BATMAN #7—This one didn’t blow me up as much as previous installments. Capullo/Glapion still turn in gorgeous panels, but the story wandered a bit too far into melodrama for my taste. The “He was your great-grandfather!” line coming in from out of nowhere and the necessity of decking Dick Grayson to prove a point, in particular. Though, of course, you have to admire Bruce’s control and finesse. It takes some serious ninja precision to pinpoint a particular tooth to knock out with one punch! I remain quietly optimistic about this little event coming up here. Also looking forward to Albuquerque backup pencils next month.
WONDER WOMAN #7—Huh. The Amazons are siren/rapists and traded their boychildren to Hephaestus for weapons. I guess it makes sense in this new Greek context, but it’s kind of gross. Glad to have Chiang back, though, hey. Like a few other books from the relaunch, I’m enjoying this one well enough in individual issues but feel like they should be building toward a greater sum than they have thus far.
JUSTICE LEAGUE #7—Huh. Johns waited until Lee was gone to finally turn in a script that did it for me. Maybe I just wasn’t feeling every aspect of the whole together-again-for-the-first-time situation in the first arc, but this whole thing went much better for me. GL and Flash giving Batman the business, the throwaway bit with the umbrella for Aquaman, these little beats worked for me in a way that was falling entirely flat in the first arc. A strange call to make Steve Trevor suddenly the focus of this one, but it worked well enough for me. It seems like Johns is trying to mine out some of that superheroes vs/as government territory first carved out by Ellis a long long time ago in STORMWATCH/AUTHORITY and cursorily explored by Millar in ULTIMATES once he got his grubby Scottish hands on old Hitch. Is Johns trying to make the writer-guy the villain now, suddenly? That would be an odd play for the Trade Federation.
The Shazam backup is anathema. Beautiful work from Gary Frank as always, but turning Billy Batson into a bastard and making Shazam grim’n’gritty with a hoodie is pretty much straight-up caricature out of the gate. Like, if Michael Kupperman was dropping this, I’d be laughing my ass off. It just doesn’t seem like they’re joking, here. I can appreciate that if the Kunkel version didn’t take off and bringing the TINY TITANS guys in to write didn’t work, then you need a different approach, but this is a thousand times no not it. You have to have a certain amount of respect for the source material. Jettison too much and you might as well have created a different character. If you make Wonder Woman a heartless lying bitch trying to succeed in the world of big business, well, it’s not really Wonder Woman anymore, is it? Wish they would have given Palmiotti/Connor a shot at the boy reporter whose greatest wish comes true, those would have been fun comics. And, more than most characters, it seems important to me for Shazam to remain fun. Not not not hanging out in a dark alley. In a hoodie. Seriously.
FABLES #115—Again, not much new to report. This series remains a fine example of an engaging serial narrative distributed in a monthly format. Still holding my breath for the Bad Sam arc.
KICK-ASS 2#7—What a wild rumpus! Not much surprising in here, which is actually kind of a shock, in and of itself. Old Millar certainly likes to pull the rug out whenever he gets a wild idea, regardless of how well he’s set it up. Maybe it’s having Hit-Girl pull a Captain America, there. I don’t know, I’m not wild about the idea of a HIT-GIRL mini that takes place in-between the first and second volumes of this, if she winds up where she was in Vol 2 #1, who really cares what happens over the course of her own spinoff? All the dirty words she said? I bought this thinking that it might be my last Millar comic, but then that eight-page Gibbons preview was actually pretty solid. And I don’t know how I can not buy Quitely pages. *shakes fist at Millar*
THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #514—Fraction continues to keep the plates spinning and wring Tony’s planned relapse for every iota of story potential possible. Which, why not? This one continues to deliver the goods on a monthly basis.
X-FACTOR #233—We finally get to see the classic all-new all-different team back in action. I like how Kirk even dresses Val Cooper up in her c. ’91 wardrobe, the trenchcoat and tie. Really glad that Layla just cut through the bullshit as soon as she woke up, PAD knows that none of us want to sit through months of Madrox agonizing in caption boxes over all of that business. More true words on the recap page yet again. With this and FABLES coming out on the same day, there is a bedrock of reliability to the third week of the month that no other weeks can hope to match. Oh, and I enjoyed the letters column, how PAD kept nonchalantly jacking up the number of issues they produce per year. Hilarious business.
BEST OF WEEK: PROPHET #23—I really love this series. Graham & Roy do a fantastic job of presenting a satisfying episode in and of itself while still managing to launch their ongoing narrative right on off beyond the stratosphere. Even more than in previous installments, this really comes across as Moebius dropping some serious John Carter-type science pulp adventure. I’m crazy for it. Really dig the tone of the prose, the long-shot detail of whatever crazy thing our hero’s stumbled across next, and the gorgeous colors gracing the pages. I especially appreciate the way the entire thing just trapdoors out into the galaxy at the end of this one. Can’t imagine what they’ve got in the hopper for the fourth damn issue when this is what they do to shut down the third one. Top-drawer work/why we show up on Wednesday/everyone should be reading this to their children and pets/etc, etc…
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