Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

All-New, Cranky Comics Catch-Up

Some odds and ends from the comics pile from the past several weeks. I'm not going to do a comprehensive attack, just note what comes to mind at the moment as I pick a few comics out of the handiest stack that I've gotten around to reading.

JSA ended it's current numbering with issue 87 by Levitz, Orway and Ross. This issue wraps up a slightly overlong story concerning a Silver Age Batman villain: the Gentleman Ghost.

While I've read far worse the arc has reeked of filler material and mostly has me looking forward to the return of Geoff Johns (even though they'll be starting the numbering all over again) in a few months. I'd probably have been a little less critical of it had this been a filler arc and next month would see #88 and the return of Johns. As it stands, making it the capper for a series puts a bit more strain on it, IMHO. Still, Levitz and company built towards a big climax as they face a legion of spooks, and it will probably be an instantly "classic", favorite arc for a much younger fan. Not all comics are written for 45 year old comics fans.

I did enjoy one panel in particular in this issue, where three of the attacking ghosts appear to alternately be threatened, overwhelmed and even horrified by Power Girl's breasts. (That's on the 17th page of the story -- irritatingly there's no numbering on the pages.) I'm too laxy to set up and do a scan on the page at the moment.

Thunderbolts #104 sees the conscription effort paying off and, ultimately, Zemo apparently tipping a little of his hand to the audience by issue's end. How many angles Zemo's playing remains unclear, which is part of the appeal of the current arc. We're getting closer to open conflict in the overall Civil War arc.

The only other recent Civil War tie-in I've read was issue #3 of Civil War: Front Line, in which Paul Jenkins generally continues to underwhelm.

The issue opens with the primary segment continuing, as we in turn see each of the ideologically "embedded" reporters gather information from people on their side of the issue. We open with Miss Floyd, the reporter covering the anti-registration side of the argument, as she is taken, blindfolded, to meet with a group of c-list characters. The exchange there is okay as they kick around some of the issues - rights to privacy, freedom of speech and the polarizing nature of the situation. In this we also learn that the underground, anti-registration movement hasn't grown organized enough yet for those interested in joining it to be able to find it.

Next we see Ben Urich, covering the pro-registration side, interviewing Reed Richards. Reed makes his case based on a statistical projection, seeing the unregistered hero activity as a sort of plague sweeping inward, across the nation, from the coasts. Ben brings a healthy skepticism to the idea of making any mathematical predictions based on behavior and public sentiment. So far, generally, so good. If Jenkins stuck with more interesting, thoughtful, balanced material like this we might get somewhere interesting.

After this the embedded section for this issue slides rapidly towards the toilet as we rejoin Miss Floyd. She comes across a battle between two costumed characters I've never seen before - Thunderclap and Bantam - representing the anti- and pro-registration arguments. She finds a camera-toting colleague crouching behind a bench, and he fills her in on who these two are and that they've been "punching each other for half an hour" because Bantam is ticked off at Thunderclap for not registering and somehow spoiling Bantam's chance at legitimacy and recognition. Huh? Okay, so he's brain damaged. Let's think about this "half hour" thing, though.

Now... I could see Bantam -- who's a hispanic guy in a sort of tattered rags version of Rocky's training outfit -- doing that, but the guy he's up against has giant metal thimbles over each forearm and hand with an armored thumb sticking out, and as best we can tell this is designed for one, main power: When he claps the tips together it creates an explosive shockwave. We see him do it once, right after Batman comes close to clipping him with a right cross... the result: Batman is hurled back with sufficient force that when he slams into a gas truck (taking a light pole/street sign with him and somehow sending a car partially flying off to the left) and igniting it in a way that surprises scares and lightly buffets the two reporters less than 30 feet away, and leaves Bantam with third degree burns over his body, though no one else in the area appears to have so much as a singed eyebrow.

Now, wait, it gets worse...

We see a shocked and soon despondent Thunderclap saying "Oh... God... ...What have I done..?" and then get up and walk off, slump-shouldered, saying "I didn't... I didn't mean it... it was an accident..." He heads for a dark alley, walking between two police officers who are apparently so interested in seeing the crispy critter that they ignore him completely. Why, I'm sure they've decided that the poor guy's conscience will punish him enough. You just think about what you did, boy. I bet Baby Jesus is bawling his eyes out even now.

Next we switch to the detention center where they're keeping Robbie "Speedball" Baldwin, the only New Warrior to survive the devastating incident in Stamford, CT., whose power control centers were apparently burnt out saving his life, and who awoke from a coma in time to be charged technically because he wasn't in compliance with the registration bill that was signed into law while he was in a coma, so he's in violation of the law as an "unregistered combatant." Well, sure, this is a twist on the instituted corruption allowed by government when Terror is used as a key for legislation, so all of us here in Bush Country are sadly used to this sort of thing.

Ultimately Robbie's presented with a "compromise" by his lawyer, Jen "She-Hulk" Walters, wherein he is to agree to register with the government and spend the next three years doing community service, which is bad enough as it's tantamount to an admission of guilt, but is worse becasue the "service" boils down to ratting out fellow heroes and helping them be hunted down. Despite being in an institution where both the guards and other inmates are against him -- he's already been repeatedly brutalized -- he refuses to sign.

This middle section of the tale is in general the strongest thread in the series, and we may ultimately see Speedball, generally dismissed as a joke character over the years, come out of this as more of a player. Every comics fan worth his salt knows the power's still lurking somewhere inside him; it's just a matter of time.

With this issue Jenkins adds a third storyline as we catch sign of a secret Atlantean program where a post-hypnotically triggered sleeper agent is triggered, changes himself back to an Atlantean (presumably because this will grant him sufficient strength to offset, you know, the detriments of suddenly being very much a fish out of water) so he can kill his human wife and destroy the pet shop they've been running for what appears to be decades. Oh, those cunning Atlanteans...

DC's 52 has been rolling along, covering various threads during this missing year in a way that can prove a little frustrating from week to week if one's invested in one or two storylines but not so much in the others. As it's a weekly it's more tolerable by far than this would be in a monthly, but I have to say that this past week's formal debut for Batwoman didn't do much for me. Maybe it's still the thought of someone really trying to do gymnastics and martial arts in those Batgirl boots.

Indeed, my favorite part of the story was seeing that one of the file boxes the Question had in his little HQ was labeled "OHIO 2004" -- a reference that seemed all too fitting in a story concerned with Intergang. There's a crime perpetrated on us we'll be paying for for a generation at least.

Reaching back a week or two, I fear that Gail Simone let her nature as a comics fan overcome her own good sense as a writer based on the deadly dull item that was The All-New Atom #1.

I ordered this issue almost entirely on the strength of the (nominal) writer's talents, and while I don't believe his modern work is a match for what he produced once upon a time, seeing that John Byrne was supplying the pencils struck me as a nice touch. At least I'd know what to expect.

Unfortunately, I don't believe John B. will ever go back to just supplying the artwork and being a co-plotter - the combined role he's really best suited for.

As I moved through the issue I was struck by how utterly devoid it was of what I've seen as Simone's wit and how much it made me feel I was reading a new interpretation of The Worst of John Byrne. My standing hypothesis is that Byrne turned in pages complete with his own dialogue written in in nearly every panel.

It opens with a quick look 100 days into the future where aliens (presumably from some sub-atomic realm) who have problems with verb tenses and sentence structure are surveying the ruined Earth and trying to break the spirit of various captive heroes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl. Then we jump to a point ten days before the present to see a nervous man save something to disc and then be devoured by a convention of small dogs. Then we jump 14 years into the past to see the science nerd who will grow up to be the protagonist of this series.

This is followed by a dull, uninteresting introduction of characters in rapid order as the young Doctor Ryan Choi meets first the straight-laced, probably a bit too serious dean and then various faculty members, each of whom is wacky in the way that's intended to assure us that we're in the presence of Great Minds. Just to be sure of that, though, we get to see the young hero to be's thoughts as he ticks each off in his mind as a luminary in this field or that as he's introduced to them at the poker game. If we could but see the faces on the royalty on the cards I suspect we'd find that even they were bored.

Our hero has taken the position that used to be held by Ray Palmer (the Atom, currently missing), and this included his house on campus. Having corresponded with Palmer since he was a student in Hong Kong, Choi took the position partly in order to look for a message from Palmer. He finds an anagram inscribed on a pin and it instructs him to look under a piece of furniture because, well, no one would ever find it otherwise, you know. It isn't as if this technology would be the focus of governments around the world or anything. Anyway, he finds Palmer's size-changing belt and has a little misadvenure before returning to full size.

I'm feeling doubly cheated as I spend this much time on recounting the issue.

Imagine my amazement as almost every other review I came across offered praises for the issue and characters introduced, many of them pausing to note how this is some of Simone's signature material. Several of the reviews praise as witty the selection of mostly over-used quotes which I found to be inserted with almost brutal ham-handedness.

Am I missing something? Are people bending so far over backwards to praise any woman in mainstream comics, and to not come across as being pegged as racist (because the new Atom is Asian) that they're not actually reading the story in the least bit critically? I'm indifferent to Choi - race isn't entering into it, and there's almost nothing wrong with the character as he's presented - and Simone's work has been so entertaining elsewhere (Villains United was by far my favorite Countdown to Infinite Crisis series) that this flat drek strikes me as something she should be embarassed to have her name on. Is it that this is in some way based on things introduced by Grant Morrison, and we must always praise anything that comes from Morrison?
Was I being too harsh?

Nah. I'll stick with my original estimation.

That's as much as I have time or interest in covering at the moment. I may get to some more over the next few days, since a new box of comics will be arriving by the 28th - next Friday - and anything older will likely never be covered here once new material lands.

So, have you read any of these issues? Any comments? Am I being a prick about a recent favorite of yours? Am I missing redeeming subtleties or the 800 lb gorilla in the room point?