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OK, let me just say right off the bat: This was, for me, a bit disappointing.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let me count the ways. First of all, seemingly nothing happens here. We’re interviewing venture capitalists, which, while it may be interesting for someone who knows absolutely nothing about business whatsoever, I found incredibly spoon-fed and dry as a desert bone. Even the subtitle, IPO, didn’t actually happen. There was no exciting IPO, instead it was blah blah blah about who did or didn’t loan money to these companies. As if we care! These characters better come back in the next two issues, or I’m going to consider this whole issue a write-off. The only mildly amusing part of the comic was the two page spread of the VC getting eaten by monkeys. (Monkeys were also the most amusing part of the first comic, so I’m especially glad they made a return here.)

Secondly, the art was unfortunate. Not to say that it was badly drawn, or not my style, but I found it especially repetitive, and frankly, downright boring. Honestly, if I see another page with four panels, each one with just the face of the documentary’s narrator, I’m going to be a bit pissed off. The most interesting art in the whole book was a panel about 2/3 toward the end with a mechanical dog and cat in it. A clearly drawn reference to WE3, and a decent attempt at making this book interesting by association. The second best art was the panel showing the character Dave Apple’s art. It was meant to be pathetically unskilled looking, but it was funny and interesting, two things most of the rest of this comic were not.

The thing is, this is supposed to be halfway through the series; this is issue 2 of 4! And we got about as much story out of this issue as you generally get reading a postage stamp. I had high hopes, and I really wanted to like this comic, but unfortunately, it’s just not working for me.

While at first appearing to be a cheap ploy to capitalize on the success of the critically acclaimed Mouse Guard, The Mice Templar has actually turned out to have a relatively rich and interesting story. It all still feels a bit thrown together, like there are a few too many diverse elements, but I guess that’s at least part of how they get that “rich” feel. You just stir in enough stuff, and of course you’re going to have a complex story.

So what does Mice Templar have in its plot pot? Other than quite a lot? (Ahem. Sorry.) There are ghosts that bleed, (at least in issues 3 & 4), Fish Gods who bestow our likely hero Karic with a waterskin that never empties, hordes of evil rat baddies who overrun a mouse village and take down a buck whenever they feel like it for food, black “death magic”, a clearly chaotic history muddled with some kind of templar war, some seer mice who possibly tell the future (or the present) by watching grain sway in the wind of swooping owls, and of course a prophesy of some kind.

Issue #1 was great, drawing me in with compelling art by creator Michael Avon Oeming (who apparently draws Powers, among other famous things), but after I read issue #2 (back when it came out) I wasn’t left terribly excited about the series. I felt the story was really quite predictable, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the least bit new. I kept it on my pull though (whether out of laziness or a genuine but waning interest), and now that I’ve read issues 3 and 4, I’m glad that I did. I am left wondering what is going to happen to those poor captive village mice. And what waits for us at the tree in the middle of the field (ocean) of grain? Only time and comics will tell!

I’ll admit that the movie made me do it. I decided I wanted to read some Iron Man. I never have before, and I didn’t know if it made sense to start at the beginning, so I just decided to see what was at the library, and read some of that. There I found the collection The Many Armors of Iron Man, which starts with this comic, Iron Man #47.

Much to my surprise, when I cracked open the TPB, I discovered that this is the comic that tells the first part of the story from the movie! I looked for some sign that the trade was simply a movie tie in, but I didn’t see any. I’m sure I could probably dig online here and find some indication of whether this book was published before or after the script for the movie, but it probably doesn’t matter. It tells Iron Man’s “origin story”, so it’s a natural choice to base a movie after.

I quickly finished the comic, and now I’ll give you my impressions. (Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!)

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Who would not want to read a comic with this title!? I mean, the story practically tells itself! The title already told the story! In fact, just having read the title, this comic could not possibly have lived up to the innuendo-laden science fiction odyssey that I then imagined. And all this for only $.99!

Oh yeah, so how was the comic? Well, go see for yourself. Turns out you can read the whole thing online. And the next one too! (And I think the reest of the series, although it looks like the author may be only partway through the last issue–number six.)

UPDATE: Re-reading this review, I really sounded lackluster about this comic. I put a lot of exclamation points in there, but while I’ll admit that I was a bit underwhelmed by the first issue, I did really like it. The story is light and fun, and it kept me reading and wanting more.

I’m now through issue 5 (reading them online, page by page), and reading “In search of the fourth wall”, which the author —Megan Rose Gedris, who according to this interview is only 21– calls an intermission issue. This isn’t even Megan’s first comic. She also has an apparently quite successful webcomic called YU+ME.

Anyway, I regret that I was in a bit of a rush when I wrote this. I think having discovered that the comic was available online kept me up that night well into the wee hours, and I think I basically pushed this out because I wanted to write something before I fell asleep staring at the laptop.

So give IWKBLPFOS a try!

On a recent sleepless night, I read the Sinestro Corps War saga that ran through the Green Lantern titles last year. At the end of it, I felt a sense of satisfaction with the story, the epic, the huge event. It felt complete, while hinting at the repercussions from the saga that will occur over the next couple of years in the DC Universe. I felt like I got a full story, which stayed exciting right up until the dramatic conclusion. I realized, at the end, that this was kind of a new experience for me: satisfaction with a “comic event storyline”. I think the closest I’ve come to that sort of satisfaction was with the conclusion of Crisis on Infinite Earths over two decades ago, but to be honest, I felt a little let down at the end of that as well. I think that’s the trend with comic book Events. Big E Events, with Earth-shattering ramifications! They’ve become the comic book equivalent of summer blockbuster season, with one event bleeding into the next event, and sequel after mega-sequel.

We’re getting ramped up into the two latest events from DC and Marvel with the upcoming Final Crisis and Secret Invasion respectively. Both of these are sequels or continuations of previous events. Both of them will cause the very foundations of their respective universes (or multiverse) to quake! And as far both of them go, I’m exhausted already. Over the past several years, we’ve experienced event after event after event. Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, One Year Later, 52, World War III, Amazons Attack, Countdown, Disassembled, House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, and that’s not even counting the ones that are exclusive to the X-Men titles. My god, living the life of an X-Man would be tiring. Not just from the pitched battles with your foes, but from having to take part in all these events! You don’t have time to sit down, take a breath, before you’re flung from one cataclysm to the next crisis. It’s possible now that you may be taking part in simultaneous crossovers. There won’t be room on the cover for any art, just event logos. I fully expected to see a comic with World War Hulk at the top, the Initiative listed underneath that, a quarter page of art and a flashback to the Civil War single color bottom half. Oh, with the title listed somewhere among all that.

I’m prepared for the DC events this summer, having just finished Countdown yesterday, which fizzled like a sparkler at the end of its sparkle. What started out a year ago as skyrockets, in the end was merely a punk. I was really looking forward to this series wrapping up and meaning something, but the last issue, Countdown #1 really seemed like the writers had lost their steam somewhere along the way. There were awesome moments in Countdown, like in 52, but at the end, maybe it was just too much, too quickly. And to be honest, all the action happened in the various other mini-series happening around the DC Universe, like Death of the New Gods, Countdown to Adventure, and the mini-epic going on in Batman and Action, The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul and Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, respectively. There were some very fun stories to be found in the DCU this past year, but the “spine”, as described by Dan DiDio, was suffering from a calcium deficiency.

The follow-up to Countdown, and the bridge leading into Final Crisis, is DC Universe #0, written by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns, and illustrated by everyone and their brother. You get a little taste of everything in this issue, with vignettes featuring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the Trinity of the DC church, plus the second tier of character who will be having major stories happening over the next year, including Green Lantern, the Legion (or at least one of them), the Spectre, and a surprise guest (who is really no surprise if you’ve been paying attention). Countdown was a mess that couldn’t seem to tie itself together without massive Dei ex Machina leaving axle grease all over the place. The stories in DC Universe, by contrast, were gourmet hors d’œuvre, served up in a pleasing series of courses, each giving a taste of the multi-course meal coming up. That some of the courses may leave you feeling a bit gassy, bloated or unsatisfied remains to be seen.

This is the twin to a previously reviewed double length from Ape Entertainment, Bizarre New World. This also had a three issue series that introduced the story and characters, and this was also released in an over-sized trade paperback-like edition.

Contrary to the title, there are three stories contained within, though the middle one is only a couple of pages, and less a story than brief character building exercise. None the less, it was probably my favorite piece in the book. Maybe it was because of the Iron Man-like nature of one of the boy’s fantasy future that got me, but the art and artist were also different, making the coloring a bit more vibrant than the rest of the comic which had been, like the first three-issue prequel, drawn in a sort of sloppy, colored-pencil style. The colors are thus are a bit muted, a bit less bright and crisp than I’d have preferred.

As far as story is concerned, White Picket Fences doesn’t start out with any context. (I remember this about the previous series also.) It just dumps you into a story about three (or four) boys, living in a strange and exciting town where anything can happen. The year might be 1950, (I don’t think we know), but the comic ends up feeling like a cross between Leave it to Beaver and Evolution (the David Duchovny movie from 2001). Anyway, the first three-parter is better than this book, but this is pretty fun too. There are lots of other good things out right now though, and I’m sort of on the fence about the next three promised issues.

This was easily the “top of the stack” comic for me from this last week’s releases. I really loved the first three-issue series, and recommended it to everyone within earshot. This book lived up to those three issues. It was easily as well written and well drawn.

Perhaps the only questionable part of the experience was the format of the comic. This was packaged as a small trade paperback (“prestige format”) rather than a single issue, with a price point of $6.95. The length was probably just that of two issues, or even an especially “thick” single issue. (52 pages, including title, copyright and author’s rant on the back page.) I’m not really meaning to complain, as I was honestly happy to pay it, and especially happy to get the whole story in one package, but it did strike me that this must have been a tough marketing decision.

Read on for some minor spoilers. (But you should really read the first three comics if you haven’t already first.)

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I’m catching up on back issues, and just read Spirit #11, from last October.

Great comic, and great rendition of a gay couple….up until the end when one of the gay characters dies heroically. He saves the city, literally, but is fatally shot just beforehand. The part that bothered me, however, is that earlier in the issue, we met his partner, who was left at home, waiting for his husband to come back, not knowing that he never would. The issue ends with Denny Colt looking up and seeing Ellen, knowing that everything is going to be all right. But it isn’t going to be, not for everyone. Cooke’s writing does touch on this, in that Colt narrates the story, saying that every death caused by the villain is his own fault, since he created the villain. I guess this just adds some more blood to his hands.

I’m kind of at odds with the comic. I liked it, I enjoyed it, it had positive gay characters, including the one who saved the day, but I’m a little peeved that it seems inconsiderate in the way that so much is inconsiderate. In the literal sense of the word, it doesn’t consider that part of the story. Granted, there are only so many pages, but in the face of Denny and Ellen being happy, I can’t help but think of the offscreen grief of the husband soon to get that terrible visit from the authorities.

I guess I caught the re-print on this one, and judging by the announcement over on artist Gabriel Rodriguez’s blog that Locke & Key #2 has sold out too, I’d better try and remember to find a copy of the second issue next time I’m in the source, before they’re all gone.

Anyway, this an interesting story about a seemingly fairly normal kid who ends up in a really fucked up situation. It’s more or less told from his perspective, but his younger sister and brother are also around at the time, and lets just say there is murder and most likely rape. It’s brutal in a way that feels pretty real, and somehow the overtones that there may be more to the story than we are already shown are borderline disappointing because they pull us away from that feeling, and into the more detached realm of fantasy-based horror. We get a jumble of these “clues” toward the end of the book, and then there is this text at the bottom of the last page of the book: “WeLCoMe To LoVeCRaFT ~Chapter One~”.

The story is told in a jump-cut kind of way that had me a little confused the first time I noticed it, but once I realized we were getting “before and after” scenes, it was no problem, and it definitely enhanced the rest of the story telling.

I will look for the next in this series and report back. The well crafted art, and quite excellent story have me hooked and wanting more.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this one-off single issue comic. I wish everyone could have the experience I had reading this. I picked it up in the shop, read the first couple of pages, and the premise was interesting enough to bring home with me. Basically, Adam is the first genetically modified human, grown in a vat, and considered by these future humans to be the first of their kind. Because the generations that came after Adam never die. They don’t get sick, and they don’t have genetic “defects”. It’s basically a utopian society, and everyone is beautiful, because nobody is flawed. This was all I knew when I brought the comic home and opened up to where I left off. We hadn’t yet seen Adam, our narrator.

Extremely mild spoiler after the link:
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My cup runneth over. New Buffy and Angel comics last week, new Serenity comic this week.

This issue of Serenity was a nearly stand-alone story within a small 3 issue arc. Most of the pages display the fantasies of each character, sharing what they say they would do if they were rich and could presumably change their renegade semi-criminal lives. Now we all know that they are living this way, in the fringes with each other as a makeshift family, for their own reasons and most could have have found other options. Some crewmembers never fess up, and some are full of it, but all are highly amusing.

The art is in my favorite style; vivid watercolors with realistic likenesses of the actors I adore. I was surprised to see complaints about the photorealistic style from one of the letter column contributors, although I guess I can see their point. This does not allow as much individual artistic interpretation, and I have seen instances of this style backfiring- clearly trying to be recreations of a real person’s face, but missing the mark and instead becoming a constant distraction. In this case, however, I feel like I am in the room with people I know well. I recognize not only their faces, but their movements and voice patterns. I am able to simultaneously immerse myself and admire the beautiful images before me.

Next month will bring the conclusion on this arc, but there is a promise of another 3 issue arc by the end of the year, this time focusing on Shepherd Book and revealing more about his past.

How does Warren Ellis write so freekin’ much?!

First off, I read Gravel #2, and it wasn’t terrible! It didn’t really have much in the way of plot development or story, but it was pretty, and there were ghost-horses and spilled brains! (Literally, brains. Brains are a bit too graphic me for some reason. The blood I didn’t really mind, the the brains? Yeesh.) So yeah, if you’re not a fan of man on stallion action, then maybe this isn’t the book for you. There were about six pages of ghost-horse chasing Gravel, while he flips and jumps and gets hit and finally finds his special ghost-shooting gun. It’s cool, but not super cool.

The latest issue of Freak Angels, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. Awesome art and a compelling story. My only qualm with the series thus far is that we’ve got a lot of characters we’ve now been introduced to, and I’m not sure whether the plot is really moving along at all. We have some notion of the “bad guy”, an outcast Freak Angel, but otherwise we’re really just getting glimpses into the lives of the characters so far.

I do have to wonder whether the comic is supposed to generate revenue at some point, or what the goal is exactly here. There aren’t any ads thus far, but the site does seem to have some affiliation with Avatar, since the about page links to Avatar’s flickr stream. (Incidentally, there is lots of cool stuff on that flickr stream, I’ve added it as a contact.)

Finally, I also just read Anna Mercury #1, and damn if it wasn’t awesome. This book was swashbucklingly spectacular. We basically get thrown into a steampunk-like world where there are magneticly powered space ships that fly to the moon. Anna Mercury herself is a red-haired firebrand secret-agent type who is clearly not afraid to break a few eggs to crack the case. We even glimpse her mission control in the comic’s last page, which makes us wonder where exactly Anna is at this time.

As with these other comics, I felt a little let down that more didn’t happen in this issue. We did get introduced to a so-far-so-intriguing world, but we got left with a big cliff-hanger, and not much else. I wonder if the answer to my initial question is that Ellis is stretching himself pretty thin. He can write a bunch of comics each month because each one is really only a few pages of story, with a bunch of filler thrown in for good measure. Don’t get me wrong, none of these are all filler, but all of them felt a bit padded to some degree. Surprisingly, the one that felt the least like it was padded was the one without any page-length constraints whatsoever. If you haven’t started reading Freak Angel yet, now’s as good a time as any to get started!

I had intended to write a review of Young Avengers Presents #3: Wiccan an Speed but then came across a review posted at a slightly lesser known site called Newsarama and thought it summed up my thoughts nicely. So instead of going to all the trouble, I thought I’d post the link here. The part that makes the review so notable is that it addresses the handling of two young gay males and their relationship.  Instead of a full review here, I’ll comment on a few things I found funny:

1. Do you really think that Hulkling hangs out with his boyfriend all the time as big and green?  I would think that he would “unhulk” at those times.  Unless Wiccan really digs it.

2. Does anyone else find it creepy that Hulkling can transform into a carbon copy of his boyfriend?  Next time someone tells Wiccan to go fuck himself, he really can.

3. Master Pandemonium (Master P) now resides as a depressed slob in Cresskill, NJ?  He really does reside in hell.

4.  Do you think New Jersey gets sick of being the butt of the country’s jokes?  I bet it and Iowa have a support group.

Also at the same Newsarama page, there’s another review of Kick Ass that touches on another offensive part that Jason and Marty missed in their commentary. It’s worth a read.

Anyway, here’s the link:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=152795

Just make sure you come back here when you’re done!

It ain’t a secret anymore.

Apparently it’s been four years in the making.  We were hit with the opening salvo a year ago in the form of an Skrully Electra.  And now it’s here.  What has been a really satisfying slow build up has now exploded into an intense, in-your-face declaration of war.  I enjoyed the first issue, but at the same time, I kinda wish we could go back to the prelude.

Part of the reason for this is that the title Secret Invasion is a bit of a misnomer.  It really isn’t a secret anymore…it’s a full out invasion.  While Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Reed Richards are investigating why the Skrulls are invisible to any detection powers, SHEILD tracks a Skrull transport that crash-lands in the Savage Land, and Iron Man’s Avengers go to investigate.  Except Luke Cage’s team of renegade Avengers decide to steal their Quinjet so they can get there first.  This delays Iron Man’s team all of three minutes and they have a stand off in front of the transport.  Then all hell breaks loose as the Skrulls attack at several strategic locations across the globe, each with a cultish “He loves you” mantra.

I had to read this twice to decide if it was a good issue or not.  What I liked about the months leading up the event (dubbed Secret Invasion: The Infiltration) the suspense of not knowing who was a Skrull and who wasn’t, how long they’ve been masquerading as our heroes, how long they’ve been here, how many there are, and what happened to the heroes they’ve replaced.  Those questions are quickly tossed out the window, and while we are not given the answers, they’re replaced with a flurry of battles, double crosses, and surprise reveals (and some not all that surprising).  I felt it was too much for the introductory issue of the event.  Despite all this, it was fun if a bit rushed.  I still really don’t like Leinil Yu’s artwork…the lines are too heavy, the proportions off, the action sequences are sloppy, and his females all look like Aunt May on Halloween.  Look at the attack on the Black Widow…probably one of the most sloppy representations of Spidey’s webs that I’ve ever seen.

Final word: it’s a good, if not great, opening that makes me intrigued for the rest of the series.

I just caught up on Kick-Ass. This comic should be called Ass Kicked, based on how often the main character gets beat up. I didn’t really think either issue was particularly awesome, but on the other hand, I was compelled to keep reading. I have to admit that I don’t particularly empathize with the main character or anything, but I do think it’s an interesting premise.

Jason clued us in to the controversy about the use of gay labels used in a negative context, unfortunately AFTER I’d already purchased these issues. Basically, my take on it was that if “bad guys” had used the terms demeaningly, then you could at least have that as an excuse, but it’s the main character who calls some spray painters “homos”, (and then proceeds to get beat up by them, which was not, I didn’t think, supposed to feel vindicating in the context of the book). This slander doesn’t appear again in the second issue, but, in protest, I will not be buying any more Kick-Ass issues.

I picked this up knowing full well I had a couple of other Hickman comics at home sitting, waiting to be read. But I’m a real sucker for the concept of transhumanism. I wanted to see what this was about. I probably would have picked it up without Hickman’s name attached to it, and, after opening up the first page and finding that it was written as a documentary from the future, well, that was hook line and sinker.

I haven’t really done a whole lot of trolling the interwebz for other comic book reviewers. I didn’t actually mean to at all, but I decided to check out www.pronea.com, which is Jonathan Hickman’s site, and seems to get a lot of prominent placement in his books. It was rather disappointing, mostly because there really wasn’t any art over there to speak of. Just a blog and bio, press links, and some teasers for his work. There was also a conspicuously crossed out link in the nav labeled “Store”. I know I wouldn’t mind a tee shirt with the Red Mass for Mars logo on it, and I haven’t even read the damn thing yet.

Anyway, long story short is that I ended up following some of his links and then reading a bunch more reviews (mostly ones I found from the image messageboard thread on the subject. Here are my two favorites (and newest google reader subscriptions): Comics Should be Good, (hysterical review of Drain, also included, don’t miss it), and Occasional Superhero, which endeared me because I mostly agreed with everything Chris Lamb had to say, and I rather wished I could just copy that review and paste it into this one.

It is difficult to come up with new things to say about Joss’s new Buffy and Angel comics that exist within cannon. They are good. He is awesome. Everyone should read them.

And now there’s going to be a new Spike spin off based out of the latest Angel world. I love me some Spike.

That is all.

This was an impulse buy while comic shopping this week. I basically read the whole thing after picking it up, not because it was short or anything, but because it drew me in right away, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it until I got to the end.

I liked the art right away. Florence had picked it up, and thought it looked too “cartoony”. I don’t mind cartoons, and this book is not really all that cartoon-ish anyway. The art is a bit bubbly, I guess, with everything drawn in thick lines. And the coloring is obviously computer-applied, with solid colors or gradients mostly, but it looks good anyway! I guess what I liked most about the art was how it was all in black and white, with the exception of the main character (Jane). This was probably meant to indicate that it was a “memory”, but I still liked it stylistically.

The story was good. Interesting. Basically a girl decides she wants to be a superhero because she realizes she really likes helping people. She’s a bit of a flibbertigibbet, but otherwise doesn’t seem terribly insane. I’m not sure where they’re going to go with it, and that is appealing in some ways.

This, the second arc in the Welcome to Tranquility series was, I felt, easier to read than the first arc. Probably this was just some amount of familiarity with the milieu and characters. We return, of course, to the town of tranquility, a sort of retirement home for old superheros and supervillians.

The arc did a decent job of turning my expectations about which characters were bad and which were good head-over-heels, which I remember being true of the first arc also. Each individual comic told a piece of the overall plot, and I think each one also had a story at the end that was basically tangential or semi-related. The thing is, I doubt I would have liked these nearly as much if I hadn’t had the whole arc sitting in front of me to burn through in one sitting. The story that is dolled out is meager from issue to issue, and unfortunately, there are too many characters to really get attached to anybody in particular. Maybe the main sheriff girl, but even her I wasn’t super fond of or anything.

All in all, it was a satisfying conclusion, and worth a read. The first set were released in TPB, so I’d assume these will also be eventually.

I have to admit that there is something about this series that has felt a bit “off” to me. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Each of the stories feels a bit rushed, a bit light, a bit simplistic, and my working assumption is that it’s somehow the medium, because I’ve read many of these stories before, in short story form, and they were great!

I didn’t think it was the art. I’ve, overall, really liked the art, and that goes for this issue too. At least, I liked it well enough while I was reading the comic… but now that I page back through it, I do think there were more than a few awkward drawings. And, worse than that, it felt like there was a sort of disconnect between the art and the writing. For instance, the story is very much about these robots… but we don’t see them as much as it would seem to make sense for us to see them. It’s almost like the artist takes pains to avoid drawing them in the beginning of the comic.

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Poor kid.

Mark, aka Invincible, is taking us through the process of growing out of adolescence and into an adult. That involves pain, confusion, and most of all, disillusionment. Mark is a good kid at heart; a year ago he unabashedly loved his mom, idolized his superhero dad, and was thrilled to experiment with his nascent inherited powers. The beginning of his story involved the crushing discovery that his dad, the most powerful and beloved superhero on the planet, was actually a bad guy, an alien sent to spy on and ultimately conquer the weak human race. Mark was rocked by this his betrayal, and knew that he was hopelessly outmatched, but he did what he believed to be right; he fought his dad. The fight left Mark very hurt, but not quite dead. His father had left the planet and he found himself having to explain to his mom and to the world his reasons for driving off their protector. When everyone learned the truth, he was supported as a new hero by the public, but his mom was devastated, sinking into depression and drinking. Mark lost the care and protection of both parents, and gained the weight of the world’s protection. He didn’t quite lose his faith in humanity, he clung to his black and white notions of right and wrong.

Since then, Mark has realized that he has a lot to learn about girls, and about living with a higher purpose/ obsession without being a jerk to those close to him.

He hasn’t been entirely on his own. He has been working for Cecil, a man in charge of a secret government organization. Cecil swooped in to protect Mark’s identity and public image as well as his mom’s safety, when his dad’s true motives were revealed. Cecil gave Mark a focus for his powers and a renewed belief that he was doing good things. He would call Mark away from his regular life at all hours and give a specific location, enabling Mark to show up in the nick of time to serve and protect innocent people around the world.

Spoiler warning:

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I’m a big Groo fan. I think it’s generally a clever parody of the swashbuckling hero genre, and just silly enough without resorting to elephant sized chickens that it often has me chuckling to myself when I read it. (Not to be confused with clucking to myself, which I would undoubtedly do, if I were an elephant sized chicken.)

Of course, much of the appeal comes from Sergio Aragonés’ signature style, perhaps taking me back to the days of my youth, when I coveted owning my own issues of Mad Magazine, rather than reading snippets of friend’s copies over their shoulders or in the bookstore when I thought I could get away with it. I think Aragonés art is best when it’s super-detailed scenes with lots of people and stuff happening. I love when he draws lots of faces at once, as in scenes of village folk and cityscapes, or armies and big battles. The variation he achieves in expression with so few lines is definitely an art worth studying.

This latest arc, Hell on Earth, is an obvious parody of our political climate. Issues of the environment coupled with an unfriendly war-mongering ruler draw easy parallels to situations here in the US and the rest of the world. Truth be told, I thought it was all a little heavy handed in the first two issues of this arc, but with this issue I’m warming up to it. I’ll reserve final judgment for the forthcoming fourth and final issue.

The letters pages have been particularly amusing in this Groo itteration, and this issue’s was especially so. I felt like it really managed to build toward a suitably silly conclusion, and unlike other letter columns wasn’t filled with endless praise and meaningless back-patting prattle.

If you have a bone for the funny, Groo is well worth a gander. Not an elephant sized gander, mind you, but perhaps one human sized or slightly larger. But if you started reading Groo with this series, and then went back to read some of the old Groo series, you might find the gander grew on you, if you catch my meaning. (Yes, I did just write that. Cluck.)

Lot’s of stuff to write about! 1)Last christmas Florence, and Marty got me the first volume of Absolute Sandman.  It was awesome, the second volume is even better.  The Absolute line (yes the name does make it sound like a promotion for Vodka) from DC is basically a repackaging of some of their most acclaimed series, in oversized, beutifully designed hard covered books.  Usually the art is recolored, and the back of the book is jammed with extra content.  I usually don’t think it is worth buying a second copy of something if the story has not changed, and other Sandman I don’t think I will (although Kingdom Come is tempting).  With Sandman they have reprinted three tpbs, per volume.  Volume 2 contains the Seasons of Mists, a Game of You arcs, and most of the short stories from the Fables and Reflections collection.  Though volume 1 had some really great issues, this is the period in Sandman in my opinion where it came into it’s stride both with the story and the art.  SoM, is an epic that feels like an ancient myth that no one had transcribed yet.  Lucifer decides to quit being the adversary, kicks everyone out of Hell, leaves locking the door behind him.  He gives the key to Dream, whom he had previously vowed to destroy but now just hopes it will make his life a little difficult.  Which it does, as figures from many different pantheons (religious as well as comic book) arrive in the Dreaming seeking the deed to Hell.  Reading it again now, it is amazing how a few small interactions in these early issues set in motion the conclusion of the whole series.   At one time Season of Mists was my favorite arc, but now I feel a Game of You surpasses it.  It is a much smaller scale story than most of the other large arcs, and though Morpheus id in it, he is mostly periphery.  The main character is Barbie, who was a periphery character in the Dollhouse (collected in volume 1).  She had at one time had a very vivid dream life, in which she was a princess in a magic world of talking animals called the Land.  She has however stopped dreaming, and no longer remembers the Land.  In her absence the Land has started to die and is under the thrall of a monster called the Cuckoo.  Barbie does eventually return to the land and the it causes serous damage to the waking world.   The story could just be another “magic land ” like Oz, or Wonderland, but the conclusion id entirely originally.  The supporting cast Barbie’s neighbors: sweet transvestite, Wanda, lesbians Hazel and Foxglove, and the witch Thessaly (the only one to have any importance to the bigger story of Sandman), as well as the Land’s animals, giant dog creature Martin Tenbones, and Wilkinson a cynical rat wearing a trench-coat, are some of the most memorable in the whole series.  These are the stories that where the art  finally moves away from the typical horror comic style (overly lined faces, and colored in sickly purples and greens) .  Despite having some of the most horrific  scenes in the whole series, a man chained to rock in Hell having his chest repeatedly torn open, a pile of decapitated heads singing, the face torn from corpse nailed to wall happily chatting away with it’s wagging tongue.  It was well worth spending seventy dollars for this excellent new printing. 2) I also read echo number 1.  It is Terry Moore’s new creator owned comic.  It appears to be his take on super heroes.  Of course the heroine is one of his beautiful girls.  the first issue is a simple origin story.  Girl taking pictures in the dessert, inadvertently finds herself in the path of a explosion, gain a super powered suit.  That is all that has happened so far.  Except that we know that the owners of the suit seriously nasty, killing the previous wearer of the suit (hence the explosion) just to test it’s durability.  I know in few issues this is going to have completely sucked me in, and the story will be any thing but simple.  This is from the creator of Strangers in Paradise after all. 3) I have totally fallen in Love the album Super Secret from the band Ookla the Mok.  They are by far the geekiest band I have every encountered.  Nearly every high energy song song is a packed with references to comic books, old school science fiction, or alien abductions.  A sample of one of there lyrics from the song Theme from Super Skrull “He can turn one leg invisible, which is not all that practical. Unless you are quite gullible, you won’t get fooled by Super Skrull!”  My favorite song on  the album is called Stop Talking About Comic Books or I will Kill You, but the one I can not stop humming is Guggenheim Love.  The songs are not only catchy, they are hilarious. 4)  In a couple of hours i will head over to my local comic shop and pick up a months a worht of issues.  Including issues of, Buffy, Angel, Runaways, Fables,  Astro City, and the first issue of Serenity: Better Days!  Woo hoo!That is all. 

I read Gravel #0 and Gravel #1 just now, without any prior knowledge of the character or universe. Each issue gives you a complete story, while still tying in with a larger story arc about “The Sigsand Manuscript”. The tone of these comics is dark, featuring regular killings and gore, so if that’s the kind of thing you actively dislike, stay away, but otherwise the story seems to be fairly well written and compelling.

What I didn’t know, until I read through Issue #1 and found an ad at the back, was that Ellis has written about William Gravel before! Apparently the character was created for Strange Kiss, a three issue b&w miniseries that went on to inspire another three issue b&w series called Stranger Kisses. I am now tempted to find copies of these to read (hopefully from the library).

The character William Gravel is a “battle mage”, which, aside from making it sound like Ellis made up him up while playing D&D, actually makes for a pretty interesting premise. He’s basically in some special arm of the British armed forces, one that has no qualms whatsoever assassinating terrorists in Issue #0. Gravel does this in the first few pages without being seen, and then we get to the beginning of the real plot which loosely revolves around the “rediscovery” of the aforementioned Sigsand Manuscript.

The Avatar Press website page about the new Gravel series invites you to google for “The Sigsand Manuscript”, Thomas Carnacki and William Hope Hodgson. A good summary can be found over at the wikipedia page on Carnacki, who was author Hodgson’s creation. It’s all sounds very Lovecraftian, and maybe (since I finally read The Call of Cthulhu last month) this is the year for that. I’m tempted to also find a copy of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder when I make that trip to the library.

Let me just re-iterate that I am a huge Warren Ellis fan. I have liked and/or loved almost everything I’ve read of his. That having been said, this is way down on the liked/loved scale for me (maybe actually below “liked” and into “could care less about” territory).

Part of the problem is that I’m just not sure I can ever be a fan of these “bad guy perspective” comic books. I don’t feel like there’s anyone for me to empathize with, no protagonist, at least not in the traditional sense. And therefore they’re usually just lost on me.

I do think Ellis is doing a good job of trying to get us to empathize with some of the recurring characters in spite of their evil-ness. But then of course they just go and kill an innocent bystander or in some other way show their lack of moral fiber, and it’s like all of that care he’s carefully built up is gone in one quick fell stroke.

Oh yeah, and conclusion? I thought this was a complete arc! The next issue has a different subtitle entirely, yet this arc has about as much conclusion as a single issue of some other comics out there.

The art is good, and the characters are fun, so I think it’s really only the story that I disliked. I’d say read it if you’re into it, but don’t go out of your way.

Written and illustrated by Jeff Smith

Wow. A new comic from the creator of Bone. And it’s stunning. The artwork is beautiful. Jeff’s style is evocative of the best animators in the business. It’s a cartoon in still-life, making you want to forget that Pixar ever came into being. In an interview, he said that his primary influences have been Carl Barks, of Duckburg fame, and Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo. You can see a definite evolution from Uncle Scrooge to Pogo to Fone Bone, and while RASL isn’t anthropomorphic animals (or Bones), that same sense of design is there.

RASL (first name? Initials?) is a thief, a cat burglar, with a taste for fine art, not so fine hooch, and cigars. He’s also good at getting out of tight spots, which he appears to have no trouble getting into in the first place. This is a noir story, where we’re coming in after a lot of the action has occurred. RASL is injured, but appears meditative, and then we’re taken back to what happened to him. Or at least a part of what happened to him. In fact, RASL and Kick-Ass both kind of start the same way. The heroes of our stories are injured, in danger, something dire has happened to them, and we start finding out what, piece by piece. This was a common trope of noir films, such as D.O.A, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, where we know the ultimate fate of the protagonist, and the unraveling mystery is how they got there. And how did RASL get to the desert? We’ve barely begun to find out, but what was revealed in this first issue is enough to hook me. There’s a combination of the fantastic and the mundane, a combination of noir and sci-fi, a little bit of Chinatown and a little bit of Blade Runner, with a touch of Looney Tunes thrown in for good measure.

The next issue comes out in May, according to the last page of this one. It’s going to be a tough wait.

Written by Mark Millar, drawn by John Romita, Jr.

Awesome comic. Creator-owned, so not beholden to Marvel, although they do a lot of name-dropping of Marvel stuff in there, which makes sense since it’s an Icon book (Marvel’s creator-owned imprint–they publish Powers).

It’s about a teenager who decides to become a super-hero. He doesn’t have any powers, he doesn’t have any special training, he just has a costume and the balls to do it (although maybe not for much longer after the third page). The rest of the issue is a flashback of his “origin”, what there is of it.

I’m kind of surprised by how much I liked the comic. I’m not a huge fan of either Millar, or Romita Jr, but don’t really have anything against either of them. Romita Jr’s art really works here, although I keep picturing the main character as a cross between Sprite from the Eternals and Ken Connell from Starbrand. The first issue goes by really fast, but that seems to be the state of comics these days–everything seems to be written for the trade, or maybe that’s just the expectation that we give comics now. I finished it wanting to read more right away.

The story itself seemed very realistic to me in terms of what a teenager, what I as a teenager, might think of doing. That you might actually think it’s a good idea to put on a costume and go beat up bad guys, and how that might end up not working out so well for you. It’s pretty brutal, both in violence and in how teenagers get treated by each other.

When I read the last issue of Y the Last Man, I had this feeling of deja vu. I felt to me like the last chapter of Lord of the Rings. Both are basically a really long epilogue. All the plot threads have been tied up and the story is pretty much over. They serve to tell us what happened to the heroes once the adventure has finished and both give a bittersweet view of what happens to heroes once the adventure is over. The issue begins sixty years after the previous issue ended. The human race has tentatively recovered from the plague that killed all creatures with a Y Chromosome, back in issue one. A vaccine has been developed to prevent the plague, and cloning has advanced to the point that the population is on the rise. Whether the old fashioned way of making babies will make much of a come back is uncertain. As for Yorick Brown, the only survivor of the plague (along with his helper monkey Ampersand), he is an old man. He had become an important symbol of hope to what had remained of humanity. His daughter now in her sixties is the president of France and seeing him grow bitter and suicidal in his old age, fears the affect should his condition become public. He is locked up in straight jacket and kept company by several, far too well behaved, clones of Ampersand. The only possible way to bring him out of his funk, she believes, is to have him spend time with one of his many clones. Through a series of flashbacks ( that to the reader are still flash forwards) we see what became of the supporting cast, and it is indeed bittersweet. Each one eventually dying . He is once again the lone survivor, this time of his makeshift family instead of his gender. The young Yorick clone is twenty-two and the spitting image of Yorick from issue one. But this man is as much a cheap imitation as the helpful Ampersands copies. It is clear that what formed Yorick into the man we have grown so fond of over the last fifty-nine issues, is the journey he took and the relationships he formed during those fifty-nine issues. It is telling, and fitting, that the one flashback we get to happier times, takes place amid rotting corpses and eminent danger. The last page hits just the right note. Leaving you to decide if Yorick is Frodo going at last to the the Grey Havens, or Sam returning to his family sad but content. Maybe both. So while I hate to see this series end, I can’t wait to find out what Brian K. Vaughn will do next

Astro City floors me. It’s one of those rare comic books that actually reaches the level of high art. A comic that actually means something when you get done with it. It’s a title that I am not even slightly hesitant to call literature. It consistently tells stories that are powerfully meaningful, even when taken out of the context of superpowers and costumes and cosmic space battles. Astro City has all that, but the story is so good that you get to the end of an arc, and you realize that it didn’t even need all that stuff. The part that sticks with you is that human story. But of course the point is that these stories are in that context. It uses that backdrop all the more powerfully to illustrate and punctuate the nature of what it means to be human by contrasting it with the inhuman elements present in the superhero genre. It’s a story telling formula with seemingly limitless possibilities, because the series continues to impress me with new and impressively compelling stories.

This issue in particular, did a good job of telling a very heart-warming story in the context of a relatively feeling-less robot character. We are hearing the story of a girl robot who is modeled after a Barbie doll. (I’m sure Barbie was changed to Beauty to avoid trademark infringement.) She has super strength and can fly, but she is also curt and tactless when it comes to human interaction. She’s made of plastic, and she saves the world on a regular basis, so most people give her a break. But we learn that she doesn’t know where she came from, or who she is, and that question nags at her, troubles and bothers her, making her far more human than external appearances would have us believe.

I’m not going to say anything more, for fear of ruining it for you. But let it suffice to say that finding out about her past is as deliciously fun as it is meaningful and thought provoking.

All in all, another home run for Astro City. You should read it now!

I just read Sword, issue #5, by the Luna Brothers. This is easily one of the best comic book series in publication today. The story and characters are just so surprising. The luna brothers really know how to make an engaging and compelling story.

The art is relatively simple, (as with all of their work), and not really anything to write home about, but it does the job just fine, and they have improved quite a bit from their early work, (which could be a bit distracting at times), to the point that now, if you notice the art, it’s because something was particularly well done, not the reverse.

I really look forward to this title, and can’t wait for the next one!