Read Comics

Comics read since last time:

Young X-Men 1-6
Cable 3-5
The Last Defenders 1-2
Gotham Underground 7-9

Young X-Men is a lot more of a continuation of New X-Men than I thought it would be. Including New Mutants #1 was pretty neat; it brought back memories for me. I wish I could still get the feeling I used to get when I was reading New Mutants as a young teenager, but then again, isn’t that true of everything you remember from your youth? Nostalgia includes the Greek word for pain. The bad guy is telegraphed so early on, I hope they didn’t think anyone would actually be fooled by the subterfuge. I did enjoy this a lot more than I thought I would, but then, it is Guggenheim doing the writing. Although I’m annoyed by most of the characters, and miss some of the ones from New X-Men that I liked. Anole, come back, all is forgiven!

Cable got better, but only slightly. Cannonball apparently had no trouble finding steroids in future. Honestly, Sam Guthrie, one of the lankiest characters ever created suddenly has not guns, but cannons? At least I’m not paying for it, other than the cost of getting to the library. I have a feeling the time travel chase scenes will get old. Cable should’ve brought Sophie with him. Of course, it would’ve been a little too much of Voyagers crossed with Doctor Who at that point. Oh, with huge nonsensical guns.

I don’t know much about the history of the Defenders, just knowing some of the team line-ups. I don’t think I’ve read any of the original series, and much like the Champions, it’s always seemed like a way for Marvel to cash in on the success of the Avengers and the relaunched X-Men. At what point did the X-Men become an actual hit? I know that it was on the verge of cancellation in the ’60s, with a long run being reprints. But the Defenders has always seemed like a “why bother” team. Maybe it’s a way that Marvel retains copyright on certain characters by bringing them out, dusting them off for awhile. These first two issues are an awful lot of set-up, so far. I can feel Giffen’s touch, although not as much as when he and deMatteis wrote their other Defenders story earlier in the “bwah-ha-ha” vein. A few nods to Civil War, the Initiative, and even Secret Invasion, with Blazing Skull correcting Nighthawk about his moniker. I’m interested in Nighthawk’s history, so that might be a reason to go back and read some original Defenders stories. Was he one of Marvel’s answers to Batman?

Speaking of Batman, I wonder if anyone is able to tie together into a cohesive continuity all of the stuff going on in DC right now. Where exactly does Gotham Underground fit in to Batman RIP and Final Crisis? I finished this trade off last night, and it seemed mostly to be a rehash of War Games, as well as a way to reintroduce Spoiler. I love Batman’s rogues gallery, and would like to see more Penguin and Riddler–the Joker’s so over done now. But I’d like to see them given some respect again. Maybe a little less reinvention and bit more back to basics.

I’m reading the recently published first trade paperback from the Geoff Johns series, his first comic work, according to the introduction. Collecting the first 8 issues from 1999 and 2000, it introduces the character of Courtney Whitmore, the new Star-Spangled Kid, who went on to be a member of the Justice Society, in the relaunch of JSA, also written by Johns.

My introduction to the character was in trades of JSA, and I didn’t know too much about the character, or her stepfather, the man in a tin can, Pat Dugan. DC really likes their legacy characters, at least within the last 10 to 15 years, and really likes pairing them up with younger, newer versions of their legacy characters. Pat used to be Stripesy, the sidekick to the original Star-Spangled Kid back in the Golden Age. In this series, he plays the begrudging mentor to young Courtney as she develops her super-hero persona and skills, thanks to the cosmic converter belt formerly owned by the original Kid. I say begrudgingly because he claims to not want her adventuring and that he’s doing his best to prevent it. If that’s his best, I’m surprised she didn’t start going to JSA meetings right off the bat.

I’ve only read the first few issues in the trade so far, but they’re fun. You can tell that Johns is hitting his stride, and setting things up for some wacky happening ahead. So far this is written very much in what I remember Young Justice to be like, and in fact they appear in a one-page cameo, where Robin discusses possibly recruiting her to be on the team. This, along with Young Justice and Impulse, seems to be courting a teen comic reader, and most probably teen girls. It was launched when Buffy was in full stride, and Veronica Mars was still a few years off. It’s very light-hearted, and Lee Moder and Dan Davis’s art is cartoony without seeming childish. Along with fighting super-villains, she’s dealing with being the new girl at school, getting braces, and handling her mother marrying her step-father (the latter, handling poorly).

When I started reading comics seriously at age 12 or 13, I remember my favourites being Power Pack, New Mutants and New Teen Titans, and I think that might’ve been because the characters were closer to my age. I like that Marvel and DC are trying to find younger readers with their Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC lines, but I didn’t feel like the three comics I mentioned were written for me because I was a kid. They were part of the same universes, they interconnected with big named characters, were part of crossovers, and fit into the bigger picture. I think Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. is a great comic to get younger readers, probably of the middle school age introduced to comics. It’s fun, the writing so far is great, the art is accessible, and there are cameos by other characters, without it feeling like you have to know right away who they are. It’s a taste of other corners of the DCU, kind of a sign at the amusement park telling you there are more rides in Adventureland over this way. All fourteen issues have been collected in two trades, which I found at my local library.