Sunday Marvel Sunday "Tony Stark: Iron Man #12"

Tony Stark: Iron Man #12

Wow, that was a lot more difficult than it should have been.

I'm talking about finding an image of the cover on Google, which turns out to be a Walmart-exclusive variant (I found one with the title logo in blue, but apparently only Walmart had it in, y'know, Iron Man colors).

It should be noted that all these Sunday Marvel Sunday comics were originally obtained via Walmart three-packs.

Anyway.

Marvel continues to know what the hell to do with Iron Man.  Perversely, the company seems committed to screwing with the character in every way possible.  This has been going on in ridiculous fashion since the '90s, when Tony Stark was, inexplicably, a teenager for a while.  This was okay, in the '90s, if it was Ray Palmer, because even in the '90s Ray Palmer (the teenage thing was thanks to Zero Hour, in case you were wondering, and was featured in Dan Jurgens' Teen Titans) was not really a significant character (he had his heyday in the '70s, I think, in a partnership with Hawkman).  This is not to say The Atom is not a great character.  But very few writers seem interested in him.  I mean, even Ant-Man, with one of the worst publication histories of any major character, now has his own movies.  Ray Palmer in the Arrowverse is basically Iron Man, with shrinking powers.  Played by Superman.

Okay.  I kind of got sidetracked.  Anyway, this rant about how ridiculous Iron Man comics have been of course ties in with the fact that Iron Man has literally been the most significant superhero of the past decade, because of, y'know, the MCU.  And Marvel figured it was okay to exploit this opportunity.  To continue making terrible Iron Man comics.

Iron Man's dad, in the comics, isn't even Howard Stark, by the way.  Multiple writers affirmed that some convoluted adoption nonsense was the new status quo.  And Tony died.  And came back.  And died.  And as of this comic?  Is kind of dead.  And alive.  At the same time. 

Somehow the idea that Tony's a tech genius has gotten widely out of control.  In comics, being a tech genius is futurism, not smartphones.  Tony operates on such an advanced level (and yet, as with his armor, still doesn't...technically share it with everyday peons. despite running a massive business. somehow) he beggars all imagination. 

Part of this is superhero comics as they now exist, almost totally divorced from the real world.  This issue, by the way, is a tie-in with War of the Realms, just another cosmic story in adventures that no longer have anything to do with problems any of us is likely to ever experience outside of, well, a comic book, or another MCU flick.  It's particularly egregious when Marvel does it because this is supposed to be the company that's painfully reflective of everyday struggles.  And yeah, by token references to Tony's alcoholic past, it is.  Pretty much.  His new body has the same history as his old body (just don't even ask). 

Never mind that Marvel is once again replacing Tony as Iron Man, by the way.  Forget that DC may have just fired Dan DiDio because it had second thoughts about a Marvel-like attempt to line-wide replace the icons, again. 

Forget that this was a golden opportunity, with Tony's death in the movies, to remind any interested fans, that Tony's adventures continue well past Robert Downey, Jr. in the comics.  Maybe.  Probably.  Sometimes.  Unless they can help it.

Anyway, it doesn't matter who's writing Iron Man.  Bendis did it for a while, and he actually was kind of more interested in Doctor Doom.  Or Mary Jane.  Or Riri Williams.  This issue it's Gail Simone, the writer most likely to not really conceive of anything outside of comic book logic.  Unless it offends her.  And gives her a career. 

Anyway, I'm noticing that Thought Bubble Comics really only has a readership of one these days (thanks, Pat!), so it really doesn't matter what I say.  Some of these are going to be rants, and some are actually going to have nice things to say about Marvel.  But most of them will be rants.  Coming at you weekly!

Reading Comics 221 "Tampa Comic Con 2018"

This past Saturday I attended my first ever comic con, packed to the gills with geeky goodness.  I picked up a few comics and a bunch of collections (but I haven't gotten around to transposing any of my Goodreads collections reviews here, even though that's been a goal for a few years now).  Here's some thoughts!

The Couch Preview
A typical sketchy-art indy book featuring a twist on superheroes: the lead is actually a psychiatrist whose career is flatlining when he suddenly finds himself with an unexpected new clientele: Wrecking Ball and the Ultra Squad. 

Invincible Iron Man #600 (Marvel)
The last-forever-for-now Brian Michael Bendis Marvel comic!  I've been trying to track down a copy for a little while now, so it was great to find one in one of the vendors' discount bins.  The story wraps up "The Search for Tony Stark," and explains what happened to him, and how he used that to also revive Jim Rhodes.  Marvel also decided to stick with the whole adoption concept another writer introduced a few years back, and Bendis gives us a look at the birth parents.  We see Riri Williams joining a team that also includes Miles Morales, destined to be one of Bendis's lasting contributions to Marvel lore, and his epic Ultimate Spider-Man run.  He skirts the whole idea of Doctor Doom running around as Iron Man recently.  He spends a lot of time with the A.I. Tony ruminating on the nature of his existence, which might as well be considered allegorical for Bendis reflecting on his big transition.  In lieu of one final signature letters/hype column and/or farewell essay, he gives readers some photographs of important behind-the-scene moments from about the last ten years of his Marvel tenure.  It was worth having a look at.

Jupiter's Legacy 2 #4, 5 (Image)
The final issues of the second (technically fourth, if you include the two Jupiter's Circle series with a different artist) volume of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's bid for a grand superhero generational statement.  It's sometimes hard to separate the hype from the emerging legacy of a Millar comic.  All I know is Quitely feels constrained compared to stuff I've seen him do with Grant Morrison (their Multiversity: Pax Americana is my favorite collaboration between them).  I do like the emphasis on generations, though by "generational," earlier, I was talking about a generation-defining comic like Watchmen. 

Kamandi Challenge #9 (DC)
Tom King's issue in the grand concept of new creators every issue for a year, with each new team finishing whatever cliffhanger the one before it left them.  I'm not sure if King's goal here was to do that or comment on the existential nature of the concept.  Not sure it's one of his better comics, but certainly interesting, as King always is.

Millarworld New Talent Annual 2017 (Image)
Two years running I entered this contest and lost, and it's always interesting to see the script that beat me.  (Two years running I'm not impressed).  The highlights from the results this time are more plentiful than the previous one.  The Empress story (that's the one I entered this time) features great art from Luana Vecchio, with watercolor coloring that helps it additionally stand out.  Simon James' Superior script is pretty great.  Martin Renard's Super Crooks script is pretty clever.  The whole Huck package, writing from Stephanie Cooke and art from Jake Elphick, sells the concept pretty well.  I'm glad I was able to catch a copy of this finally, too.

Nibiru and the Legend of the Anunnaki #1, 2 (Fat Cat)
This is exactly the sort of thing you hope to find at a convention, especially one with name creators (I went to one in Colorado Springs, much smaller, with a bunch of local talent).  Neal Adams was there, and Fabien Nicieza ("creator of Deadpool," his table said, with the only official line of all the creators), and Scott Lobdell!  But the one I stopped at was Pat Broderick's.  The Pat Broderick who spoke to me was actually his wife.  Pat Broderick the classic Marvel/DC artist didn't really do much talking and/or interacting in general, which was fine.  The Pat Broderick who was his wife was very, very eager to talk, constantly hyping Nibiru even after I'd said I would buy it, and even after I bought it!  That's exactly the kind of help you want at something like this!  The comic itself features landscape formatting inside and...fairly atrocious editing.  The art can be a little rough, too.  Still, I appreciated having a look and supporting a guy who's been in the business a long time and sometimes not had the easiest time staying in.  Apparently he's a Tampa local and has had some professional jobs around town, too.  I figured Nibiru was his bid to get back into comics, in the thoroughly modern sense (the project was launched via Kickstarter, naturally).  The storytelling is very much in the Prince Valiant vein. Two issues in and it's basically still setup, though the action picks up with naked men fighting each other in the second issue.  The Pat Broderick who was his wife assured me the third issue was publishing soon, and I've seen art from the next few issues.  These two were published in 2016. 

Scout Comics Presents #1 (Scout Comics)
For a small publisher, there's a lot of excellent art and even decent storytelling on display in the previews included.  The least successful concept is actually Stabbity Rabbit, which had its own table at the con, separate from the one where I picked this up, which is too bad, because something called Stabbity Rabbit sounds like it really ought to be awesome. 

Quarter Bin 81 "Starlin's Infinity saga, Loeb's Iron Man, Moench's JLA, Hitch's JLA, Waid's Offspring, Moore's LXG"

Although this is a back issues feature that doesn't necessarily always feature comics literally found in a quarter bin, this time you can once again safely assume that.

The Infinity Entity #1 (Marvel)
From May 2016.
I love that my local shop puts damaged new releases in the discount bins.  It makes it incredibly simple to sample stuff I might have otherwise overlooked, such as Jim Starlin once again revisiting his Infinity saga.  Starlin's the guy who has been guiding this stuff from the beginning.  You have him to thank for Thanos, that guy who's kind of the big bad in the Avengers movies, and basically, the Infinity saga is Starlin's ongoing narrative of the further exploits of Thanos, and other interested parties, such as Adam Warlock.  This mini-series actually takes place between two Starlin graphic novels, Thanos: The Infinity Relativity and Thanos: The Infinity Finale, which was released this past April.  Infinity Entity focuses on Adam Warlock as he reintroduces himself following one of those untidy comic book deaths.  It's amusing, seeing him interact with the original Avengers.  These are Marvel comics I eagerly anticipate reading at some later date, the older and newer stuff.  This is, you understand, not something I usually say about Marvel comics...

Iron Man #9 (Marvel)
From July 1997.
I think so much of what Marvel was doing in the '90s came off as desperately trying to look cool (possibly because, oh, the fate of the entire company was in the air thanks to potential bankruptcy) that it ended up alienating older fans and leaving newer fans with the impression that none of this mattered, once the company shifted focus back to more familiar ground.  I rarely read Iron Man comics (I've just never been interested), but I figured I had to read this one, as it was written by Jeph Loeb, during that whole period where he was writing Marvel comics without anyone realizing it was Jeph Loeb, because being Jeph Loeb didn't matter until fans got excited about him thanks to DC work like Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman/Batman (which is ironic, because he never gets the same respect at Marvel, and yet that's where he's been for about a decade now).  This story features an old Tony Stark colleague who was actually partly responsible for the original set of Iron Man armor, and has since kind of gone off the deep end.  Naturally, the guy is totally unknown in today's lore (didn't see him in 2008's Iron Man, right?), and so he's been lost to the same comic book vagaries and/or '90s amnesia that are so easy to rely on with fans.  I didn't find it to be such a bad read.

JLA: Act of God #3 (DC)
From 2001.
Doug Moench was one of the lead Batman writers in the '90s (among other things, helping spearhead "Knightfall" and the vampire saga with Kelley Jones; he also created Bane and Black Mask, as well as Deathlok and Moon Knight over at Marvel, where he did most of his formative work).  One of his last projects with DC was a prestige format JLA mini-series, Act of God, where he imagined what it would look like if all superpowered heroes suddenly lost their superpowers.  By this finale, several of them had banded under the direction of Batman, while Superman and Wonder Woman struggle with finding new meaning in their lives.  It's not terribly hard, in retrospect, to read it as Moench's swan song statement, and so I'm glad to have read it.

Justice League of America #8 (DC)
From May 2016.
Bryan Hitch's Rao saga continues in this issue, and I suspect the next one finally explains why all those dead Superman bodies kept showing up, as depicted in the first issue of the series.  Hitch's art was once known for its hyper realism, but in this series it's been simplified so that it kind of looks like the work of Stuart Immonen.  As a fan of Immonen, I find this acceptable.  Hitch is the writer of the Rebirth Justice League (along with art from Tony Daniel), and I think this was a good choice.

The Kingdom: Offspring (DC)
From February 1999.
The Kingdom was Mark Waid's follow-up to Kingdom Come insofar as it depicted many of the next generation heroes from the original story, and featured the menace of Gog, who was responsible for next generation hero Magog.  The Kingdom was split up between bookend issues where the overall story was told, and several one-shots.  This may be the first time I've read Offspring, which features the son of Plastic Man.  Both of them are struggling with the idea of being taken seriously, and as such Offspring makes for a good standalone story in and of itself.  It doesn't hurt that Frank Quitely provides the art, because Quitely isn't really capable of doing ho-hum work. 

It's interesting, though, The Kingdom, because it's an example of what DC always wanted to do, and eventually did, with Watchmen.  I've talked far too much recently about Alan Moore (elsewhere), but suffice to say I find it disappointing that he left mainstream work the way he did, and wanted no part in revisiting Watchmen.  For a lot of fans, that's become axiomatic, which strikes me as interesting, because this is the comics medium, the place where storytellers are most free to reinterpret, the basic job of storytellers everywhere, ever.  And yet, there's Waid, doing it with Kingdom Come, not very long after.  I mean, it makes sense from a business standpoint.  DC, and its parent company Warners, would understandably be interested in maximizing the profitability of a proven hit.  That's just basic business sense.  I never thought The Kingdom was or was intended to be the same kind of creative statement as its predecessor, but it still provided room for material like Offspring, which represents excellent material in and of itself.  To assume that this is impossible is, to my mind, to completely misunderstand the art of storytelling.

It's interesting, too, just to reconsider Kingdom Come, thanks to something like Offspring.  This was something that was a major deal twenty years ago.  It's not inconceivable to think that fans really did think this was something akin to Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns.  Yet, twenty years on, you really don't find anyone talking about it like that anymore.  I find that odd.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder, have we just lost the ability to conceive new touchstones as actually existing?  Without Kingdom Come, you wouldn't have Civil War.  I mean, Mark Millar's Civil War, when you strip it down to its essentials, is essentially Kingdom Come, done in regular continuity.  Tragedy strikes, and the superhero community is forced to decide what to do next.  Isn't that argument enough that Kingdom Come is still important?  It's just, we stopped trying to see it as important, when it proved about as important as a superhero comic could get.  DC had Identity Crisis, later, and Marvel finally jumped on the bandwagon.  Civil War was clearly a creative watershed for the company.  And you wouldn't have it without Kingdom Come.  I'll leave it at that for now.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #6 (ABC)
From September 2000.
Alan Moore's last significant creation was LXG, in which he envisioned a unified Victorian literary canon, which infamously was adapted into a 2003 movie that not only proved to be Sean Connery's last, but the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of Moore's ability to interact positively with the mainstream.  (The movie also made it important among fans that movies not treat, to their mind, adapted material with disrespect, which actually had the result of superhero movies after that time being more important in terms of mainstream crossover appeal than appealing directly to fans, which in 2016 seems to have taken on new wrinkles thanks to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which fans have once again sunk their teeth into the debate).  Anyway, reading LXG itself is something of an odd experience.  Creatively it's not much of a statement.  More seems to have been put into the novelty of packaging the comic in vintage ads and, in the letters column, being wonderfully droll than in distinguishing the story experience itself.  At this point Moore had started to retreat into the familiar comforts of home, and yet the comic doesn't read as particularly British (that's why Paul Cornell's Knight & Squire was such a delight to read), and even if that wasn't the intent, just tossing familiar characters together reads like a cheat.  I mean, the old Allan Quatermain makes a fascinating subject, surely, in the same sense that comics with old superheroes (say, The Dark Knight Returns) tend to be, but it's odd to juxtapose him with, say, Moore's somewhat racist impression of Captain Nemo.  Quatermain (best known as the protagonist of King's Solomon's Mines, and as a cultural predecessor of Indiana Jones) and Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) are surrounded by Mina Murray (Dracula), although for what reason, if not a vampire (as in the movie), I have no idea, at least as depicted in this story (more sense would have been Van Helsing, who was the subject of Van Helsing, which like LXG served as a template for Marvel's Avengers), the Invisible Man, and Jekyll/Hyde, plus Professor Moriarty as the antagonist (by the end, as much of a genius as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan's Khan), a predecessor to James Bond, and some Chinese characters who perhaps deserve about as much speculation as Moore's Nemo...

I feel I have to reiterate that I don't come by my impression of Alan Moore lightly.  I haven't read everything he's done, and wouldn't particularly care to, even if the best of it is better than the worst that I have read.  I'm just irritated, irrationally, by the notion that to some fans Alan Moore is a god, and that his views and his work can't stand criticism, when to my mind not only is it possible, but necessary for any true reader.  I mean, it's not like I'm not used to people picking on the stuff I like.  I know how it goes.  Maybe some of this logic is best left to fanatics.  We all form strong opinions, and to give voice to them, whether in the privacy of friends or in the wide reaches of the Internet, is to invite contrary opinions.  To dismiss the opposite as an idiot is maybe the easiest response.  But just maybe, it ought to have you reconsider why it is you formed those strong opinions in the first place. 

Well, we all reconsider our thoughts, eventually.  Hopefully.  I guess I really shouldn't worry about it. 

Reading Comics 172 "A final week..."

It always sucks having to tell your local comics shop that you have to close your hold file.  But that's what happened last Wednesday...

When I started this blog at the end of 2010, I was headed toward what I thought was the end of a very enjoyable period of reading comics that'd begun six years earlier.  Instead, Flashpoint and the New 52 succeeded in sucking me back in.  It's always a question of money.  I walked away from comics in 1999 because I needed money for college.  The intended 2011 break was because I was entering my worst financial period (and it just got worse and worse until finally...it got better).  Now, it's because I will be entering a unique period of my life, dedicated to my sister and her baby.  I don't know when I'll have comics money again.  It's wise to walk away sooner rather than later, without that dangling period like I gave myself the last time, keeping the window open.  The window is closed.

It sucks, in some ways, because I would love to read Dark Knight III in its individual installments.  I would love to read Klaus from Grant Morrison.  And there are other comics I won't have a chance to read, or haven't heard about yet, and...

So it's better to try and not think about that.  This was a good year, a very good year, and it was one in which a lot of great stories ended.  Which makes all this far more fitting than I could've imagined.  If there has to be another moment to walk away, this is as good a moment as there can be.

All that being said, I made sure the last week was a good one, too.

18 DAYS #4 (Graphic India)
This issue is more or less an incredibly abbreviated version of the classic Bhagavad Gita, in which Arjuna and Krishna have an epic heart-to-heart.  I've grown to appreciate how this Morrison project has opened up the Iliad of India.  This is pretty much what I always hoped Shanower would've done with Age of Bronze (a project that is apparently indefinitely on hold).  Shanower, left to his own devices, is far less interesting than the kind of liveliness he exhibited adapting Baum's material in Marvel's Oz series.  Even if Morrison himself isn't writing 18 Days directly, his blueprint has proven invaluable, and the results have been continually and even increasingly impressive.  I will try and keep tabs on this series, and hope to catch Morrison's other Graphic India project, Avatarex, at some point, too.

ATOMIC ROBO AND THE RING OF FIRE #2 (IDW)
The letters column humbles me as a fan of Robo.  Clearly there are fans out there who are much more on top of Robo mythology...

BATMAN & ROBIN ETERNAL #1 (DC)
The debut of DC's lately weekly (scheduled for half a year) celebrates the Boy Wonder legacy, which as a long-time fan of Robin I'm very happy to see.  There's also a "Robin War" crossover coming up, making this an excellent time for Robin fans in general.  The story here seems to be clever even if at the same time a little clumsy, one of those "there's new information about the past that we're revealing now and it happens to be a deep, dark secret!" deals that's kind of trademark Snyder (see: Court of Owls, etc.).  Dick Grayson is at the center of the action, both in flashback and in the present.  Jason Todd and Tim Drake play support this issue, as does Harper Row, the apparent would-be Robin who instead became Bluebird.  Stephanie Brown, who was Robin, will be part of the story.  Left out so far is Damian Wayne (who will be a part of "Robin War"), as well as Duke Thomas (We Are Robin).  The best part of this issue on the creative front is Tony Daniel returning to the Batman family.

BLOODSHOT REBORN #7 (Valiant)
I'm so, so glad I ended up catching up on The Valiant, because this follow-up has just been brilliant.

THE MISADVENTURES OF GRUMPY CAT (AND POKEY!) #1 (Dynamite)
Yeah.  I read this.  I love that an Internet star has finally managed to start branching out past their Internet roots.  The meme of all memes has already become a Christmas movie, and now Grumpy Cat is a comic book star as well.  This issue features three tales.  In all of them Grumpy Cat is forced to be more than just, y'know, grumpy.  Establishing a working fictional world turns out to be more entertaining than you might expect.  I didn't previously have anymore interest in Grumpy Cat than the millions of casual Internet denizens who saw the endless memes, and theoretically this will be about as far as my experience will go, but I'm rooting for the idea.  I'd love to see the Christmas movie at some point.  Hopefully Grumpy has more staying power than poor Hoops & Yoyo, whose hilarious greeting cards seem to no longer be in stores, and whose own Christmas special joined the heaps and heaps of recent Christmas specials that apparently have no chance at all at becoming immortal in the same way as ones created half a century ago.  But things can change, right?

HEROES: VENGEANCE #1 (Titan)
When Heroes debuted, I thought it was a horrible misfire.  Ironically, I became a hopelessly devoted fan at the very same time everyone else walked away from it.  So I'm glad Heroes Reborn is happening, and checking out this companion comic seemed like a good idea.  It was.  This issue, anyway, links superheroes with the masked stars of Mexican wrestling.  One of the best things for fans of the original series who also happened to be comic book fans was the art of Tim Sale being featured in the visions of various characters, which I believe was later featured among the material DC published at that time.  It's unlikely that Sale will pop up again.  Or that Jack Black will show up and shout, "Nachooooo!"

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1 (Marvel)
Brian Michael Bendis finally writes Tony Stark.  I don't know why this took so long to happen.  I mean, I know this technically happened during the many years Bendis wrote Avengers comics, but to have Bendis write Stark directly is kind of one of those dream creative matches.  As I've remarked before, the movies so many people love probably wouldn't exist without the tone Bendis set in the comics, and that's especially true of Iron Man.  So that's exactly what you can expect here.  The best part is that this means there's finally, finally a readable Iron Man comic.  As far as I can tell, this has never happened before.  I mean, not completely.  It's just, Marvel has never attempted to capitalize on the character's momentum, never tried, even in the wake of the huge success of the movies, to make him a true headlining act.  How to make this sound better?  Bendis is finally writing a Doctor Doom worthy of his considerable reputation, too.  Do you need anymore reason to read this one?

 STAR WARS: SHATTERED EMPIRE #2 (Marvel)
I appreciate the effort to make the Rebellion's victory less clear-cut, and the comparative restraint Marvel is showing in keeping the Empire around, but I think once again, the results are not exactly to my liking.  I have all the faith in the world for The Force Awakens, but I guess I'm glad I won't be reading the rest of Shattered Empire.  End of story.

STAR WARS: LANDO #5 (Marvel)
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the remarkable insight Charles Soule brought to Lando.  So apparently I did end up missing an issue, but not so much of the storytelling.  Poor Lobot ends up with his inevitable robotic lobotomy, but the logic of how and why it happens, and what it means to Mr. Calrissian, is flawless.  This ended up being a true highlight of the year.

TELOS #1 (DC)
King and Pagulayan continue where they left off in Convergence, and I'm glad this happened.  Telos is a second chance for DC to create a true star from the New 52 era after Pandora didn't quite pan out (I think they just waited too long to pull the trigger on her).  To continue weaving Brainiac into the mythology is brilliant.

And...that's it, folks.

Escape Velocity

Okay, so you’ve already slogged through my so-called “Comic Book Memoir,” so you know that I have technically quit the business of reading comics. What further relevance can I have for those who want to read about new comics? For starters, I have not given up completely, even though it’s financially unfeasible to continue the habit as I’ve have pursued it throughout my regular experience. I will continue to read, in altered ways, in a more limited capacity. For instance, I will become the very monster I had once vowed to fight with my life. I will “wait for the collections.” I also work at a bookstore, so I’ve got a limited selection of first-run issues still available. I’ve got DC represented pretty well there, GREEN LANTERN, GREEN LANTERN CORPS, THE FLASH. (Okay, so I’ve got Geoff Johns pretty well represented.) ACTION COMICS is another, which I’m thrilled about, because I love what Paul Cornell has been doing, and that big anniversary issue is coming up. I can still keep tabs on Tony Daniel’s BATMAN (which is a bestseller there, so I need to be fleet of foot, if I want to read it, if not buy it). There are a few others, and of course some that aren’t DC.

But that’s the future, that’s potential and possibility. Back in the present, I’ve made a new vow, and so far so good. I haven’t gotten a comic book in over a week (woo!), whether in a store or via a shipment from Midtown. The subject then, for this week is my last-for-now trip to a store, Escape Velocity in downtown Colorado Springs. I made it in the full knowledge and after canceling all my subscriptions with Midtown. Though I still had one final shipment awaiting me, this was technically how my comics habit came to an end.

I should backtrack a little. I can’t completely acknowledge my motivations for this decision without mentioning the inciting incident. I live in an apartment. I never truly appreciated the differences in postal service from carrier to carrier until I moved to Colorado Springs. I had tremendous experiences, growing up in Maine and in Burlington, MA, with postal carriers, met some really good ones, even had some really good relationships and even friendships with them over the years. When I moved into this particular apartment, however, and started depending on Midtown to read comics, I crossed over the postal matrix, and finally experienced the flipside. Not all carriers are created equal. Unfortunately, it seems most of the carriers here come from the Dark Side. Still, not to dwell too much on the negative, since it was one of Midtown’s random decisions to ship with UPS that allowed some hooligan to steal the package mere hours before I could have taken it into my door that really concluded the series of unfortunate events that seem to have gone hand-in-hand with packages and this apartment, that finally convinced me that peace of mind and security were more important than spending money I did not technically have. So, thank you, hapless carriers, hooligans, and assorted other rogues. Your apathy and devilry helped me do the right thing.

Anyway, the comics I will be writing about this week come from that fateful trip to Escape Velocity, and they all come from either the third week of January or the first week of February, 2011, the former replacing the essentials from that lost package, and the latter representing the fact that I made the trip on a Wednesday (it was both convenient and appropriate).

BRIGHTEST DAY #18-19 (DC)
In many ways, this is the title I most regret not being able to follow, because there are really only a handful of issues left, and I was really enjoying it. As a huge fan of 52, which quickly became one of my all-time favorites, not because of the weekly gimmick, but because the four writers (Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, and Greg Rucka) proved why they were and are some of the top writers working in comics today, I had followed DC’s subsequent efforts at successor projects. COUNTDOWN was the closest until BRIGHTEST DAY (and probably reads better in collections, where it more appropriately takes on the air of a quasi-event, an old-school one, anyway, and maybe that’s why so many current fans found it hard to enjoy). Johns and Pete Tomasi have absorbed the lessons well, and have made BRIGHEST DAY a mix of the two, following semi-obscure characters (which both previous books did) as they embarked on extremely personal quests (which 52 did) that have wide-ranging implications elsewhere (which COUNTDOWN did better; Booster Gold rediscovering the multiverse is not the same as the Fourth World smackdown). These two particular issues help to point out the further direction of the book, especially the surprising act of killing off both Hawkman and Hawkwoman, well in advance of the conclusion (an act similar to the death of Osiris; while lacking in visual impact, infinitely more significant). Then Aquaman finally gets a huge moment, probably the first huge moment he’s ever gotten, building on a lot of his lore, and suggesting that there’s always been more potential in this character than any writer seems to have ever bothered. I would suggest anyone who hasn’t been reading this book to either start now, or join me later in the collections.

CHARMED #5 (Zenescope)
This is a book I’ve been reading/buying partly because I’ve been passing it on to my sister, who’s a huge fan of the TV series. This issue seems to bring about a premature end to the Source arc that helped launch the comic, but in fact plays right into further developments. My sister said she wonders how this would have played out on television. I figure the arc would have been a single episode, and that’s probably it would make most sense. Of course, in comics, this represents pretty much a collected edition (I can’t call it a trade paperback, because there’s almost as strong a push these days for hardcovers), which is a strange way to equate the material covered in TV and comic book formats. But let’s move on, shall we?

DC UNIVERSE ONLINE LEGENDS #1 (DC)
A comic book that’s basically supposed to be a promotional gimmick has absolutely no right to be this good. From Tony Bedard and Marv Wolfman (with art this issue by Howard Porter) comes an extraordinarily compelling story to launch the series about how Lex Luthor comes to regret making a bargain with Brainiac, both as he sets the deal up and then prepares to pay for it, after they’ve actually won. Clearly a story that could not be told in regular continuity, and is all the better for it. Seriously, you need to read this one.

G.I. JOE: COBRA #12 (IDW)
I have no idea why this book has such low readership, and apparently even this landmark issue was virtually ignored, because it has, since the original mini-series, been among my absolute favorites, a psychological thriller that has followed Chuckles’ efforts to explore the mysteries of Cobra, most of the time tracking the activities of the Paoli brothers, Tomax and Xamot. Well, this is the big climax (which I’m hugely grateful to have been able to recover), in which Chuckles finally plays his hand, and assassinates Cobra Commander, an event so unprecedented that IDW will actually (and not just by necessity) be reshaping its whole slate of G.I. Joe books around. Christos Gage, who has been helping shape this book from the beginning, will be moving on, but Mike Costa, the best G.I. Joe writer since Mark Powers (who worked over at DDP; IDW got the rights to the franchise, and trust me, we lost the other great G.I. Joe book of the modern era) will continue on.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #56 (DC)
Tony Bedard also works his magic here. Bedard has quickly become one of the best writers working in comics today; this may be the platform where he is finally noticed. Since taking over from Pete Tomasi, he has been writing one huge event after another, first rewriting the Alpha Lanterns, and now summoning the Qwardians back into Green Lantern lore, with the Weaponer, who forged Sinestro’s original yellow ring, becoming a formidable adversary, and probably the only guy besides Hal Jordan capable of provoking him. This is the kind of work Tomasi consistently aspired to in the book, but only really reached when some big event necessitated a crossover. Bedard can’t seem to help himself.

IRON MAN #500 (Marvel)
I’m not a regular reader of this book and/or character, but I’d heard enough intriguing things about Matt Fractions’s plans for this issue that I had to read it. Unfortunately, it seems to fall into the same trap so many other Iron Man stories do, in failing to completely grasp the potential of the character. Much of Fraction’s work seems to be inspired by the Jon Favreau movies, but without a singular and concentrated vision, that sort of approach doesn’t work in comics, and the bigger the scale Fraction attempts to handle, the less he’s able to grasp it. The story spans several generations of Starks, and maybe it holds more significance either for those who have been reading the book, or the ones Fraction hopes will be reading later, but it just feels desperate to me, a grandiosity assumed but not earned. (I’ll have more such Marvel thoughts in two weeks.)

IRON MAN #500.1 (Marvel)
I don’t really get why Marvel is doing these issues, especially with the potentially confusing gimmick with that numbering. Are they assuming regular readers don’t need to read them? That’s my underlying assumption, anyway. The good news for IRON MAN, though, is that I bought another issue all the same. This one reads better, even if it dips into the incredibly obvious pool, the one that’s rarely actually explored but dipped in whenever convenient, that Tony Stark used to have a drinking problem. Fraction acquaints readers with Stark’s history via an AA meeting. One of the things I hate about Marvel is that every writer is forced to accept every single that every other writer before them ever wrote, dating back decades. It’s literally all canon. No matter how little everything actually gels, it’s all got to fit in. In the retconned context of most of Stark’s history being explained by either his relapses or recoveries, this story really makes sense. Of course, I was reading a little of Iron Man around CIVIL WAR, and I know that his regular comics did everything but actually work on his character. It’s disingenuous to suggest to new readers that they can expect intimate explorations of Tony Stark. That’s the last thing on the mind of a regular Iron Man writer (which again, made it so ironic that the best parts of the Iron Man movies had everything to do with Tony Stark and very little to do with Iron Man) Anyway, still a comic worth reading, good timing, all that.

What sucks about the pilfered package is that it also contained some stuff I would have written about elsewhere in this blog, as part of the regular Quarter Bin column. It contained a few issues of DEATHSTROKE: THE HUNTED and one of GREEN LANTERN: MOSAIC. I really wanted to read those comics. And some day, when I either find or order them again, I will have another opportunity. But it probably won’t be soon. Still, I have plenty of comics to talk about, and plenty more to read. But that’s a matter for the future.