authentic and relatable in the way that the best teen hero books are.

And in this issue, a dragon fights a robot, and this is one of the few times that something like that is actually as awesome as you want it to be.

The Punisher #64: Well, on the one hand, Gregg Hurwitz’s scripts for Punisher still read like pretty much every action movie from the 80s, right down to the momentary emotional breakdown that’s quickly forgotten and doesn’t actually address any of the conflicts within the character and the lurking super-badass boss in the shadows (in this case Jigsaw, but it might as well be Bennett from Commando) and his attendant ethnic stereotypes.

But on the other hand, the Punisher totally kills a dude with a shark in this one.

Folks, I am torn.

Uncanny X-Men #504: Despite the fact that I’ve been reading and enjoying Uncanny–especially since the new direction that began with the team’s relocation to San Francisco, storywise–I haven’t really felt the need to review it because… well, because it’s X-Men, and odds are, you already know whether you’re going to be reading it or not based on that fact alone.

I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t at least point out that in this issue, Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson deliver what is unquestionably the Sensational Character Rediscovery of 2008 with the addition of Dr. Nemesis, a Golden Age character who co-created the Human Torch, fought the Invaders, and then spent the intervening time building new eyes and then using them to hunt down cloned Nazi super-soldiers and shoot them in the face with his guns made of science. And really, I don’t think I’m overstating matters when I say that a crotchety old super-genius hitman is exactly what the franchise has been lacking all these years.

Trades

Crogan’s Vengeance: Longtime ISB readers might recall that this is one that I’ve been excited about since I met Chris Schweizer back at HeroesCon and heard the guys from Oni describe what he wanted to do: A sixteen-part series of graphic novels, each one focused on one member of the illustrious Crogan family through the ages. It sounded like a neat concept, and given what I saw of the book back then, it’s been something that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. What surprised me, though, was that the finished product is actually even better than I expected.

Simply put, it’s great, fun comics, telling the story of a reluctant–but very skilled–pirate, related as an object lesson to the latest generation of the family after an unfortunate encounter with a neighbor’s birdfeeder. That was, one of the things that surprised me the most, actually: the idea that the Crogan family wasn’t just a group of luminaries from the past, but that there would be a connection to the modern day that to tie things together. But while that’s a nice touch that I wasn’t expecting, the real action here is on the high seas, and that’s where Schweizer excels.

I imagine this is a comparison he’s going to get a lot, but his art reminded me a lot of Jeff Smith’s Bone: Strong lines and cartoony, expressive features against detailed backgrounds that add up to beautiful pages of stark, black and white linework. And while Schweizer did a lot of research for the book, the script is organic and doesn’t fall into the trap of letting the research become the focus.

But like the man says, you don’t have to take my word for it: There’s a preview on Schweizer’s website that, at 26 pages, is longer than most comics. So give it a read and then pick it up. It’s worth it.

Spider-Man: Kraven’s First Hunt HC:

IT’S A FAUX HAWK YOU BIRD BRAIN.

And that’s the week. As always, any questions about something I picked up or dodged this week can be left in the comments below.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and figure out what exactly Lady Kraven is a new look between.

It’s that time again!

Yes, it’s Thursday night, and with another round of foot-to-face jaw-jacking behind us, it’s time once again for another round of the Internet’s Most Smashing Comics Reviews! But first, a quick reminder about Planet X, the retro-future Sci-Fi action comic my pals Jim and Trey are doing over at Zuda with Animal Man’s Chas Truog:

Click To Read!

If you haven’t already, click the image above to head over to the Zuda website to give their first eight pages a read, and if you like what you see, throw ’em a vote so we can get some more! And of course, while you’re at it, check out some of the other projects they’ve got going.

Now then, to get back to the stuff you have to pay for, here’s what put a dent in my wallet this week…

And here’s what I thought of ’em!

Comics

Amazing Spider-Man #577: With as much as I’ve been griping about the last few issues of Amazing, there are probably a few of you out there wondering why I don’t just go ahead and drop the book. It’s a fair question, but issues like this are exactly the reason I stick with it.

To be honest, it’s not the best Spider-Man story I’ve ever read, and while it’s certainly a refreshing change after the nonsense of the past few issues and the annual, it’s only a little better than average. But at the same time, it is better, and while Zeb Wells was one of the Spider-Man writers that I was expecting the least out of, but his work on the title’s ended up being consistently enjoyable, and this issue’s certainly his best. It reads like a classic Marvel Team-Up issue between the Spidey and the Punisher–which, for me anyway, is certainly not a bad thing–but I’ll confess that I was genuinely surprised that after teasing the reader with a Hulked-out Frank Castle, Wells goes in a different direction that, while not as exciting as “HULK PUNISH!” on the surface, works far better as a character moment.

The real draw, however, is artist and 21st Century Hunk of the Month Paolo Rivera, who is absolutely phenomenal on this issue. It’s not just that he’s got a great, fresh style and expressive faces, but that he’s one of the few artists in a long while to really get the visual aspects of Spider-Man. Grab the issue and look at the fight scenes: Spider-Man’s feet do not touch the ground while he’s in action. He’s in the air, on the ceiling, on the wall, sideways, upside down, but never on the floor, and it gives him a sense of dynamic motion that nobody outside of Marcos Martin has been able to bring to the book in the past few years.

It’s gorgeous, and thirty-two pages of Rivera’s art–plus a six-page Joe Kelly/Barry Kitson backup, if you’re into that sort of thing–is well worth the cost, even with the extra dollar price jack for double-sized issue.

Batman: Cacophony #1: This is not the worst comic book I have ever read. It’s not the worst Batman comic by far, and it’s actually not the worst Kevin Smith comic book either, as that title is still held by Spider-Man/Black Cat, and the less said about that one, the better. So no, not the worst by a long shot.

That said, it is still pretty Goddamn terrible.

Seriously, I don’t even know where to begin with this thing, but I guess I’ll start by saying that for the first three pages, where Smith sets things up with the story of a laid-off Arkham guard selling secrets to the underworld, it’s actually pretty good. It’s a nice setup, and it works well in the context of a world that can’t seem to keep its most dangerous criminals locked up for more than a couple of story arcs. But then you hit page four, and once the Joker starts talking about his pubic hair, everything goes straight to hell.

Batman: Cacophony is what you’d get if you asked a twelve year old to write his idea of an “adult” comic: Everyone wears trenchcoats so that you know they’re super-badass, and there’s a string of sex jokes–continuing through the almost obligatory anal sex joke right on through Mr. Zsasz talking about cutting his penis because that’s the only spot he has left–that’s just embarrassing for everyone concerned. Not because they’re sex jokes, but–again–because they’re the sex jokes a kid trying to sound edgy and grown up writes in his fan-fiction. Which is pretty much what this is, but without the level of quality control you get from the online community that actually wants to read about the Mad Hatter trying to fuck the Joker.

And the rest of it’s just as awful. I actually did enjoy Batman’s appearance in Smith’s run on Green Arrow, but the more I look at this thing, the more I realize that was because Batman kept his mouth shut for most of that one. I mean, dialogue’s supposed to be Smith’s forte, but seriously, the easiest way to improve this thing would be to just take out Smith’s ham-fisted narration, where Batman grunts his way through the laughably maudlin (“Don’t worry, kids… the monster can’t hurt you anymore” and “Two people who somehow found each other in an otherwise horrible world. Like my PARENTS”) or the downright stupid (“I crash Zsasz’s unholy briss,” in which “bris” is misspelled, and “Baruch haba, SCUMBAG,” which I think speaks for itself). Cut those out, and the fight with Zsasz at least gets readable, but then you’ve got to deal with… well, with the rest of it.

Which of course brings us to Onomatopoeia. Now, I’ve mentioned before that I actually like Onomatopoeia as a villain, but probably not for the reason I’m supposed to. To me, he just seems like one of those goofy Silver Age villains that got a dark and gritty revamp in the ’90s, only there was never any Silver Age Onomatopoeia running around robbing the Radio Museum or whatever, which somehow makes him even funnier. But he’s not exactly the sort of character that I can buy as presenting a legitimate threat to Batman, and Smith knows that, so he goes to one of the oldest, laziest, and worst tricks in the comics writer’s handbook, and has him saunter into the story and take out someone who does: in this case, Deadshot. It’s a cheap trick that panders to the same crowd that wanders around talking about how Gambit could totally kill the Silver Surfer by charging up his board, spouting trivia without learning that there’s a greater narrative structure at work. He is essentially telling us that Onomatopoeia is as powerful as ten Gokus.

As for the art, well… Look. I’m not trying to rag on Walt Flanagan here, because let’s be honest: If I was an artist and my friend was writing a Batman story and he wanted me to draw it, I’d totally do it. And if Smith wanted Flanagan for the job, there’s no reason for DC to say no, because, c’mon, it’s not like any Kevin Smith fans are going to be upset that Steve-Dave’s sidekick from Mallrats is drawing Batman, and to be honest, he actually does a heck of a lot better than I expected. It’s a fantastic opportunity for him and I’ve got nothing but love for a guy who’s chasing the dream, but none of that changes the fact that there are a lot of sections where the art is amateurish. Nothing glaring, but there are rookie mistakes like the panel where Onomatopoeia’s holding two water pistols in his tiny hands at the end of a pair of very out of proportion arms, and in a book with a company’s flagship character, that stuff sticks out.

So for those of you who didn’t have the patience to get through seven paragraphs about this thing, here’s the short version: It is rough, but since it’s Kevin Smith writing Batman, I’m pretty sure that most of you guys are going to pick it up anyway, because, hell: I did, and I knew better going into it. Fortunately, my curiosity’s been taken care of, and when the next two issues roll out sometime in 2011, I can be sure to avoid those.

I Hate Gallant Girl #1: Okay, so full disclosure here: Back when Shadowline was having their Super-Heroine Contest, I entered and–obviously–lost, with a project that’ll hopefully see the light of day sometime soon over at The Action Age. Still, despite the fact that my genius wasn’t appreciated in its time, I did check out the ones that made it through, and out of all the finalists, I Hate Galaxy Girl (as it was originally called) certainly sounded like the most fun. Oddly enough, it didn’t win either, and yet, here we are with the first issue, while the winning book has yet to come out.

In any case, here’s the deal: Kat Cahill’s I Hate Gallant Girl is about Renee Tepete, the powered hater of the title who lost a super-hero beauty contest to a prettier but less powerful girl, and is then offered the humiliating job of working as the new Gallant Girl’s stand-in when they need somebody to handle the grunt work. It’s a very fun premise that could lend itself to some great, comedic action, and while the first issue deals largely in setup, Cahill and artist Seth Damoose still show a heck of a lot of potential, and I’m pretty interested in seeing where it goes from here.

Jack Staff #19: This week brings us another long-awaited issue of my favorite comic, and while it’s fantastic as usual, ISB readers might notice that this one has a little something extra. Specifically, it’s got me!

Or at least, it’s got my name and the address of one of my reviews of the book, dutifully namechecked by Friend of the ISB Benito Cereno in a message board post about The Butler, who is unquestionably the Sensational Character Find of 2008. In any case, it was a nice surprise, as one doesn’t usually expect to see their own name crop up in a comic they love as much as I love Jack Staff, but the real draw, as always, is Paul Grist who expertly juggles the various fun plot threads that make up the book. It’s great stuff, and as always, it’s one of the few books that disappoints me every time I finish it because I always want there to be more.

But that’s old news, right? Right.

Trades

Ghost Rider: Hell Bent & Heaven Bound: You know, I was originally going to suggest that this book ought to be titled “Hell Bent & Heaven Sent,” but I’m pretty sure the ISB hit critical mass for Elvis Costello references back on Monday.

In any case, I knocked this one out over lunch today, and while I’d heard a lot of good things about critical darling Jason Aaron’s run on the book, the impression I was left with was this: Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider is what would happen if Michael Bay directed Preacher.

Yeah, I know, but bear with me here: At its heart, once you strip away the trappings of the characters, Preacher is the story of a country-ass redneck with an unstoppable super-power who wanders around trying to find the best way to pursue his vendetta against heaven, and that is exactly what Aaron’s here. Except that in the grand tradition that makes Marvel Comics Marvel Comics, he’s doing it with what has to be the least amount of subtlety possible by adding as many explosions as he can fit and having it star a flaming skeleton in a leather jacket who rides a motorcycle that is also made of fire.

This is not, by any means, a bad thing.

In fact, it actually works out to be really fun,with Aaron taking the innate over-the-top craziness of a character like Ghost Rider and applying it to the rest of the world. I mean, there’s a story here that involves a cannibalistic funeral director whose ancestors are responsible for a haunted highway, and brother, he’s thrown in almost as an afterthought because Johnny Blaze already has his hands full with a gang of gun-toting hit-nurses. It’s non stop, and that’s exactly the way a Ghost Rider comic oughtta be.

And that’s the week! As always, if you’ve got any questions about something I read or skipped over this week, feel free to ask about it in the comments section below, and I’ll do my best not to respond with a hate-filled 900-word essay about it.

But I make no promises.

You know what I like about Jay Faerber’s comics?

They always put their best foot forward!

Groan if you must, folks, but before we get around to another round of the Internet’s Most Combustible Comics Reviews, a quick announcement: Jim Shelley and Trey Causey, two of the truest Friends of the ISB, have just gotten into this round of the Zuda competition with their entry, Planet X!

Click To Read!

Some of you might already know Jim as the mad mastermind of the FlashBack Universe–soon to host three original stories by yours truly–but Trey’s another good pal of mine, and they’ve teamed up with Chas Truog, who you might know as the artist of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, to do a story that they’re calling “Retro Future Spy-Fi A-Go-Go,” and it’s something that I’m pretty excited about. Seriously, give those guys half a chance and they’ll blow your mind with some great, fun stuff, so head over to Zuda to check out their first eight pages, and if you like what you see, show Trey and the Beyonder some love with a vote.

Now then, on to the reviews! Here’s what I picked up this week…

And here’s what I thought of it!

Comics

Amazing Spider-Man #576: As hard as it might be to believe in retrospect, there was a time when I would’ve listed Joe Kelly as one of my favorite writers, hands down. Of course, this was around the same time that I thought Metallica would “always rule” and D-Generation X was the greatest thing on the planet, but bear with me here.

At the time, Kelly was writing Deadpool, which was the heir apparent to the funny, character-driven super-hero crown that had been vacated by the end of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League. Seriously, #11, where Kelly and artist Pete Woods insert ‘Pool into a classic Lee/Romita issue of Amazing Spider-Man is a great bit of fun with retro comics that was years ahead of its time.

But then he left Marvel for DC, and while his run on Action Comics started off strong, it eventually fizzled, and was followed up by a string of bombs that included a damn near unreadable run on JLA and its actually unreadable spin-off, the monumentally godawful Justice League Elite, and now he’s finally landed back at the House of Ideas as a part of the alleged “brain trust” behind Spider-Man.

I say all this to illustrate a point, which is that there was a time when putting Joe Kelly, on Spider-Man would’ve thrilled me to no end, and probably would’ve been the perfect outlet for a guy whose best work was with a wisecracking protagonist with an underlying tragedy. But unfortunately, that time isn’t now, and judging by the last two issues of Amazing, it hit its expiration date sometime around 1999.

The problem here is… Well, it’s everything except the art, and that depends on your feelings about Chris Bachalo. Kelly’s Spider-Man is a petulant, ineffectual whiner (even by Spider-Man standards), the beats of the plot that deal with the gang members were cliché when Cloak and Dagger were dealing with them, and the revamp of Hammerhead that started in the ASM Special is almost so bad that I’d think Kelly was trying to parody Geoff Johns if it wasn’t presented with such sloppy, ham-handed earnestness.

It’s no good, and contributes to the uneven tone that stands as the biggest problem with the title. I guess the theory here is that the reader’s more likely to follow it from a good story to whatever comes next, and, well, it got me to give Kelly another shot, but that’s not a mistake I plan on making again.

Final Crisis: Resist: You know, at first I wasn’t sure about Justice League Mascot/Shirt Collector/Semi-Professional Slacker Snapper Carr being a super-secret agent of Checkmate, but about halfway through, when this thing turns into the story of Snapper Carr bopping around a world taken over by Darkseid and banging a catgirl, it starts to make a little more sense.

Seriously though, as much as this one feels like another unnecessary angle to fill the time between issues of the actual mini-series, I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying it, especially given how much of a letdown FC: Submit was. I mean, let’s face it: Greg Rucka’s crossover-centric work has been pretty rough in the past. It’s tempting to assume that it’s just because he’s not cut out for the super-hero genre, given that his best stuff tends to come from either other genres, like Queen & Country, or books that only skirt the edge of super-heroics, like Gotham Central. But hell, the guy did write Batman, and while it’s essentially a spy story, Checkmate–like Suicide Squad before it–was never shy about the fact that it was a spy book set in a super-hero universe. The crossover stuff, though… Brother. I mean, Renee Montoya fighting a bunch of assassins over a book called the Crime Bible? There’s no reason that shouldn’t have been awesome, but it was not very good, to the point where I haven’t bothered to pick up anything since.

This one, though, is more like a Checkmate story than anything else, and as such, it succeeds in the ways that Submit failed: The story trucks along at a decent pace that shows things we haven’t seen before, and while it does end up in your standard issue We-Few-We-Happy-Few speech from Mr. Terrific, it’s worth it to see Snapper Car pistolwhipping somebody.

Guardian of Metropolis Special #1: Even the most die-hard Starman fan would be hard-pressed to deny that James Robinson’s dialogue can get a little florid at times, but Jiminy Christmas, this thing has got to take the cake on that front. I mean really, even if you’re used to characters walking around and speaking to each other like they’re trying to get into Grad School, there’s chunks of dialogue in here that will blow your mind. And I’m not even talking about the two security guards on page two that are doing their best impressions of Vladimir and Estragon, either. Here’s a bit of dialogue from Jimmy Olsen from page six:

“You begin the beguine in Salem? I didn’t even know Cadmus had a place there.”

Folks, I’ll be honest with you here: I have no idea what a “beguine” is, and while this might just be me copping an ego, I’m pretty sure that JIMMY OLSEN should not be using words that I have never heard before in my life. Admittedly, I don’t work for a Major Metropolitan Newspaper, and I don’t have anything against learning new words from comics, but being twenty-six years old and learning one from Jimmy Olsen is a little hard to take.

Okay, I just went and looked it up, and apparently a “beguine” is “a dance in bolero rhythm that originated in Martinique,” and I’m sorry, James Robinson, but I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one until I see a flashback sequence where Lois and Clark get Jimmy a Word-A-Day calendar for Christmas. A dance in bolero rhythm. I mean really now.

Invincible Iron Man #7: As you might be able to tell from the review above–and the fact that I wrote a medium-length novella about Flash Thompson during last week’s reviews–I tend to take Spider-Man stories a little more seriously than other comics, which is probably more than I really should. I’m not sure why–I mean, I like Spider-Man a hell of a lot, but I don’t usually have the same reaction to stories with my other favorite characters–but if I was pressed, I’d probably say it’s because there’s no need for there to ever be a bad Spider-Man story. Sure, if you do enough of them, there’s bound to be a bad story with everybody, but the truly bad Spider-Man stories are all bad in the same way, in that they manage to screw up what’s so perfect and appealing about the character, which is so easy to get right.

Or maybe I just think it’s easy, because when it’s pulled off, it seems so effortless.

Case in point, Spidey’s guest appearance in this week’s Invincible Iron Man, in which Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca give us a team-up between the guy everybody likes, and the guy everybody used to like until he started acting like a total dick to all of his friends. But here, like the issue of Invincible Iron Man where Iron Man runs into Thor, Fraction meets the old conflict head-on and uses it to tell a story that reclaims a bit of the humanity that Iron Man’s lost over the past couple of years.

Of course, it’s not perfect: As pal Chad was quick to point out, Spider-Man’s line about how he’s “never seen destruction on such a scale” doesn’t hold a lot of water in a world where the entire island of Manhattan was just obliterated by the events of World War Hulk, and the vague re-masking of Spider-Man via demonic mindwipe makes his relationship with Iron Man a tricky field to navigate: we know Peter worked for Tony Stark, but since Stark hired him because he’s Spider-Man and built him a suit of armor but now he doesn’t know who he is but he remembers that Peter used to work for him and you know what? It’s a mess. But Fraction does us all a favor by doing his best to skirt that segment of it, and by the time you get past the first few pages, the story’s so fun that it hardly even matters anymore.

It’s a rare comic that manages to show the characters with the kind of humanity that we see here–especially given that they’ve been on opposite sides of a pretty major conflict–while still having them fight the Big Wheel and the Terrible Tinkerer’s Rocket Wheelchair. But needless to say, it’s a good one.

Marvel Zombies 3 #2: “A robot, not a ho-bot.”

Oh Fred Van Lente, you are a delight.

Punisher War Journal Annual #1: I’ll be honest with you, guys: This is the goofiest damn Punisher story I have ever read, and in case you forgot, I have read them all.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I thought it was a hoot, but there’s no getting around the fact that this is a story where a guy figures out how to make a drug from the dreams of a little girl and doses the Punisher to the gills, which means that this is also a story where Frank Castle meets a beautiful unicorn and shoots it in the kneecaps.

I think you get where I’m going with this. A hoot, I tell ya.

And that’s the week. As always, any questions or concerns, such as a discussion of how hard the first issue of Kull rocks (answer: Pretty hard!) can be left in the comments section below.

Boo!

Yes, by the time you read this, Halloween will be in full effect, but since it’s Thursday night now–though the midnight hour is indeed close at hand–that means it’s time for another round of the Internet’s Most Diabolical Comics Reviews to separate the tricks from the treats!

Here’s what I picked up this week…

…and here’s what I thought about ’em!

Comics

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1: Those of you who obsessively track my comics purchases may have noticed that last week’s issue of Amazing Spider-Man was the first one since Brand New Day began that I’ve skipped out on, and since someone asked about it, I figure this is as good a place as any to discuss.

So here’s the short version on Amazing #574: I might be judging the issue a little harshly since it was the return of Marc Guggenheim after the hoot that was Dan Slott and John Romita Jr’s “New Ways To Die” (because come on, Anti-Venom? That’s hilarious!), but the fact of the matter is that Flash Thompson never needs to appear again. As much as I’m a guy who spends a lot of his time looking backwards and celebrating pieces of comics that have fallen by the wayside over the years, I recognize that there are things that have outlived their usefulness, and brother, he’s one of them. He exists solely as the counterpoint to a teenage Peter Parker, the school bully who frustrates Peter with his hero-worship of Spider-Man, and then matures along with Peter and grows to accept him as Our Hero becomes more comfortable with himself. That’s it, and while it essentially maks him the male Lois Lane, it is his entire function as a character, and the more he’s removed from that specific idiom, the more ridiculous he gets.

Seriously, look at what’s happened to the character in the past few years, a litany of plot twists that reads like they were written with a sledgehammer: He gets injured in a car crash because, having missed that episode of Saved By The Bell, he was driving drunk. Then he gets liquored up by the Green Goblin and gets in another crash, coming out this time as a catatonic albatross to be hung around Peter’s neck. Then he makes a miraculous recovery that somehow also leaves him a partial amnesiac who once again reprises the role of a high school bully which… Really? They might as well have just written “HERE WE GO AGAIN!” at the bottom of that page. And now, in a callback to when Stan Lee shipped him off to Vietnam that works as the ultimate in subtle commentary, he’s an injured Iraq War veteran, which makes him Capital-R RELEVANT.

Not to get too deep into this–or at least, any deeper than I already am–but that’s pretty much the opposite of what I want to see in the comics. Using a fictional character that has been plugged into what appear to be completely random stories as a cipher to represent the sacrifice of American soldiers in a real-life war–in a story where the message is that their acts are directly inspired by fictional characters in an oroborous of heroism–is the kind of thing that takes great skill to pull off, and when you’ve got a fucking premature ejaculation joke on page four (because his name is FLASH, get it?! Ha ha! That’s edgy!), I think we can all agree that “skill” is not the primary focus here.

So no, I didn’t much care for it.

Anyway, onto this week’s Annual, and I’ll warn those of you who are already nodding off after 550 words about Flash Thompson: I didn’t care for this one either. This time, though, the reasoning’s a little easier to explain.

One of the things that gets on my nerves in storytelling–not just in comics, but storytelling in general–is when something’s presented as a mystery when it’s really not. See, there’s a difference between being a mystery and just being mysterious, and when you’re dealing with the former, it presents a problem–and this is the important part–that can be solved. A mystery, such as asking “Who is Jackpot” and then offering up “clues” such as the simultaneous introduction of another beautiful redhead with an interest in crime fighting, should make sense in retrospect once the big reveal’s been made. But with this issue, that’s not what happens. Who is Jackpot? Oh, she’s just some girl. Some girl who apparently looks enough like Mary Jane that Peter–who, if you’ll remember, was in a “civil union” with MJ for a while–is fooled into thinking that it’s her. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t necessarily want Jackpot to be Mary Jane or Carlie, but if there’s a mystery here, it’s one that doesn’t play fair and relies too much on entirely unnecessary red herrings and a deus ex machina ending that makes me care even less than when we started.

To be fair, though, the artwork is fantastic.

Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch: Considering that this is the first Hellboy story to be written and drawn by Mike Mignola in something like 26 years, I think it’s safe to say that expectations were running pretty high, and… Well, this is the kind of book that meets your expectations exactly, and that’s sort of the problem.

Make no mistake, this is not a bad comic, but In the Chapel of Moloch reads like a Greatest Hits album: It’s everything you want to see from a Hellboy story–from creepy villains and two-fisted monster-fighting to Hellboy’s laconic dialogue and Mignola’s beautiful art–but by the same token, it’s everything we’ve already seen in other stories, only this time around it’s all done by the numbers, which makes it, by Hellboy standards, pretty unremarkable.

That said, an unremarkable Hellboy comic by Mike Mignola is still a Hellboy comic by Mike Mignola, and it’s worth picking up, even for a die-hard fan like me. If you’re new to the character, however, I imagine this one’ll make a nice place to jump on and test the waters to get a good picture of the entire series in miniature. Just keep in mind that there are other, better Hellboy stories that may or may not involve the title character punching the living heck out of a Goddamn Nazi Frankenstein Monkey. Just sayin’.

Incredible Hercules #122: I’ll talk more about this when I get to the hardcover below, but just so you don’t think it’s all negative around here, I just wanted to point out that this issue contains this panel…

…and may therefore be the greatest Marvel comic on the stands.

Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #41: And speaking of the greatest Marvel comics, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this month’s MA Fantastic Four, by ISB favorites Paul Tobin and David Hahn, features none other than Devil Dinosaur, which means that, no matter how remote, Marvel Adventures Devil Dinosaur is now a possibility.

Now, I’m just going to go ahead and put this out there, Marvel: I would pay you to let me write an all ages book about a dinosaur from a volcano and his human buddy who roll around the Mesozoic Era–or the future, I’m not picky–just kicking the living crap out of cavemen and space aliens. Devil Dinosaur fights the Celestials in space. Devil Dinosaur vs. Kang. Devil Dinosaur vs. the Council of Cross-Time Moon Boys. Seriously. Don’t answer now. Think about it for a while.

I’ll wait.

Secret Invasion: Thor #3: I don’t know how it is for you guys, but since I usually end up reading my comics during the downtime at work, I’ll occasionally have moments where I read something and then immediately have to go tell someone about it because I just can’t keep it to myself. Today, I had one of those moments, and it went like this:

“Hah! Hey, dude, did you read this?”

“Yeah.”

“They dropped a city on her.”

“Yes.”

“Like, the whole thing. They dropped a GOD-City on a Super-Skrull.”

“Yes.”

“Man, I love comic books.”

And I do, mostly because guys like Matt Fraction and Doug Braithwaite are ensuring that they’re a medium in which I can see the God of Thunder and his pal the Space Horse do something so awesome that Volstagg–whom I remind you is the Lion of Asgard–has to step in and break it down for everybody. Not since Thor hit Hercules with the island of Manhattan has the use of a city as a weapon been so thrilling.

Trades

Empowered v.4: Ever since it first hit shelves last year, I’ve been pretty vocal in my support of Adam Warren’s bondage-heavy sexy super-hero shennanigans, so to avoid repeating myself–and since I’ve already blown whatever claim I had to brevity with my novella-length complaints about Spider-Man up at the top of the post–just assume that I said all that stuff again here, pointed out that this volume featured something of a tonal shift towards more long-form stories and more (relatively) Serious Drama along with a guy whose arms and legs had been replaced with katanas, and then reassured you that yes, you really oughtta buy this.

If only to see the Goddamn Maid Man, who may in fact be the Sensational Character Find of 2008.

Incredible Hercules: Secret Invasion HC: I’ve gone on at length about my affection for Incredible Herc–in fact, I’ve mentioned it in this very post–but the fact remains that it is probably the single best comic being put out by Marvel today. And considering that they also put out stuff like Ed Brubaker’s Daredevil, Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man and Jeff Parker’s Age of the Sentry, I think that’s saying something.

Still, even stacked up against those, I find that it’s Hercules that I tend to look forward to the most every time it comes out, and while the current story’s knocking it right out of the park, it’s this one that really sets the tone. One of the more interesting things for me as a reader is seeing what various creators do when they take part in a crossover, and like the best writers before them, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente use the conceit of Secret Invasion to springboard into something entirely more grand, sending a group of gods that includes a Jack Kirby creation, a member of Alpha Flight and the Japanese god of evil who speaks only in haiku to fight the Skrull Gods for the fate of the Earth.

Like I’ve said before, it’s downright Simonsonian, with a mix of action, comedy and adventure that’s darn near perfect. So if you haven’t, give it a read. It’s worth it.

And that’s the week. As always, any questions, such as whether Harold Sipe and Hector Casanova’s Screamland makes for an excellent Halloween read (yes) or if I’ll ever be able to stop saying “Nick Fury 2099 is right, Ghost Rider 2099!” (no) can be left in the comments section below.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

I know everyone’s expecting Drax and Cosmo the Space Dog here, but let’s be real: if there’s one thing better than kicking a Nazi in the face, it’s kicking a Nazi in the face with another Nazi’s foot while judo throwing the second Nazi.

Oh Atomic Robo. You make life worth living.

Yes, after two light weeks, we’ve finally gotten back on track around here, but before we get into the comics, a word of warning. Those of you who don’t live in the midlands of South Carolina may not know this, but it’s the week of the State Fair, which means that I went over there for lunch today and ate, among other things, two deep-fried Oreos and a deep-fried Reese’s peanut butter cup. So there’s a good chance that about halfway through tonight’s post, I’ll be lost to whatever you call it when you mix a heart attack and a diabetic coma.

That said, let’s get on with the Internet’s Most Batter-Dipped Comics Reviews! Here’s what I got this week…

And here’s what I thought of it!

Comics

Age of the Sentry #2: When the comics scholars of the future look back on today, they’re going to get to Age of the Sentry #2 and ask themselves one question: “Why did they even keep making comics after this one came out?” And they will ask themselves that because this is it, folks: This is the new apex of the art form, to which all others must be compared and, almost inevitably, fall short.

And I know this, because this is the very first panel.

Let’s do this by the numbers, shall we? That is one panel that contains:

1. A bear
2. That is both gigantic and wearing a tutu
3. Fighting two super-heroes
4. At the behest of a man with three brains
5. In a flying saucer that also has training wheels
6. While a robot priest looks on.

Now admittedly, the robot priest actually doesn’t show up for the rest of the story, but any disappointment about that is completely obliterated once we get to page two and find that Jeff Parker and Nick Dragotta have not only given us Harrison Oogar, the Caveman of Wall Street, but a story in which J. Jonah Jameson hires Truman Capote as a columnist to cover the Sentry’s worldwide battle with a rampaging super-bear. Yes: Truman Capote and J. Jonah Jameson. Together at last, just as Jah intended.

It’s everything I love about comics in one place, and with it, Parker and Dragotta (along with Paul Tobin and Mike Cho, who do the second story) have made me love the Sentry. Or, to be perfectly accurate, they’ve made me love the stand-in for Silver Age Superman that the Sentry works so well as, but even with the cracks in the retro facade that are leading to a bigger story for the character, they’ve made me want to know what happens to him. I mean, really: They’ve made me care about the Sentry, and that’s something that I thought was impossible three months ago. And yet, here we are with what might be the most fun comic since Nextwave. Read it. Love it.

Amazing Spider-Man #573: ¡Dios mio! ¡Es la primera aparición del Señor Frowny Pumpkin! And just in time for Halloween!

Unfortunately, despite his prominent placement on the cover, SFP–like the robot priest discussed above–doesn’t actually appear in the story. In fact, now that I’m flipping back through, the only pumpkin bombs that get tossed around seem distinctly happy about their work, which only begs the question of what manner melancholy can descend on a novelty explosive for such results. These are the questions I ask myself when I read my comics, which in turn is why I’m always surprised that anyone actually reads my reviews. But anyway, back to Spider-Man.

This issue caps off “New Ways to Die,” which was about as fun as a story could be while involving not only Venom–whose status as the epitome of the regrettable ’90s is matched only by Gambit–but his color-inverted doppelganger who cures cancer with his tentacles. It’s a premise that sounds absolutely ridiculous at first glance (and every subsequent glance, too), but Dan Slott pulls it off with the same sense of fun that runs through all of his stories, and nobody needs me to tell them that JRJr draws a darn fine Spider-Man. So yeah, I like it.

Then again, I also support gay marriage, but that’s a topic for when an issue by Marc Guggenheim actually comes out.

Fables #77: Ever since I found out that Bill Willingham was going to go ahead and do his planned ending for Fables without actually ending the comic, I’ve been curious about how it was going to turn out. After all, as much as the chance is there for the book to lose its direction after a peak like that and end up wandering around aimlessly until it grinds to a halt, there’s a certain kind of freedom that can come from getting out from underneath a big plan like that, and with this issue, it looks like we’re getting a taste of the latter.

Yes, for me at least, the big news in this issue was the introduction of Freddy and the Mouse, two characters who are pretty clearly stand-ins for Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the characters, F and the GM are essentially the Riggs and Murtaugh of the sword and sorcery set: A pair of mercenaries who get up to what can only be called “rollicking shennanigans.” I mean, there’s one story where they steal a nobleman’s entire house. Admittedly, it’s a small house–more of a cottage–but it is described as being well-stocked with the Lankhmar’s greatest collection of erotica, and being able to steal even a small building is a pretty mean feat when you get right down to it.

They’re fun characters, but unlike the familiar fairy-tale quantities that we’ve gotten for the past six years, they’re not the kind that you can plug into any story easily. It’s closer to when he uses Mowgli, who has a definite milieu that he’s drawn from, but it’s like if Conan suddenly showed up in the middle of things: They demand attention. In any case, I’m pretty excited about them, since they haven’t shown up in comics for a while, and even if Freddy and the Mouse were just off-brand versions that’re dead and gone by the next issue, it’s fun to have them around.

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2: You know, I’ve seen the phrase “continuity porn” thrown out here and there, but brother, I’ve never seen anything like this. Between a fight scene drawn by the inimitable George Perez that reads like Geoff Johns went through a set of archives making a checklist for villains–or, now that I think of it, just read through An Eye for an Eye and threw in his 31st Century “Justice League” for good measure–and a scene where the original Legion gets the same crystal ball that’s on the cover of the first JLA/JSA team-up to pull two other Legions from various continuities… Well, the mind boggles.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Me, I think it’s a hoot, although I will say this: I love the Legion. I love the Silver Age Legion, I love the Reboot Legion, I love the current Legion. I love that they’re all having a big crazy team-up, even if it means my favorite version’s last hurrah before they get chucked back into limbo again to make way for the return of Dawnstar. But seriously, I don’t care if he comes to the rescue with Bizarro Computo and Tyroc in tow, there is no way in hell that I will ever care about Sodam Yat, beyond wondering why there doesn’t appear to be anyone totally honest or totally fearless in the entire future.

Punisher #63: Well, that worked out pretty much exactly as expected, didn’t it? Only there was the added bonus of it being so monumentally emo that I’m surprised it didn’t come with one of those little sound chips that started playing Hawthorne Heights or something whenever you opened it.

Me, I’m more of a Slayer fan, but the problem here is that this issue reads like a storytelling trick and not a story. I said in my review of the last issue that the way things worked out–with Frank being set up and only made to think he killed the girl–would provide an easy out without addressing the actual problem, but even knowing that going in it was a stretch. Far be it from me to nitpick about realism in my comics–see the above endorsement of a book involving a giant atomic bear–but the Punisher of the MAX series is a different beast entirely, and when your story hinges on Frank Castle–Frank Castle, who has lived gunpowder and smoke for thirty years–not being able to tell the difference between firecrackers and gunfire, things start to get a little iffy.

What’s even stranger is the fact that, in the story as told, this is all used to give Frank a reason to go after the bad guys, which is something that we already have. We know from the beginning of the story that they’re killing young girls in horrible ways, and that’s bad enough to get the Punisher involved without a cheap psyche-out attempt at making it personal. Even worse, it undermines what the character’s been built around for the past eight years. As strange as it might sound, the Frank Castle of the MAX series under Garth Ennis isn’t driven by revenge for himself; he’s simply out to kill people who do bad things. Now, there are stories where that’s not the case–Up Is Down and Black Is White and The Cell spring to mind–but those are based around specific things, and one of them even ends with the Punisher talking about how it’s not revenge anymore, just a job to be done.

And yet, here we are with the Punisher intoning “she is dead” over and over, which really just gets laughable after a while, and resolving that now he’s going to kill them EXTRA HARD. And the worst of it is that even with all that, from a technical standpoint, it’s not a poorly written comic. It’s certainly interesting enough that I don’t hate it, but there’s nothing that falls quite so flat as something that’s almost good.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen Special: When we were talking about the preview of this one that came out last week, Dr. K mentioned that he was glad James Robinson established by page four that Jimmy Olsen gets laid regularly.

My response to that? Of course Jimmy gets laid. He’s best friends with Superman! He’s been to outer space! Hell, he’s been to the future, and while we’re all going to get there eventually, he came back with stories of super-powered triplets fighting over him. He went to the past to drop-kick a leopard in the body of Marco Polo! He dated a robot viking! He survived the Mountain of Judgment!

I guess what I’m saying here is that I love Jimmy Olsen and I would knife any of you right in the eye if it meant I could write an ongoing.

But I guess Robinson does pretty okay.

And that’s the week. As always, questions on anything I read or skipped this week can be left in the comments section below. Also, if anybody wants to explain how we’ve managed to develop the technology to make “fried Pepsi,” I’m curious about that one.

I mean, a deep fried liquid! Now THAT’S science!

Behold! Batman: Trendsetter.

Man, everybody’s got those treads on their boots these days. They’re like the iPhone of the DC Universe.

But enough about footwear! It’s Thursday night, which means it’s time for another round of the Internet’s Most Raucous Comics Reviews! And while it doesn’t have quite the same sparseness as last week, it’s still pretty light. There are, however, a lot of great trades this week, including the long-awaited Annihilation Classic hardcover, which means we are now living in a time when both Rocket Raccoon and Devil Dinosaur have been collected.

Anyway, Here’s what I picked up this week…

…and here’s where I inform your purchases with spurious logic and irrelevant anecdotes!

Comics

Batman Confidential #22: Despite my desire to get away from “Year One”-era Batman stories (with the exception of Matt Wagner’s work, which is always welcome), I’ve been picking up Batman Confidential over the past few months because I will buy pretty much anything Kevin Maguire draws, and while I was planning on ditching it for greener pastures once his run was over, that was before I realized the new arc is written by Andrew Kriesberg. Kriesberg, as I’ve mentioned, is the writer who brought us the pure awesome of Helen Killer, and I figured if his Batman stuff was half as good as that, then it’d be well worth reading.

And while I was right about it being half as good, it’s actually a little disappointing.

The story focuses on the aftermath of Batman’s first encounter with the Joker, specifically revolving around the GCPD’s first shot at handling a supervillain after Batman slaps the cuffs on him and drops him off at headquarters. It’s an interesting concept, but it has the misfortune of coming out at a time when the film version of that exact event, which was absolutely incredible, is still fresh on everyone’s mind. Anything that’s less exciting than the Joker’s jailbreak in The Dark Knight is going to suffer by comparison, and since everything from “Would you like to know which ones were cowards?” to “I just want my phone call” was riveting, it’s going to suffer a lot.

And that’s not necessarily the fault of the creators. As much as it’s possible that Kriesberg wanted to do a story that would capture some of that movie magic in the comics–which itself was already done to near perfection in Gotham Central, which I have to imagine was an influence on TDK–but let’s face it: It’s just as likely that this story’s been sitting in a drawer for a year waiting for its slot in the rotation. Still, it can’t be separated from what’s around it, and it comes off as a bit of a letdown.

As for the art, well, once you get past the fantastic Stephane Roux cover, there’s another problem: Scott McDaniel. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike McDaniel to the point that a lot of other people do, but I can completely see how the same stylistic tricks that made his art so energetic on Nightwing ten years ago have evolved into things that hold him back now, and partly thanks to a few weird coloring choices, there are vast sections where everything just looks off-model.

There’s potential here, and honestly, I’m willing to give Kriesberg another shot based solely on his record as the man who gave us Frank Miller’s The Miracle Worker, but right now, it’s looking pretty grim.

The Corps #0: So here are two things I learned about Rick Remender at HeroesCon. One: He is probably one of the funniest pros I’ve ever met. And Two: His hair is perfect. Just ask Rachelle.

Despite those two crucial facts, though, his comics–which I’ll admit to only having read a few of–have never quite clicked with me. It’s not that they’re bad books, but they just don’t hit me quite the way they should, and even with the inherent hilarity of Devil’s Due replacing GI Joe in their lineup with a book based on the cheap knockoff surprisingly similar 3.75″ figure line, I was expecting this one to be about the same way. Even worse, actually, since I remember seeing an interview with Remender where he talked about wanting to get away from cartoonish bad guys, and–with the exception of phenomenal books like Queen & Country–my interest in military fiction pretty much evaporates once plots to take over the world with mind control perfume are no longer an issue. So yeah, expectations here were pretty low.

And really, I should’ve known better, because this thing is a hoot.

Seriously: To kick off the eight page preview story here, Remender opens with a woman named Dusk taking out enemy mercenaries with throwing knives that she pulls out of her stockings while tarted up as a cross between a peasant girl and a Whitesnake video, and by the end, he’s written what is not only the best dialogue exchange of the week, but maybe the best one all year:

Beautiful. I cannot wait for the ongoing.

Invincible Iron Man #6: You know, it’s not every day that Iron Man–whose entire deal is that he’s wearing a billion dollar suit of technological armor designed to live, walk and conquer–ends a fight by stripping down to his underwear and bashing a dude’s face in with a rock. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the closest we’ve ever gotten to that was the one time in X-Statix where he fought an equally naked Guy Smith, but that’s beside the point, which is this: I’ll be damned if it’s not a pretty exciting way to cap off a story.

This issue marks the end of the first arc on Iron Man by Matt Fraction–who, as everyone already knows by this point, continues to rock along as one of my favorite creators–and while he pulls it off excellently, I can’t imagine it was an easy job. It’s sort of the opposite of what I talked about above with Batman: Confidential: Fraction’s story was launching with the release of the Iron Man movie that was not only a great, amazingly well-received picture, but actually made people want to read about Iron Man again after a couple years of waning interest from Marvel playing him as a villain opposite guys like Captain America, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and one nonsensical fight with Thor. Enter Fraction, facing not only the challenge of living up to the movie, but winning over fans that was expecting more of the adventures of a tin-plated cryptofascist.

But it works, and it works very well, for the same reasons that he and Ed Brubaker’s work on Iron Fist was so good. With this story, he’s boiled Tony Stark back down to his basics as a guy so full of guilt over his creations being used for evil that he uses the culmination of his life’s work to stop it. And it doesn’t hurt that the book’s got the photorealistic Salvador Larrocca and the son of the bad guy in the movie–a holdover from the late, lamented the order–either. Of course, that’s not exactly news to anyone, but with the first highly enjoyable arc finished, it’s worth repeating: Solid stuff.

Marvel Zombies 3 #1: Over on Twitter, MW wrote a brief, yet thoroughly accurate review of this one: “It should be retitled, ‘Machine Man From Nextwave Returns to Be Awesome.'”

And he’s not wrong. I’ll admit to being more than a little burnt out by the Marvel Zombies franchise–which at this point has almost gotten to the level of “If it’s Halloween, it must be Saw“–and after the disappointing showing of Marvel Zombies 2, in which the humor of the first one was largely traded for hamfisted pathos, I was willing to write the whole thing off. But then I saw that this one was being written by Fred Van Lente, and considering that he’s one of the creators behind both Action Philosophers and the best title Marvel’s got going right now, Incredible Hercules, so I was willing to take a shot. And it’s awesome.

Seriously, reviewing this thing is next to impossible, because like the first, it’s based largely on the humor inherent in the goofiness of super-heroes fighting zombies. But just so you understand why I’m so thrilled with it, here’s a brief list of what’s in this issue: The worst Initiative Team ever, which includes both ’70s sorceress hottie Jennifer Kale and Steve Gerber’s 1970s Space Jesus, the Aquarian. Zombie Deadpool, who hungers for the flesh of the Fourth Wall. Portal–yes, Portal from Darkhawk–who is now in charge of defending the Nexus of All Realities. And of course, Zombie Morbius the Living Zombie Vampire.

And also Man-Thing’s in it. And Machine Man. And really, if those two combine like Voltron to form Machine Man-Thing by the end of this, then it might end up being the best thing to come out of the franchise.

Trades

Street Fighter Tribute: Because apparently, I’m the kind of person who buys a forty-dollar book of pin-ups based on a video game. Who knew?

shut up i really like street fighter okay

And as brief as it is, that’s the week. As always, questions about anything I read or skipped this week can be left in the comments section below, although odds are if I skipped it, it’s because of one of three reasons.

All right, folks, let’s get to it! After all, every minute I spend writing a snappy intro is a minute I’m not playing Megaman 9, so it’s best to just dive right in.

Yes, it’s that time again, and what better way to kick off October than with the spoooooky story of a man who went to the comic book store and found that almost nothing had come out! I mean, I only ended up coming home with nine singles this time, and if you’ve been following the ISB, you probably realize that that’s a bit lighter than usual.

Still, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to stop the Internet’s Most Distracted Comics Reviews! Here’s what I got…

And here’s what I thought about ’em!

Comics

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse: Book One #1: Well, well, well.

You know, ever since the end of the last series, which was capped off by a full-page ad for this issue, people have been asking me if I was planning on continuing my award-seeking series of annotations on the Anita Blake comics. And that is a question that I can only answer thus:

Do you dare miss a minute of the action?

Batman #680: In this issue, both the Joker and Commissioner Gordon discover Batman’s secret identity, Bat-Mite is revealed to be an interdimensional Jiminy Cricket, and Bruce Wayne manages to maintain his perfect .000 batting average of romantic choices.

So in other words, it’s just another Wednesday night in Gotham City.

Really, though, as crazy as this book’s gotten over the past few months–or let’s be honest, because of it–I’m having a blast with this story. Admittedly, it feels like the kind of thing where Morrison’s run is going to have a huge, explosive climax that’ll be the comics equivalent of dropping the mic after a battle rhyme, and then whoever gets the book after’ll have to come in and explain it all away with lines like “Well when Batman punched out the Joker, he hit his head on the coffee table and suffered amnesia, and Commissioner Gordon had been dosed with Velocity-9 over in Detective that month, so he wrote it off as a fever dream.” Or maybe I’m just paranoid because that’s pretty much what happened with New X-Men. Either way, it’s a lot of fun right now, and I’m loving it.

Specifically, I’m pretty excited about the fact that the human mind–even Batman’s–simply cannot handle being a Silver Age character for an extended amount of time without just giving out, sharpened soup can lids being used as shuriken, and the fact that the DCU equivalent of the characters from the Marquis De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom–which Morrison based a good chunk of The Invisibles around–apparently get together every year to watch the Black Glove take down a super-hero, and yet were completely unprepared for Batman to bust in on them holding a baseball bat in one hand and The Bat-Radia in the other. That is fun comics.

As for this issue’s Big Reveal, however, I’ve got to say that if it actually is the Big Reveal of Batman R.I.P., it’s a little disappointing. I mean, Morrison did say that the identity of the Black Glove was going to be the biggest reveal in seventy years, and even making allowances for hyperbole, that’s overstating matters just a little. Still, there’s one issue left, and that’s plenty of time to pick it up.

The Man With No Name #4: Four months into this one, and as much as I like westerns, Christos Gage, and Man With No Name trilogy, I’ve got to say that this is a more than a little underwhelming. It’s not that it’s a bad comic; it’s a perfectly serviceable western. But that’s the problem: It’s only serviceable.

As much as Gage has gone to the trouble of tying the plot into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the end result is a story that just feels generic, and really, that’s not his fault. Story is, after all, a secondary concern in those movies–if it was the real draw, then you could just watch Fistful of Dollars or Yojimbo and not have any particular need to see the other. But in Sergio Leone’s films, the plot takes a decided back seat to style, and while comics are a pretty versatile medium, it’s going to be impossible to capture what’s so incredible about a six minutes of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach staring at each other while an Ennio Morricone score builds to a crescendo on the comics page. It can’t be done. And yet the draw here as a licensed comic is that it’s not just a western, but a western about The Man With No Name, and so a story that could easily be fun if it was tailored for Jonah Hex or the Two-Gun Kid instead falls flat.

And it’s nowhere more apparent, oddly enough, than in the lettering, which gives TMWNN’s dialogue a different font than anybody else’s–one that you usually see being used for ghosts or something–for no particular reason that I can think of. I mean, it’s not like his voice in those movies is so different from anybody else’s. It’s distinctive because of Clint Eastwood’s laconic delivery, and that’s something that you have to hear. Trying to duplicate it with a lettering trick is just distracting.

Marvel Apes #3: Bruce Bananner. Oh, Marvel Apes! Once again you have warmed my bitter old heart!

Top Ten Season Two #1: I’m pretty sure that I said when this was solicited that Alan Moore’s Top Ten is one of my favorite comics, so I was pretty skeptical when I heard there was going to be another volume without Alan Moore writing it. I did feel a little better once I heard that Zander Cannon and Gene Ha–the original art team–were sticking around with Cannon taking the lateral move to scripting chores, and now that I’ve actually read it, I feel even better, because this thing’s a lot of fun.

The biggest criticism I’ve heard about the book is that the art is… well, off, and that’s definitely a valid point. Ha and Cannon (who also does layouts) have chosen to give the characters a painted, watercolor sort of look while doing the backgrounds with a more traditional penciled and inked style, and while it’s not very noticeable in a lot of scenes that focus on the characters, there are spots where it outright clashes. Specifically, check out Irmageddon, whose head is done in the painted style while the rest of her–in her nuclear battlesuit–is drawn with sharply inked lines. It’s weird, especially given Ha’s crisp, detail oriented art on the original series and Cannon’s more cartoony work on Smax.

The story, however, more than makes up for the art’s shortcomings, coming complete with the series’ trademark references, from the pregnancy test shaped like the Ultimate Nullifier to the concept of crossover-dressing, which is a great punchline that I’m surprised I haven’t seen before. It’s fun, clever, and while it looks like it’s going to just go ahead and ignore Beyond the Furthest Precinct–the first attempt at a Moore-less Top Ten–and instead take place concurrently with Smax, I don’t have a problem with that at all.

Trades

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney v.1: I’ve mentioned my affection for Phoenix Wright games before, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I grabbed this one, thinking that it’d either be an adaptation of the stories in the game–which would be pretty pointless, since it’s in the “visual novel” style that means you’re doing more reading than actual playing–or, even better, original stories done in the same style. Instead, it turned out to be an odd little anthology of stories, some of which are based around cases, some of which are based around ramen-eating contests involving the principal cast, and most of which do their best to take a sledgehammer to the fourth wall in that charmingly inimitable doujinshi style. The end result, at least for me, was something that’s bizarrely entertaining in almost exactly the same way as the game is, throwing slapstick comedy, grisly murders, and the complete disregard of the Fourth Ammendment into a blender and coming out with something that’s highly enjoyable.

Of course, there is a story where Maya, Phoenix’s youthful, spirit channeling sidekick, attempts to breastfeed a cat, so, you know. Thanks, Japan.

And that’s the week! As always, any questions, such as whether or not the Phoenix Wrighit manga could’ve used more Franziska (answer: Yes) can be left in the comments section below. And if you’ve already managed to get through your stack this week, why not head over to Living Between Wednesdays, where Rachelle Goguen has not only posted more Marvel Hobos, but a reimagining of the Punisher that you must see to believe.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy the original art and have it framed.