TINY TITANS #49—AyeGod, the penultimate issue and the boys don’t pull any punches. We get another random grouping of characters in the form of the Squishy Titans, ostensibly led by Plasmus, with Bumblebee hanging around I guess for company, returning friends like Offspring and Proty from the 31st Century, as well as Clayface, who I don’t think has shown up in these pages as of yet. The standout this issue is, no question, Clayface’s splash-page tirade on what all you can do with mud, which still about knocks my kid right off her bed a few days and twenty reads later. Fine fine work. It is ridiculous how badly reading the last issue next month is going to cut out my heart.
BEST OF WEEK: FF #15—Hickman simply cannot stop knocking it out of the solar system. This one’s the flipside to last week’s flagship title, a few pages are even the exact same dialogue, every time that the kids intersect the adult team, but their journey here contains its own engaging character beats (Valeria to Kristoff, Franklin calling Leech his best friend) that are the heart and soul of this book, never mind all the Kirby Krackle and Celestial bombast. I’ve certainly been wondering about the mysterious figure in white since #600 and had some fun guessing his identity throughout this issue. I had been thinking it was Nathaniel but then settled on Tesla about halfway through this one. I spent the previous week just blown away by the last page of FANTASTIC FOUR and the trick Hickman pulls at the end of this one makes me glad that they weren’t released on the same day like last month, so I had that extra time to let the cliffhanger really percolate in my imagination. I’m starting to fear that Hickman’s run is coming to an end and no one’s told me, because it really really seems like everything that he’s been building to for the past three years is coming to an end, just any week now. And what’s with the AVX preview knocking out my split-page Coming Attractions for next month? I dig that. Oh, I've got to say, put me down with the folks who loved Bobillo's crazy indie style for these kids. Sorry to see him go so quickly, but Dragotta certainly picks up the slack. Also, talking art, I've got to take old Mike Choi to task for giving Julie Power a Britney Spears mid-riff costume on the cover when she’s rocking the same old full-body threads on the interior pages. We don’t have to see her belly to take her seriously as a character! Thanks for leaving Katie’s costume alone.THE NEW AVENGERS #22—Deodato draws the shit out of this, fantastic double-page spread on 2 and 3, tweaking what he did last month. It still seems a bit ridiculous that we’re spending this much time on Osborn so soon after DARK REIGN, but Bendis makes the characters interactions just barely worth the $4 ride.
THE AVENGERS #23—Cool to see Daisy quake it up, as ever. Nice moment when the military shows up at the mansion to synch the two books up, I was wondering about that. Just three more of these and then we’re done with Osborn, yah?
JUSTICE LEAGUE #6—Well, Johns finally shows up here with some character moments that, while probably not as deft as the business he was regularly rocking years ago on JSA, at least manage to live up to the art and not come across as lowest-common-denominator as the series has thus far. That was supposed to be a compliment. The camaraderie between the team doesn’t come across as staged as it has up until now. Though Hal Jordan’s dialogue still seems a bit forced, which makes no sense at all, given that Johns has been writing the guy monthly for, what, like eight years, now? It was a nice touch that the everyman guy turned out to be the author of the backmatter a couple months back. As for the Pandora story, I found it mostly ridiculous. Been thinking she was Raven, but now she’s maybe Zealot? Or an amalgam? Possibly the daughter of Darkseid referenced in the main story? That’s not a horrible set-up, but the minute she went all acrobatic Grifter on THE PHANTOM STRANGER, I experienced a severe disconnect. I mean, first the Swamp Thing punchout in the last issue of BLACKEST NIGHT and now this. Yes, it’s been twenty years now, the minimum distance for official classic-rock-level-nostalgia, but that really doesn’t mean that we want to bring back the 90s again, even with hyperkewl magic guns. When writing The Phantom Stranger, aim for Moore and Gaiman, not Lobdell and Harras. No matter who the boss is.
THE UNWRITTEN #34.5—We get an even more engaging .5 than usual, the secret origin of Wilson Taylor (which of course turns out to not even be his real name). This basically functions as the zero issue for the entire series, chronicling the point at which the patriarch first stumbles upon the power of story and the effect that believing in it can affect reality. I’m now remembering the old lady who shows up at the end of this, whose origin I think we caught in 32.5. I really need to marathon back through all of these before the finale, it’s going to bring a lot of threads together that I think are eluding me in the month-by-month. Another solid done-in-one, great Erskine art. Though, you know what, the unrelenting pace of getting pummeled by this biweekly is starting to hit me, bring on #36 and a three weeks’ respite.
SPACEMAN #4—More top-flight work from one of the most synergistic teams in the industry. Azzarello’s gift for dialogue might have never been more in evidence, incredible things he does with phonetics and abbreviations, somehow completely futuristic and grounded in believability at the same time. That cliffhanger, it looks like Orson might have some trouble with his remote sexgirl. Which, we’ve all been there.
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