Conservative Comic Book Pundit

Saturday, December 09, 2006

This week's comics!

Hulk 101 - Planet Hulk continues to be the best comic Marvel puts out. Totally free of all political context, adolescent angst and pseudo-armchair psychology, the Hulk just basically kicks butt and takes names. Not totally mindless fun.

52 needs a kick in the pants or some caffeine. Slow, slow, slow. Still, I need to find out what is up with Skeets. Too bad Lobo is being totally wasted and Ambush Bug disappeared.

Dr. Strange: The Oath #3 - There's some standard "evil big business" cliches here, but the main storyline is fun and full of cool twists and turns. The art is very Ditko-ish as well, which is always a plus.

Justice Society of America #1 - "The Justice League is a strike force. The Justice Society is a family." In those words, writer Geoff Johns summed up why I prefer the JSA over the JLA. This issue is a rather standard #1 - the team gets organized and a new mystery crashes the last page in order to set things up for next issue. Good stuff.

Stan Lee meets the Silver Surfer - Stan Lee gains even more coolness by parodying his own overwrought Silver Surfer dialogue. Considering how earnest his early Silver Surfer monologues were, I am surprised at his ability to self-parody what was likely his most heartfelt words.

Supergirl 12 - an issue the interrupts the flow of the ongoing storyline because of some crossover I don't understand. But that doesn't matter - what I see is that I want this writer to be doing Supergirl. He did it a lot better. The writer of the last few issues (and the next few) thinks he's the James Joyce and Samuel Beckett of comics, and he's failing at it miserably. This issue was pretty good. I'm probably dropping the book if the writer doesn't change soon.

Red Prophet Tales of Alvin Maker #4: Well, the Alvin Maker series is Orson Scott Card's best work, IMHO. I'm a bit confused by the decision to adapt the second book in the series first, but whatever makes them happy. However, the adaptation is too straight. The pictures add nothing - this just makes me want to read the books themselves again. I can't really see the point of this version of the tale.