A Creaking Door. A Scream! A Waxen, Blood-Caked Visage! John Has Risen From the Dead and Bought Comics!

Hello, folks! Welcome back to Living Between Wednesdays, the blog written by four busy people. This week was especially filled with events for all us Living Wednesdateers, but our usual semi-regular updates should be back on track shortly.

And now: the reviews!

Green Lantern No. 46

Flip-flop time! I have unearthed, I think, the root of my dissatisfaction with Blackest Night. There was a bit of hashing out in the comments section of my last post and I eventually came to the conclusion that I should stop reading the spin-off titles. And I feel light as air, having skipped Blackest Night: Titans this week, not that I was going to buy it anyway. Most of my problems with the whole event can be very firmly located in the adventures of DC heroes as they scrap with their innumerable deceased friends and enemies. By contrast to that very-quickly-boring scenario, the drama in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps revolves around the interactions between the various corps rather than being solely reliant on dreadful corpse reveal after dreadful corpse reveal  – witness how cool the Sinestro/Hal/Mongul stuff is this issue. Heck, even the costume thing isn’t a problem, since almost all of the deceased characters involved started out as Lanterns of one sort or another and that’s a pretty compatible aesthetic. Sorry to imply that your story sucked, Geoff Johns – turns out that it was just piled up with a lot of similar-looking stories that did suck.

So screw you, Blackest Night spin-offs! You’re terrible and I hate you!

Batman: The Widening Gyre No. 2 (of 6)

As I said last time, I have no personal experience with the supposed soul-wrenching badness of Kevin Smith’s comic writing, so I’m going into this without expectation. That being said, this is the SECOND ISSUE, so I suppose that it’s time for some JUDGEMENT.

Hell, I don’t know. This is a really hard second issue to judge. I can’t decide whether Smith is setting up three or four themes that will be important later or just had half a dozen cool Batman moments that he wanted to write. Like, Superman shows up: will he be back? Is this meant as an illustration of Batman’s trust issues? Is it just a chance to have Superman call Robin “little shaver” (any points smith got for that, by the way, were negated by Robin saying “Wow. Just… wow.” in the next panel. “Wow. Just… wow.”, in my estimation, is one of the most contrived, overused, irritating and smugly deployed [witness how transported I am! I am a highly sensitive person!] expressions ever coined. Never, ever use it, I implore you)? Likewise, the issue opens with Batman tracking Fun Land, the obese serial killer from the pages of Sandman. Not that it’s not nice to see Fun Land finally get caught after getting off so easily in his last appearance, but is there any real purpose behind it? I have no idea!

I guess that I’ll go ahead and gamble the twelve dollars and get the rest of this series, and for these reasons: 1) That goat-headed guy has an unusually interesting costume for a Gotham vigilante. 2) I want to see if it does indeed get really bad, or if all people are blowing this way out of proportion. And 3) I just can’t deprive my fellow bloggers of the joy that I am currently providing them. Seriously, the comic shop was like a friggin’ comedy club yesterday. Tiina, Dave, Cal, Ben… everybody was pulling out their A material for this one. I think that a couple of kids who wandered in looking for Pokemon cards managed to crack wise at my expense. I feel like the Santa Claus of cheap laffs!

Astro City Special: Astra No 1 (of 2)

Ah, the one- or two-issue Astro City story, how I love you. Dark Age is a great time, don’t get me wrong, but it was the self-contained tales of Silver Agent and Jack-In-The-Box and the like that I fell in love with, way back when. Busiek and Co. have an enviable knack for telling tales that manage to hint at a whole heck of a lot of history to both their characters and their world, and this story more than many because it hearkens back to an earlier yarn, the one in which Astra Furst, of the super-hero team First Family, runs away from home to go to school and learn about hopscotch.

Now, having evidently aged roughly in real-time, Astra is graduating from university college, so it looks like she kept up that “going to school” thing from the last time we saw her. And… aw, all of my examples of how things have obviously been going on in the meantime are a little to spoilery for my liking. Let’s just say that a hundred or so issues of whatever nonexistent comic the Fursts normally operate in have gone by in the meantime. Of course, Busiek will never spell out precisely why things are the way they are, so I shall spend my declining years in an increasingly frantic quest for information on why there are three more members of the First Family now.

*SOB!*

The Last Days of Animal Man No. 5 (of 6) – I know that I would eventually get tired of the whole thing, but I kind of want “The Last Days of…” to become the next “Year One”. I could really stand to read more miniseries set in an indefinite and not-guaranteed-to-occur future and only beholden to the continuity that the writers feel like including. Sure, some of them would be terrible, but if only one in five contained something as fun as Whale Green Lantern then it would be worth it. No matter how it ends, this series was a great idea, well-executed.

Superman No. 692 – Flip-flop numba two: Remember how bored I was getting with the extended Superman family of titles? Well, I’m interested again. Now, if the pattern holds, this World Against Superman sub-story will go on about two issues too long and I’ll get bored again. Let’s see if I’m right!

I was, by the way, almost physically shocked to see the original Outsiders in a comic book again. Good show, I think.

One Step Away From a Strongly-Worded Email

Okay, it’s time for me to lay down some thoughts now that this thing has been going on for a while. Why isn’t Blackest Night kicking my ass like it should be? I am enjoying it enough to keep buying it, but it’s definitely not my most anticipated comic of the week. Some theories:

1. The Anticipation Factor: I call this “The Matrix 2 Effect” because that’s when I first noticed it. Remember how hard The Matrix rocked us? And how long we waited, our little faces scrunched up, for the next episode? And how it was then decried as THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME? Bushwah. It was an okay movie. The problem was that it wasn’t as good as the original, while in our head it was going to be exponentially better. Similarly, we’ve been waiting for Blackest Night for, what, a year? Year and a half? Coupled with the fact that the Green Lantern stories leading into the whole thing were pretty solid fun, Blackest Night is almost guaranteed to have a hard time being  as awesome as I, personally, was hoping for.

FIRST CONCLUSION: One Year Of Hype Is Too Much Hype.

2. The Trouble With Black Lanterns, Part 1: I started thinking about Blackest Night earlier this week after reading Chris Bird's thoughts on the current state of comics (here they are), among which was the fact that the Black Lanterns are very poorly written (edit: oh dang, he's quoting someone else, isn't he. Well, I still read the quote there). Far from being cunning emotional manipulators who wring every last drop of succulent emotion from their prey, the Black Lanterns (and here I’m going to lift the Mighty God King’s Jim Smith's analogy, because it’s the very best one to use here) sound like fourteen year olds on a message board complaining about a character that they don’t like. It’s just cheap, easy shot after cheap, easy shot. Really, the most effective Black Lanterns so far have been the resurrected villains, because they have the option of a personality and some of them actually have legitimate beefs with the heroes that they are fighting. You know what would be cool? Basically any other villainous archetype, that's what. Like, what if the Black Lanterns retained their old personalities but were compelled to attack their friends - that would be a potentially compelling roller coaster of emotion. Or hell: monosyllabic or completely silent engines of undead destruction. Just shut up Zombie Elongated Man.

Thank you.

SECOND CONCLUSION: Fourteen Year Olds On Message Boards Aren’t Evil, Just Annoying.

3. Let’s Make it a Company-Wide Event!: Remember Sinestro Corps War? Green Lantern event, lasted maybe three months, took place in two regular series and a handful of specials? What a nice little event, yes? Wouldn’t it be nice if Blackest Night had gotten the same treatment instead of sprawling all over space and time? I mean, I'm grateful that DC has stopped the old policy of having events intrude on every single ongoing series, but we don't need to see how every single super-hero deals with the return of his or her dead in excruciating detail.

THIRD CONCLUSION: If You Beat The Horse Before It’s Dead, You Might Just Kill It.

4. The Trouble With Black Lanterns, Part 2: Zombies with power rings should be cooler than these guys are. I mean, I can understand undead super-humans using their old powers, but why the hell is Sue Dibny just slouching around in the background rather than flying around and slinging death beams? Basically the only Black Lantern to do anything remotely interesting is The Ventriloquist, who has been floating along surrounded by a cloud of heavily-armed Scarfaces. GAH!

FOURTH CONCLUSION: Power Rings Ain’t Just Jewelry, Dammit.

5. That Damned Black Lantern Costume: The costume design for the Black Lanterns looks pretty good on paper (uh, I mean writing paper, not comic book paper): the character’s regular costume done up in black, grey and silver with elements of Black Hand’s costume superimposed over top. And sometimes it works, as in Sue Dibny’s simple dress-with-a-logo. Most of the time, though, it’s a recipe for extraordinarily dull and confusing fight scenes. And did you know that Batman has about three hundred dead villains who are basically generic dudes with long hair and knives? I didn’t, until I spent half an hour trying to figure out who the hell they all were.

FIFTH CONCLUSION: Maybe The Black Lantern Corps Needs Nametags, I’m Just Sayin’.

6. What, no Avarice? In Blackest Night: Batman No. 2, up on the roof of the Gotham City Police Department, one of the Generic Long-Haired Undead Batman Villains (dramatically silhouetted for extra identification challenge!) says that they will eat Gotham’s inhabitants, “… savoring the distinct subtleties of the fear, rage, love, compassion and willpower coursing through their souls!” and I’m all like “What, no love for the orange light of avarice?” but then I realized that no, inciting avarice would require some subtlety on the zombies’ part, and they don’t have time for that. All the other emotions could probably be evoked through beating people up and trolling them, after all. But when Black Lantern Jade tried to sex Kyle Raynor up, that worked! That was much more interesting than if she’d moaned at him about how she died instead of him and told him that he was a sucky replacement for Hal! Nuanced behavior on the Black Lanterns’ part might actually make them interesting opponents for a company-wide event! And they have power rings! They have the capacity to create energy constructs! THEY COULD BE FANTASTICALLY EFFECTIVE TEMPTERS AND MANIPULATORS! I think that this might have just become a mashup of points 2 and 4. I don't care, though, because i just pictured a comic in which every beloved dead character in the DCU came back to life at once and everyone was really happy but peril lurked behind their eyes. Oh imagination, thanks for all your help.

 

SIXTH CONCLUSION: Oh hell, I don't know. Something about not living up to potential or the like. More Larfleeze needed.

Ah well. I'm still enjoying myself, though I can't be sure how much of that is just my enduring love for Where's Waldo attaching itself to my little games of Spot the Zombie. But my joy should be from more than just going "Heh heh, undead Ch'p."

Of course, Geoff Johns has showed a facility for turning a weak story around with a very satisfying ending - see Flash: Rebirth, which hasn't quite ended yet, I guess, but still counts because I want it to - but, well... that doesn't make the story as a whole good. Even if the 80-90% likely victory by Hal Jordan wearing all the different Corps rings is coupled with Sodam Yat returning from the Daxamite sun all supercharged and a possible appearance by benign "at peace" undead like Dove and it's a completely fun, nail-biting, fist-pumping, senses-shattering phantasmagoric thrill-ride, well, that's not going to make the issues that preceded it any better.

So what's the solution? I guess that the only thing that I can do is to stop anticipating anything ever, which might require me to pay even less attention to comics news  than I already do. And we could petition Geoff Johns to retire his "irritating fanboy" character now that Superboy Prime has been locked away. That would be nice.

Anyway, thanks for hanging out with me while I vented my spleen. Go read something that will bring you joy - that's what I'm going to do (if I can find my damn copy of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, that is)

Good afternoon!

Come Travel Light: This American Drive

Hooray! This American Drive is here! Halifax comic book superstar and Living Between Wednesday BFF Mike Holmes made a book, and I finally have it in my greedy little Gollum hands. I've been super stoked about this awesomely illustrated and brilliantly designed book, so I'm now cradling it in my arms and whispering "my precioussss." You know, treating it how I normally treat the cat.

This American Drive was originally a comic that appeared in Halifax's alt weekly, The Coast. The graphic novel is fattened up (like it's been eating too much White Castle) with a more in-depth story, including Mike's charming prose and more great illustrations.

The book follows Canadian, Mike, and his Texan girlfriend, Jodi, on a three week road trip across America. Mike perfectly captures of the unique experience of Canadians traveling in America. It's so similar and yet so different, like you accidentaly met yourself when you went back in time and you forever altered the future world. The USA is Canada Earth 2.

Mike and Jodi travel from the Halifax to Texas, taking in all that America has to offer.

His observations are spot on—they get waved through the boarder with barely a glance at their passports after weeks of worry, they squeeze into tiny but shockingly cheap hotels rooms on the side of the interstate, the drink $1 PBRs and they have a better time at Cooter's than at the Grand Old Opry.

We all know that the best part of any road trip is sampling the local cuisine and This American Drive serves up some delicious junk food porn, as Mike describes every barbequed rib dinner, plate of biscuits and gravy and basket of deep fried pickles that he and Jodi eat.

The title is an homage to the most essential of road trip items—podcasts of This American Life, and like its namesake, the book reminds us of the beauty and humour that can be found in the mundane, from a great cheeseburger to a funny looking cactus.

Invisible Publishing is taking This American Drive on their own little road trip. It'll be launched this Sunday at Word on the Street in Halifax (and your LBW writers will be there too with Strange Adventures and Nimbus Publishing), and in Ontario and Quebec next week.

John Buys Comics, It's Official

Underground No. 1 (of 5)

Well, all right. Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber tell the tale of a town and a cave. Crap, wait. I meant to make it sound better than I just did. Let me start over.

The town of Marion isn't doing so well financially and so the people are all for a plan to open up a local cave system for tourism. Of course, the presence of massive crowds of people tends to irreversibly screw up basically everything about a cave's workings, so the area's park rangers are opposing the plan.

And since what I just laid out for you is a recipe for a comic about council meetings and petitions and possibly a bit of filibustering, there are ample amounts of nefariousness, licentiousness, explosions and sass-mouth to liven up the proceedings. The protagonist, a rare-in-comics short lady name of Wesley Fischer, is passionately against the project and, unless I miss my guess, is about to be put in mortal peril because of it.

Plus, it's interesting and written well and doesn't feature anyone in a cape - we might just have a new addition to the "lend to those who don't like super-heroes shelf". Huzzah!

Wednesday Comics No. 12

The end of the great experiment! Let's break down how it all went down!

Batman: Looked great all the way through. I reckon that this story would read better in a single reading than sequentially, though. Hey, what do you know, it's on the front page! It's the easiest one to read! There were no aliens or demons.

Kamandi: My Christmas wish to Grampy Tanglebeard this year now includes an ongoing Kamandi series. Post apocalyptic adventure comics at their finest. There were no aliens or demons.

Superman: I was never very taken by the art but now that this is done I like it a lot more, partially because it, more than any other Wednesday Comic, works better as a complete story than as a series of installments and even more because of today's installment, in which Superman is revealed to be absolutely gigantic, much to my drunken amusement. Also, a lovely Batman gag. There were aliens and no demons.

Deadman: Terrific. This comic looked great and never stopped being a good time, especially with the neato reveal a couple of weeks ago. There were demons but no aliens.

Green Lantern: A decent enough yarn, but it seems.. unbalanced. I'm pretty sure that there were more weeks devoted to flashbacks than alien-fighting. There were aliens but no demons.

Supergirl: Nice and light, in the best possible sense of the word. Brought me nothing but joy and was the only one to end on a note of  adorability. There were aliens but no demons.

Metamorpho: A couple of weeks ago I had a bit of an inkling, but today I was suffused with joy: Gaiman and Allred were continuing the Haney run from where it left off! That alien guy was Metamorpho's mysterious enemy from the 60s comic! The one who was never revealed because the book was canceled! Element Dog! You two beautiful madmen, I love you! There were aliens but no demons.

Teen Titans: I wasn't too sold on this at first, but this was a solid story. The art was very nicely adapted to the format after a rocky first couple of weeks and the plot was entertaining to me. It pleased my brain. Most improved. There were no aliens and no demons. Wait, except Kid Devil. And Ms Martian.

Strange Adventures: Paul Pope wins the awards for best adventure comic of the bunch, best title and best use of mandrills. If he could be persuaded to keep doing this then I would buy Wednesday comics forever. There were aliens but no demons.

Hawkman: Man, I wasn't feeling this one. I liked a lot of moments from it but I couldn't get into it as a whole. Still, the last installment, like that of the Superman story, made me smile and redeemed its brethren somewhat. There were sliens but no demons.

Metal Men: I love me some Metal Men, and this was a decent Magnusbot experience. the penultimate episode was the best. There were no aliens and no demons.

Wonder Woman: Like Teen Titans, a much improved comic. The odd style grew on me after a while and the art looked better suited to the format at the end than it did at the  beginning, but the biggest thing that sold me on it was Etta Candy. I'm a big fan of the Golden Age Etta and this might just be the best reimagining of her that I've ever seen. Woo woo! Also, Dr. Poison is a great villain name. My only real problem is with the whole "last of the Amazons" thing. Is it like, the fact that she's the last of them to be born or are the rest of them gone? Is Diana just hanging around on an empty island? So confused. There were demons but no aliens.

Sgt. Rock: Oh dude. This was lovely to look at and feature satisfying Nazi beatdowns, but... twelve installments dedicated to a guy getting out of a room? That's rough. There were no aliens and no demons.

Flash: This one just kicked my ass on a regular basis. Seriously, just look at some of the design-work on this thing. I think that I clapped once. And neither aliens nor demons!

Demon and Catwoman: I was up and down on this one but the last couple of weeks got me back in the positive camp. I think that the  clincher was the implication that about an hour after the final comic ended Selina and Jason were humping like monkeys. That and the iambic pentameter. There were demons but no aliens.

So that's it. I would participate in this experiment again, doctor. No real insight on the alien/demon thing, just an observation on the fact that they are thick on the ground.

Detective Comics No. 857 - Or should I add the "Batwoman in" part to it? I guess I should, shouldn't I. It's like Action Comics Weekly or the like. In any case, the name that the comic goes by doesn't mean much as compared to the contents, which signify nothing but good times. Take all of the gushing that I have done about this run, even the bit about the octopus man, and smash it together for this issue. A truly entertaining read. And in the back, an appearance by irascible scientist Aristotle Rodor!

Supergirl No. 45 - Things that I liked about this issue of Supergirl other than the general good times of the story: a scrolling newsfeed making reference to the events of Detective Comics, Lois finally calling Cat Grant on her wenchery, the fact that Squad K is headed by the archetypal "leader too tough to wear a helmet like anyone else".

The Web No. 1 - Oog... I really want this  to be a good comic. I'm going to defer all commentary in favour of a SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGMENT. Fingers crossed, gang.

Superman: Secret Origin No. 1 (of 6) - I like it! But it''s late and I've had a couple of beer and I think I'll articulate more about issue 2. One observation: if every interpretation of Superman requires an interpretation of Jor-El then I have to say that that is a good Jor-El. Right up there with the Silver Age and Byrne versions.

Herbie vs. Rorschach

I’ve been reading Dark Horse’s Herbie Archives recently, which collect  the exploits of lollipop-sucking, time-traveling weirdo kid Herbie Popnecker. It’s pretty strange stuff—the so-called “Fat Fury” is seemingly omnipotent and indestructible, not to mention irresistible to any number of beautiful ladies. Herbie travels to other planets, rubs elbows with Gregory Peck and Santa Claus, and helps Christopher Columbus discover America. The whole thing is made even more bizarre by Ogden Whitney’s classic illustrative style, which is kind of at odds with how wacky the stories are. Alan Moore is reportedly a huge fan of the series, and much has been made of the fact that both Herbie and Watchmen protagonist Rorschach share a similar speech pattern, a sort of lazy, disaffected monotone where they skip lots of words. However, I submit to you that the two characters have several more traits in common as well. For instance, both subscribe to a similarly unapologetic, uncompromising personal ethic: 

 

Not to mention, Herbie and Rorschach share a belief in enhanced methods of interrogation and intimidation:

 

Of course, their similar personalities might be a product of childhood trauma—both characters suffered at the hands of tyrannical, abusive parents:

 

No word on whether Herbie enjoys cold beans right out of the can, though. Or whether Rorschach enjoys a nice lollipop once in a while.

The Lazer Tag Files Part 3: Legacy

Well, I like to think so: