All Star Superman #9This wasn’t the greatest issue. In fact, it was kind of mediocre. And yet mediocre for Grant Morrison includes the following:
1. The secret origin of super heroes wearing underwear over their tights is actually the height of Kryptonian fashion.
2. Daily Planet employee Steve makes another appearance. Steve basically thinks people are outing him as Superman whenever he is in proximity of Clark Kent who actually has someone trying to out him as Superman. You see, this is funny because Steve looks like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
3. After throwing Superman through the moon and causing it to crack, two Kryptonian astronauts stitch up the damage by creating giant surgical staples with various suspension bridges from Earth. For some reason this tickled me.
B.P.R.D. – Killing Ground #4
Here is what I like about Hellboy: juxtaposition. There is all this goofy goth stuff going on and Hellboy—who happens to be a devil pulled from Hell by Rasputin with the help of the Nazis during WWII—does not want anything to do with any kind of that goth tomfoolery.
In fact, this is how things usually turn out in Hellboy:
Some kind of demon that wants to control everything: “By the seventh god of the sixty-three Zords, I shall bring about the kingdom of Zargot who shall rule for fifty-seven cycles with unyielding pain to bring about paradise.”
Hellboy: Yeah, why don’t you shut the hell up? (Hellboy then beats demon to death with a wooden chair.)
Now, some may really like all the gothy, demon stuff. I don’t. I do like seeing gothy stuff pummeled though. However, in the B.P.R.D. series (at least from the the two arcs I’ve read) the paranormal is taken a bit more seriously. Of course, this means I don’t fight it quite as enjoyable. And added to that, this story arc has pretty much read like a paranormal version of Alien, where a demon is haunting the hauls of the B.P.R.D. headquarters and picking off people on at a time. Now Alien was a great movie; however, taking a similar story and stretching it over five months…well, it just looses something.
But I’ve got to hand it to Mignola, as great as Alien was it never included a scene where one of the main characters dies, only to have the ghost of Lobster Johnson rise for his corpse and shoot ghost bullets into another character in a coma in order to kill a spirit trying to take possession of her body. And that is awesome.
Countdown to Final Crisis #24
This is one of those instances where the compulsive side of my collecting habits just got a bit out of control. I was all hyped for this series after the mostly excellent 52. Besides the Trickster/Pied Piper story line, I haven’t really dug this thing. I mean, after 27 issues (the issue number is actually counting down so don’t get all confused) the writers figured they would start progressing the story line after 25 issues. Now I’ve never written for a major comic book publisher, but I think this is a pretty bad idea. Anyways, this issue involves a lot of an evil Superman (you can tell he’s bad—and probably from the 90’s—because he’s all dressed in black) killing super heroes from an alternate earth. If that tickles your fancy then jump in.
DMZ #25
First off, I didn’t like the art in this one. It was muddled and dark and hard to tell what was going on. As with the last few issues, this is another one-shot character study of someone caught in the DMZ. I love one-shots in comics mainly because I’m really, really sick for two or three issue story arcs dragged out to six or seven in order to pad out the TPB version. However, this story is about a low-level Chinese gangster try to reach to the top levels of the Triad. And that’s pretty cliché.
However, this story ultimately succeeds when thinking about it outside of the series and relating it to…I don’t know…maybe some real world conflict that certain countries might be caught up in today. This story effectively shows how no matter how super power-ed (super power in a political, non-comic way) your country may be, it is impossible to predict the outcome due to internal forces seeking power. And is the U.S. really ready to go and kill every Triad member to control Iraq…metaphorically speaking?
Punisher #52
It is hard to upstage Frank Castle. He runs around with giant guns and grenades and kills really bad people. Not ambiguous bad guys that might be right…just really, really bad people like drug dealers and Russians who murder entire Afghanistan villages. But Barracuda does it. He’s the opposite of the Punisher…not that he isn’t a cold blooded killer…rather, that he’s a cold blooded killer without a sense of justice or revenge. He just kills because it is easier to do than actually dealing with people. Instead of asking that jerk to be quiet during a movie, shoot him. Barracuda is so over-the-top bad, he makes a good read. And as much as I like reading about his exploits, I really want to see him dead. Dead at the hand of the Punisher because he seems to really know how to hurt bad people. And seeing that the Punisher off’ed the wife of a mob member who tried to murder him by recruiting her sister, who then proceeds to beat bad-lady to death with a baseball bat while naked while he watches while handcuffed to a bed…I’m really excited to see how he’s going to deal with the man that has just apparently shot his child in the face.
Punisher War Journal #13
One panel is all you really need to see to understand the ultimate greatness of Matt Fraction’s Punisher:
Even in a book about a cold blooded murdered devoted to a life-long mission of seeking revenge for the murder off his family, there is room for a Kool-Aid reference.
World War Hulk #5
Dear Marvel,
Look. I really have enjoyed this series. After all, it was just a series of big beautiful fights between the Hulk and various Marvel super heroes. I just have one little problem. So this whole ordeal takes place a month or two after Civil War, which I hope you can admit now that it pretty much sucked. I mean, the climax was Captain American giving up to fascism because a building got knocked down while he was fighting other super powered people that wanted to give the government control over their lives. That’s pretty weak. But who knows, maybe New York is like this great symbol of America and therefore we should give up certain rights to preserve those symbols. I guess that’s cool and all that you’ve let George W. Bush take reign of the editorial board so he can have a job in 2009.
But can I just recap the events of World War Hulk #5? So, this was the big show down between the Hulk and the Sentry. Now the Hulk is a huge, muscular, green monster that is known for using the phrase, “Hulk smash!” And the Sentry is a meta human with the power of a million suns (or some ridiculously high number). I mean, I’m willing to overlook the big cinematic who-done-it twist at the end even if it did weaken the complete awesomeness of the Hulk kicking Reed Richards’ and Tony Stark’s butts all over the place. But look, just about every page of issue 5 was composed three or four panels of the Hulk and the Sentry punching each other which resulted in huge explosions and onomatopoeia phrases with ridiculous amounts of consonants and no vowels. Now, I’m not complaining about the fighting. That is the only reason I picked up this series. I’m not even upset about the three or four spin-offs coming from this series (a red Hulk? Seriously?) because that is pretty standard fare for the comic industry.
However, I’m pretty sure that amount of explosions pretty much leveled New York. So the arrest and death of Captain America pretty much amounted to nothing. He gave up to save New York and you successfully leveled the entire city. So you give control of super powered humans to the U.S. government and then you crap all over everything that Captain America gave his life for.
I know I was joking about W. running the editorial board over there, but seriously, is he the new editor?
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