Quarter Bin 74 "Drax, foiled again..."

These actually were bought for a quarter each, thank you very much.  The local haunt frequently puts damaged comics aside with steep discounts, so most of them this time are younger than is usual for this feature...

Drax #2 (Marvel)
From February 2016.
Being, perhaps somewhat uniquely, a fan of comics as well as professional wrestling, I can probably give insight into a CM Punk comic better than you might find elsewhere (were you so inclined).  Punk famously ditched the WWE after feeling he wasn't getting his due, even though he was one of the company's top performers, and somewhat irreplaceable, as the last few years since his departure have helped prove.  I have a complicated perspective on Punk.  On the one hand, he truly is as good as he thinks he is.  But on the other, his ego is probably more massive than he can support.  Strange combination.  But my sympathy for him has only increased since his departure from the ring.  I'm definitely Team Punk.  When he started writing comics, I was instantly intrigued, because it's a well-kept secret that comic book writers often intermingle their personal thoughts with their fictional ones (especially when they leave a series).  I quickly found I wouldn't be disappointed.

And yet, I wasn't sure I wanted to make a commitment to his first regular assignment, Drax, so I avoided sampling it until now.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about.  Punk is definitely reflecting on his own life here, but not in a way that gets in the way.  Drax has a series because Guardians of the Galaxy made him more famous than he'd ever been.  And this series follows, more or less, with the character as established in the movie, which is a good thing because his was a fairly minimal role in the movie, and so there's plenty of room to explore (unlike, say, Rocket or Star-Lord, or the Guardians in general, but I digress).  Anyway, Drax is a unique situation in a comics era that's desperately grasping for unique situations (making them less and less unique by the minute), and again, Punk is ideally suited to explore it.  Nominally, Cullen Bunn, who never met a concept he couldn't suck the life out of, is there to help guide Punk, because Marvel probably had the same concerns I did, but I sense little Bunn here (again, a good thing).  So this was a very happy reading experience.

Superman: Lois & Clark #1 (DC)
From December 2015.
Another comic I was hesitant to read was one of the several Convergence spin-offs.  Fans cooled almost instantly on Convergence (I thought it was a pretty great success, both the mini-series itself and the creative freedom of the side projects), so maybe these spin-offs were never going to be the big hits DC thought they'd be (just as copying "Batgirl of Burnside" made that less significant, and led to DCYou being the failure it seems to have been).  Lois & Clark is a continuation of Convergence: Superman, with creators Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks along for the ride.  Jurgens famously was one of the writers DC tried on the New 52 Superman itself, one of the writers who famously failed to make it anywhere the success Grant Morrison's Action Comics was, at least in terms of garnering any kind of buzz.  Jurgens wisely seems to have used Lois & Clark as a commentary on that, and the New 52 as a whole.  And in case you didn't know, it also continues the Superman era last seen at the end of the '90s, the last time DC was ready for a major overhaul (technically, the early millennial Superman was not a reboot, but it really was).  The series also features Superman's son, who will be playing a significant role in the DC Rebirth era.  The comic itself is a fine read (and looks fine, too, thanks to Weeks, who knows how to translate Jurgens better than Jurgens has for years).  The issue outlines the whole concept, how the '90s Superman ended up in the New 52, and stood out of the way of history.  Like Drax, makes me wish I hadn't been so dismissively originally.

Action Comics #47 (DC)
From February 2016.
The Greg Pak era in Action Comics was kind of completely overshadowed.  It turned out to be for those who didn't want the Geoff Johns, or Gene Luen Yang, Superman.  But it's not really much to write home about.  This is from the "Truth" period, and features a villain who kind of has a valid perspective (seemingly ripped from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).  But it seems so pedestrian compared to the Johns/Yang Superman.  The artist is Georges Jeanty, whom I originally encountered in the pages of '90s Superboy, and who later resurfaced in the pages of Dark Horse's Bffy the Vampire Slayer comics.  But his work here is completely unrecognizable, which is a shame, because I liked his work from that time.  Equally baffling is Frankenstein's appearance in the issue.  It's not really dwelt on.  It's a visual element and nothing more, probably explained elsewhere, but surely disappointing for someone randomly stopping by.

Wildcats 3.0 #1 (WildStorm)
From October 2002.
This older issue is from the last attempt to keep WildStorm a viable, separate entity within DC once t became an imprint here instead of at Image.  The characters continue to pop up (they had supporting roles in Futures End, for instance, plus random efforts at ongoing series like Grifter and Midnighter), but it'll never be the same.  Speaking of completely different, this third volume of Wildcats was part of the Authority era, in which the company helped set up the Ultimates era, which helped set up the Avengers movies.  But clearly the original intent was something, again, completely different.  The idea was new maturity.  Joe Casey writes the corporate Wildcats in a way that sheds new light on just what America looked like at the turn of the millennium.  No wonder we've been struggling with our financial health ever since, because that was the era in which corporations really did seem to take over.  I mean, the '80s were the Greed Decade, but they had nothing on the '00s.  I think we all see that now.  A little too late, perhaps, but maybe it's because of things like Casey's fairly incomprehensive buzz speak heavy Wildcats.  Amusingly, Casey explains the evolution of the team in an essay, and it really doesn't help explain how Wildcats 3.0 makes sense from that any better than the comic itself, which ignores pretty much everything Wildcats except for Grifter.  I guess that makes sense...