TINY TITANS #43—All right, this was another time when we hit the first page and I just started cracking up, totally blindsided by the perfection of execution, and the two-and-a-half year old could only elbow her way in, clamoring to get in on the joke, Why’s so funny, Daddy? It’s funny because Cyborg shows up with a new pair of hiking boots and proclaims that he needs a re-boot. And then on the next page, the kids are all reading vintage DC comics and out of nowhere, Superboy yells, “IT’S TIME! I NEED A CAPE!” and flies off. And then they spend the rest of the issue trying to get new costumes. This is one of the best yet. Really hoping we make it to #100, though I’m just now realizing that if there ever came a day that my little girl grew out of it and didn’t want to read them anymore, even only once a month, it would break my heart.
LATER . . .
X-MEN: SCHISM #3—It just keeps getting better. Acuna is a scary, scary hoss. Of course I adored Morrison’s run back in the day, but three issues in, Jason Aaron is just about my #2 favorite X-Men writer Of All Time, and the notion that we are present in the timeline in which he and Gillen are both going to be writing monthly titles at the same time that Hickman has not one but two FFs going is really almost too much to bear, and don’t even get me started about new CASANOVA finally finally being at the printers, after all these years. Whatever AVARITIA even means. Oh, CASANOVA, come back to me after all of these years.
AVENGERS #16—And yes, here, occurring to me that not only is Fraction’s main program the best Marvel event of all time, Bendis is dropping career-best superhero arcs on his own two titles, just running alongside parallel. Had to bring back JRJr for a huge issue featuring Steve Rogers and his Avenging Angels. It has been a treat to mark the evolution of the former “Hunk of the Month’s” style for all these years and see him still here, right in the forefront and thick of it, channeling Kirby for all he’s worth. Marvel’s major franchises are so hot right now.
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #507—Fraction remains out in full force with the usual cohorts. I really really feel for the poor slobs who are going to have to pick up the pieces whenever these guys decide to finally pack it in and drop the mic. Such a run.
UNCANNY X-MEN #542/JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #625/GENERATION HOPE #10—The Gillen triple shot is, yeah, about more than I can take, mainlining too much primo first-gen Marvel content at the moment, I don’t think a soul will argue, but this right here is almost too much, my considerable threshold met, most horrifying thing of the hat trick was how perfectly he welded the Idie thing into SCHISM, I can’t believe I’m experiencing these feelings here and now, Sam and Dani and Rahne and Xi’an and Bobby are eating popcorn in the yellow-and-blacks by the soft blue light of Magnum & Higgins while Kitty and Pete and Kurt and Logan drink malts and beers down the road at Harry’s. Hiya, sport.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #2—Pure testosterone gorgeous unbelievable. McNiven is terrifying.
X-FACTOR #224—After Siryn’s delivery, I was understandably concerned what was going to happen when Rahne gave birth. Not disappointed. Rahne’s cub is even more terrifying than McNiven. How long can David keep this up? What could his endgame possibly be? Does even he know?
BUTCHER, BAKER, CANDLESTICKMAKER #2—Ennis continues to serve up the brutal origin of his lead from THE BOYS with co-creator Robertson on hand to hammer the point home none too softly, my son. Ennis demonstrates here that he is comfortable weaving compelling yarns set in any battlefield, not just WWII. It really is just great to have Robertson back, as solid as Braun has been. We leave the Butcher cackling in a low point with true love just around the corner. Never a good sign in one of these stories.
FABLES #108—And the storytelling engine keeps chugging right on. We seem to have passed or be in the process of passing out of the Second Age of this title and there is no end in sight, just plenty of stuff going on every which where. First-rate material, all around. Was Ozma’s prophecy to Ambrose in #100? We saw it, right? I seem to recall my senses being completely oversaturated at that point. Which, ah, admittedly doesn’t really narrow it down so much as far as Wednesday nights go, but this was different! We do get the token emboldened “LOST” in this one, though on page 5, because Willingham is so cheeky. Those portraits of the cubs, their page frames, might be the all-time winners.
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #16—Levitz brings this iteration of the Legion to another close. Fourth version? Fifth? These guys have to be the most rebooted team in sequential history. It seems like maybe they’ll just keep going with a new #1, a la the Batman and GL franchises. But this issue, all the beats fall where they need to. There’s a nice symmetry to these sixteen issues, it definitely turned out to be The Ballad of Earth Man, which was really cool, scooping up Johns’s addition like that and fleshing him out a bit, but where PAD breathed all kinds of pneumbra into Bendis’s Layla Miller cipher, I never really felt dialed in to old Kirt. There hasn’t been any kind of an emotional hook for me to hang on. Not bad, even competent fill-in artwork on the way out, but I expected a little bit more out of the publisher’s return to the choppy and merciless waters of the freelance writer’s gig.
****
BEST OF WEEK: SUPERBOY #11—I’ve made no secret of my gushing adoration of this title all along and almost the best praise I can give this is that they didn’t drop the ball, this is a finale worthy of what came before. The action flows organically but never at the expense of character development, the lines have a clean European look about them, and it looks like the guy from ALL-STAR SUPERMAN colored it. We even get the kid from ESSEX COUNTY back to bookend everything, which meant a hell of a lot more to me this time than it did last year. A shame that it didn’t keep going but this run was a brilliant flash of perfect writing complemented by artists who actualized the story beautifully. It was everything that SMALLVILLE could have and should have been. There were a couple of hiccups in the middle there when the Doomsday crossover barreled in and Gallo needed fill-in work, but this one right here will almost certainly be my preferred version of Superboy for all time. No mean feat to drop a definitive version of a seventeen-year old character inside of twelve months. I will miss this cast that just barely got to start stomping around together and will look forward to and devour future work from these creators.
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