Booster Gold #21

This issue of Booster Gold is the first DC books to show­case their new backup story con­cept, or “co-features” as they’ve decided to call them. A way to keep minor, but loy­ally fol­lowed char­ac­ters that can’t sup­port their own book on the shelves.

If this lit­tle 10-page story, about Blue Bee­tle beat­ing up a giant robot called THINKO! for 3 hours, is any indi­ca­tion then the recently can­celled ongo­ing series must’ve been an absolute gem to read.

Flash: Rebirth #3 (of 6)

I’m not sure I under­stand the point of this series. Green Lantern: Rebirth was fairly straight for­ward: “Hal Jor­dan died a vil­lain, so lets bring him back to life in a way that reaf­firms his hero status. ”

But what about Barry Allen? He died a hero, sav­ing the uni­verse from the big bad at the time only to pop up in Final Cri­sis as the universe’s attempt to cure itself of Dark­seid (no, really!)  There had to be an incred­i­bly good rea­son to keep him around after that, past edi­to­r­ial whim.

Even with the patented Geoff John’s vil­lain reveal page at the end of this issue I’m still at a loss as to why this series exists.

Green Lantern Corps #37

When I showed this cover to Ange her imme­di­ate reac­tion was “Oh yuck.” I couldn’t have said it bet­ter myself. It’s a hor­ri­ble draw­ing of Arisia.

Watch­ing the Dax­am­ites freak the hell out when their super­pow­ers kicked in went a ways to mak­ing up for the ter­ri­ble cover.

Uncanny X-Men #511

Look, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Greg Land is ruin­ing Uncanny, but when every char­ac­ter is posed like a model and either smil­ing or laugh­ing or mak­ing a “porn face” regard­less of whats hap­pen­ing around them then the art becomes at best, panel filler or at worst, utterly detri­men­tal to the story.

I’m sure the script for this page went some­thing like:

STORM floats at the win­dow as a gust of wind BLOWS past her EXPLODING the glass into a mil­lion frag­ments that BLAST into the MASTERMIND SISTERS send­ing them reeling.

While Land had done an neat trick by hav­ing the pieces of glass appear out­isde the panel walls, they don’t seems to con­vey any direc­tion of move­ment. Ther are far worse exam­ples of his stilted style, but I’ll do you a favour and spare you the bur­den of look­ing at them.

You can imag­ine how happy I am that next issue doesn’t seem to have been touched by Land at all. I’m even hap­pier that it’s cen­tered around Beast and his X-Club. One of the bet­ter ideas to come out of Fraction’s plan for Uncanny X-Men.

X-Factor #44

Another solid issue from Peter David. It’s been said that X-Factor is the best X-title being put out by Mar­vel at the moment. I couldn’t agree more.

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #25

I’ve men­tioned this back when Jane Espen­son had her turn in the writ­ing seat, but the big prob­lem with bring­ing in ex-writers of the Buffy TV series is that, while they may be pretty damn good at screen­writ­ing, they’re just not that good at putting together a story in comic book format.

Case in point: In the open­ing pages of this book, Doug Petrie writes a con­ver­sa­tion between Xan­der and Buffy that, spo­ken by actors would be incred­i­bly snappy, how­ever on the page it reads more like Yoda with multi-personality dis­or­der. It’s frus­trat­ing to read.

I’m not sure how long they intend Sea­son 8 to run but right now the series just seems to be drag­ging it’s feet. It’s time to start wrap­ping it up, boys and girls.

Power Girl

I really, really like this book. It’s every­thing main­stream super­hero books aren’t right now. It’s fun, whim­si­cal, fea­tures a solo female as the pro­tag­o­nist, has an ape-with-a-human-brain as the antag­o­nist and doesn’t co-star Wolverine.

Amanda Conner’s art helps to raise the book even higher. Char­ac­ters actu­ally show emo­tion (Ed Benes take note) and she does a good job of mov­ing the cam­era around in a way that doesn’t obscure the story (Ed Benes).

I hope DC aren’t hing­ing it’s future on a some incred­i­bly large sales fig­ures. Power Girl is prob­a­bly too much of a niche book to edge into the monthly top 10. To my knowl­edge Ms Mar­vel, Marvel’s equiv­a­lent female super­hero, has never even hit the top 20 and it’s at #38 and quite hap­pily chug­ging along.

New Mutants

This should go with­out say­ing, but when you’re try­ing to hit the reader with the shock return of a long dead bad guy you prob­a­bly shouldn’t fea­ture that char­ac­ter on the wrap-around cover.

Just say­ing.

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #25
Flash: Rebirth #2 (of 5)
Power Girl #1
Trin­ity #49
Agents of Atlas #4
New Mutants #1