Green Lantern Corps #38

This issue got me think­ing about how much Count­down failed Kyle Rayner as a char­ac­ter. In Count­down he was lit­tle more than trans­port for the other char­ac­ters. Using the most pow­er­ful weapon in the uni­verse as directed through his artist’s mind to cre­ate bub­bles and flat boards for them to ride on.

The Kyle we see in this issue is con­fi­dent and most impor­tantly proac­tive. The back half of this book has a great con­fronta­tion between Kyle, Guy Gard­ner the Alpha Lanterns. Peter Tomasi should be really proud of how well he’s fleshed Kyle out. This isn’t the same char­ac­ter from the ION series (that I dropped halfway through due to over­whelm­ing meh-ness). In link­ing him to Guy and Sorinik Natu Tomasi has given Kyle both pur­pose and passion.

Art by Patrick Glea­son is good. Very good in fact. It must take a lot of work to draw this book. What with 99% being aliens of dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes. Then hav­ing those aliens appears con­sis­tently across every page. It’s really impres­sive work. I don’t know why Glea­son isn’t doing more in the indus­try. He’s def­i­nitely one to follow.

Uncanny X-Men #513

I’m still not 100% sold on this book.

I get what they’re try­ing to say with the sto­ry­line. Propo­si­tion X is a par­tial alle­gory of California’s Propo­si­tion 8. And if the story was a med­i­ta­tion on how Propo­si­tion X (pro­posed ster­il­i­sa­tion of all mutants) it could’ve been incred­i­bly inter­est­ing. But this is a Mar­vel Uni­verse under Nor­man Osbourne’s Dark Reign. So he has to pop up to reit­er­ate what a giant ass­hole he is. Again.

And there’s the lit­tle things that didn’t need an extra layer of comic book­i­ness added. Like Simon Trask, the man repon­si­ble for organ­is­ing the march that starts this whole thing, being revealed as some sort of cyborg or Sen­tinel of some kind. Wasn’t it enough that he was this hor­ri­bly blink­ered bigot? Did he really have to have the electro/mind con­trol thing going on too?

Now that I’ve reread that, it seems weird to be com­plain­ing that a comic book is too much of a comic book. But there you go.

On the plus side the character’s voices are spot on.VBut then Frac­tion was always good at that.

The art work by Terry Dod­son is top notch as always. Some won’t like the thick out­line around each char­ac­ter, but I’m a fan.

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #26
Witchfinder In The Ser­vice Of Angels #1 (of 5)
Bat­man and Robin #2
Green Lantern Corps #38
Secret Six #11
Agents of Atlas #7
Uncanny X-Men #513
Angel #23

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.

Green Lantern Corps #33

Know what I really, really liked about this issue? The inclu­sion of a smack-talking, Steve Buscemi look-alike called ‘Imec­sub’. It was a nice call­back to Geoff Johns cre­ated Isamot (Tomasi back­wards) and a cool way for Tomasi to ‘pass it on’.

The rest of the issue is a period of down­time. Giv­ing the main char­ac­ters a quick breather before plung­ing into more ‘Black­est Night’ fun times. Kyle Raynor and Guy Gard­ner share a beer; Raynor and Natu, a kiss; Sarnek(?) and Vio­let Lantern Miri, words. It’s obvi­ous that Peter Tomasi is hav­ing a lot of fun with this. Espe­cially in the scenes where Raynor and Gar­dener involve the rest of the Corps into help­ing paint a mural on Oa.

There’s no eye­balls rain­ing from the sky, babies being cut out of wombs or other hor­ros. This comic is the dreaded f word. It’s FUN.

The backup Ori­gins and Omens story focuses on Kyle’s recent his­tory and teases that we’ll see a Black Lantern Jade in the upcom­ing Black­est Night. Despite her phys­i­cal body being blown to space dust way back in Infi­nite Crisis.

Incog­nito #2

When I reviewed the first issue I kinda bitched about how the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters weren’t exactly multi-dimensional. Well I take that all back.

I thought it’d be a lot longer — we’re talk­ing issue 4 or 5 — before the Zack’s boss, the Black Death showed up, but I’m glad to be proven wrong. I’m still unsure about what sort of threat he poses to the gen­eral pop­u­lace (apart from tele­path­i­cally talk­ing to peo­ple in black, evil look­ing thought bal­loons). But it’s something.

The story keeps flow­ing from pulp to noir fairly seam­lessly and at a decent clip. Scenes like Zack’s mad sci­en­tist cre­ator lit­er­ally pick­ing the brain of a pre­cog­ni­tive guy awe­somely called Max Gazer shoring up the pulp, almost EC Comics side. While Zack spends some qual­ity night time with a girl with seri­ous damsel-in-distress issues, who barely acknowl­edges him in his day­time civil­ian identity.

What I most like about this issue is that every­body has their own dark agenda. Not just the bad guys, but the “damsel” and even Zack’s new best friend. Zack is try­ing (not very hard) to be the hero, but the world has decided that he’s bad guy. It’ll be fun to see if he can push past that peer pres­sure and be the bet­ter man.

Com­plete List

Hell­boy: The Wild Hunt #3 (of 8)
Booster Gold #17
Green Lantern Corps #33
Trin­ity #37
Incog­nito #2
Angel #17

Final Cri­sis #6 (of 7)

For­get the naysay­ers, Final Cris #6 is great.

No, I’m not going to write para­graph after para­graph defend­ing the book. It’s awe­some, even with one minor problem.*

I didn’t read Bat­man RIP, or it’s fol­lowups, so I can’t com­ment about how it fits in with Final Cri­sis. But I did read Count­down so I can help out if you’re strug­gling with the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance needed to get through it.

Speak­ing of Bat­man, hav­ing him his one rule to put a god-killing bul­let in Dark­seid, then pay­ing with his life, was one of the best things I’ve read in a long time. Oh, and he’s not really dead, you guys. Read the story again. Hell, just read the Sonny Sumo pages. Not. Dead.

More good things: a Tiger-man on Tiger-man bat­tle, where the Tiger in a tweed jacket and bow tie comes out on top; and a sub­plot about shift­ing the planet’s pop­u­la­tion to a par­al­lel uni­verse to save them; end­ing with a vari­ant of the now clas­sic CoIE Super­man pose. They’ve got me hooked.

*The art. They’re up to around 4 or 5 artists now, so there’s lit­tle con­sis­tency from page to page. I can see why JG Jones was ink­ing his own pen­cil­ings too. Who­ever they’ve got to replace him is just awful.

Green Lantern Corps #32

I don’t under­stand these Faces of Evil tie-ins. Is it sup­posed to be a  show­case of the bad­dest char­ac­ter fea­tured in a book? If it is, then Kryb isn’t it. Sure she’s creepy as hell, but not what I’d call evil. Espe­cially with the rev­e­la­tion that she con­sid­ers the Green Lantern Corps to be a malev­o­lent dan­ger to the well being of the chil­dren she col­lects, and isn’t search­ing for  food.Though I don’t know how that trans­lates into the “abil­ity to instill great fear”.

But that doesn’t really mat­ter as the rest of the issue is pretty damn cool.

There’s Kyle’s clever way of remov­ing Kryb’s mind-control; the grisly death of a red shirt Green Lantern; a new law enacted in the Book of Oa; the res­ig­na­tion of a large con­tin­gent of the Corps, who I’m sure will no doubt pop up as vio­let, blue or some other colour of lantern down the track; and an inter­est­ing, but not unex­pected fate for Kryb.

I really enjoyed the Vio­let Lantern’s ring class­ing Kryb as a ‘heart­breaker’. I liked the way the Vio­let ring com­mu­ni­cated in gen­eral. I’m glad they’re not just a straight up female ver­sion of the Green Lantern Corps, but have their own rules and meth­ods for deal­ing with their ene­mies. Though their recruit­ing process is a lit­tle extreme, espe­cially com­pared to the Blue Lantern’s “extended inter­view” way of recruit­ing to their par­tic­u­lar corps.

Com­plete List:

Booster Gold #16
Final Cri­sis #6 (of 7)
Green Lantern Corps #32
Trin­ity #33

Booster Gold

This is the first issue writ­ten by Dan Jur­gens, cre­ator of Booster Gold and drawer of said char­ac­ter since issue one of this par­tic­u­lar ongo­ing. This issue is a  lot more light-hearted than the pre­vi­ous issues writ­ten by Rick Remender. While adven­ter­ous, his issues were com­pletely lack­ing in charm. But enough about ol’ Rick. How does Booster Gold stand up now?

Bet­ter. Much, much bet­ter. It’s not quite Geoff Johns level, but this Booster has just the right amount of self-indulgent goofi­ness and Skeets has the right amount of know-it-all side­kick­i­ness going for him.

I would’ve pre­ferred this to be a done-in-one issue, but it looks like we get another mul­ti­part story, spin­ning out of the sto­ry­line Remender fol­lowed. Is this Jur­gens’ way of ignor­ing Remender I wonder?

After a cute open­ing scene with Booster and Gold­star in 16th cen­tury Italy look­ing for food and fame, the story quickly becomes a search for Rip Hunter and their head­quar­ters that seems to have van­ished from the timestream. There’s a fun sib­ling fight then Skeets informs the two that all evi­dence points to time trav­el­ing knife, mis­placed dur­ing the Killer Moth mis­sion, being the cause and not Goldstar’s pos­ing for a por­trait with Leonardo da Vinci as Booster sug­gested. Booster meets up with future fel­low Jus­tice League Inter­na­tional team­ster Elon­gated Man, in a scene that would mean a lot more had I grown up read­ing JLI. Then Booster is flung through time to some­where next month’s solicit reveals to be World War 1.

This book sits fairly low on the month-by-month sales chart. Lower than Blue Bee­tle and Birds of Prey. I hope that doesn’t mean that this book is up for can­cel­la­tion. Though I wouldn’t be too sur­prised, given DC’s cancel-happy atti­tude these last few weeks.

Green Lantern Corps #31

Con­fes­sion time. Kryb scares the every lov­ing shit out of me. This is Kryb:

Seri­ously, it took all of my willpower just to post that picture.

Not only is she a super­pow­ered baby-stealing alien that runs on fear. Her “milk” also acts as a DNA-specific mind-controlling agent if it gets on your skin. Jesus H. Christ. The only way Kryb could be more creepy is if “she” was a “he”.

Despite the recent ick fac­tor Green Lantern Corps has been great to read. Expand­ing on the emo­tional spec­trum where the stand­alone GL book has become more tightly focused.

Yes, we know that the Love Lantern is going to defeat Kryb and break the hold over the other lanterns. Well at least I hope that’s what hap­pens. Before Kryb cuts the baby out of Amnee’s body, thanks. The third law of Oa, “no rela­tion­ships between Green Lanterns”, is only going to end in dis­as­ter. But if the Guardians actu­ally thought things through instead of just react­ing to every­thing then we wouldn’t have the Man­hunters or the Alpha Lanterns.

Yes, this book is creepy, but it’s creepy in a “look through your fin­gers” kind of way. And I love it for that.

Com­plete Pull List:

Booster Gold #15
Final Cri­sis #5 (of 7)
Green Lantern Corps #31
Jus­tice Soci­ety of Amer­ica HC Vol 03 Thy King­dom Come Part 2
Jus­tice League of Amer­ica #27
Secret Six #4
Trin­ity #28
Aston­ish­ing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2 (of 2)
Secret Inva­sion Dark Reign
Wiz­ard Mag 2009 Platinum