John Buys Comics, Fights His Way Back From Alternate Timeline, Defeats Evil Self

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I’m… I’m going to put my Blackest Night review at the end, okay? Just read the first part if you got enough of that last week.

Mysterius the Unfathomable 

Yep, this trade totally came out last week, but I got it yesterday. I don't know if I missed it or it was on a slow comic delivery boat or what. Maybe I'm just a terrible person.

Mysterius the Unfathomable is simply a delightful comic. It's full of fun characters and crazy monsters, big-bellied men and hippy women (and women who are hippies), and a plot that worked well when it was told in individual issues and even better as a unified whole. Every event in the story ties back into the main plot, but not obviously, not insultingly, and even better: in a way that is explained early on in issue 1. 

So, yeah, this is an amazing comic. It looks incredible, rewards careful rereading, features a main character who is a Bastard With a Deeply-Buried Heart of Gold (one of my favourite archetypes) and has a sidekick/conscience who isn't just a horrible whining guilt-tripper (also good). Plus, Seuss-analogue-as-demonologist Dr Gaust and his cadre of Hellmoggin are the most entertaining antagonists that I've encountered in a very long time.

It's just pure good times, is what it is. 

Astro City: The Dark Age Book 4 No. 3 – Holy moley. The Dark Age is over as of next month. While I am completely sure that the world is divided up into people who have read the whole thing and people who couldn’t give a dang, I’ll probably write a lot about the whole thing next issue. For now I just have to say that the payoff on being an Astro City fan is enormous. The Pale Horseman was mentioned in “Confession", what? Twelve years ago? Just one line from one angry old hippy way back when and now he’s on a cover, and I’m dang certain that Busiek had at least part of this planned out when he was writing that hippy’s dialogue. If you’re a continuity junkie but are disenchanted with Marvel and DC: here’s the book for you.

Adventure Comics No. 9 – Man, the retro cover design that this book has been rocking doesn’t really work with every art style, does it? Especially with that child-frighteningly hideous Superman in the middle of things. Bright and clean folks, bright and clean. As for the inside of the book: meh. It looks okay and reads okay, but it’s partially the Legion in the 31st Century, partially Superboy and the Legion Espionage Squad on New Krypton in the 21st Century and partially Project 7734 bullplop. I’ll be interested to see what’s done with this comic once the Superman Family books calm down, but until then it’s necessarily going to be tepid, as only a book that has been shoehorned into an event but has no actual stake in the event can be.

Blackest Night No. 8

Look, I’m going to spoil this, okay? I’m already breaking last week’s promise not to do this any more, so why not go whole hog?

So, Blackest Night happened. A big ol’ crossover, yup. And man, was it terrible.

Not that the ideas behind it didn’t have merit: why do people keep coming back to life? (wasn’t it because Kid Eternity was jammed in the door to the afterlife?) What are the consequences of all of those people coming back to life, other than Kid Eternity being uncomfortable? Why can’t we set up a page where we make a huge unintentional joke about how most of the DCU super-heroes are Caucasian?

Heck, a lot of the thing looked really pretty, and the weird aliens were suitably weird (although there was no panel that featured the just-a-big-head guys from the Red and Green Lantern Corps standing next to each other, and that made me sad) and I like the possibilities inherent in the various Lantern Corps. 

But this was interminable and about two-thirds of it was full of gut-wrenchingly, melodramatically awful writing - Green Lantern Corps was fun throughout. It may have been due to the fact that whatever Johns had worked out ahead of time and meticulously set up was smeared across the entire DCU instead of being confined to three series, but looking back on the whole sad shebang the overwhelming impression is of forced improvisation, like he had a starting point and an endpoint and was just filling pages until the requisite number of issues were scripted: an issue of characters figuring things out, one of gathering up Deputy Lanterns (and how supremely helpful they were!), tiny victory, huge setback, tiny victory, huge setback etcetera etcetera etcetera ad nauseam barf.

Actually, I was going to say something about how it was like the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths in that regard, but on further reflection I realized that this series was actually opposite of that one: the universe is now much more complicated, some super-heroes have come back to life and the Anti-Monitor is on the loose. Sadly, it lacked the two elements that made Crisis worth reading: Perez art and novelty. Oh, and necessity, or at least perceived necessity. Even the caveat at the end about how people won’t be coming back to life any more essentially means nothing, because the very fact that people were brought back provides a reason for every dead character ever to no longer be so: they were White Lanterned. Ralph and Sue Dibny won’t be coming back and that’s it.

And there were just too many stupid moments: the Black Lanterns’ dialogue. The Deputy Lanterns, (except for Scarecrow, but exactly how necessary was he?). Having most of the event happen on Earth. Bringing back characters (Martian Manhunter, Captain Boomerang) in idealized, not-at-all-what-they-looked-like-when-they-died form. Bringing back Reverse-Flash at all, since that a) undoes the end of just-finished, written-by-the-same-guy Flash: Rebirth and b) Implies that Flash actually killed him at the end. Or maybe c) this takes place before that series and Barry Allen is going straight from this incredibly life-affirming moment to a period of awful, whiny angst.

But of course the stupidest thing is the entire concept of the White Light of Life and the White Lantern Corps. People have been making jokes about White Lanterns for about two years because it’s the most dumb, obvious end to this story imaginable. Especially because the second most obvious end, which is Hal Jordan putting on all seven rings and using them to generate white light and smash Nekron, would actually be kind of cool. Heck, it would at least justify the Hal Jordan lust amongst the various Corps.

*looks at cover* Oh, hey, Sinestro wears his ring on his left hand. Clever!

Johnathan and Blackest Night No. 8: BEST FRIENDS

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I'm shelving the rest of my reviews this week and retracting all of my earlier bitching, because Blackest Night No. 8 is a perfect comic.

We are now BEST FRIENDS. (sorry Jimmy Olsen No. 72)

We're also forming a crime-fighting duo!

Our CLOSE FRIENDSHIP will see us through the ups and downs of investigating the seedy comic book underbelly of my house.

Yes, we truly are BFF.

Who's Who: Mitchell Lee Reid, aka Commander Mercykill

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Name: Mitchell Lee Reid

Height: Some inches (no one actually told me)

Weight: 6lbs, 11oz

First appearance: March 25, 2010 at 4:05am, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Known relatives: Rachelle Goguen (mother), Matt Reid (father)

Base of operations: Bedford, Nova Scotia

Group Affiliation: the family Goguen-Reid

Origin Story:

Mitchell arrived on the scene two weeks before his due date, ready for action. Not content to wait around for a normal birth, which would take, like, a thousand hours, Mitchell decided to straight up punch his way out of the womb. He attempted to come out hand first, which resulted in a c-section operation for mom. This made mom more vulnerable to an attack by Magneto, as she had 16 staples across her abdomen, but they have since been removed.

Despite the impatient nature of Mitchell's birth, he is a pretty mellow and quiet baby. His favourite activities include sleeping and trying to rid himself of his sworn enemy, jaundice.

I'm Not Even Certain There's an Award For This...

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... but I'd like to nominate a comic for the title of Most Tenuous Link Between Cover Image and Actual Story.

It's a much-bandied-about fact that the covers for Silver Age comics, and especially Silver Age DC comics, were occasionally drawn long before the story that they were connected to was even written - that the cover was essentially used as the seed idea that the story was later grown around. I've certainly encountered plenty of olde tyme comics that were probably put together in that way but this is the one time that I am absolutely confident in pointing my gnarled finger and screeching like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

First, the cover:

Within, the number one story (Mystery in Space being an anthology comic) is entitled

The hero: a brown-haired, strong-jawed dude, but not the same brown-haired, strong-jawed dude.

Whoops, I guess that image doesn't really show his hair colour. In any case, it's not the same guy and he has to run around getting the titular seven wonders for those evidently lazy aliens. And the wonder on Mercury is:

And that's about it for the jewel-folks, which probably means that this  is the only Silver Age comic that I can think of that features the (implicit) death of the standard-issue leggy dame/ chiseled-featured dude duo.

I'll bet that the Jewel Full of Murder was a big attraction at the Seven Wonders museum they end up putting together at the end of the story.

Kyle Baker in Halifax! Tomorrow!

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The incomparable KYLE BAKER will be speaking at the Halifax North Branch Library tomorrow afternoon! Baker, as you probably know, is an incredibly prolific writer and illustrator, who has won every comics-related award there is and worked for every publisher and company in the business. I just read (or in some cases re-read) a bunch of his stuff including Nat Turner, Why I Hate Saturn and The Bakers books—all amazing, and each totally different from the last. Baker's work is as diverse as it is brilliant.

Baker's talk is part of a day-long Graphic Novel Camp—an event providing education about comics and celebrating the medium. LBW's BFFs Mike Holmes and Faith Erin Hicks will also be there, as well as Kate Beaton (of Hark! A Vagrant fame), and the wonderful Rebecca Kraatz (if you haven't read her book, House of Sugar, do it! And check out the beautiful wood-burned images on her website. Looking at them is like a present you give yourself).

For more information about the Graphic Novel Camp event go here.

This is event is free! So come by!