Last week I tried to shake things up a bit by review­ing every comic picked up. While it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment I didn’t quite  get the response I was after, so we’re back to the three book deal this week.

Power Girl #2

It seems a lit­tle too soon to use the sec­ond issue as an expo­si­tion tool and drawn out ori­gin for the bad guy. Sure, it goes against con­ven­tion, but you know what? I didn’t mind it. Because the rest of the issue was devoted to Power Girl tak­ing on an albino gorilla with a super­hu­man brain. I could read that kind of thing forever.

Incog­nito #4

Still good. Still very good in fact. But it feel like the 2 month gap between issues #3 and #4 killed the momen­tum some­what. This issue is pretty much entirely fall­out. Zack is dis­cov­ered, inter­ro­gated by the SOS, a gov­ern­ment agency tasked with tak­ing down rogue super­pow­ers. (Which I guess in a way makes it the CIA of Incog­nito) and put back on the streets sans pow­ers. The improb­a­bly named Ava Destruc­tion throws a wrench into the whole idea of the bad guys com­ing for Zack’s blood. The pulpy ele­ments are still there, but the noirish tones have really started com­ing to the fore.

Mighty Avengers #26

I was all but ready to give this up after last month’s issue. It’s pretty easy to bag the book with it’s slow pac­ing and char­ac­ters don’t do a hell of a lot — except for Her­cules, who may just be the fun­ni­est char­ac­ter in the Mar­vel stable.

But then you get an issue like this  with crazy War­ren Ellis-style Zeno Rooms, sonic screw­drivers and sci­en­tific equa­tions that take phi­los­o­phy  into consideration.

It’s still dan­ger­ously close to being dropped, but if Dan Slott can keep load­ing the book with off the wall sci­ence stuff and improve char­ac­ter inter­ac­tion then it’ll keep it’s spot on the pull list for now.

Com­plete List

Ex Machina #43
Final Cri­sis After­math: Dance #2 (of 6)
Power Girl #2
Cable #15
Incog­nito #4
Mighty Avengers #26
X-Men: Legacy #225
Angel #22

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