I read another 124 comics this week. I completed Ultimate X-men and the Ultimatum miniseries and read some more of Legionnaires among others. My total year to date is now 1851.
4 Likes
Titans: 6 issues from 2008
Writer: Judd Winick
Hm… Beast Boy being insufferable, terrible things happening to Cyborg for no reason (at least his shoulders have apparently grown back; beats being just a head like in the Johns era), Raven acting completely out of character with minimal explanation*… It really is a New Teen Titans throwback.
*Speaking of which… look. Raven is my favorite character in the animated show just like she is in Wolfman’s run. That Raven is fun. But she’s a very different character from comic Raven, so comic Raven suddenly acting like her feels extremely wrong. And it’s not even a synergy thing here; the animated show had ended right around this time.
Also, this is slightly Geoff Johns’ fault, but Winick, Raven was a college student when she died the first time. Then she came back and died again like twenty times, but the point is, how exactly is she a high school student now? Even de-aged, that’s just not her education level.
770.
Justice League of America: 8 issues from 1972
Writers: Mike Friedrich (4 issues), Len Wein (4 issues), Ken Fitch (Hourman story reprinted in 1 issue), Robert Kanigher (Wildcat story reprinted in 1 issue, Atom story reprinted in 1 issue), John Broome (Sargon the Sorcerer story reprinted in 1 issue), Joseph Samachson (Starman story reprinted in 1 issue), Gardner Fox (Sandman story reprinted in 1 issue)
Wait, Starbreaker is just Galactus. Except sort of a vampire. Except they do a really poor job of explaining what’s especially vampire-like about him. And then they hype themselves up to beat him by watching home videos of their origin???
Friedrich also seems to be lapsing back into the chapter-based “Let’s split up and look for clues minibosses, gang” structure Gardner Fox was so enamored of.
I’ve liked stuff by Len Wein, so I was optimistic for him to take over. His opening arc is kinda bumpy, though. It’s also got the Fox Formula going on, but being three issues, each vignette does have a bit more room to breathe and variety in the exact sequence. But it’s still 90% of the pagecount being spent on 10% of the plot, and it does have its share of Of Its Time™ moments.
The Halloween issue is a bit smoother (and apparently part of another stealth Marvel crossover, where several characters from both companies were running around the same fictional town around Halloween).
Also, one of my favorite things about this era is Batman’s aggravation with puns. It’s remarkably consistent across writers here; where’d it go in modern stories?
In reprint-land, I expected a Golden Age Hourman story to be oblivious about the implications of his getting superpowers from drugs, but I’m not even sure this is oblivious. Miraclo explicitly affects his personality and he makes comments about how much of a “kick” it has. Rex, you need help, man. With the Sargon story, I’m beginning to realize that “Older, short, heavily New-York-accented, derby-hat-wearing comic relief character” was an oddly common/specific sidekick archetype in the ‘40s. I’m counting at least Doiby Dickles (who I’d guess must be the one who originated this?), Woozy Winks, and this Max guy now. It only just hit me that Gardner Fox wrote several of these Golden Age Sandman stories, so he must have made an intentional decision to change his abilities from “Non-powered Batman-type who’s the ‘Sandman’ because he has knockout gas to put you to sleep” to “Literally summons objects made out of sand.”
778.
Now, I’m sure I’ll be back soo-
What do you mean, they did another weekly?!
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Oh, wow, you got there even sooner than I expected.
7 Likes
I haven’t updated in a while, so here goes.
Teen Titans (Rebirth) 1-5
It’s fine. It’s a weak Teen Titans comic, but it’s also kind if a strong Damian Wayne story. (Seriously, in terms of this arc, there is little to no reason that this is part of a Teen Titans run and not just a Damian Wayne solo comic.) I like the art and I didn’t expect a couple of action scenes to be as brutal as they were. This isn’t a complaint, but why was Damian has the exact same device in Issue 1 as Syndrome in The Incredibles? I can’t be the only one who noticed that.
5.5/10
Teen Titans (Rebirth) 6-7 (The Aqualad Introduction)
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never been sold on this version of Aqualad. whether it be comics or Young Justice he never struck me as all too interesting. (Although I did kinda like what Young Justice did with him in season two.)
4/10
Red Hood and The Outlaws (Rebirth) 8-10 (Who is Artemis?)
I don’t have any strong opinions on this. It’s just uncaptivating and disappointing.
4/10
Superman Adventures 1-66
The series peaks in vol. 2 (11-16), but nothing else was all too great, and it definitely wasn’t anywhere near as good as The Batman Adventures. The sad thing is that the worst issues are often the most memorable.
6/10
Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III 1-6
This is going to sound dumb, but I’m going to say it anyway. This is a perfect Batman comic. Great action? Check. Batman can lighten up? Check. Batman is challenged emotionally and his struggles are actually believable for once? Check. Batman actually fails once of twice? Check.
Additionally, this is super creative. The character designs are fun and it’s really cool seeing how the worlds of Batman and Ninja Turtles are combined. There is even a Thomas and Martha Wayne death scene that serves purpose. This is honestly the best recent Batman comic I’ve read, quite possibly the best crossover comic I’ve ever read, and 100% James Tynion’s best work.
9/10
Batman: White Knight 1-8
This is very similar to The Dark Knight Returns for me. I see why everyone loves it, but I found that it had too many flaws to be considered one of the best Batman comics. The good here is better than the best The Dark Knight Returns has to offer, but it also has way more flaws.
7/10
Man of Steel (The Bendis Mini) 1-6
The only one of the three plot lines I like in this is the one that is forgotten about until the end. I really don’t like Rogol Zaar, he’s a textbook example of a generic villain. I don’t like Clark and Lois sending their son to space with his crazy grandfather. But I did actually like the friendship between Superman and that firewoman, so at least that’s a plus, even if it isn’t a big one
4/10
Superman 1-28 (Bendis era)
I don’t even want to talk about this one. It’s bad, and I think even if you like this, you’d already know everything I dislike about it.
3/10
401 comics read so far.
5 Likes
THE RUTLAND PARADE CROSSOVER! Those them books, when creators from both companies would just hang out, go full geek-mode, make wild funnybooks.
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The Batman you just described is the Batman for me. Ol’ CHIP ZDARSKY is taking over the book in a couple months, PUHHHLEEEEEZE CHIP, GIMME THAT BATMAN!
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Ha! I felt like Williamson was shaping up his run to fit my criteria but I feel with every issue he’s writing it worse. I’m also very hopeful for Zdarsky, I’ve heard nothing but great things about his Daredevil run.
4 Likes
Trinity: 31 issues from 2008
Writers: Kurt Busiek (main stories and plot), Fabian Nicieza (backups)
(And on the writers, I’m not sure “main story” and “backup” are exactly accurate descriptions since they’re the same length, but I’m not sure how else to describe it efficiently.)
Okay, so I’m biased in favor of liking this because it’s by the Thunderbolts team. Uh, the one from when Thunderbolts was good, like twenty years ago. But one thing I am going to have to address at the front if I’m being entirely fair: Who wanted this? I mean, me, but who other than me? Both 52 and—bless its misanthropic, continuity-mangled little heart—Countdown were focusing on much lesser-known characters. Not complete nobodies, but ones who wouldn’t otherwise be getting their own stories. But… was there some dearth of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman stories that a whole separate weekly series was needed for them? It’s weird.
Now, necessary griping out of the way, this is… really good. Like really, really good. In my head, I keep comparing it to Superman/Batman, as something about a few major tentpole characters that kind of operates on the premise that they’re special somehow. But… this is the book Superman/Batman always wished it could be but never was, I guess is how I’d put it. It actually gets the characters and gives them something interesting to do. It also doesn’t feel the need to make everyone else look stupid, useless, or evil to make its protagonists look better.
And compared to the other weekly books I’ve read, there’s genuinely a lot of plot packed into this. Like, at least in the first four months, I kept thinking I was much further along than I was because it mostly has enough things happening to justify all the space it takes up.
Now… it does get a lot slower in the next four months. The modified timeline is, like many elseworldy-type things, not really interesting enough to justify the portion of the story it takes up, but it’s not horrible. At least there’s time to develop it and the cliché density isn’t so high. Some of the ideas are sort of clever. But it is jarring that it spent four months getting me invested in the Trinity and their dynamic, and then four months with them basically not appearing at all.
And also it’s another JLA/Avengers sequel. I admire Busiek’s commitment to making that canon.
But also, can we talk about the insane pace here? Like, two guys writing fifteen pages each a week, that’s doable. There’s a reason most weeklies have rotating writers, but if you made it your main focus, you could keep that up without too much difficulty. But most artists can barely manage twenty pages a month. Mark Bagley is doing fifteen a week in this thing and making them look pretty good, all things considered. Like, I’d heard he was known for working fast, but this is just a flex.
So, overall, yeah, big thumbs-up on this so far. I’m honestly surprised more people don’t, like, talk about this book in general.
809.
Justice League of America: 5 issues from 1973
Writer: Len Wein
In the first issue, they keep shortening the Shaggy Man’s name to just, like, “Shaggy,” man. Zoinks. 1966 had the excuse of Scooby-Doo not existing yet, but 1973 is just trying to provoke these jokes.
This is probably the most moment-to-moment readable run so far, at least. Though—and this isn’t just Wein but he certainly hasn’t stopped it—the way everyone from the villains to the other heroes to the narration captions keeps perving on Black Canary is getting very old.
And I’m of two minds about the Freedom Fighters’ introductory arc. These are neat characters and I like Wein’s instinct to bring back forgotten names like them and the Seven Soldiers the previous year. But boy is the actual Earth-X plot sure something. I really do not understand comics’ fixation on Nazis. I mean, like, in the ‘40s, sure. But there are a weirdly high percentage of writers who seem to wish the ‘40s never ended.
814.
7 Likes
Reign in Hell: 4 issues from 2008
Writer: Keith Giffen
This is pretty over-the-top gritty and grimdark, as you’d expect for something that literally takes place in Hell, but… honestly, I’m kind of enjoying it so far? I threw this on the list on a whim (was hoping to do some research on Etrigan, but most of his stuff is not digitized; this is one of the few exceptions and he doesn’t seem especially prominent even here so far), but it does a surprisingly decent job of, uh, worldbuilding Hell. And I just like a lot of the main characters who are brought in here.
So… yeah, this is weirdly cool. It has stray moments or ideas I could gripe at, but overall I’m at least interested to read the back half of it when I cycle around to ’09 books.
818.
Justice League of America: 6 issues from 1974
Writers: Len Wein (main stories in all issues), John Broome (JSA reprint in 2 issues), Gardner Fox (JLA reprints in all issues, Starman reprint in 1 issue), Mort Weisinger & Bill Finger (Seven Soldiers reprint in 2 issues), Howard Purcell (“Just a Story” reprint in 1 issue)
And confound it, I seem to have misplaced #110* now, too. How embarrassing.
Not much new to say about the JLA stuff here. The most interesting story is probably the JSA crossover, mainly in that it has more… I’m not sure if moral ambiguity is exactly the term I’m looking for, but it has a less pat or optimistic resolution than I’ve seen in this title to date. So, like, from a historical perspective, it’s interesting to see the storytelling techniques mutate over time. And Wein does still have probably the best pacing and variation in narrative structure of any of the runs I’ve read so far here. That sounds kind of like damning with faint praise, and it is a little, but I’m saying that the process of reading this is starting to actually be fun instead of just interesting.
In reprint land, we’re in the “every issue is padded to a hundred pages with reprints” era, so there’s no dearth of material, though this title seems to be focused on reprinting long stories rather than a million short ones. I actually really enjoyed the Seven Soldiers story for the most part, though I can’t help but note that there are really either five or nine of them; there’s no reason Stripesy and Speedy should count as soldiers when Wing and Billy Gunn don’t. The art style and dialogue for Wing are yiiiiiiiikes, though. I mean, it’s from the ‘40s, so kind of to be expected, but there’s still that “Wow, you’re… really going with this” moment.
One of the JSA stories reminded me that Harlequin (Molly Mayne) has the absolute dumbest motivation—namely being in love with Green Lantern (Alan Scott), and pretending to be a criminal to get his attention—but it’s so absurd it kind of wraps around into being charming.
(*okay, as an in-joke for the amusement of certain people here, i am pretending that certain issues are missing, but since i’ve referenced the gag three times, i should note that they are not actually missing, i did read them, and my issues-read count reflects that)
824.
5 Likes
Secret Six: 2 issues from 2008
Writer: Gail Simone
Knockout has (had?) the worst luck. She was barely in Villains United, then Simone had that whole ill-advised fakeout-death subplot for her in the Secret Six mini only for her to actually and even more ill-advisedly die in a Countdown tie-in (which is not Simone’s fault, just Countdown being Countdown), rendering whatever point the miniseries threatened to have moot anyway. What a mess.
Anyway, this has some good moments, but so far it seems to be running on gross-out humor and the protagonists only being more likeable than the antagonists because the antagonists’ evil factor is exaggerated beyond all logic.
But, like, it’s two issues and I’m a little poisoned from the last Simone thing I read being New 52 Batgirl. We’ll see how I feel once I get back to this in the following year.
Simone’s Batman characterization actually does… kinda have a habit of impressing me even in fairly ancillary appearances, though? Probably the best part of these issues was his fight/conversation with Catman. Like…
… I do appreciate when writers get this part. I’m probably going to be waving this line in someone’s face before long.
As a final note, I do still love Nicola Scott’s art.
826.
Justice League of America: 11 issues from 1975
Writers: Denny O’Neil (1 issue), Cary Bates (3 issues, co-writer on 2 issues), Elliot S! Maggin (3 issues, co-writer on 2 issues), Martin Pasko (1 issue), Gerry Conway (1 issue), John Broome (JSA reprint in 1 issue), Gardner Fox (JLA reprint in 2 issues, Starman/Black Canary reprint in 1 issue), Howard Purcell (Johnny Peril reprint in 1 issue)
Man, the alien Justice Leaguers’ species have terrible luck. Like, the Kryptonians were always dead, but O’Neil killed off most of the Martians back in ’71 or so, and now the Thanagarians all have this “Equalizer” plague.
#122 is entitled “The Great Identity Crisis” and features Doctor Light as its main villain; I have a suspicion that Identity Crisis was this story’s fault.
The following story arc… okay, Earth-Prime and the actual writers getting involved in the plot was kind of funny when it was a gag subplot back in that one issue from the Wein era, but this is getting self-indulgent. Cary Bates, Supervillain terrorizing Earth-Two is mildly funny (not justify-spending-a-two-part-JSA-crossover-on-resolving-it-funny, just mildly so), but Elliot Maggin teaming up with the League is wearing out my patience.
In Reprint Land, honestly I was really expecting the villain in the JSA story in Hollywood (named Evil Star, but no apparent relation to the one from the Silver Age on other than a similar mask) to be the actor who disappeared in the first scene. If nothing else, it’s weird that they never explain what happened to him. All indications are that he was kidnapped, not murdered, but he never turns up.
837.
And with that, I’ve run out of buffer between me and Final Crisis. Maybe I shouldn’t have read so fast today.
5 Likes
Final Crisis: 24-issue event from 2008-2009
This is not as unmitigated a disaster as Infinite Crisis, because unlike Infinite Crisis, it largely cleaned up after itself and kept the death count comparatively small and plot-relevant (to the extent that it has a plot). Additionally, some of the tie-ins by Geoff Johns were not completely terrible, and most of the involved artists are quite good.
With that, I have thoroughly exhausted my capacity to praise this abysmal exercise in self-importance.
I would proceed to criticize the plot, but the plot is completely incomprehensible and, as far as I can tell, wastes time on numerous largely irrelevant threads like Libra’s Society that seem to exist for no reason and go nowhere.
As that line of discussion is closed to me by the lack of any apparent substance to coherently criticize, I’ll instead refocus on certain tonal concerns, namely the rant about how to use Jack Kirby stuff in general and the New Gods in particular that I threatened a little while ago.
Okay. Let me drop some hot takes: First, while I do like a lot of Jack Kirby’s work, Jack Kirby was not perfect and just because he created something does not make it good or interesting. OMAC, for example, is not interesting. It has never been interesting and the eighty-seventh big event comic that tries to reboot the ideas from it will still not make it interesting. And, while I like Kirby, he’s not my favorite comic writer ever and I don’t think even his good stuff is sacred. I think it’s sort of interesting and distinctive and I’m going to go to bat for it a little, but I don’t think it’s the best ever way to write a comic or that people should try to emulate it anywhere near as often as they do. But it’s pretty neat and creative in a lot of ways.
Second, and more specifically, New Gods is the only truly great original Fourth World title. That one is extra spicy, and let me qualify it by saying that Mister Miracle has more likeable characters and makes a good superhero comic. I’ll elaborate on this distinction I’m making.
The New Gods, and here I refer to the group of characters and not the title, are called that for a reason. It started as a Thor book, and accordingly Kirby was trying to write mythology. Myths have an exaggerated character to them, simplistic in some ways and needlessly convoluted in others. Sometimes they’re just stories, but often they’re a way of making sense of the world by framing large-scale concepts in terms of these larger-than-life figures. It’s not allegory, exactly, it’s a way of personifying ideas that are otherwise bigger than a person.
Now, if I were smug and thought I was smarter than I am, I would spend the next paragraph arguing that superhero stories are the same. As it happens, I am smug, and I do think I’m smarter than I am, but not in that particular way.
Superhero stories and myths are not always equivalent.
They can be, sometimes. But the best superhero stories also have a grounded and personal component that is tonally contrasted with the high-concept, larger-than-life theatrics of mythology. Mister Miracle is the Fourth World title I enjoy reading the most because it’s comparatively grounded and personal, more set against the backdrop of the “modern myth” Kirby was constructing than quite as fundamentally integrated with it as New Gods or Forever People. That’s why it’s the best superhero story, and it’s why I enjoy it the most. The characters are the most fleshed out. The worldbuilding is all Kirby’s over-the-top standard, but the people feel distinct.
New Gods, on the other hand, is the title that best executes Kirby’s purpose with the Fourth World. It’s “an epic for our time” that personifies his thoughts on good and evil as fundamentally a struggle between free will and tyranny. And it reads pretty differently from Mister Miracle. One begins with a character moment of Scott Free befriending Thaddeus Brown, and one begins with “THERE CAME A TIME WHEN THE OLD GODS DIED!”
I’m talking about all of this because I think Grant Morrison understands some of it—not a lot of the nuances but the general concept of “what if myths, but comics?”—and they want you to think they’re just so extremely clever for pointing it out. But Morrison has several problems.
First, Morrison is not writing myth. Ultimately, what Morrison is writing about is how clever Grant Morrison is. Thus, the story itself is a secondary concern to pointing out that it is a story and framing everything that happens in terms of stories. It’s rather circular and obvious once you cut through the melodramatics.
Second, Morrison does not understand how to manage tone. Kirby captures the larger-than-life tone of a myth because… well, the dude lived and breathed pure ham. It came naturally. Morrison, though, is trying to be gritty. They’re trying to include this sort of existential horror and ugliness and demoralization of an occupation by a brutal tyrant. The problem is that we’re dealing with concepts that are, frankly, pretty absurd. Like, “the anti-life equation,” when you get right down to it, is a pretty stupid idea. That’s just… not what math is or how it works. In Kirby’s material, you can sort of roll with it because basically he’s essentially taken the concept of propaganda and interpreted it as a literal weaponized idea that gives you the power of mind control in order to create an interesting MacGuffin. Most importantly, though Kirby does not expect this to be frightening. I mean, menacing in the way villains are usually supposed to be, yes, but your enjoyment of Kirby’s Fourth World material does not hinge on your feeling legitimate existential dread at the sight of math. Morrison, on the other hand, not only takes the Anti-Life Equation at face value, they actually write it out. The whole longwinded “self-worth / mockery / condemnation” or whatever thing gets flung at you and characters react with horror and revulsion as this utterly childish mantra gets repeated. People are gorily dying and suffering because “loneliness + alienation + fear” is being emailed to them. That’s one example, but there are myriad instances of facially absurd concepts being presented with complete grimdark seriousness. This is, like, “Howard Chaykin trying to make G’nort grimdark”-tier tone-botching.
Third, this may come as a surprise, but Morrison’s writing does not really make very much sense most of the time. This is a drum I have beaten before, but I’m doing it again because it’s important. Now, it would be a bit of a stretch to say that Kirby’s writing “made sense” in some ways, but it was possible to follow the causal sequence of events, fantastic concepts were properly introduced and behaved in a roughly consistent manner, and you could tell what point he was making. I’m not saying “freedom is good and should win out over tyranny” is a distinctly insightful theme, but Kirby’s stories make that point in a clear, direct, and reasonably interesting way. Morrison will sometimes beat you over the head with what point they think you should take away, but the actual events they portray for you will be so muddled and circular and self-referential that it’s impossible to derive that point without being beaten over the head with it. In other words, if myths are a way of making sense of the world by personifying concepts, Morrison sucks at doing that because they don’t make sense of the world. They, well, make nonsense of the world.
Okay. … Okay, I think I got that out of my system.
Issue-by-issue breakdown
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Final Crisis #1, by Grant Morrison: As ways to make me not like your story from the very start go, killing J’onn is a very efficient one.
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Final Crisis: Requiem, by Peter J. Tomasi: I was hoping this might at least be vaguely poignant because Tomasi seems to like J’onn, but his basic writing quality is so awkward that it’s impossible to get very invested. And, being who he is, Tomasi naturally makes sure to gore it up a little in the actual death scene. This event has become one of my least favorites incredibly quickly.
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Final Crisis #2, by Grant Morrison: I swear to god if Morrison doesn’t stop trying to write Japanese culture I am going to break
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Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #1, by Geoff Johns: Finally, a writer who doesn’t make every panel a test of my patience. Ish. Usually. Bart Allen’s death being an “accident” doesn’t square super well with, uh, the actual story, but I appreciate the effort, at least.
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Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #2, by Geoff Johns: “Okay, Geoff. You’re writing the Rogues book you’ve really secretly wanted to be writing from the beginning of your first Flash run. What’s your pitch.” “… … … All right, hear me out, guys. This is pretty radical. What if there were the Rogues… but there were more of them?” “Geoff, that’s literally everything you’ve ever pitched.” “And it’s never failed.”
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Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #3, by Geoff Johns: All right, this was solid, actually. “One ■■■■■■-up year,” indeed.
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Final Crisis #3, by Grant Morrison: wait, is j.g. jones fancasting robert mitchum as jay garrick, because jay really looks like robert mitchum in some of these scenes
- honestly, i can kinda see it
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Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #1, by Grant Morrison: I know Countdown wound up not having much to do with this event, but there’s an interesting thematic parallel in how they both refuse to tell their stories in the actual series and require multiple distinct tie-in miniseries to actually have things happen in. Lois’s situation is very contrived here, to begin with, and it seems weird to set her up in a damsel scenario so that Superman has to be bribed to go save the multiverse. Then there’s the statement that the Monitors call the Bleed, which suddenly has healing powers and is the MacGuffin needed to save Lois—and I can’t believe I’m typing this but I swear it’s in the issue—“Ultramenstruum.” Yes, really. Apparently. The only thing that can save Lois Lane’s life is—and if this seems immature blame Grant Morrison—super period blood. I just- I- why? And then- and then this thing isn’t even done. To repair their ship, they use a book with an infinite number of pages containing every possible book, on the theory that their ship’s computer has infinite processing power and can locate and extract its own repair manual from the book. Oh, how utterly clever and meta. Except. The infinite set of every possible book also contains an infinitely larger number of repair manuals which are incomplete or inaccurate, many of which will cause the ship to be further damaged if followed. In order to locate a useful manual from infinite data, the computer would not only need infinite processing power, it would need to already know the answers it’s looking for.
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Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2, by Grant Morrison: Oh, there was enough else to dump on that I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning that I hate Captain Atom as Doctor Manhattan Lite. They honestly have extremely little in common other than comparatively high power levels. We get the gem of a line (from yet another scene of Morrison trying to pretend that something really cool is going on and we puny readers just couldn’t possibly comprehend it) “Everything is more profound. More meaningful.” Amidst all this pointlessness, it reads like sarcasm.
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Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #1, by Geoff Johns: Aw, hell. Just what we needed to liven up this miserable process. Superboy Prime.
My strategy for this mini is going to be to look at the pretty George Pérez art, take lots of deep breaths, and attempt to remain calm. -
Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #2, by Geoff Johns: So, I surmise that the Legion of Superheroes must have stories that don’t depend on the reader having a pre-existing interest in the Legion and its history to care about them somewhere, but I certainly have yet to encounter any such story. Thus, I have not been able to build the requisite pre-existing interest. Or, to put it more simply, I don’t care about anything that’s happening.
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Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #3, by Geoff Johns: What’s with people wearing multiple Lantern rings? It confers no apparent benefit, otherwise characters would be doing it more often, but they do it often enough for it to be weird. And oh, man, guess what I don’t miss from the ‘90s? Gates’ complaining about everything. Though, on the bright side, that counts as me not only remembering a Legionnaire’s name and powers a year or two after I’d read anything with him in it, but his actual personality too. That’s gotta be a first.
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Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4, by Geoff Johns: Johns is turning this into a sequel to his Teen Titans run, and honestly, I was happier when it was focusing on characters I don’t know because I wouldn’t notice if he was mangling them.
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Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #5, by Geoff Johns: Wow, the book even admits it’s insufferable. “Waiting for it to end,” indeed. So, uh, I do have a question, though. What do any of these tie-ins so far have to do with the, uh, the actual event? Rogues’ Revenge seemed sort of relevant because of Libra and the Society, but this and Superman Beyond seem like complete tangents from the Darkseid stuff.
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Final Crisis: Revelations #1, by Greg Rucka: We open on Doctor Light menacing a bunch of prostitutes dressed like Teen Titans, and, like, it’s so the Spectre can put him out of all of our misery, I guess, but… basically, stay classy, Rucka.
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Final Crisis: Revelations #2, by Greg Rucka: Oh, good, they gave this interminable “Crime Bible” subplot its own entire miniseries. And by “good,” I mean “please stop.” Also, I suspect this is Morrison’s… contribution, but this is the earliest thing in the reading order that features it, so let me just say that this event’s attempt at rendering the Anti-Life Equation as an actual equation is hilariously dumb. If the characters weren’t taking it utterly seriously, I probably wouldn’t even consider the possibility that it might not be a joke.
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Final Crisis: Revelations #3, by Greg Rucka: Also, not sure I want a guy who seemed to have a lot of trouble understanding the concept of “Police brutality is bad” to be writing about complicated themes of religious morality and the relationships between justice and vengeance and mercy. No, I haven’t let that go, as a matter of fact. I don’t understand why so many otherwise sane people think Greg Rucka is a good writer.
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Final Crisis: Revelations #4, by Greg Rucka: How does Vandal Savage being Cain even work, anyway? It’s not like his origin was any kind of mystery. This is all so garbled.
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Final Crisis: Revelations #5, by Greg Rucka: Welp, that was as puffed-up and emptily self-important as the rest of the event, so, good times.
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Final Crisis: Secret Files, by Len Wein: This is basically a slight rewrite of Justice League of America #111 (Libra’s first appearance, also written by Wein at that time), which I read just yesterday. So, um, this wouldn’t be a bad recap if I hadn’t read the earlier issue so recently, I guess.
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Final Crisis: Resist, by Greg Rucka: Mind-controlled Gorilla Grodd just walked in on Snapper Carr and the Cheetah having sex and I just- I- I just can’t anymore. Like, this is an important plot point, too.
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Final Crisis: Submit, by Grant Morrison: … Okay, as negative as I am, I have to deploy some credit where credit is due. This is actually a shockingly good issue. Like, all of a sudden the event stops trying to prop itself up as important and just tells a story about people trying to survive in a bad situation and doing believable things for believable reasons. I… didn’t think Morrison had it in them.
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Final Crisis #4, by Grant Morrison:
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Final Crisis #5, by Grant Morrison: Did we not get enough of sexed-up evil Mary Marvel in Countdown? Was this plot point important to resurrect? Also, do you know what the minimum number of moves it takes to solve a Rubik’s Cube is? One, because a cube that’s only one twist away from being solved is technically unsolved. Assuming you solve it as efficiently as possible, a Rubik’s Cube is never more than eighteen moves from solved. However, the point I’m making is that solving a Rubik’s Cube in seventeen moves is not distinctly impressive or supernatural.
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Final Crisis #6, by Grant Morrison: I’m sure Morrison thought the idea of a literal deus ex machina was just so terribly clever. Also, whatever is going on with Renee Montoya, it makes even less sense than whatever was going on with her in Revelations (and that’s saying a lot), but I’m reasonably certain the two threads don’t line up with each other at all. Also, it’s just so typically Morrison to think they’re doing this awe-inspiring allegorical myth, and then to have Batman betray everything he stands for so they can have a cheap shock moment and then kill him.
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Final Crisis #7, by Grant Morrison: … Why is the entire Countdown/Final Crisis saga literally just a Kamandi prequel? Anyway, other than the fact that that’s the case, I have no clue what the ■■■■ just happened, and, more to the point, I do not actually care.
… Now, let’s cool off with some Bronze Age villain-of-the-month antics, shall we?
Justice League of America: 12 issues from 1976
Writers: Gerry Conway (6 issues), Martin Pasko (3 issues, co-writer on 3 issues), E. Nelson Bridwell (co-writer on 3 issues)
So, we’re in the middle of a weird stretch where four or so writers are rotating in and out, not staying in place for more than three issues or so at a time. And, like, some of these plots get insane.
The second half of this Two-Face arc was cool. He seemed like sort of a random pull for a Justice League story, but I think it wound up working.
#128 has to be seen to be believed. So, we’ve got: Wonder Woman finally returning to the book, Diana bringing a surprising but not unwelcome quantity of snark with her as she does so, a one-two-three punch of a cover, a teaser splash, and a basically unnecessary in media res opening all teasing essentially the same thing (none of them being particularly accurate), and an attack by an apparent enemy of the Green Lantern Corps called “Nekron.” But not that Nekron. Lest you be confused, this Nekron is described as a “fear parasite,” which displays the power to turn things yellow.
Red Tornado is “killed off” (and this was only, what, the second time they’d done this, so one might almost believe they intended it to stick) very abruptly in the second half of this two-parter, too. I wonder if they were operating on some kind of headcount limit? Without Reddy, that makes eleven, though, which is a weird number.
#130 contributes a mostly sane floorplan of the satellite, easing my obsessive problems with the earlier iteration, though I do have one problem still.
OK, check the cross section. That seems to suggest there’s an elevator shaft running through the center of each deck. That’s sane. Now check the decks’ floor plans. Where’s the elevator shaft?
#131 features S.T.A.R. Labs pioneering the futuristic sci-fi technology of… most people using credit cards. And transactions being tracked electronically. (It’s part of a sinister plot to give animals human-like intelligence and degenerate humans using the power of sound waves.)
And then in the following issue-
This is not as weird as it looks. It is in fact much weirder than it looks. So, Batman rides on this flying man’s back with his cape over his face for several pages. Like, he’s just there, in the background. Except, this is actually a department-store mannequin. How is it flying, you might be wondering? It is flying because it is filled with
Bees which, I must reiterate, have been made hyper-intelligent by the power of credit cards.
so, in conclusion, i agree with despero a couple issues later
The JSA crossover is one of the more normal stories, though I can’t help but note that King Kull is kind of a loser. He acts almost entirely through intermediaries and doesn’t put up much of a personal fight when the heroes do get to him.
873.
And I am finally (heh) done with 2008.
Agenda for 2009
Already read:
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Detective Comics: Awful.
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Batman: Awful.
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Wonder Woman: Mixed bag.
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The Flash: Kind of a mess.
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Robin: Awful.
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Nightwing: Awful.
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Birds of Prey: Eh… okay? Not its strongest in its closing stretch.
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Green Lantern: Actually pretty good.
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Green Lantern Corps: Kind of a train wreck.
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Batman Confidential: I think this was like one digitized issue that I’d read, but there it was.
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Batman: Gotham After Midnight: Surprisingly solid.
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Rann-Thanagar Holy War: Awful.
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Batgirl ’08: Not very good.
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Batman: Cacophany: Actually decent.
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Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Awful.
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R.E.B.E.L.S.: Had a rocky start but eventually improved?
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Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight: I think this was vaguely okay.
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Oracle: The Cure: Sadly pretty bad, but better than it could have been.
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Batman and Robin: Awful.
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The Flash: Rebirth: Not great.
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Batman: Streets of Gotham: Had some good arcs later in its run, but this early stretch was awful.
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Red Robin: Awful.
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Batgirl ’09: Awful.
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Batman: The Widening Gyre: Actually decent.
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Arkham Reborn: Awful.
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Batman: Unseen: Bad but looks like a masterpiece compared to most of these Batbooks.
Yet to read:
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Action Comics: Fairly promising.
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Superman: Ditto.
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Teen Titans: Well, I suppose I can’t rule out that this title (specifically the ’03 volume, though the Titans are a shade sparse on good runs in general) will spontaneously become good, but it sure hasn’t done so yet.
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Superman/Batman: I’m kinda curious how this will deal with Batman being dead, actually.
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Manhunter: Just a couple issues on the end, but it apparently goes some wild places.
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Blue Beetle: I… honestly forgot this wasn’t over. Wasn’t loving… whatever the last arc was.
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Justice League of America: Remains reasonably promising, actually, though I think this was around where Cry for Justice hit.
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Justice Society of America: Actually was also fairly interesting the previous year.
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Titans: Shaping up to be as much or more of a chore to read as Teen Titans.
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Trinity: I’m enjoying this and looking forward to the rest.
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Reign in Hell: This one is going well too.
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Secret Six: I think these characters have started to wear out their welcome a little with me, but it was doing some interesting things in the couple issues I read.
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Power Girl: This wound up on my reading list a long time ago when I hadn’t encountered anything by Gray and Palmiotti, and I was just like “Oh, I like Karen.” Now I’ve heard enough horror stories that I’m approaching this as an exercise in surveying the damage more than out of any hope for it to be good.
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Red Tornado: I don’t really know anything about this, but I’ve been getting more interested in Red Tornado recently, so I’m vaguely hopeful for it.
So, basically, I suspect I’ve read all the bad stuff, but my god is the bad stuff bad.
7 Likes
Huh, what did you like about it?
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lmfaoooooo
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What do you find so funny?
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I thought u were saying there was nothing good about it. Typically I just hear “what didn’t you like about it?” So I thought you were calling it bad in a very sarcastic, yet funny way. I guess I was wrong lol
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So, it goes pretty off the rails in its last issue, but for the bulk of it, it’s a more human look at Batman than you usually see without feeling out-of-character, and there are several characters I wouldn’t otherwise have paid a second thought or even actively disliked (e.g. Cornelius Stirk) that it makes reasonably engaging.
It’s most infamous for the cliffhanger at the very end, but given that it is a cliffhanger and was never resolved, it’s pretty unclear what was supposed to happen, so I’m not sure that even bothers me. There’s another scene earlier in the last issue that I have bigger problems with.
6 Likes
I see your point. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Also, I apologize if my question might have come across as rude.
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This week I read 115 comics. Year to date I am at 1966.
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