Sinestro #4 (DC)

writer: Cullen Bunn
artist: Rags Morales

via Comic Vine

That quote on the cover comes from Green Lantern #20, the final Geoff Johns issue, which I reread recently in The End collection.  It's a standout line and immediately eye-catching to be quoted for the new Sinestro series.

Tiny problem, however, in that it's not hugely relevant in the comic itself.

I really wanted that to happen!  A whole issue where Hal Jordan and Sinestro hash out their relationship, something Johns worked on a lot during his last few years, a major legacy of the New 52 to date.  Instead, we get an issue with Sinestro...demonstrating his strong will, and Hal popping up, officially, on the final page.

It's just not what I wanted to see.  Cullen Bunn is one of the "it" writers at the moment, and seems to be getting a lot of these the-main-character-is-usually-known-as-the-villain comics assignments lately.  But I don't think he's to par with what Johns was doing.  It's great that this series exists, and certainly with the perfect synergy that came to Red Lanterns later in its run with the debut of Charles Soule as writer there's always hope things will work out, but it's disappointing that they didn't get it right first shot, especially given that Johns, who is such an important DC guy, didn't merit getting Sinestro done right first shot.  Even Larfleeze was pitch-perfect (although sadly, I didn't read it any more faithfully than anyone else, and that one's gone now) from the start.

The artist is Rags Morales, who has a lot of big credentials to his name, including Identity Crisis with Brad Meltzer and Action Comics with Grant Morrison.  Fans sometimes question his work.  I don't think there's any cause for that here, although it's such a different setting than I personally am used to seeing Morales tackle that most of what I know about his work slips into the background.  This is mostly a good thing, I guess, but it's always odd for an artist who has a distinctive style to do work that isn't immediately identifiable to that style, except in the odd image here and there.  But on the other hand, his presence on art duty in Sinestro must surely be considered a vote of confidence in the series from DC.

The Sandman: Overture #3 (Vertigo)

writer: Neil Gaiman
artist: J.H. Williams III

via IGN

It sucks, because I never know if I'm missing something that directly references prior Sandman material.  I know, for instance, that we have a secret origin for Dream's helm, which was famously recovered in the original series' opening arc.  But then again, maybe this is something that fans have seen before?  

It seems as if the romance around that moment is first-run material, but then what do I know?  And should I even be worrying about this?  The third volume of The Annotated Sandman is being released in October.  I hope to get both that one and the second volume and read them either by the end of the year or earlier in 2015.  By that point I'll have caught up with the bulk of the mythology, and maybe will be less confused about these matters.

But then again, maybe I really shouldn't be worrying so much about these matters.  This issue is probably the most enjoyable, for me anyway, of Overture so far.  There appear to be direct references to Dream's ultimate fate, so that this is a prequel for all I understand.  Regardless, Dream is on a quest.  There are multiple versions of him running around.  In fact, he's at the moment hanging out with a cat version of himself.  This leads to an amusing moment when they pick up a tagalong, who suggests when she doesn't walk by herself, "I could ride your cat."  To which Dream responds:

"My cat is Dream of the Endless.  He does not give rides."

Classic.  Gaiman is a master storyteller, and is a better writer, generally, than pretty much anyone else.  Regardless of how lost I sometimes feel, he's always in control.  Reading Overture for me is a little like what reading Grant Morrison must be like for all those people who don't get him.  

And as always, J.H. Williams III is stunning on art.  The way he composes his layouts can sometimes be challenging to follow even for veteran comics readers, but it's always a welcome challenge.

Red Lanterns Annual #1 (DC)

writer: Charles Soule
artist: Miguel Sepulveda

via My Comic Shop

Recently I've really gotten to love Red Lanterns.  With Charles Soule, it's a series firing on all cylinders, as far as I can tell the best of the Green Lantern titles at the moment.  This particular issue, which as you might notice is also it's first annual, happens to be Part 3 of "Atrocities," otherwise known as Guy Gardner and Red Lanterns founder Atrocitus (you can find out his original significance in Green Lantern: Secret Origin), who has been undergoing a personal crisis since the start of the series.  He's finally back in fighting mode and wants to reclaim his rage-fueled corps from Gardner, who recently won jurisdiction of Earth from the Green Lanterns.

Under Gardner, it's no longer necessary to be angry all the time to be a Red Lantern.  The red ring has become a lot more rational and a lot more like a green ring.  Still, Red Lanterns are by definition damaged individuals.  Unlike, say, the Indigo Tribe, these guys have the chance to determine the course of their own future.

Anyway, as I said, Gardner and Atrocitus: mano-e-monstero.

Atrocitus attacks Earth in this issue.  It's a big giant crisis, too, with his cronies attacking key landmarks across the globe.  If Red Lanterns were at a level where it's beginning to belong, this might have been a whole crossover event.  Mass chaos.  Red rings find countless hosts, all of them adding to the disaster.  

Rankorr, the other human Red Lantern, is revealed to have been compromised by Atrocitus under artificial means.  He's another thread for long-time readers.

All told, it's a crucial issue.  I kind of assumed when I saw it that it was the end of the arc, but for some reason there's one more chapter to go.  I guess in this instance the series was given it's first annual as a bonus issue to help draw awareness to the arc.  That said, the issue certainly does its share of heavy lifting for "Atrocities."

Gardner comes across Supergirl, who has recently been a Red Lantern but was able to walk away, and she voluntarily joins the cause again.  It's a nice moment, just one of many that rewards readers who've already discovered the series.  Hopefully more readers will with material like this!

Dysphoria #1 (Hollow Tree Entertainment)

writer: Allison Torrey
artist: Liana Sposto

via Cargo Collective

One of the perks of visiting a local comics shop is the chance to catch some local comics talent, stuff you likely won't find anywhere else (unless you've heard of the Internet, and really, who has?), lucky finds if you're really lucky.  I happen to love chance discoveries.  I think I've made a lucky one indeed.

Dysphoria is about a futuristic resistance movement and the guy who's destined to be its hero.  Okay, so not hugely revolutionary in concept, but as always it's execution that's key.  Allison Torrey and Liana Sposto are a dynamic combination.  Torrey's scripting is fairly minimalist, so that leaves ample room for Sposto's expressive work to shine.  It really is shocking to discover talent this good on such a low-key title.  I predict big things ahead for both of them, whether it's in this series or elsewhere.  

It's a kinetic read from start to finish and instantly hooks you into wanting more, all very perfect for a comic book, where classic serial storytelling soars.  

The lead character's name is Malcolm Reed, which for me is an instant link to something else I love, Star Trek: Enterprise, which featured a tactical officer of the same name.  I've been trying to remember another place I've caught the name, unless I've come across Dysphoria before.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes peeled for further issues...

Batman and Robin #33 (DC)

writer: Peter J. Tomasi
artist: Patrick Gleason

via Inside Pulse

In this follow-up to the Robin Rises: Omega one-shot, Batman maneuvers his way over Justice League opposition to an invasion of Apokolips in order to retrieve the body of his dead son Damian (and maybe Talia's, too).

It's great fun, Pete Tomasi tackling the Justice League, which is depicted in its current incarnation (which is why I chose to represent the issue with that particular image, featuring post-Forever Evil members Lex Luthor and Captain Cold, their exchange in that final panel a brilliant encapsulation of the new dynamic) as the big Batman and Robin event continues.

So often we're told that Batman has ways to defeat everyone, even his best and most powerful allies.  Most often, however, verbally he's reserved.  This issue is all about confrontation, however, a war of words.  Even when Superman shows up, Batman still has his way with the situation, acting contrite, conciliatory, and...then the final image leaves that whole conversation spun around.  Scott Snyder took such pains in "Death of the Family" to shatter the Bat-family trust, which was immediately turned around in the "Requiem" issues following Damian's death.  Lately I've been reading gushing recaps of Snyder's "Zero Year" arc, and everyone still seems pretty convinced that the top-selling Batman is the best Dark Knight comic being published at the moment, an instant classic.  But for me, Batman and Robin is the undisputed best and best-argument-for-instant-classic series in the family.

Is it a gimmick book?  It's a team-up book, now more than ever, but unlike most team-up books Batman doesn't necessarily actually team up with his guest-stars, as exemplified all over the place in the past year.  These are stories Tomasi gets to tell as he explores a more intimate look at Batman and how he relates to the world around him.  If he's still grieving the death of his son and still trying to find a way to get over it, whatever that happens to mean, I applaud the effort.  Too often, comics can be like a lot of television, episodic, one story completely unrelated to the next.  For a character like Batman, who's been around for three quarters of a century, the temptation is great to keep the storytelling like that, so as to not damage the franchise, tie it down with developments that can't easily be disentangled without being outright ignored.  And yet, what Tomasi is doing here has its roots in Batman's own history, following the second Robin, Jason Todd's death and eventual rise of the third, Tim Drake (as explored in the "A Lonely Place of Dying" arc), except this time, Batman is being pushed further and further past his comfort zone, into the very territory that until now was really only the subject of fanboy fever dreams.  Now it's real.  And it's better than you ever imagined.

Like Tomasi, Gleason plays by his own rules.  He can play larger-than-life (his Kalibak) or a low-key Bruce Wayne in a cemetary, a Superman cape that dangles loosely around the neck, a montage of iconic images featuring Batman's colleagues forging the so-called Hellbat armor, Frankenstein in a minimal appearance speaking a thousand words with three while walking away from the reader.

DC is ramping up the Fourth World once again across numerous titles.  It seems presumptuous for Batman to declare war on Darkseid when this could provoke the annihilation of Earth, but Tomasi captures his reasoning perfectly.  How it all plays out could tie in with what happens elsewhere.  Then again maybe not.  It's doesn't matter.

It's good stuff. 

Atomic Robo: The Knights of the Golden Circle #2 (Red 5)

writer: Brian Clevinger
artist: Scott Wegener

via comiXology

Hey, so I love Atomic Robo.  This is his ninth mini-series.  Yeah!  The only one I haven't caught at least one issue of is the previous one, Atomic Robo and the Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur, which sucks, because Dr. Dinosaur is easily the second best thing about Atomic Robo other than, of course, Nikola Tesla, I mean Atomic Robo!

The draw of this particular arc is, besides a Western gimmick (most of Robo's stories are centered on genre gimmicks, which is fine, because being an ageless artificial lifeform, he not only can be in pretty much any setting, but this is a concept that readily embraces the strange), is that it is, to my mind, the first time our hero has been in an actual life-threatening scenario.

Now, Robo's actually in the past.  He's been thrust into the past.  Just to make that clear.  But he's been cut off from anyone or anything that can sustain his robotic body.  If he's somehow damaged or runs out of power, that's it.  One of the many, many Free Comic Book Day releases Red 5 has put out over the years (Robo is this publisher's bread and butter) hinted at dire possibilities once, but this is a departure from the usually lighthearted, brainy-but-in-a-fun-way adventures he and his fans have enjoyed in the past.  Not a huge departure, because it's still a wonky idea, but in the world of Atomic Robo, that's an exceptionally, reliably good thing.

Because he's the star of a tiny publisher, Robo doesn't have near the exposure he deserves.  Anywhere else he'd be a household (a geek household, anyway) name by now.  He'd have a cartoon.  Maybe even an extremely awesome movie!  But here he is, the star of Red 5.  This is his ninth mini-series, and he's at sixty issues, mini-series and FCBD releases considered, which is quite an achievement.  He's becoming a legitimate icon, even if in a minor context.  I'm proud to call myself a fan.

Reading Comics #130 "Bull Moose Grab Bag IV"

Local physical-things shop Bull Moose has recently changed the way it sells comics.  It remains to be seen whether it will be selling comics much longer.  But until recently it sold new comics and then slightly-less-new comics in grab bag form.  I like grab bags, and on the whole I liked what I got in these Bull Moose grab bags.  This is the last official Bull Moose grab bag, though I get to continue this sub-feature in future editions of this column as Bull Moose Bargains.  More on that when it happens!  Until then, the contents of the last grab bag.

Batman '66 #12 (DC)
The comic based on the '60s TV series that has swung back around to being culturally tolerated remains amusing for what it is.

Bravest Warriors #21 (KaBOOM!)
One of those cartoons clearly inspired by the success of Adventure Time.  Bull Moose Grab Bag did me wrong in giving me two copies, thanks to there being two different covers for some reason.

Chew #42 (Image)
I read some of the earliest issues of Chew, liked them well enough, but it was also fairly easy to...not read Chew anymore.  When John Layman wrote Detective Comics I was actually more impressed with him.  In his own sandbox, Layman is free to do what he wants...and I don't know, I guess he just wants to screw around.  These days I compare this kind of comic to Atomic Robo, and bottom line is, Chew doesn't seem as inspired.  Weirdo concept though it sports and the ability to exploit said weirdo concept, Chew is ultimately fairly throwaway.  Hey Layman, feel free to jump back into the mainstream.  Or find something more interesting to do with Chew.  Apparently he's one of the Batman Eternal writers, but does that really count?  I guess I'll keep myself posted...

C.O.W.L. #2 (Image)
A few years back I was ready to consider myself a pretty big fan of Kyle Higgins.  These days I'm wondering what happened.  Something that bothers me is that he often has a co-writer.  This is not in itself a bad thing.  He first burst onto the scene with Scott Snyder as co-writer (Batman: Gates of Gotham).  Given Snyder's reputation these days, that's not a bad association at all.  (Even Snyder had a co-writer tagging along when he worked on Severed for whatever reason.)  With C.O.W.L., Higgins is working alongside Alec Siegel.  I have no idea.  What I've read of this project, Higgins has been getting all the credit.  As far as the need for co-writers goes (it should be noted even Geoff Johns worked with James Robinson in his early years, and Robinson worked with a co-writer, too, for part of Starman), I'm wondering if this is something he really does need.  Maybe as a kind of focusing lens?  Because as far as his Nightwing ended up going, I wonder if he needed such a lens, and just never got one.  C.O.W.L., like the final issues of the Nightwing run, is set in Chicago.  There's been speculation that this is, in fact, what Higgins would have done if given the chance in his mainstream effort.  Well, maybe?  Anyway, regardless of my personal feelings on its (co-)writer, this series has gotten a fair bit of hype.  "C.O.W.L." is short for Chicago Organized Workers League, otherwise known as the World's First Superhero Labor Union.  That's interesting and all, and this is even a period piece, for whatever reason.  Maybe I just can't figure Higgins out.  Maybe I'm approaching this wrong from the start, but as with my Higgins experience in general lately, I...just wish there was as much on the page as I wish there was.

Deadly Class #6 (Image)
Speaking of Image series from writers I really wish I could like as much as it sometimes seems I should, this one's from Rick Remender, who's recently impressing me with the scope of what he's doing in Captain America.  Apparently, Deadly Class is a personal project for him.  I wish I could say I loved it and totally understood how it's so important to him, but I can't.  This and C.O.W.L. are the kinds of disappointments I think I probably need to reread.  Maybe I will.  (I generally don't do a lot of that.)

All-New Doop #3 (Marvel)
Peter Milligan is a writer I feel guilty for not liking.  He's like the advanced stage of where Higgins and Remender could be years from now.  Milligan has been around for years, a kind of junior member of the British Invasion who helped forge the early years of Vertigo.  His most recent prominent work was nearly the first two years of Red Lanterns, a series I've recently fallen madly in love with...under the auspices of Charles Soule.  As for what Milligan is doing now (not meant as a pun, but there's that, too), I...guess this is related to his earlier X-Statix, a cartoony corner of the X-Men franchise that was much cult-loved at the time.  But Doop reads like instantly pointless drivel.  I'd read Chew over this.

The Flash #32 (DC)
And what is this, a trend or something?  Another writer I wish I liked is Robert Venditti, who happens to have been the guy who took over Green Lantern following the historic near-decade Geoff Johns run.  I haven't read too much of that.  Sometimes I wish I did, because I've liked what I have read.  But then I read something like this.  I have great history with The Flash.  For some reason that history ended with the New 52 relaunch.  No disrespect to the early run, because I just never really got around to reading it, probably because I was disappointed that Johns ended a pre-New 52 run prematurely following the excellent Flashpoint event.  So I wish I liked what I read here.  But I just didn't.  The best material is still pretty weak, Barry Allen bonding with the new version of Wally West.  I don't know if Veditti's heart just isn't in this title, but it just reads so tepidly, a very far cry from Johns or Mark Waid.  For a Flash reader who wishes The Flash would always be a must-read, as it certainly was under Waid and a slightly lesser extent Johns, this is not just disappointing, it's kind of disheartening.

Justice League Dark #32 (DC)
I actually like this series.  I'm waiting to be really wowed by it.  Hollywood was wowed enough to option a movie based on it, so there's that.  Frankenstein is usually featured in it, but not this issue.  As referenced during his recent appearances in Batman and Robin, he's been on a sabbatical.  We've got Zatanna, Deadman, and we-have-our-own-titles-too guys Constantine and Swamp Thing.  J.M. DeMatteis is a writer I greatly respect, but he doesn't always write to potential.  He's someone who's better than the lot I've been grappling with in this column, but I sometimes wish he'd be better.  If this were a truly dark series, maybe that might be the case here.  I don't know.

The New 52: Futures End #8 (DC)
Futures End badly wants to be a new 52.  I know, with wording like that, I could easily confuse you.  52, as opposed to the New 52, was the 2006-2007 weekly series that helped prove possible the modern viability of such a format.  I loved it.  I mean, I loved it.  (It ranked fourth in my list of all-time favorites.)  I've been trying to make comparisons between Futures End and 52 since the newer title launched, based on my sporadic experience with it.  Maybe if I read it every week my opinion would be different, but I just don't see it as hitting the mark quite as truly as its predecessor.  This is disappointing, too.

...Yesh.  With all these disappointments, is this because this was all part of the final Grab Bag?  The world may never know...

Quarter Bin #53 "Grant Morrison, Hawkworld"

Comics in this column were not necessarily bought in a quarter bin.  This is a back issues feature.

Animal Man #19 (DC)

From January 1990

This is a very famous issue in the Grant Morrison run thanks to this page:

via Any Eventuality

The thing about the issue, and the greater story surrounding it, available in the Animal Man: Deus Ex Machina collection, is that it may be the essential Grant Morrison story, the one by which he should be forever known.  It's awkward, this defining thing being in an extended run (after this issue there are seven more before his departure from the series).  A writer like Alan Moore, you can point to all these standalone works, many of which have become movies at this point, real iconic stuff that's allowed many observers, including Moore himself, to be able to say [given title] and like a famous historical author it's a classic you can point to and read by itself and say, that's why he's so respected.  With Morrison, especially with something like this, it's not so easy.

This is an issue filled with philosophy, in a story that famously breaks the fourth wall.  But it's not just about metafiction.  It's about life in general.  Moore has written any number of stories that are memorable stories, and to a certain extent they've made their readers think, but Morrison, especially in this story, has the potential to make a reader think and rethink, not just the story but their life as well.  It's real meaning-of-life material.

Buddy Baker, the erstwhile Animal Man, whom Morrison resurrected from obscurity and comic book limbo for this run, has this to say about what he's experiencing, including the above moment ("you" being the reader, as Chas Truog's expressive art hopefully conveys well enough):

"I saw into another world, and it was worse than this one.  It was like I glimpsed Heaven and...and it wasn't paradise.  It was more like Hell.  What if God, or whoever it is, created us to be better than himself?  What if God's reality...Heaven, if you like...what if it's so bad that he had to imagine us to help make his life bearable?"

Now, in later issues, Buddy indeed meets "God," who is of course the writer of Animal Man, Grant Morrison himself.  This takes nothing away from the thoughts expressed above.  The fact that Buddy breaks the fourth wall and that isn't the end of the story, that's the beginning of the impact this run has in the career of Morrison, in fiction, not just comics.

Deus Ex Machina is a large part of why I love Morrison so much.  I didn't read Animal Man in its original run.  I wouldn't even read comics regularly for the first until a few years after it was done.  I read Morrison for the first time when he began JLA above five years after the end of the run on Animal Man.  I had a break from reading comics, for about five years, right around the time the JLA run was ending.  Wanting to read how he ended that was part of how I worked myself into the kind of reader I am now.  Reading Seven Soldiers of Victory was another part.  But I still wasn't the fan I am now, or close to it.  I realized what Soldiers was, its incredibly ambitious scope, but I didn't realize who Morrison was.  But then I read Deus Ex Machina for the first time.

And I became a Grant Morrison fan for life.  There's something about the way he approaches superheroes that's different from other writers, even Moore.  Most British writers seem to have a kind of distance from the concept that their American counterparts don't.  That'll always be the biggest difference between Morrison and his closest contemporary, Geoff Johns.  What Morrison and Johns share is an expansive view of the mythology, and an interesting not only in exploring but expanding it.  What Morrison does that Johns doesn't is write his stories as if he's deconstructing, reconstructing, and constructing all at the same time.  It's dizzying.  It's not for everyone.  It seems completely impossible.  Most writers can manage a few of them.  Some of them do so quite brilliantly.  But Morrison manages to do all three, and he's been doing so for years.

Deus Ex Machina is where he puts all of his ideas to their biggest test.  In this issue, he even talks about a second Crisis, as in Crisis on Infinite Earths, a famous crossover event that at that point was...five years earlier.  (Everything is in five-year intervals!)  A second Crisis did happen.  It was written by Johns.  Morrison wrote the third (Final Crisis).  He was the first to identify the idea of the Crisis as a seminal comics moment, not just for DC as a publisher, but as a story, an event in the lives of the characters themselves.  Marvel will always have its "Phoenix Saga," and DC its Crisis.

If you read only this issue, you would even have a Buddy Baker origin story, a Buddy Baker crisis, and the fourth wall being broken.  Collapse the whole run into this one issue, and I think it would still be the defining point of Morrison's career.

Glad I had a chance to read it again, just this issue.  But I think the whole arc deserves more attention.  Could it be a movie?  Could we push the experience to that point?  Maybe.  After The Matrix, which itself is something Morrison always liked to say probably owes a huge debt to his Invisibles, maybe.  I'd love for someone to tackle the idea.  With the current popularity of superhero movies, maybe something like this could slip in.

Animal Man #23 (DC)
From May 1990

As the arc continues, we spend some time with Psycho Pirate, a villain who happens to be the only character who intrinsically remembers that the first Crisis happened.  It's not easy being him.  Buddy is spending time with the Phantom Stranger trying to figure things out.  I think Morrison writing more Phantom Stranger would be a good thing.  This issue becomes a little like Neil Gaiman's more famous Sandman.  (Another series that took a loose interpretation of a superhero, by the way.)  Buddy and Phantom Stranger talk to a group of immortals, and so there's more talking about the nature of life itself.

Doom Patrol #21 (DC)
From April 1989

This is the third-of-four chapters from Morrison's opening arc in Doom Patrol, "Crawling from the Wreckage."  The whole idea was that the previous writer had blown the team to bits, you see.  And they didn't relaunch the series for this arc.  I know.  Seems strange, radical.  Last time I talked a little about the fourth chapter and wanting to know what previous ones were like.  I've read a good bit of Morrison's run on this series, but never the opening arc.  I probably need to just go ahead and read the whole arc.

Hawkworld Book Three: Phoenix Flight (DC)
From 1989

Since this was one of those prestige format mini-series, there is no indication of exact publication month.  I could do the research, of course, but I'm not going to.  Hawkworld was part of a trend at the time of allowing characters who had slipped through the cracks a little to be explored as properties other than as merely superheroes.  Aquaman got the same treatment.  Aquaman and Hawkman are two of DC's perennial candidates for reboot treatment as they're both fairly iconic but have never proven as popular as even Flash or Green Lantern, although moreso than the New Gods, sort of third-tier characters.

Anyway, while I was reading this one, which is sort of an urban crime mystery on an alien planet (Thanagar, the erstwhile Hawkworld), I realized that Brian K. Vaughan's Saga is in some ways a pastiche of this particular version of Hawkman, the one who's an alien, who gained his wings from a whole planet filled with cops who wear them as part of their uniform.  When in this mode, Carter Hall is known as Katar Hol.  Exotic sounding! 

It's pretty good stuff from respected veteran Timothy Truman, a nice reminder that Hawkman doesn't just have to be the muscle who also happens to be in an endless cycle of death and rebirth with his one true love, Hawkwoman.  Since Hawkman is one of those characters who is frequently stuck in a team book for wont of something else to do with him, how about hooking him up with one of the Green Lantern corps?  I'd suggest the Red Lanterns, personally.  

Star Trek Special: Flesh and Stone (IDW)

writer: Scott and David Tipton
artist: Sharp Brothers

via Seven Sees

I haven't read a lot of Star Trek comics lately, but I've generally liked the material IDW has published since it acquired the rights to the franchise in 2006.  The reason I wanted to read this special was the dude on the right-most side of the cover image.  That's Phlox from Enterprise.  His role in the episode "Divergence" was referenced in the Blood Will Tell mini-series that to my mind remains one of the best Star Trek comics ever (it was a Klingon saga).  Yet Flesh and Stone is now the most prominent appearance by an Enterprise character in a comic book.

Yeah, I love Enterprise.

Part of this achievement is blunted by the fact that pretty much every chief medical officer from throughout the franchise is featured in the special.  There's McCoy from the original TV series (and his Next Generation-era version), Crusher and Pulaski from Next Generation, Bashir from Deep Space Nine, and The Doctor from Voyager.  Missing would be Boyce, featured in the original pilot "The Cage" and Piper from "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot (yes, this is nitpicking).

This idea of including all of the casts has been done before, notably in several Pocket Books crossover events.  This was before Enterprise, of course.  IDW has done plenty of comics based in the original series era, as well as comics in the Abrams era, Next Generation comics, and even a Deep Space Nine mini-series.  Voyager has had a comic, too, from the second time Marvel had franchise rights.  During Enterprise's TV run, there were basically no comics being published, by the way, although admittedly it's never been a favorite among the fans.

Flesh and Stone isn't one of IDW's best.  In the effort to come up with a gimmick that includes all these doctors, few of them have much more to do than help move along the medical mystery at the story's heart.  Characterization, then, isn't really key.  If this is your introduction to any of these doctors, you won't really end up knowing a lot about them.  Pulaski, who was featured in Next Generation's second season (and is sometimes referred to as "the female McCoy" and has mostly been dismissed and forgotten) is depicted perhaps most distinctly, and accurately.  That's pretty ironic!

The Tholians who show up, by the way, are based on a design featured in Enterprise.

Red Lanterns #32 (DC)

writer: Charles Soule
artist: J. Calafiore

via Comic Box Commentary

This was a series I reconnected with thanks to some grab bags I'd been getting.  It's a New 52 launch, one of four Green Lantern titles from that time.  I'd sampled it before but hadn't really been able to get into it despite thinking it was a better idea than fans generally considered it.  It seems time has been kind to Red Lanterns.

It doesn't hurt at all for emerging superstar Charles Soule to have taken the helm.  The scene above features Rankorr, the human recruit who was introduced early in the series as someone who might be more sympathetic for the reader than other members of the rage corps originally led by Atrocitus, who was the first of the Red Lanterns introduced by Geoff Johns.  Atrocitus has been undergoing a crisis since the start.  Recently Guy Gardner revamped the Red Lanterns entirely, making it possible for them to control their rage and thereby retroactively making the red ring more comparable to the more familiar green one.  He's also successfully negotiated control of patrol over Earth from the Green Lanterns.

Oh, and that blonde in the foreground?  It's Supergirl.  That was a whole recent event.  She didn't stay a member for long, but it was certainly an interesting and key development for this version of the character.

This issue begins the four-part "Atrocities" arc that brings the conflict of leadership between Gardner and Atrocitus to a head.  It's a perfect point to recognize how great the series has become.  In fact, it's the only Green Lantern series I'm interested in reading on a regular basis these days.  As a long-time fan of the franchise, I didn't really see that coming.  The thing is, Red Lanterns gets that the franchise is a sci-fi franchise.  I know.  This is kind of weird.  It's also a lot like Guardians of the Galaxy, actually.  One might say that the Red Lanterns themselves, or their Sinestro Corps predecessors, played a huge part in laying the comic book ground for the GotG revival and current movie incarnation success.

Big epic stuff in a totally unexpected corner.  I like that.

Reading Comics #129 "Wilson's Marvel"

I've been reading Ms. Marvel since it launched earlier this year, not because of the rather gimmicky ethnic hook but because Marvel came up with the perfect writer to pull it off.  Quite shamelessly, I've been reading Ms. Marvel because of G. Willow Wilson.

Wilson became an instant favorite thanks to her remarkable run in the little-read Vertigo series Air, which twice topped my annual QB50 list (2009-2010).  Then she kind of went away.  Granted, Wilson is an accomplished writer outside of the comics medium.  Recently I read her novel Alif the Unseen, and that was pretty good, but it wasn't quite as satisfying as Air was.  I was surprised to see her resurface, but not surprised (okay, pleasantly surprised) to see Wilson tackling her relationship with Muslim culture directly, in a superhero comic of all things.  I approached Ms. Marvel with great faith but also some trepidation.

I think as of #6 I can strike "trepidation" completely from the record.

#5 was the conclusion of the opening arc (mistakenly printed in the issue as "Part Four of Five"), the origin story of Kamala Khan's debut in the role.  Being a superhero is great and all, but Wilson's genius in the series is that she recognizes and embraces that Kamala's journey kind of has nothing to do with that.  The best moment of this issue is a chat between father and daughter.  The issue also features the debut of Kamala's permanent costume.

via Things Matter.  This is her making it.

via Project Fandom. And then the finished product.

But as I said, the best issue so far is #6.  Surprisingly, it features none of the by-now trademark family scenes.  Substituted instead is Kamala having a conversation with her spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abdullah, which is probably a better moment than the one with her father in the previous issue.

The highlight, though, is the guest appearance from Wolverine.  I know, I know, Wolverine seems as gratuitous as you can probably get.  Putting aside that guest appearances from rather than in stories featuring better-known characters will never be as effective in finding new readers, this one's handled with considerable skill.  It addresses current Wolverine events but still manages to get across exactly what Wilson and Kamala need at this point, which is for Kamala to have an unabashedly good superhero moment, now that she's gotten over her introductory jitters.  

This comes about thanks to Kamala going off in search of her apparent nemesis, the Inventor.  The Inventor, unexpectedly, seems to come straight from the pages of Atomic Robo.  I didn't see that coming.  It fits perfectly with the tone of the series, too.

via Scans Daily

And then Wolverine shows up, and Kamala's endearing fangirl tendencies emerge for the first time since the first issue.  Who does that around Wolverine???  This girl, apparently!  It's fun.  It's so atypical, just like the whole series, but in a way that hasn't really been featured so far, it pushes the whole thing forward.

via Reddit

The artist for the issue is Jacob Wyatt rather than Adrian Alphona, and he does an excellent job on all accounts.  Alphona tends to get a lot of the credit for helping Ms. Marvel stand out, but it's nice to know someone else can step in and help knock it out of the park.

Loving it.

Earth 2 #25 (DC)

writer: Tom Taylor
artist: Nicola Scott

via Comic Obsessed

Earth 2 began as a series that relaunched the classic Justice Society characters in a New 52 context, set in an alternate reality that spun off the events of the Justice League opening arc of Darkseid's first appearance.  Big dramatic developments became a matter of course.

The latest big dramatic development is the debut of the new Superman.  Likely this is a character that will remain (mostly) unique to Earth 2 canon, even though he's another Krypton survivor (who teases "...another," and is not referring to Supergirl).

Tom Taylor took over writing chores from the departing James Robinson last year, and seems to have dramatically ramped up the big dramatic development machine.  He's the one who explored the new Batman (I'd still love to read Earth 2 Annual #2, where the full story of how Thomas Wayne adopted the cowl unfolds), and unleashed the returned original Superman, now apparently a force for evil and soldier of Apokolips.

So now Evil Superman has some competition.  Since this is a series that has a story that has continued nonstop since its first issue, it's maybe not an ideal one to randomly sample.  Which is not to say it can't be, but I think the impact of any given issue drops when you're no longer connected to the arcs of given characters, like the revamped Jay Garrick Flash or Alan Scott Green Lantern, both of whom were original stars of the series but are supporting characters these days.  Batman doesn't have a huge role in this issue, either, and even the new Superman only shows up for a few pages.  The most dramatic development actually involves Evil Superman.  Suffice to say, but if Evil Superman asks you to dinner, find a way to refuse.  If you can.

I'm not familiar enough with Taylor's run on the series to know if this is typical for him.  Nicola Scott has been the artist on the series since the start.  She's one of the few female artists working on an extended high profile project in comics.  Perhaps it's a good thing that even she seems to have keyed in most passionately with Evil Superman's moment.

With the upcoming Earth 2: World's End weekly series, more attention is going to be drawn to this corner of the New 52.  I'd suggest at the very least to begin with that second annual, then the issue previous to this one, so you know how the new Superman's existence is first exposed, and then continue reading, so you know how Evil Superman and New Superman measure up against each other...And then maybe you'll see how any of this relates to the rest of DC continuity, probably by next spring.  Nobody knows what's coming up.  There's speculation.  But I'm saying, maybe this is important.

Captain America #22 (Marvel)

writer: Rick Remender
artist: Carlos Pacheco

via Comic Book Movie

Hey, so you know the monkey in the room concerning classic Marvel comics and movie personality Captain America, that he's practically the poster child for steroids?  Someone finally wrote a story where his juice is taken away.

This leaves Steve Rogers as a shriveled old man, kind of what he'd be if he'd aged naturally from his original WWII existence.  Instead someone finally magically stripped him of whatever happened to have allowed him to originally escape such a fate.  And that's something DC fans saw twenty years ago in the pages of Zero Hour.

Anyway, so as part of the Marvel Even-More-Now initiative, as you might have read, the big three Avengers (Cap, Iron Man, Thor) will be going through a simultaneous identity crisis.  I'm not really clear on Iron Man's, but as far as Thor goes, apparently you can become the Norse god of thunder just because you can possess his power by lifting his hammer (I don't know, it sounded less stupid in my head explaining it that way, but anyway, they really stretched temporarily replacing him, one way or another).

I like Rick Remender's idea for Cap best.  I wish someone really would address his steroids more directly, but this is pretty good.  Sure, he'll get his steroids back (keep saying it and maybe it'll sink in), Falcon will go back to being Falcon, after being Cap for a while, but in the meantime there's an interesting wrinkle.

This is another instance of Remender writing Steve Rogers and/or Captain America more directly and relevantly than Ed Brubaker ever managed.  (The Winter Soldier thing was a great idea, but it's also a great gimmick, as in...gimmick.)

Having once randomly caught an issue and finding much to my surprise that I liked it, I was glad to give Remender's run a more deliberate look, and this was a good issue to sample.

Reading Comics #128 "Apokolips Cowl"

via DC Infinite

It's here, the Batman and Robin event: Robin Rises.

As far as I'm concerned, this is DC finally acknowledging the significance of this series.  As a title, it's had impressive pedigree ever since its original launch under the auspices of Grant Morrison.  When it relaunched under Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason at the start of the New 52 era, the series was counting down to the end of Morrison's run with Batman, which also meant the end of Morrison's own Robin, Damian Wayne.  But the end of Robin did not mean the end of Batman and Robin.  As we've seen over the past year, far from it.  And as we're seeing now, this is an extremely good thing.

Recently I've been making a much greater effort to keep up with the series.  Issue #32, the last of the covers to share credit with a featured guest-star rather rather than list ...and Robin, this one saying ...and Ra's al Ghul, wraps up the "Hunt for Robin" arc that's seen Batman pursuing al Ghul around the globe after his old foe, who happens to be Damian's grandfather, stole Robin's corpse along with his mother's, Talia (al Ghul's daughter, Bruce Wayne's one-time lover).  

Along the way, Batman has teamed up with Frankenstein, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.  Frankenstein is the last ally standing, which comes in handy, because by the time they catch up with Ra's, it's time for a fight!  Because Gleason draws Frankenstein so well, I'm glad Morrison's erstwhile Soldier of Victory has been part of the arc.  (It doesn't hurt that Tomasi writes him so well, too.)  It's also been fun having Ra's al Ghul in the spotlight.  He's a villain who often sits on the sidelines, allowing others to handle the chaos he's unleashed.  This is the first time he's had an active role in the Damian saga, too.

But the big twist introduced at the end of "Hunt for Robin" is also the spotlight of Robin Rises: Omega, which is the addition of Jack Kirby's Fourth World into the mix.  The Fourth World is Kirby's New Gods playground, a perennial feature of the DC landscape.  DC's making another push, what with Infinity Man and the Forever People and the upcoming arc in Green Lantern, while the "Robin Rises" arc has the distinction of bringing up the fact that this is the first time the New 52 has revisited the demons of Apokolips since the opening arc of Justice League.

Art in the kickoff special is provided by Andy Kubert, who helped launch the Damian saga at the start of Morrison's run, since featured in the collection Batman and Son.  Kubert also recently wrote and drew Damian: Son of Batman.  It's always nice to see him return to the fold.  He handles the chaos in Robin Rises well, and is an intrinsic part of making it hit widescreen mode, Batman and Robin as blockbuster material, all stops unleashed, however you want to say it.

Basically, everything that the series has done to date reaching a culmination point.  It's a reward for existing fans, and a chance for new ones to discover just how significant it's been.  Tomasi has been doing an excellent job explaining how important Damian was and is to his father, in life and in death, Batman's desperation and grief and conflicting impulses as events spiral out of control.  In "Hunt for Robin" he was finally content to let his son rest in peace, possibly because he knew that if Damian was revived under al Ghul's control, he'd become a monster.  But in "Robin Rises" he seems to want Damian to have another shot at life after all.  It's a grieving process that keeps going.  The cynics will tell you Damian will return at some point anyway, but I think the whole point of these stories is that he won't, and this is all we have left, the chance to see how important he really was.

And really, Damian himself wouldn't have it any other way.