Back after a week off during which I dressed up as a pirate, drew silly comics, and tackled a fire in my cave. Some careless animal tried to toast pine cones in my toaster while I was gone and, predictably, they got jammed in the slot. It was probably that jerk, the bullfinch.
GOOD PICKS
Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man dream-team of Bendis and Bagley have their own independent out (contractually from Marvel) called Brilliant #1 that is worth the glance. It focuses on college age super genius’s playing god…think “The Social Network” meets “ALPHAS.”
And I will definitely be grabbing Amazing Spider-Man #670, where the dynamic duo of Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos give J. Jonah Jameson Spider-powers and let him loose on New York! Go, J.J.J., Go!
2ND AND 3RD #1
DC is still knocking the hits out of the park, though for every home run there are some bad pop flies. I read Catwoman #1 and it is bizarre. Who is it intended for?
The fun thing about comics is there is a book out there for everyone. Catwoman could have been the book we’ve all been waiting for, a smart take on the femme fatale as clever thief, a book of female empowerment and the galvanizing proof that “Girls read comics, too” when they aren’t written for 13 year old boys.
Instead they deliver a book straight out of Aspen Comics, soft-core titillation and bad-girl posturing that was juvenile in the 90’s and antiquated today. Girls won’t want it, die-hard fans won’t want it…so who does? Jim Balent?
TO BE CLEAR, I like books about sexy ladies…heck, I’ll shout about Adam Warren’s Empowered till I’m blue in the face. Empowered, however, is post modern, small, black and white, and self-aware. Catwoman is as main-stream as it’s going to get, and just a little off the mark.
THIS WEEK: DO NOT miss the amazing Peter Milligan on Justice League Dark #1, a DC supernatural thriller showing Zatanna, Deadman, John Constantine, and Shade the Changing Man on a spookbusters squad! YES!
I think I’ll also nab All Star Western #1, the relaunch of Jonah Hex set in the wild west town of Gotham. Well played, DC. Blackhawks #1 deserves a notice too, as one of G.I. Joe’s influences in the past reinvents itself to compete against its imitator.
THAT CONTEST
MY “Find a new comic to plug” contest had one entrant and one winner: LEN KAGAMINE. He recommends you read New X-men, but he’s talking about the Morrison run…so not exactly a new comic book. Feh. I’ll recommend a new comic FOR him.
Finder Library Vol. 2, Carla Speed McNeil, Dark Horse
Finder began in 1996 as a touching story of shifting through the rubble of a post apocalyptic world for lost items and meaning. Setting your story in a broken future has always been a great device, but where others dip their toe, Finder plunges.
From the X-Men to Superman, EVERYBODY has an apocalyptic future they’ll drop in on from time to time in order to prevent. Finder is not a tale of prevention but of survival. Psychic hunter-gatherers live a semi tribal existence as they “Find” lost items and people for other, more technological tribes.
Finder is trippy, slightly hippy, and fairly bleak…but it is a far cry from the norm and well worth checking out!
