Somewhere in the middle, Jason tunes out and Florence and Marty launch into Married with Comics and talk about this week’s comics (Authority #5, Sword #13 & I Hate Gallant Girl #2).

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #024 (23 MB, 51 minutes)

Be warned, the spoilers start right away.

Buffy: Season 8 #19

Susie: I can’t say that’s what I was expecting, but it makes a lot of sense.

Florence: But it’s so sad! Ultimately Buffy killed dark Willow because that’s what Willow wanted. Do you think Willow did actually fuck shit up in the future?

Marty: The last page of the comic said that the future was still there, and everything was fine.

Florence: But did Willow actually cause evil to happen in the future?  Or did she just stir up stuff that was already happening?

Susie: I think if our Willow were to find out about it, she might cause the no-magic to happen herself, to prevent that version of herself from happening.

Florence: Did she actually live all those years? She made mention of being ‘in and out’.

Susie: No, I think she’s lived the whole, unnatural amount of time.

Florence: Yes, she did seem old- with a long burden.

Susie: She had lost a lot of herself.  She didn’t create the rift, she just had to take advantage of it.

Florence: So sad!

Susie: New topic: stupid Riley!

~Interlude for Susie to explain Riley to Marty.  He’s an ex-boyfriend of Buffy’s who was in the military demon-fighting core, and who was a stupid jerk that Buffy always idealized as the unattainable “normal” boyfriend who abandoned her.  ~

Marty: Didn’t he look like Christian Slater in this?

Florence: He didn’t look very Riley-like, but it has to be him.

Marty: What is that on his chest?

Susie: It’s the Twilight symbol, but really big.  I suppose he could be a triple agent just fooling Twilight…

Florence: Argh!

Susie: But I don’t think so.  I think we’ll finally be rid of him soon.

Florence: Yay!  Vindication after that infuriating ‘Riley is the messiah’ episode where everyone thought he was awesome.  Where do you think his wife is now?

Marty: Florence is still writing about Riley…

Florence: What were you on to?

Marty: Susie was talking about Willow.

Susie: Will this whole experience cause Buffy to start questioning Willow?  Will she tell Willow about what happened?  I can’t imagine that she’d do that.  Could anything stop her from becoming Dark Willow at this point, or does that have to happen?

Florence: I agree that Buffy is not prone to sharing burdensome secrets, but it will definitely drive her further into isolation and away from her best friend.

Susie: If she doesn’t share it with Willow, she’ll be a hypocrite for exiling Giles for not sharing every detail with her.  But when has Buffy not been a hypocrite?  New topic!

Marty: This would have made a good podcast.  Everyone would have heard me sniffle.

Susie: Was Xander’s helmet an acorn?

Marty/ Florence: What??!

Susie: It was a very strange helmet.  I sort of appreciated how silly the forest creature interludes were.  With everything else going on, that was kind of nice.

Marty: It did look like an acorn. One of the funnier lines was when Xander says, “All the ladies in the house go ‘Yeah…’”.

Susie: I liked that they were still bantering in the middle of the battle. Do you think that a big portion of the slayer army has died in the bomb?  How big of a setback will that be for them?

Florence: Good question.  There are many slayers now, but they’re still a finite number.

Marty: So this concluded the arc. Where do you think they’re going to go from here?

Florence: Do you think they’ll tell us the whole story with dark Willow?

Susie: It depends, do you want them to?

Florence: Yes- I need it!

Susie: Then.. they probably won’t.  When did they ever give us what we wanted?

Florence: But we can’t count on future seasons this time, this could be it!

Susie: I heard this season is supposed to be around 40 issues, so we’re about halfway through.  And they say that they could keep going to Season 9.  I also heard there are some stand alone issues coming up. I hope to see more of Faith and Giles again. Drusilla is still out there. But as for what will happen? I have no idea.

Florence: In the letters column they say that Giles and Faith will be back again in issue #24.

Susie: Yay!  So we will see them again.  What other old Buffy characters haven’t made an appearance yet?  I was thinking of Dru.  Is there anyone else that you would like to see pop up again?

Florence: I miss Jonathan.

Susie: As far as I know, he’s still dead.  But then again, so was Warren.

Florence: I am so dead.  Whoops, I meant to say I am so done with Kennedy.

Susie: That’s Freudian, you just wish that Kennedy was dead.  I think we’re stuck with her for now.  The one ray of hope is that no couple can stay happy for long.  I don’t even want anything to happen to her, I just want her to go away.  I laugh, because we are so hateful.  Just resentful that this is Our Thing, how can those writers force something to happen that we don’t like?  Can’t accept that we don’t actually have any control.  I guess the person that made her up probably likes her.

Florence: I find myself excited to see Marti Noxon’s name on other shows, even though I grumbled so much when she was the showrunner of Buffy.

Susie: It got to the point that anything we didn’t like, we attributed to her, and that’s probably unfair.

Marty: What was her role?

Florence: She started as a writer, and moved up to showrunner when Joss left to focus on Firefly.

Marty: ‘Showrunner’ is a thing?

Susie: It’s a job title; it involves supervising everything.  From what I hear, Joss maintained quite a bit of control, but some things fell through the cracks.

Marty: Huh.  You still haven’t transcribed my erection comment.  There is a panel in which it looks like Willow has an erection, while Buffy is hugging her (on the second to last page).

Florence: Groan, I see it.

Susie: I heard that Jane Espenson is going to write an issue, it might be the next one.  Yay!

Marty: Susie, I hope that you don’t get sick after our visit.

Susie: Me, neither, but if I do I won’t blame you guys.

Florence: You should, we are nothing but contagion-spreaders.

The Walking Dead #55

Marty: Dream sequences, love ‘em or hate ‘em?

Florence: This one worked for me. It was clear relatively quickly that’s what was happeneing. So I didn’t feel duped. I thought it said something about his state of mind that he couldn’t just say out loud.

Marty: I feel like we already saw a scene just like this, where he said, “We have to stop talking on the phone.”

Florence: Yes, I think that’s part of the point.  He didn’t let go of the phone for a long time after he said it this time.  It’s going to catch up with him soon.  Did you see the look that Carl gave him when Glen mentioned the phone?

Marty: Yeah, I see now. The new mustache guy gets really annoying.

Florence: Do you think the new scientist guy is legit?  He spent some time this issue “observing” new zombie behavior when they came across a lurker who seemed unable to find the energy to bite, even when prey was inches away.

Marty: I wonder if Kirkman’s getting tired of zombies?  He’s always said that we’re the walking dead.

Florence: What do you mean?

Marty: I mean, this could just become a post-apocalyptic story, if the zombies all die off.

Florence: I remember mentioning that idea during our podcast.  The zombies have to decompose at some point and become immobile at the very least.

Marty: Poor Glen.

Florence: Aww, I know!  That was so sad!  I tried to hide the last page from you while you were reading Buffy next to me, so you wouldn’t get spoiled.  I was caught completely off guard.

Marty: That’s funny, cause I was hiding pages of Buffy from you.

Florence: Which ones?

Marty:  The Riley reveal… and something at the end, I don’t remember.

Florence: I’m too tired to type anymore.

Invincible #55

Florence: Invincible this week focused on one of my favorite characters, Allen the Alien.

Marty: You don’t think it was also about the dad?

Florence: I DO think it was also about the dad, but the dad isn’t one of my favorite characters. Honestly, I’d forgotten why Allen was extra-strong, why he was in the same place as Invincible’s dad, but I didn’t have any problem going along for the ride. I wasn’t that caught up in the central fight of the story, but I just enjoyed seeing Allen again, and there was an interesting revelation about the Viltrumites that seems like it will advance the over-all story.

Marty: That’s what I’m talking about. FINALLY we’re getting back to the main story. It’s been at least four issues now since we saw Allen or the father. This issue was almost good enough to make up for all the time we had to put up with side-stories and such, but the fight scene did seem to go on forever.

Florence: What did you think of the new lion guy?

Marty: I think he’s actually a tie-in from something. I’m not sure what.

Florence: Something else in image?

Marty: *looking it up* Battle Beast actually just appeared before in issue 19, I don’t think he’s a tie-in from anything else. So never mind. Anyway, yeah, I’ve thought Allen was one of my favorite characters since he was very first introduced. He was pretty bad-ass in this issue. He’s totally invincible now!

Florence: haha…

Marty: There was also a page at the end of the issue with the dad’s face pretty close up, and he had blood all over his mustache. I feel like that was some kind of weird nod to an obscure fetish or something.

Ender’s Game #2

Marty: I felt like this second issue was not nearly as strong as the first. They are really glossing over what were, in my recollection, my favorite parts of the book. Basically Ender’s introduction to all the games at battle school, and then of course his learning about the battle room, which they really only get to at the end of the issue. So maybe we’ll learn more about that (with Ender) in issue #3. I did realize after reading this issue that with only five issues total, they’re really going to have to cram the story in.

Florence: I thought they were too heavy handed about Ender’s importance, and all the behind-the-scenes manipulations that went into bringing him into battle school. It’s possible that I’m being more forgiving to the book, I was much younger when I read it, and remember really loving it, but at the time it felt much more from the point of view of Ender. We weren’t privy to information outside of his knowledge, and we were really immersed in his experience, which made the revelation at the end of the book a very emotional shock.

Marty: I had a similar impression, but I’m really not remembering 100%. I think they right away go into the perspective of the instructor in this second issue, and I don’t remember that from the book at all.

Florence: I remember hearing lots of rumors about an Ender’s game movie a few years ago, and I always felt very protective of the story, and skeptical that they would do it right.

Marty: I’m pretty sure it’s still in the making. I hear something new about it every few years. IMDB has it listed as still in pre-production.

Florence: I have to say, I do really like the art of this comic (especially the color). And, in a way, I’m glad they’re doing it as a miniseries, rather than trying to stretch out the story into a much longer arc. It’s definitely a story that has a beginning and an end.

Marty: The coloring of the comic really reminds me of Orson Scott Card’s run on Ultimate Iron Man. I wonder if the artists are the same. (Looks like it’s the same artist, Pascal Ferry, who did Ultimate Iron Man II, 2008.)

Marty: I feel I should say something about what a bastard Orson Scott Card has turned out to be.

Florence: He’s listed as the creative director, and executive director, but not the script writer for the comic.

Marty: His politics are what damn him.

Florence: …his eagerness to apply his whacked-out religious beliefs to social commentary on his blog.

Marty: I’m still interested in reading the rest of these, and will probably continue to pick them up.

Just to remind everyone, there will be spoilers aplenty after the click.

I Hate Gallant Girl, #1

Florence: I liked it. It was pretty. I’m very sleepy right now.

Martin: I don’t know why I always seem to think this is a good thing for us to do right before you go to bed. Then again, that’s pretty much the entirety of our evening.

Florence: No, the evening is you playing video games on the iPhone and ignoring me, then suddenly showing an interest in doing something together just before I fall asleep.

Martin: So… this comic.

Florence: I was kinda surprised you picked it up, honestly. Because it seemed to be a high-school girl protagonist kind of story. I thought it was mildly interesting. The central premise is that a bad-ass motivated young woman with true powers who is not the physical ideal, is overlooked for the role of Gallant Girl, the most coveted/popular super-heroine spot on a super crime fighting team. This premise is undermined by the fact that she’s drawn EXACTLY the same as Gallant Girl, but with dark hair. She’s totally skinny and booby and conventionally attractive.

Martin: I’d agree with that point, I guess. But it’s interesting that the point at which you cannot suspend your disbelief starts and ends with her looks. I mean, this is a superhero comic, she’s fighting a giant robot. I sort of just took it on faith that she’s not that attractive. Although then again, she is Miss Maine or something. You forget that she’d already won some kind of pageant in order to compete for the role of Gallant Girl. I mostly picked it up because I thought you’d like it. That and that it reminded me of something, and I wasn’t quite sure what.

Florence: The art did remind me of Love and Capes, in a good way. But back to the premise: I’m just disappointed that, what could be a positive and differentiating concept in a superhero comic instead contradicts its own positive message, and renders the plot somewhat nonsensical at the same time. And this is a visual medium. We don’t need to buy any more of these.

Martin: What?!? I want to see where they’re going with it.

Florence: Do you want me to tell you where they’re going with it? Because I don’t think there’ll be any surprises.

Martin: OK, lets play the prediction game. What happens in the next issue?

Florence: She’s going to prove herself and the public is going to love her, and in the end she’ll be more successful than Gallant Girl, but she’ll have her own identity, and won’t have to fit into an existing mold. Except the mold of a conventional superhero, who is born with powers, and looks good in spandex, which she totally does.

Martin: OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that all won’t happen in the next issue.

Florence: But you said it was a three issue series, so I’m saying in the next two issues.

Martin: Good point. You may be right. It does certainly seem like that’s the most likely outcome. I still hope the creators can surprise us somehow.

The Walking Dead, issue #54

Martin: Looking back on this, I’m hard pressed to say that anything really happens in this issue. I know I didn’t exactly feel like that was the case while reading it though.

Florence: I forget what happened. Oh wait, no, they learned about herds. And I acknowledge for the record that you were right that the reference to the herd was significant in the last issue even though I wrote it off as something we already knew about.

Martin: Excellent. You know I love it when you tell me I’m right about something. It happens so rarely.

Florence: ***censored***

Martin: OK, enough of that. Uhhhh… They leave the farm! And follow some idiot who won’t tell, but claims he knows how the whole zombie thing started.

Florence: Hello “Y the Last Man”.

Martin: I don’t know about you, but I’d have a gun to that guy’s head and make him tell all. It just seems so stupid for him to cling to some kind of government authority when the government is clearly non-functional in this crisis. I guess it’s possible that nobody would understand his explanation, but I’d still want more than “It’s classified.” And it would just piss me off hearing that kind of bullshit excuse for not telling.

Florence: I think he just thinks it’s the only thing keeping him alive. Also, it seems like the evidence that he’s smart has more to do with him watching Mr. Wizard than his being a high class scientist. Look, he can fashion a compass out of soap! I think he’s full of shit. I think he’s just found a way to keep people motivated to keep him alive.

Martin: Good conjecture. I also got that vibe. All the more reason to dismiss him. It’s interesting the direction that Rick’s personality is getting taken right now. It’s almost like he’s pretending to be all meek and shit. It was most convincing with his son at the end of the issue.

Florence: Well, there’s no way, having read Kirkman’s letters columns, that he’s going to have them end up finding a cure.

Martin: Good point. He wants this apocalypse to go on forever. And why not? It’s been plenty interesting so far.

Top 10: Season Two, #2

Florence: Top Ten is really good. I haven’t read any since Season One, but I really loved the story, and the characters were familiar enough that I remembered them, but also had clearly evolved since I’d last read about them. I loved the art and the colors.

Martin: I too loved this. I traded reading this for reading The Authority, since I was behind on that series and Florence showed no interest in this one. I knew she’d like it though. I have pretty much loved everything Top Ten that I’ve read, (with the possible exception of Smax, which was only so-so). If you’re not already reading this, you should definitely pick it up.

The Authority: World’s End, #4

Florence: This is so fucking depressing. And bleak. I haven’t read any of the tie-in comics that presumably explain how the world has gotten to this point, and how everyone else is dealing with it, within the Wildstorm universe. The Authority is decimated, with little access to their respective powers, with logical explanations.

Martin: What explanations?

Florence: Well, Hawksmoor’s powers were tied into the city, and the city has been decimated. Apollo’s powers are linked to the sun, and the sky is filled with crud blocking the UV rays. Midnighter is at full strength, but without Apollo… it’s so sad. And Angie has lost a lot of her powers, but I don’t fully understand that. It has something to do with some EM pulse that knocked out her technology. The ship, which was a lot of the source of their mobility and ability to stay above it all, has now been fused and trapped and blended with London for reasons we didn’t really see, and have perhaps been explained elsewhere.

Martin: OK, I guess those were pretty good explanations. I personally think Apollo’s power should be stronger than they’re giving him credit for, but maybe he’s always been this way. I guess I never really understood the logic (if there is any) behind Hawksmoor’s powers, and what ever happened to the Doctor?

Florence: I have found it nearly impossible to follow any sort of continuity in the Authority story lines. I would like to understand what happens.

Martin: You complain about pretty much every other Authority comic that you read. Basically that they’re horrible.

Florence: It’s true, because the other ones I read are these spin-offs that are often not part of the main continuity and don’t seem to have consistent characterization. This arc appears to be back on the main continuity, but with a bunch of missing bits, and I don’t know where I can find those. What did you think of this? Are you glad you read it? Do you agree with me on everything?

Martin: Um, yeah, pretty much that’s my job, right? (There should be some marriage jokes in here. Where’s my beer, woman?) But honestly, yeah, this is dark and foreboding. I am intrigued. Sort of glad I read four at once, because not terribly much has happened, but enough now that I’m probably going to stick with it. There was some pretty much anticlimactic bad guy that just got beat up by Midnighter, and the whole plague that turns people into superhuman monster type people for minutes until they blow up because their bodies can’t handle it. (Doesn’t seem like that virus would last terribly long in the wild, does it?)

Florence: Which makes you wonder if maybe it’s some kind of directed weapon being released sporadically.

Martin: True. Possibly by the former British government types that were introduced in the end of this issue.

Sandman: the Dream Hunters, #1

Florence: This was beautiful, and told an intriguing story. You don’t have to have read the previous Dream Hunters book, but it does help to bring you into this world. The previous book was even more gorgeous in its illustrations. Full of spectacular watercolors.

Martin: I also loved this. I think I got to about the middle of the third page before I looked up at you and said “This is awesome. I’m really glad I got it.” Neil Gaiman’s signature writing is totally apparent, even that early in the comic, and gives it that sort of high-gloss literary polish that we both know and love.

Florence: I don’t want to give too much away. You should just read it. We should also mention that it’s a miniseries and not a huge commitment.

Martin: Also, although it’s no doubt in the Sandman universe, you don’t necessarily need to have read Sandman to enjoy this.

Florence: But if you have, you’ll at least recognize one of the characters.

Gigantic, #1

Florence: We mentioned this in the podcast. You brought it home, and I was skeptical, but said that I’d enjoy it. You were completely correct when you told me to just read the first page and that was enough to get me hooked, and to agree that this was a good buy. Did you know at the time that it was the same team that created Strange Girl?

Martin: No, I really had no idea. This is the third series I’ve gotten into (although only the first issue of it) written by Rick Remender, and I’m now convinced he’s totally awesome. It’s hard not to love someone who so clearly loves Samuel Clemens, who was my idol in high school. (There are tons of Samuel Clemens quotes in Fear Agent, and I just finished reading the fourth TPB of that recently.) Also I knew you would love this because the premise is that our world (the planet Earth) is one giant reality TV show created by sadistic aliens to boost their ratings, and what’s not to love about that?

Sword #12

Florence: So we’ve been complaining that not a lot has happened in a few issues. Something happened in this Issue that’s going to send ripples… But what happened seems so predictable that I wasn’t really excited about it. And it seems like what’s going to come next also seems incredibly predictable. I would love to be pleasantly surprised. With Girls I never knew what was going to come next. It’s almost as if what happened shocked the characters inside the book, but it didn’t really effect anyone reading it. Reading about people being shocked doesn’t necessarily produce excitement. They set up a big epic fight to the death, and they dragged it out for several issues, so at some point someone had to win, and it was probably going to be the main character. I’m bored.

Martin: What I’d like to say is that I think there’s really no way it can be that dumb. But all signs do indicate that’s what’s happening. I’m not sure he’s really dead.

Florence: It’s even more boring if he’s not really dead.

Martin: Yeah, I definitely see what you mean, then it’s like we’ve spent the last three issues doing nothing.

Florence: It seems like, in their minds (the luna brothers), it was really interesting and creative the things he could do with water. But we’ve all been reading comic books for a long time, being punched with an ice fist just doesn’t strike me as that innovative.

Martin: He had a big floating ice ball too! But I completely agree. I did think the end of the comic was interesting, the fact that this is all publicised and on the news suggests the government organization that had her in custody briefly earlier in the comic clearly doesn’t have all that much influence.

Florence: I did think the last page was my favorite part.

Martin: I think my favorite part was seeing the battle scene from above. It was cool how all the ice spread out from the center point of his death. I hope we get to find out how they got their powers. Because if this is really the death of a god, don’t you think there’d be reprecussions? I mean they just killed water. Now what?

Florence: I never thought they were actual gods, they just had the power of gods, compared with humans. There was an origin story somewhere in there.

Martin: I thought all we knew was that their mother had been an outcast, and gone up to a mountain, and that was about it.

Florence: I’ve forgotten it now.

Martin: Exactly.

No Hero #2

Martin: I can’t help but wonder how much we’re paying for those FIVE pages of Avatar ads and order forms in the back of this comic.

Florence: I definitely felt like the comic ended abruptly, because I didn’t know we were that close to the end with all those additional pages.

Martin: That minor quibble aside, I did really like this. I think the main guy, the inventor of the drug, is naive to think he can be the only one who ever creates superheroes.

Florence: I think he uses his current power to sabotage anyone who comes close to reproducing the formula.

Martin: Obviously. But there was some kind of hint in there that this has been an ongoing struggle. They’ve been “attacked”, and I thought that was clearly by some other people with superpowers.

Florence: I think that attack could have been accomplished by someone without superpowers, and I thought that no one else had reproduced it yet.

Martin: I think time will prove me right on this one. But who knows. I just can’t see taking a super-powered person apart the way they said happened (in Minneapolis no less!) without having other super-powered people on their side. (Try saying “super powered people” three times fast.)

Florence: I think their knowledge of the anatomy is what allowed them to do it, not that they had to have identical powers.

Martin: We shall see. But you’re wrong. Oh, and I do really like the art. I think Juan Jose Ryp is getting a lot better.

Florence: I don’t really like the art. I think it serves the story pretty well, but it’s too brutal and bloody for me to enjoy it.

Martin: There wasn’t even that much blood in this one. Just some vomit, and a sort of blood-spattered hallucinatory orgy at the end. Do you think he’ll survive the induction?

Florence: Yes, or else there wouldn’t be a comic about him. I do think he’s intended to be the main character. He’s just been sort of passive so far. I think his journey is supposed to be the main story.

Martin: I think he’s getting set up to be the one who takes down the whole organization.

Florence: So what do you think the consequences they are referring to are? Is it just the pain and suffering he’s going through now, or that it’s long term? I think it fucks with your anatomy and physiology in ways that are not well balanced. In standard superhero fare, once you get your powers, that’s sort of it, you usually don’t have to deal with long term consequences. It’s just assumed that the rest of your bodily functions remain as normal. But in this, a sort of intentional drug-based alteration of the human body, I think the intention is that the rest of your body isn’t going to compensate in a pleasant way. That one woman was saying that you get the power of flight, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your kneecaps can withstand the force of landing. I think there are going to be additional consequences that we don’t really understand yet.

Martin: So do you think this is going to be more about him, or more about the political story? I feel like what you’re suggesting could be a really cool premise for an interesting comic. But I think, and maybe this is just because I know this same creative team (Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp) created Black Summer, that this is going in a totally different direction. I actually believe that the story you’re talking about might be more interesting, but that it’s more likely this is not a personal story. I would love to be wrong about that, but I think the frequent TV spots, and talking heads really illustrate that this is supposed to be a bigger story than just about one man.

This week it was just two issues, the new Echo and Invincible. Enjoy.

Echo #7

Florence: Moore’s art has really developed over the years, especially on men, since I’m more used to him drawing women. I feel like he’s doing a good job creating more than one male face. I really like his style, but he does sort of tend to have one face for all women, even though he does woman’s body shapes in more variety, which I really appreciate. I’m most intrigued by the character of Ivy Raven right now. When we were first introduced to her, she was a very sweet and loving mother, and now she’s clearly very formidable. In one panel we see her anger, and it’s scary. It shows that no matter what level of calm she exhibits, she’s dangerous. The last panel of the comic was very difficult to decipher.

Martin: I agree about the last panel being confusing. I won’t describe it for fear of giving it away, but I probably couldn’t if I wanted to, since I have no idea what happened. The old guy on the cover was the only other person at the crash site where Julie got her metal breastplate. Obviously he’s got some of whatever she has stuck to his hand. We only see him for about half a page in the whole comic, which felt weird since he was so prominently featured before we opened the book. I do feel like this was consistent with the rest of the story telling in the series, but the pace seemed to slow down quite a bit here. Not as much happens in this issue, and I guess I was a little disappointed by that.

Florence: That’s really just in contrast to the pacing he’s set already with the other issues in this title. That’s not compared to any normal comic’s pacing. This one has just started big and kept going. He’s set us up to expect that from every issue.

Martin: That’s true, but I guess I did feel like there were unnecessary scenes in this comic. If it doesn’t turn out that there’s a reason for the missing dog, then her asking about it was only to further highlight the stupid pet monkey that’s chained outside their motel room. The monkey got way more panels than necessary, IMHO.

Invincible #54

Florence: It’s your turn to go first.

Martin: Ha! I’m the one typing, and it looks like you were wrong about that prediction! Seriously, WTF? Invincible has sucked for like 4 or 5 issues now. I don’t even remember the last time it was cool. What ever happened to stuff happening in this comic?

Florence: I have detected no deterioration. I think it’s nice that he’s dating Atom Eve. I could have done without the four page spread of their relationship. It seemed to be both past and present. Like a montage.

Martin: I was going to say that, damnit. It was totally a montage! Montages are lame in all their forms. Except when used to make fun of montages, like in Team America: World Police.

Florence: Really though, if this just disappeared and I got twice as many Walking Dead issues, I’d be fine.

Martin: Totally. I never thought it would get to this point. I used to love Invincible SO MUCH. I do have hope for the future though. Maybe someday they’ll get back to the plot line with that one-eyed alien, and Invincible’s dad…

Florence: Now that I think about it, I did really like the future stuff, the stuff with Immortal. It seemed like a plausible path for him.

Martin: I guess this was sort of like a one-off book. I think Kirkman should have written it as an Invincible spin-off with a different title. Maybe another Invincible Presents Atom Eve… No, that one actually had a cool story, and stuff happened in it. Maybe it should have been called Atom Eve loves Invincible.