Gravity Doesn’t Suck: Stormwatch #7 Review

In reading Stormwatch #7, it occured to me that the best Stormwatch and Authority stories (and let’s face it: the New 52 Stormwatch is just The Authority with The Martian Manhunter) have been simple sci-fi and superhero comic tropes, only racked up on amphetamines and extrapolated out to their craziest violent extreme. Warren Ellis had them fight God. Mark Millar did great tales of the team fighting “The Avengers” (Sure, it was a pastiche of a famous superteam, but with personal and sexual problems… but up to a point, isn’t that all The Authority was?).

In this, writer Paul Jenkins, in his first issue on Stormwatch (First of two before Peter Milligan takes over), starts with an idea you could pull out of any Doc Savage story or early issue of Justice League of America – The Gravity Thieves! – and spins it out into a very dense-feeling, hard sci-fi(ish) story that, if not in league as the classic Ellis and Millar stories, at least it’s in the same ballpark, swinging for the fences.

The book hits pretty much every mark on the successful Authority story checklist. Weird sciency shit blowing people up in gruesome ways? Check; got that out of the way by the end of page two. Unknown, faceless entity demonstrating its power by taking out Big Gun Apollo? Yup; disembodied energy tentacles, to excite even the most darkly perverse hentai/tazer “enthusiast”. Find out that the threat is potentially extinction-level in nature to Earth? Hell, this one is capable of stealing gravity with their energy tentacles and wiping out all life in the known universe… possibly from being hit at high speed by hentai/tazer enthusiasts being flung through zero gravity in the opposite direction of their penises.

Explosive Hemorrhage: Red Lanterns #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was written when the writer was extremely hung over. This has affected his mood, and his ability to remember if he has included spoilers or not. You have been warned.

Red Lanterns is one of the damnedest comics on the stands right now. Every issue I’ve read feels like it has some kind of underlying theme, some kind of Big Message it’s trying to impart. Issue one felt like it was hinting at the underlying motivations and effect of vigilante violence. The third issue teased themes of the effects of sexual violence. This issue intimates a greater examination of the vary nature of what it would mean to become suddenly superhuman. These are all admirable aspirations for a monthly comic book, and it would be exciting and interesting to read… if those themes weren’t buried in hamfisted storytelling that seemingly goes nowhere and gratuitous ass shots and brokeback poses. This book serves up more ass on a consistent basis than a back alley Chinese food place… in more ways than one.

Look At What’s Happened To Me: Action Comics #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Well Lois, we stand for spoilers, ruined story beats, and The American Way. Actually, those first two kind of are The American Way. Either way, you have been warned. Plus, your underpants are pink.

Action Comics #7 is, in many ways, a standard and classic Grant Morrison issue: a bunch of Big Ideas wrapped in one of the oldest ideas in the Superman mythos: fight Brainiac, and choose between his Earth and Kryptonian heritage. It is, in its own way, a perfect amalgam of what Morrison does best: turning old, hoary Silver Age story ideas that most of us laughed at during the Dark Age into something majestic and galactic in scope, all while perserving the humanity of the characters involved (It’s that last part Morrison sometimes punts on, but not here). In general, this is a good comic book.

And then there’s the fucking suit. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Modern Retro: O.M.A.C. #7 Review

Considering that Keith Giffen’s art on O.M.A.C. is an obvious and unabashed tribute to Jack Kirby, if there is any justice in this world, we will eventually discover that Giffen’s pencils of Superman’s face in the opening of this book were redrawn by Al Plastino… or in a more modern turn of irony, Rob Liefeld.

Actually, having looked at that lede I just wrote, and at O.M.A.C. #7 itself again, I think doing something like that wouldn’t be a dose of justice, but something that co-writer Dan DiDio and Giffen might do just as a self-referential goof, for the sheer, lunatic thrill of it… which seems like the reasoning behind almost everything they do in this book. This is not a bad thing. O.M.A.C. has, since its launch in September, been many things: over the top, agressively retro, and almost deliberately schizo in its jumping from outlandish scenario to outlandish scenario every month. It has also been one of the most consistently entertaining comics of the first batch of the DC’s New 52.

In My Tommy Hilfiger Hoodie: DC Debuts Rebooted Shazam

DC Comics debuted a teaser image of the Gary Frank-redesigned Shazam (née Captain Marvel) in this morning’s New York Post. I’m guessing that writer / DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns decided that the redesign of a niche character who’s been unable to carry his own book for around 20 years, and who’s appearing as a backup feature in Justice League, was news too earthshattering to relegate to the ghetto of the comics-related press… and further guessing that the Post ran with it due to a need to fill column inches thanks to a sudden unexpected dearth of Lindsay Lohan candid upskirt vagina pictures.

DC’s Saturday Morning Cartoons Inspire My Inner Child. She Is 12.

This morning, over on Cartoon Network, publisher DC is launching its DC Nation cartoon programming block, starting at 10:00 A.M. EST. According to USA Today, this programming will consist of

…superhero shows Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice, behind-the-scenes looks at its DC comics and Warner Bros. screen projects, and a series of shorts starring Plastic Man, Doom Patrol, Teen Titans and Aardman Animation’s take on various heroes and villains.

 
We’ve talked about this launch back in November, with the full trailer here. As a die hard fan of The Wrong Trousers, I was the most excited about the Aardman Animation stuff. An extended look at the Aardman Animation take on the DCU has been released:

 
Having watched the Green Lantern cartoon debut last year, this programming block is definitely a reason to get excited about Saturday morning cartoons again. It also makes me wish I could get my hands to stop shaking long enough to draw something that doesn’t resemble a stick figure in the throes of molecular disintegration. If only there was a way to become a cartoon illustrator, without any actual talent beyond the ability to craft a really stellar dick joke…
 
Can technology provide me with the solution to my illustration woes? Find out after the jump!

Denouement: Justice League #6 Review

Justice League #6 is the most memorable and remarkable of the title’s relaunch for two reasons, the first being that it is packed with the kind of cover-to-cover superhero action that you want from a team comic book. The second is that it contains a splash page depicting Cyborg with a stance and facial expression that, minus any context, looks like he’s taking a savage and angry dump so terrible it might alter his religious beliefs. Which is as good an example of the schizo feeling this book has instilled in me for the past six months.

Let’s start off for a change on a positive note: this is one hell of a superhero fight. Writer Geoff Johns establishes the stakes early, showing a desperate family trying to escape the Armageddon that is occurring as Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg battle Darkseid in the middle of a city. The battle is visceral, the feeling that the heroes are throwing every Goddamned thing they can think of at Darkseid, who is drawn by Jim Lee as solid, giant and implacable. This is the kind of epic throwdown that I’ve been wanting from Justice League from the word go… which is a damn good thing because many of the characters still act as if they’re recovering from a partial lobotomy.

Johns’s characterizations have been problematic throughout this arc. Yes, I understand this is a reboot, but the youngest character in this book, in terms of creation date, is Cyborg, who has almost a third of a century of previous characterization history behind him. And sometimes we get glimmers of the long-established behaviors of the characters, but other times they act like they were created by Rob Liefeld in a 1990 cocaine twitch. Sometimes within two panels.

Crossdressing: I, Vampire #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last review before the comic stores open…

I tuned out of I, Vampire after protagonist Andrew Bennett left Boston for Gotham City. I figured that we just in for yet another meeting of a vampire and Batman, and besides: being from Boston, I was getting a charge out of seeing a major comic set in my town. Maybe I was being unrealistic, but I sort of hoped that we’d see Mary, Queen of The Vampires, take a bite out of David Ortiz and grow about three horse testicles in her armpits.

So robbed of the chance to see some Boston University knuckleheads get bled out on Lansdowne Street, I checked out for a little while, and I clearly shouldn’t have. Because sometime between then and now, all the shit has hit the fan.

The book opens in some kind of gothic building (A subway station? A church? Being Gotham, maybe a 7-Eleven?) with Bennett, some allies and yes, Batman, fighting about a scrillion vampires. And it is an impressive scene… and it says something about the state of the modern vampire story that I’ve written and deleted about seven different “sparkling vampires” jokes just now.

Premature Evacuation: Justice League Dark #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers, and saying that backwards won’t make them go away.

We’re six issues into Justice League Dark now, and Peter Milligan is finally putting the actual team (mostly) together after an interminable rampup of what seemed like dozens of tiny solo adventures of the DC Universe’s most Vertigo-like heroes… just in time for a forced crossover with I, Vampire and Milligan leaving the book. Thanks a lot, Pete. Your timing sucks.

At the end of the last issue, we finally had Constantine, Deadman, Shade, Zatanna et al in one place… just in time for each of them to say, “Fuck you, Charlie” (Or in Zatanna’s case, “Eilrahc, uoy kcuf”) and disperse to the four winds. And now they’re all having nightmares; Constantine dreams of London on fire and it being his fault. Zatanna dreams of monsters putting fingers in her mouth (Meaning that, based on finger placement, her definition of nightmare has a lower threshold than mine). Deadman dreams that Dove is dead, unlike most comic fans who have been praying that Hawk would also take the dirtnap.

Stone Cold Killer – Review Of The Flash #6

The Flash is another one of those books that finds its way into the house that I rarely get around to reading. It’s really Rob‘s thing, more than my own. Not that I particularly dislike the character; hell, I got a kick out of watching him run around the globe in order to pick just the right amount of steam to punch Lex Luthor in the face in Justice League Unlimited. However, my DC superhero tastes tend to run to characters with the word “bat” somewhere in their names and there is no “Batflash”…and if there was it sounds more like a euphemism for an evening of rooftop sex between Bruce and Selina that ends in disappointment.

With Flash issue 6, “Best Served Cold”, I find myself again picking up a book that is smack in the middle of a story arc. And, I do mean “smack” and “in the middle” – as the book opens, The Flash is engaged in an all out brawl with Captain Cold on a frozen lake (? – I always assumed Central City was somewhere out in fly over country), with a boat themed restaurant teetering from a giant stalagmite made from ice that is protruding from the lake’s surface. Will The Flash save the trapped restaurant patrons in time? And why does Captain Cold’s beef with The Flash seem so much more personal this time?

Ahead, prepare yourself for the cold fist of spoilers. Or don’t. Whatever.