Capsule Reviews for Comics I Bought on 3/21/07Ratings system, gooooooo!
Yeah! - A great comic all around. Definitely worth buying.
Heh. - Pretty entertaining. Give it a read if you have a chance.
Eh? - Confusing. I'm not really sure if it's bad or good, honestly.
Meh. - Not particularly exciting.
Bleh. - Terrible.
Detective Comics #830
So a crazy, somewhat generic bomber is running around in Wayne Tower, Batman's with foreign dignitaries and has to stay Bruce Wayne, and Robin is covered in C4 that looks like jizz, LOLZ. It actually turns out to be a pretty good premise and a pretty decent suspense story, with some cool touches in the art that keep the story moving. Particularly cool is one page that shows the outside of the building and pinpoints where Robin, Batman and the bomber all are and shows what they're doing. It's not the level of story that Paul Dini's been providing on this title, but Stuart Moore does a decent job. Likewise, Andy Clarke's art is detailed and well-done, despite everyone looking slightly Asian for some reason. Rating: Heh.
Will Eisner's The Spirit #4
I'm a total sucker for misdirection, and this issue pulls off one of the most "I so should have seen that coming" misdirection moments I've ever seen in its first two pages. That's how hard writer/artist Darwyn Cooke is working to entertain you, the paying reader. The title character almost ends up being secondary here, and for all intents and purposes that's fine with me, especially when the woman who emerges as the hero of this story makes fun of people by using art references and speaks using terms like "city boy." It's just fun. Rating: Yeah!
Amazing Spider-Man #539
Peter Parker is pissed. And while, yes, we've seen this, the Aunt May gets hurt story, many times before, I've never seen it handled quite like this. We've seen our boy Spidey get mad before, but has he ever been "throw a Jeep at a dude" mad? He is now. And it makes for some great shit. Check this out:
Seriously, damn. That's cold, Spidey. Yes, I know that this is all an excuse to get Peter back in the black costume before the movie comes out, but this issue actually features him doing most of the fighting out of costume entirely, which I found awesome. (NOTE: I mean he was in his civilian clothes, not nude. Sorry if I caused any confusion.) If there's one good thing that may come from the ill-advised unmasking in Civil War, it's that. And yes, it's dumb that he just had a black costume hanging around somewhere in the city. But, listen, he threw a Jeep at a dude. Rating: Yeah!
Irredeemable Ant-Man #6
This series keeps rolling along, and has stayed pretty entertaining. I like that writer Robert Kirkman has not even attempted to have the utterly unlikable main character do something as abhorrent as fucking his dead friend's girlfriend on top of the guy's grave, but has still managed to have him do some awful shit in the meantime. This issue, he burns up half of his old boss's face, which he does accidentally, but he also doesn't show a lot of remorse for doing. To be honest, I was probably most excited by the "Next Issue" box at the end of this one, but I do love a scoundrel, and this certainly has provided one. Rating: Heh.
Batman Confidential #4
Let me go ahead and just run down the plot of this one for you: Lex Luthor, who now apparently weighs about 90 pounds, built some robots, that he then sold to the military. In a surprise to absolutely no one, he turned on the military and made the robots turn on them too in an attempt to take over the government. Meanwhile, Batman fights his own plane, which knocks him into some bat shit. That's really all that happens. If you'd like to thank me for saving you the $2.99, please, feel free to send the funds my way. Rating: Bleh.
Y: The Last Man #55
As one of my favorite comics ever enters its last story arc, it's revisiting some of the themes from earlier on in the series, notably Yorick's crazy dreams and the foreshadowing of something really bad happening if he finally finds his girlfriend, Beth. There's also some characteristically great dialogue in here incuding some hilarious mangled English by a Russian-speaking character (and vice versa). Plot-wise, things appear to be all coming together, and though I'm sure the ending will be satisfying, I'll also hate to see this title go. Rating: Yeah!
Ultimate Power #4
I really like the basic concept of this series -- essentially Reed Richards sent a probe into another dimension that ended up killing millions and he's being put on trial for it. But it's just being handled so badly. Greg Land's photo-referenced art is just downright distracting. Rather than thinking about the story I continually am trying to figure out what celebrity everyone looks like. Also: Is it allowed to just change writers mid-stream in a series like this? I could have sworn Bendis wrote the first three issues, and now JMS is on it. Not that JMS does a worse job -- he actually moves the story forward at a reasonable rate -- but he clearly doesn't have the same grasp on the Ultimate universe that Bendis does. As far as I know, Ultimate Thor has never talked in Ye Olde English-speak, so Spider-Man's quips about how he always says "verily" seem misplaced. Honestly, most of the characters seem like the regular Marvel U versions rather than their Ultimate counterparts. JMS does nail the Supreme Power characters pretty well, though, because, well, he created those. Rating: Eh?
The Walking Dead #36
After 3 dozen issues, you would expect a series about a zombie outbreak to get a little stale, but Kirkman has managed to keep this one pretty fresh, introducing a whole new conflict here for the characters that seems like it could prove to be yet another outright disaster for these poor folks. Also of interest is a whole new internal struggle in the main character, Rick, who wonders if all the stuff he's had to do to protect his family and the others has made him evil. And as a result, Kirkman manages to take his story beyond average gross-out zombie fare and make it what really good zombie fiction ought to be: thought-provoking. Rating: Yeah!
That ought to hold at least until Chris gets his far superior reviews out.
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