Comics, Comics, Comics

52 Week 51: Thank god, it's almost over. This issue was actually pretty solid, although I still get the strong impression that the writing team is rushing to catch up on all the editoprial mandates they forgot to handle all year. Adam Strange's ending seems very tacked on, as if they never really had an end planned to begin with, sio they just wrapped it up quickly. Poor. That said, the Animal Man & Booster Gold segments are both lots of fun and very good, and despite all my negativ ity towards this comic, I gotta admit I'm interested to see what happens next issue. Definetly not buying Countdown, though. C+

JSA 5: The tie-in with the JLA drags this down, since I really hated the first part of the crossover, but on its own merits, this issue's OK. It's unfortunately got a guest artist, but this dude's pretty good aside from a few panels where the figures look very stiff. He's solid otherwise, so no complaints; it's certainly light years ahead of the hideous JLA issue. Storywise this one's very heavy on exposition, problematic since it's Part 2 already, and we've still got characters standing around explaining the plot. But the characterizations' still awesome in this comic, and I'm interested enough to see what happens next (provided the next issue of the crossover has actual, you know, stuff happening). Barely scrapes its way up to a B-.

Illuminati: Scret History: No idea what possessed me to buy this, but it was surprisngly good. Good enough I may even buy the rest of the series. Issue 1 wasn't at all what I expected, with the Illuminati actually making a huge mess of their attempt at telling off the Skrulls, and barely getting out. Not sure what the point was, other than to possibly set up future New Avengers stories. But the story was engaging and reasonable, so Huzzah. Issue 2 was also fun; it actually appeared to take place very recently, so you get lots of little comments and bits of dialogue from Iron Man that you can't help but read things into, in light of CW. I like that the little bits of revisionist history in regards to his recent character are being played subtly here. Also, if you consider the implications of that ending (look carefully at the art, esp the colors), Bendis may have thrown Marvel a "get out of jail free" card to rub out the whole Civil War thing when they eventually need to backtrack on it. B

Biblical fun

Deuteronomy 22:13-21: “If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “"I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,"“ then the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin”.

Imagine this today: A man accuses his wife of having had sex before marriage, and her father has to bring evidence that she did not. The woman has no rights whatsoever to defend herself; men must do it for her. Her word can be questioned without basis. And what proof could there possibly be she was a virgin? I am at a loss; I cannot think of what sort of proof would even exist. This of course sets her up for the penalty of not being a virgin before marriage: being stoned to death. Got that, ladies? In sum: man accuses his wife of having sex before marriage, she’s getting stoned to death. There’s no conceivable way evidence could be obtained, so this must be the outcome.

Oh, that wacky bible!!

Other comics this week

All-Star Superman 7: I continue to love this comic, even if Grant's starting to get a little too cute for his own good. I'm also not entirely sure what's going on in the first 3 pages, although I think I get it. Still, an artist as good as Quitely should've been clearer. Otherwise, I really liked this, it's a fun way to update the whole Bizarro concept in an even more "Silver Age" way then the Silver Age was in the first place. A-

X-Factor 18: 18 issues, and not a single bad one in the lot. This series continues to be PAD's best work since the glory days of his Hulk run and his original X-Factor. Great characterization, well-thought out plots, interesting use of concepts ignored or dropped by other x-writers... perfect. Possibly my favorite current ongoing. Something else I didn't really appreciate till he was gone the last 2 issues: regular artist Pablo Raimondi is awesome at facial expressions and body language. I might even place him as being as skilled as Gary Frank, and that's some high praise coming from me. The fill-in guy the last two issues is a solid artist & doesn't drag anything down, but I do miss Raimondi's work. He makes the characters look & feel like real people. A+

Fallen Angel 15: On the other side of PAD's output, I'm enjoying this series, but not enough to justify the $3.99 price tag. It's also getting to be a very frustrating read, as PAD seems to be going for the Azzarello school of writing in the last few issues, with everyone making vague, smart alecky comments instead of actual dialogue, and I barely even know what's going on. This storyline was supposed to be a tribute of sorts to PAD's Supergirl run, but really, it's all very surface level and not particularly interesting. The chick in this story has a similar name & appearance to PAD's old character, but otherwise, there's nothing there which recalls the character or the series. I may drop this after this story. C

JLA 8: Meh. I don't like Meltzer's writing, and if there's anything worse than Ed Benes' artwork, it's some fill-in guy trying to ape his style. Pretty dull stuff, the usual cornball/hit you over the head with a baseball bat/ barndoor characterization that people seem to just ignore about Meltzer's writing, combined with a plot just barely interesting enough to keep me from dropping JSA for the duration of this arc. Wouldnt've bought it if not for the crossover. D

Ex Machina 27: Solid issue, and they finally seem to be getting to revealing some stuff about where Hundred's powers come from. I'll reserve judgement on this arc as a whole till we get to some revelations, although considering how long it's been since the last issue, another issue dragging out the mystery was pretty underwhelming upon first read. But I'm getting very negative this week, so I'll drop a B on this sucker just to be nice.

I already reviewed the whole 52/WW3 waste of time below.

52, WW3

Wow. I never expected that these issues would solve ALL of the problems of 52 & DC's continuity problems, but I didn't think they'd be this horrible a disaster. Someone at DC really needs to be ashamed of this; it reeks of the plotters of 52 completely dropping the ball on the One Year Later changes.

Even DiDio's editorial at the back admits as such: the writers started out intending to cover the changes, but then decided to do some other story instead (which explains why the stories have focused so much on characters we don't care about, meandered pointlessly, and told various stories that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other). I love Morrison, and I love a lot of Johns' output, (I don't care about Waid and think Rucka is vastly overrated) but they really needed a stronger editor on this series. Someone to reign them in and remind them what story they signed up to tell, not someone who just smiled and nodded at everything they said and let them meander all over the place like they did. The series is a success in that it met its goal of coming out on time, but if it did so at the sacrifice of a good story, then is that worth it? Not really.

The OYL changes are barely covered in the specials, even, and don't tell us anything we didn't know. How did Aquman transform? Because he did (and that story didn't even have anything to do with WW3, so what was it doing here?). How & why did Jason Todd take over Nightwing? Because he did. Why and when did Donna Troy become Wonder Woman? Just now, and just because. None of this is explained, it's simply noted that it occured, much as we already knew from having read the OYL comics ourselves. Totally pointless, time wasting, cash grab, and DC has completely squandered the good faith they gained with me (and a lot of other readers) after IC.

Civil War may have sucked, but at least Marvel seems to have a plan they're sticking to consistently, and the stuff coming out of CW makes sense in context and is pretty good on its own. DC is all over the place, with no apparent plan, creators doing whatever they want completely at random with no regard for story or continuity, and no editors keeping things under control. No wonder their sales have been terrible lately, noone wants to read this nonsense.

Shameful.

(oh yeah, Week 49: B+; Week 50, B-; WW3, F's all around)

Tideland

What a fucked up movie. Terry Gilliam's Tideland is one of those rare movies that I left genuinely not knowing what to think - I'm not sure whether to recommend it or not. I can't really decide if it was going for black humor, shock horror, subtle horror, light comedy, or fantasy. It kind of sprawls across al of these at once, which I think is the point. I just can't decide if it's a worthwhile point.

I'll give it this: I can't recall many movies that had me as emotionally invested in the well-being of the main character. I really, really, felt bad for the little girl in this film; to the point that I wanted to walk into the movie and get her the hell out of there. It really did a great job of making me feel for the poor kid; not just because the circumstances were awful, but because they were just so ... uncomfortable. I was genuinely squirming around in my seat, I had to stop the movie a couple times and get a drink, walk away for a minute. I felt really, really awkward watching some of this shit.

So I guess it's powerful, in a sense. Part of my discomfort, though, was the realization that (in the real world), the little actress had to do this stuff; she had to be present for it, aware of it. I'm not sure I'm cool with that, which is where a lot of that unsettling feeling comes from, and that's not really a good thing.

Batman: World's Greatest Downer

I was watching Justice League Unlimited, Season One with my newly-minted fiance. Our favorite thus far: Kid Stuff, where Mordred gets some magic plot device and gets rid of all the adults in the world, so Morgan La Fey turns the big 4 members of the JLU into kids to go stop him. Batman totally steals this one: we actually laughed out loud when Wonder Woman catches him while falling, and then he gets all snitty at being saved by a girl and broods off, all sullen. Awesome.

My favorite moment, though, is the end, after they've saved the day and everyone's happy. Wonder Woman, smiling, makes some comment about how it felt good to be a kid again. So Batman just says "I haven't been a kid since I was 8 years old", and Wonder Woman stops smiling and looks all downcast. Way to take a dump on the mood, Bats.

Honroable Mention goes to little kid Green Lantern needing glasses and making them look like Kyle Rayner's orginal mask.

The next 60 or 70 years

I got engaged today, to the most beautiful, smartest woman on the planet, who for some reason decided she was ok with my comic books, whinyness, and legendary gas. I am happy. My only regret? I didn't use the Rocky 2 proposal. "What are you doin' for the next 60 or 70 years? Cuz I was wondering if you wouldn't mind marryin' me too much".

Comics again

Batman 664: What the hell? This reads more like the sort of middling stuff the big two were reeling out through the 90's, not a Grant Morrison comic. It's not helped by the presence of Andy Kubert, one of my least favorite artists (and who has a very 90's style, IMO). Very dull stuff, far below my expectations; even coming from an average writer, I wouldn't be impressed. Worst single issue I've ever read by Morrison. D

Fallen Angel 14: I may stop reading this after this storyline; the $3.99 price tag isn;t quite worth the quickness of the read. Still, a solid issue otherwise, I like the inclusion of "Lin", obviously meant to be a wonk and a nod to PAD's DC Supergirl series. Hopefully he'll do something interesting with her in the next couple issues (I have faith that he will). B

52 Week 47: One of the best issues of this series yet... but not to worry, I'm getting to week 48 next. I really liked Robin's dissection of that monk's little philosophical problem; nice outside the box thinking. One of those little moments that makes me feel like the character really is as smart as the dialogue tells us he is. Everything about this issue, other than the Bible of Crime garbage, was fun, especially Will Magnus's mad scientist moments. One small problem, though: this series is real time, and Animal Man picked up sun-eater powers 3 or 4 weeks ago.. so why are the yellow aliens acting like it just happened? Sloppy, enough so that it drags the grade down: B

52 Week 48: What a complete pile of crap. Hands down, the worst issue of this already dissapointing series, with nothing whatsoever good about it. A complete failure in every way. I have never cared at all about Montoya's whiny, annoying storyline, so a whole issue of it was never going to please me, but god... this is just awful. It's supposed to be a climax, and it's not even entertaining. Her friend dies, and she's making witty (?) comments, the villains motivations are barely comprehensible - after 48 weeks? Or maybe I'm just looking for more motivation, since what's presented is idiotic. Christ, even the artwork is terrible. Darick Robertson is usually good, but this is just ... ugly. It's actually difficult to look at, it's so bad. What the hell happened? Did he try to draw with his left hand or something? Besides being ugly, it doesn't tell the story well - I had difficulty following the action towards the end. Or maybe was just so fucking bored and annoyed with this story that I stopped paying attention. I can't say enough bad things about this comic book. Everyone involved in the making of it should be ashamed of themselves. Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful. F