Pandemic Comics #10 “Ichabod Snip/Howard Fleck Expedition in 2020!”

Penultimate reporting on the Mile High mystery box comics:

Infinite Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre #2
The Crispus Allen version of the Spectre had as dramatic an introduction as possible, Allen’s arc beginning in the pages of Gotham Central where he existed alongside another character named Jim Corrigan (no, not the boy genius!), which led many readers to believe they knew exactly what would eventually happen. But then Corrigan murdered Allen, and Allen became the new host of the Spectre. In hindsight, this angle might’ve had longer legs had Allen accompanied his other colleague from Gotham Central, Renee Montoya, into the pages of 52. But then a lot of other things might’ve turned out differently. So maybe Crispus Allen was always destined for the reboot turnover scrap heap...Then again, so was Montoya. Spirit of Vengeance, where art thou???

Star Trek #1
From 1984, in the wake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, following that exact continuity, the way the old Star Wars comics at Marvel used to try and guess what was relevant to do between films. Here it’s imagined that in a world without Spock, Kirk just kind of continues on without him. Oh, sure, he struggles with the idea, but...Anyway, like those Star Wars comics, these are tales somewhat instantly negated by the next movie, as Search for Spock would make clear...Mike Barr, the writer, points out in an essay that this is technically the first time Star Trek actually happened without Spock. And while later there would be a lot of Star Trek without Spock, it never seemed to work out the way everyone imagined it in those early years. The TV reboot in the ‘70s that was going to end up repurposed as The Motion Picture, which of course heavily featured Spock. Even his death didn’t prevent Spock from soldiering on! Which is to say, Barr indeed wrote history.

Stormwatch: Team Achilles #9
Couldn’t manage to read more than a few panels, alas.

Action Comics #662 
In hindsight it shouldn’t have been so surprising for the Superman writers concluding they literally had to kill the Man of Steel to prevent him from getting married too soon (in case you didn’t know, that was always their story for why Doomsday happened, because Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was just getting started on TV, although ironically everyone loved it until they got married) (then the wedding was ruined anyway)...This is the big issue where Superman finally reveals his secret identity to Lois (who had just gotten engaged to Clark)...and most of the issue is spent dithering over the Silver Banshee. Although also historically interesting as it deals with the aftermath of Lex Luthor’s death, setting up his heir, no doubt quickly revealed to be his “son,” who ended up being revealed as his clone. (Lex died as a result of Kryptonite poisoning, of all the delicious ironies.)

Adventures of Superman #500
Polybagged, and will remain so, even if it’s never worth anything again. This was both the beginning of “Reign of the Supermen,” and the road to Superman’s return, as he spends the issue in the afterlife, talking with Pa Kent, who’s had a heart attack. (I know it’s as traditional in continuity as the reverse, but I prefer Pa, and Ma, alive versus dead. It’s the Lois & Clark fan in me. I love those three-way phone calls!)

Action Comics #849
(Between #662 and this, we’re talking 1991 and 2007, by the way!) I’m just gonna ignore the issue itself, a somewhat misguided effort to talk about matters of faith in relation to Superman. The back page features Peter J. Tomasi announcing that he’s leaving editing duties behind and commencing a full-time career as a writer. Here we are in 2020, and it was a very good decision, Pete!

Superman Confidential #1
Darwyn Cooke & Tim Sale begin “Kryptonite,” a Year One Superman tale that’s really easy to see in the  vein of Sale & Jeph Loeb’s collaborations, as of course it features Sale on art and Cooke very much writing the Loeb style. I’m frankly mystified that it’s not one of DC’s evergreens.

Swamp Thing #93
From 1990 and writer Doug Wheeler (in the letters column most of the readers are reacting to his recent acquisition of the job, and reflecting on his famous predecessors, like that chap Alan Moore). Anyway, this was a fun issue, and the source of the title to this post, the moops trying to expose the legendary “Swamp Man,” one of them wondering if the results won’t be famous in that fabled far-off future of 2020, which made it funny to read in 2020...Since, outside of the Charles Soule New 52 comics I’ve never really made a habit of reading Swamp Thing, it’s always nice to be reminded that things like Alec’s speaking pattern and even orange word bubbles have long been part of the mythos. And maybe I ought to read more of them.

Reading Comics 231 "Midtown Comics"

I had a bad habit of spending money I didn’t have, a decade ago, ordering comics from Midtown.  When I placed my most recent order, it was money I did have, so it was a fine thing to revisit the old habit.  Here’s what I got:

Doomsday Clock #11 (DC)

The penultimate issue, leading to the much-anticipated encounter between Superman and Doctor Manhattan, lays out what exactly Geoff Johns was doing all along, including finally explaining what Saturn Girl has been doing in the Rebirth era (somewhat ironically, for her).  This is probably some of the best stuff Johns has ever written.

The Green Lantern #11 (DC)

Back when I was at my blogging height, I collected a number of blogs I thought would be worth reading on a regular basis, but more often than not I was wrong.  One of them is a comics blog that has continued to review new comics every week, and…I just don’t give a wit about the guy’s opinions.  He seems positively allergic to any real ambition in comics.  So: he doesn’t like Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern.  I think you have to be an idiot not to like a Morrison comic, especially when he’s obviously applying himself and having a great old time.  And he’s clearly doing exactly that in this comic.  And in this issue alone, he does what no one since Geoff Johns has really been able to nail and that’s introduce another forgotten element of Green Lantern lore, and it doesn’t hurt that he deliberately draws on Don Quixote to do it (this has sort of been my Year of Don Quixote).  Anyway, while I don’t love everything Grant Morrison has ever done, this whole run is going to sit very proudly alongside my collection of his works.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1 (DC)

Wow.  So, Brian Michael Bendis, folks.  The dude has been a tireless creative dynamo since coming to work for DC, not just with the creator-owned material he either brought with him or began, but the stuff he’s been imagining with familiar characters, and everything fans expected him to do, he just keeps coming up with curveballs.  This comic, for instance, actually centers on Rose & Thorn, a concept I came across in ‘90s Superman comics, but which Bendis makes his own, brilliantly.  Now I want to read a comic based on her, forget about the returning Legion!  But I’ll take the Legion, too, because I’m pretty convinced that if anyone can pull off a relevant new Legion, it’s Bendis.  I’ve never enjoyed him as much as I am now.  I haven’t always been a fan, per say, but I’ve enjoyed him in the past.  But he’s operating on an entirely new level now.  It’s, dare I say, amazing…

Section Zero #6 (Image)

Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett are basically reprising their old Superboy comics, which to my mind is a very good thing, with this one.  I bought the Stuart Immonen variant cover, naturally.

Spawn #300 (Image)

I’m pretty sure the creator-owned landmark Spawn is matching this issue and passing with the next one is Cerebus, which was much-celebrated in times past but much-criticized today.  Now, given that there’re 300 issues of Spawn to be accounted for and maybe the first few years that most fans are actually going to remember, someone had the bright idea to reboot back to the continuity, basically, of those early years for this occasion.  It’s only just occurred to me that Spawn as a concept seems to have copy-and-posted almost directly from Venom, as far as being a symbiotic costume thing.  Todd McFarlane explains how he came up with the character in the ‘70s, obviously before Venom or the black Spider-Man costume ever existed, but I wonder how much of what ended up being Spawn was envisioned back in the day and how much when McFarlane went off to help found Image on the back of all the money he and his fellow pirate artists were making at the time.  In fact, reading (or sort of reading) those Demon Etrigan comics from Forbidden Geek sort of put Spawn further in perspective: He’s sort of exactly Venom, but envisioned by DC. 

Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath #1 (IDW)

I’m a fan of the series itself, so I didn’t mind revisiting it in comics form, and this comic is a good way to do so, and even harkens back to the best of IDW’s Star Trek comics.

Superman: Up in the Sky #3 (DC)

This is the comic book store reprint series of the Walmart Superman Giant material from Tom King and Andy Kubert, which I thought I’d get at least one issue of, calculating (correctly, as it happily turned out), that this one would feature the “controversial” installment featuring the many deaths of Lois Lane.  And rereading this material was as equally pleasurable as the first time, as I hoped, so that was also good to see.

Quarter Bin 111 "Whitman Star Trek"

Star Trek: The Psychocrystals (Whitman)
from 1976

Some of the early Star Trek comics, before the franchise revival.  Technically at this point not only the original series but The Animated Series existed.  But this comic is pretty rubbish.  It barely seems to care about characterization.  Scotty's accent comes and goes, for instance, depending on whether or not the writer cares to make the effort. 

Whitman was repackaging Gold Key material, by the way:

Gold Key is the publisher history knows better.  Marvel briefly had rights to Star Trek around the release of The Motion Picture, but DC had gained control by Wrath of Khan, and held onto it for years.  At the moment, and on the whole doing a really good job, is IDW.  But Star Trek comics have never been as famous as Star Wars comics.  There the rights have always been pretty clear-cut: from Marvel (Howard Chaykin! drew the original adaptations) to Dark Horse to Marvel again.

But if you like the original series, Gold Key/Whitman's output would probably satisfy you.  The intent seems to have been to closely mirror the spirit of the TV adventures.  No doubt helped fans keep in touch with the spirit of the TV show.

Reading Comics 202 "Third LCS Visit 2017"

American Gods #1 (Dark Horse)
An adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel, which is soon to be debuted in another adaptation, for television.  I haven't read the book in years, but I liked it quite a lot.  Still, reading some of it in comics form makes me realize it really has been years, so I may have to reread it.

Batman #19 (DC)
Tom King sets up an epic clash between Bane and Batman.  He continues to write sensationally.

Divinity III: Stalinverse #3 (Valiant)
Matt Kindt likewise continues to write sensationally.

The Amazing Spider-Man #25 (Marvel)
Dan Slott's epic run continues, this time with Norman Osborn.  I actually picked this up because Stuart Immonen begins his run (he's done Peter Parker before in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man) with the issue.  Thankfully he retains his return to streamlined work previously seen in Empress and other recent work.  Actually, the most notable thing about the issue is Slott introducing...the Superior Octopus.  Which is really, really awesome.

Star Trek: Waypoint #4 (IDW)
The first Enterprise-focused comic ever!  Phlox was featured in a doctors confab a few years ago, but this is the first time the fifth live action series has gotten its own comics adaptation.  The writer somewhat flubs the opportunity, but still rightfully puts Porthos in the spotlight.  It's always about Porthos!

Superman #19 (DC)
Action Comics #976 (DC)
Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason are their usual sensational selves in the first issue, while Dan Jurgens continues to struggle to adapt to modern storytelling in the second.  But I like the "Reborn" concept and how Mxyzptlk was revealed to be behind the Clark Kent mystery, and how Jurgens gets to unique disparate continuities in the conclusion, which feels right regardless of my other qualms.

X-O Manowar #1 (Valiant)
Matt Kindt again, in this quasi-reboot of the franchise, completely nailing it.  Might be viewed as the Dark Knight Returns/"Old Man Logan" for comics' most famous Visigoth.

Reading Comics #200 "First LCS Visit of 2017"

Batman #14-15 (DC)
This two-issue interlude features Tom King working alongside signature collaborator Mitch Gerads (Sheriff of Babylon) exploring King's vision of the Batman/Catwoman dynamic.

Divinity III: Stalinverse #2 (Valiant)
Divinity III: Aric - Son of the Revolution #1 (Valiant)
Divinity III: Komandar Bloodshot #1 (Valiant)
Divinity III: Shadowman and the Battle of New Stalingrad #1 (Valiant)
Matt Kindt's epic vision continues, this time in full-on event form with multiple writers participating in spin-off one-shots.  Love the debut and concept of Red Legend, as well as where Kazmir, the third cosmonaut, has been all this time.

The Flintsones #3, 5, 8 (DC)
Figured I'd check out this Mark Russell (Prez) interpretation of the classic cartoon.  I learned more about his creative vision, certainly.

Justice League of America: Rebirth #1 (DC)
Steve Orlando has officially joined the ranks of elite writers at DC.  Love his Lobo, which is the classic one and not the much-derided New 52 version.

Kamandi Challenge #1 (DC)
Dan DiDio (can't believe I hadn't created a tag for the guy until now) and Dan Abnett help launch this latest ode to Jack Kirby with his Last Boy on Earth, which is a concept as set up by DiDio could really be a great story well before he ever learns the truth. 

Star Trek #57 (IDW) (2016)
Star Trek: Waypoint #3 (IDW)
The first issue features the third of four installments from an ode to Spock's legacy as a tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy.  The second features Voyager and Deep Space Nine stories that I found pretty insightful.

Superman #11, 14 (DC)
Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason set up Super Sons with the first issue and begin "Multiplicity," which is a direct ode to Grant Morrison's Multiversity, with the second.

X-O Manowar #50 (Valiant) (2016)
I was never particularly a fan of this Valiant rebirth title, but I figured I'd have a look at the final issue.  Most notable are the bonus stories from Fred Van Lente and Matt Kindt, whose effort gives a brief preview of his upcoming relaunch.  I hadn't really considered until this issue that the character is pretty similar to Alpha Centurion. 

Reading Comics 187 "Catching up on Atomic Robo, Batman & Robin Eternal, Empress, Huck, Klaus, Nameless, Star Trek, and Tuki"

Free Comic Book Day this year was pretty good for me, and not just for the reasons I've already discussed, but because of the way I justified loitering to see how others were enjoying it at my local haunt: namely, by shopping.

There's a whole bookshelf of titles not published by DC or Marvel, or classified as mature reader material (in this place, that stuff is kept in glass cases by the register), which I haven't really explored before as it's chaotically managed.  I spent half the time I browsed it trying to help bring about some order (yeah, I'm that kind of shopper).  It was cool, too, because spending that time helped me think up stuff I should be thinking about.  There were a couple of people there who stumbled on Chris Burnham's E for Extinction mini-series from Secret Wars, and they mistakenly identified Burnham as Frank Quitely.  I corrected them, but it's an easy mistake to make.  I mean, Grant Morrison worked with Burnham because he evokes Quitely.  Eventually, this made me remember Nameless, and the fact that I never read its final issue, which was released late last year.  But more on that later.  Here's the stuff I found:

Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #5 (IDW)
The conclusion of IDW's first Atomic Robo mini-series (the character was previously published by Red 5, who used to feature him in all its FCBD releases) features his gang of action scientists confronting the notion of science becoming too big for its britches, working for the greater good at the expense of good public relations.  You know, the classic Bond Villain dilemma.  I love that IDW allows the comic a letters page, in which I am constantly humbled by how much better other fans keep track of Atomic Robo's adventures.

Batman & Robin Eternal #26 (DC)
The conclusion of this half-year weekly was something I wanted to read despite not having read any issue of it since, ah, the first one.  The late 2015 attempt at emphasizing the Robin legacy was a welcome one in my books, what with "Robin War" and this series that featured basically every Batman sidekick ever, including most of the ones from the New 52 (Duke Thomas is featured on the cover but absent from the interior, although he ended up playing a key role in Scott Snyder's final Batman arc).  Harper Row/Bluebird seemed to be the biggest beneficiary of this story, even as she was easily, otherwise, Snyder's least-utilized creation except in the alternate Eternal adventures.  Also featured are Stephanie Brown/Spoiler and Cassandra Cain, a much-loved one-time Batgirl who assumes the identity of the Orphan and thusly becoming the other big beneficiary of the series.  Also in the spotlight: Dick Grayson, the first Robin, who also receives some nifty character work.  It was nice seeing him, Jason, Tim, and Damian getting along, too, and the whole concept of what brings all of them together, the character of Mother, who provides an alternative to Batman, was a good one, too.  So I can say this was a pretty worthwhile affair.

Empress #2 (Icon)
Mark Millar and Stuart Immonen's space opera of a distant past (kind of like Star Wars, or the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica) ramps up.  It's hard not to find comparisons with Saga, but I can't help gush over Immonen's return to his more simplistic, evocative style, which for me is the obvious, easy draw of the series.

Huck #6 (Image)
The conclusion of Millar and Rafael Albuquerque's Superman analogy (akin to Tom de Haven's It's Superman! novel featuring a simple-minded Midwesterner) has his mother save the day, but Huck proving to be the kind of hero everyone wants Superman to be in the movies.  (Although, folks, we did see that Superman, as portrayed by Christopher Reeve.  Four times.)

Klaus #2, 3, 4 (Boom!)
I bugged the owner of the shop I was frequenting in Maine about this title, pronouncing it like "mouse" instead of "claws," Grant Morrison's Santa origin, but kind of drifted away from it after the break I took from being a full-time reader.  (And by the way, I'm still on that break, and things may grow sparse here to reflect that, in the coming months.)  Yet coming across the second, third, and fourth issues (the covers reflect that the mini-series expanded from six to seven issues somewhere along the line) had me back in the mood.  This is very much a fairy tale, or even a superhero kind of story.  You can be a fan of Frozen and find much to love about it.  Morrison has written few romances, but this is one of them.  More and more, I like it a lot.

Nameless #6 (Image)
Morrison's reunion with Burnham (after Batman Incorporated) baffled me as a kind of regression on Morrison's part, horror kind of for the sake of horror.  He's not normally so one-dimensional.  But I guess that was kind of the point, tapping back into his black magic bag to present a portrait of true human depravity.  This will never be one of my favorite Morrison works, but at least I understand it a little better now.

Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War #6 (IDW)
The conclusion of this crossover proves once again that it was basically a love letter to the Geoff Johns era in the Green Lantern franchise, which is something I could totally embrace.  It's also one of the more readable Star Trek comics I've read from IDW in recent years.  After a spectacular start when it acquired the rights, IDW's efforts started to slide.  This was set in the 2009 continuity, which worked well for the concept, including its use of Chang (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), who was unlikely to show up in this continuity otherwise.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy #2 (IDW)
Taking a chance, I also snapped this up.  Like a lot of IDW's Star Trek comics (including the above), it's written by Mike Johnson, but it's Johnson in excellent mode.  While the parts largely borrowing directly from the 2009 film are fairly routine, the ones featuring new cadets are lively, showing what it's like to live in Star Trek, filled with insightful and amusing culture clash material.  Honestly, I don't know why there hasn't been more stuff like this, whether from IDW, other comics publishers, or the ongoing series of Pocket Books novels.  Also of note is artist Derek Charm, whose blog I have technically been following for years, and although I don't remember now how that started, it's nice to be able to say that I've now bought some of his work.

Tuki #4 (Cartoon)
This latest collection of material Jeff Smith previously serialized on the Internet features the main character and his quirky companions coming closer to facing their destiny: being the first humanoid to leave Africa.  The weird ways the group interacts with one another, and Smith's vision of the world at that time continues to be fascinating.  I was glad the shop had this.  I'd caught another printed issue there, but didn't know if I'd ever see another.  Well, now I know.

Reading Comics 168 "7/8/15 - One of the Best Weeks of the Year"

Covered this edition: Batman #42, Bloodshot Reborn #4, Civil War #1, Descender #5, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #2, Earth 2: Society #2, Providence #2, Saga #30, Spider-Verse #3, Star Trek/Green Lantern #1, Star Wars: Lando #1, and Strange Fruit #1.

To say last week was disappointing for a comic book addict like me would be an understatement.  This is not to say that there nothing worth reading, but nothing that interested me, nothing from my pull list and, well, nothing else that I wanted to read.

So this week was an embarrassment of riches.  Very good (or very bad) for a comics addict.  I ended up reading a bunch of stuff I hadn't read previously, or continuing to read stuff that I don't typically read, or enjoyed a bunch of new stuff, and of course a bunch of stuff I've been reading all along.

Kicking off is Batman #42 (DC), the second issue of the Bat Gordon era.  Visually the costume in full armor still looks and will always look ridiculous, and Gordon's military haircut looks ridiculous, but...this is still the best Batman Snyder has ever written.  It's the first time he's allowed himself full control, and it shows.  The fact that astute readers knew Bruce Wayne was never dead, and Snyder has shown every willingness to play along, keeping him in every issue "post-death," including the issue with "his death" after "his death," this is what I've been waiting for.  This is an exercise in patience.  Obviously this is an exception, and if it hadn't been hugely popular from the start, DC would never have stuck around this long.  But thankfully this is an instance where popularity eventually gives way to material justifying the hype.  I don't know how popular this material will be, in the short- or long-term, but I have to imagine, however much longer Snyder sticks around, he will be back to writing Bruce Wayne as Batman, and will be the better for having this experience under his belt.

It's also clear that the villain concept was in part an excuse for Capullo to do a version of Clayface after discovering how well he does it visually in Batman #20 (excellent cover).  I would have maybe capitalized on the horn concept and named the villain Horn (although I guess there are other members of the gang, so there's always a chance, right?).

Bloodshot Reborn #4 (Valiant), meanwhile, is something I picked up because I just read The Valiant, and thought it was pretty brilliant, and because of the timing, which was even better than I thought, I realized this series existed and I should probably start reading it.  It's the first of two Jeff Lemire comics from this week (just as there are two from Charles Soule), and both are winners (just like Soule's).  Bloodshot, as I've explained elsewhere, is a kind of Wolverine, and in this iteration without any of the baggage and written in the full knowledge that it's perhaps is best to just concentrate on what makes him interesting, which is his background and how it continues to impact him.  In The Valiant, Bloodshot lost his powers, and so Reborn is the journey of getting them back.  In this instance, picking up the narrative four issues in (I wanted to try and catch up with whatever was available, but when that meant the latest issue as it was released and only one other plus a few of the preceding series, I opted just for this one) proved no problem at all.  Whatever else has been done in Reborn to date, this issue captures the journey perfectly, exactly as I hoped it'd be from The Valiant.

And even with surprises, such as Bloodsquirt.  Kind of like Bloodshot's Bat-Mite, Bloodsquirt is part of the hallucinations Bloodshot is experiencing as he tries to deal with his situation (the other person he sees is the woman responsible for taking away his powers, but in this scenario, unlike House of M's Scarlet Witch, the late Geomancer was a good guy who was very much Bloodshot's friend, which is why she did what she did, right before she died).  The nanites, meanwhile, that previously gave Bloodshot his powers have been infecting other people, and he's able to absorb them back when he finds these people.  Anyway, the whole thing is pretty fascinating, and executed perfectly.  I'm once again glad that Valiant exists, and that I've found my way in.

 Civil War #1 (Marvel) is one of the many, many Secret Wars spin-offs featuring past notable Marvel stories, whether standalone events or arcs within a given series.  Civil War ought to be polarizing.  Originally, it concluded with Captain America's assassination, but in this version that never happened, and things degenerated to a certain extent as the "Old Man Logan" arc did in Wolverine (which has become another Secret Wars spin-off, not to mention one of the titles announced as becoming an ongoing once Secret Wars ends, and Hugh Jackman's vision for his last performance as Wolverine).

This is written by Charles Soule.  When his exclusive contract with Marvel was originally announced, I conceived of it as a nightmare scenario, not because I had enjoyed his DC work so much, but because I feared Marvel wouldn't know what to do with him.  But as it turns out, that wasn't really the case at all.  If anything, he might be perfectly suited at Marvel, where he can use his best instincts to bring out Marvel's best instincts.  This is in fact a best case scenario.  At DC he was for the most part marginalized.  At Marvel he has the opportunity to become the company's next signature writer, succeeding Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman.  I would be very happy to see that happen.

Civil War, then, is a kind of audition.  I mean, arguably all of these Secret Wars spin-offs are auditions, either for talent or for the continuing viability of old concepts.  In that, Marvel again has an edge over DC.  With Convergence, DC was letting fans know once again (and I do mean once again) that it hasn't forgotten its own history, but it was never going to revive anything.  DC is always looking forward, aggressively, often to the detriment of fans who want desperately to cling to the past.  Marvel isn't like that.  It's often just as merciless as DC when it chooses to change things, but it usually goes out of its way to assure fans that things are going to be okay (unless you're a mutant).  Anyway, it's always trying to do things organically, whereas DC is that pesky genetic engineering that everyone has such a passive-aggressive relationship with.

All that's to say, Civil War, and Soule along with it, is once again a fascinating concept.  The problem Marvel has, despite all its virtues (and I'm convinced Marvel fans celebrate the virtues and ignore everything else, on the whole), is that most of the time, once it's come up with an idea it really has no idea what to do with it.  The idea eventually, inevitably, peters out, or mutates so many times that it become irrelevant.

What Soule accomplishes here, as he usually does, is succeed in once again grounding the original idea without losing sight of how to once again progress it.  The original hook of the original Civil War is played out to its logical conclusions, going full American Civil War by creating separate nations: The Iron, which obviously is led by Tony Stark, and The Blue, which is led by Steve Rogers.  Perhaps with the less comic booky version of Captain America's assassination (otherwise, the opposite of what Brubaker chose to do) in the original in mind, Soule has an attempt by Stark and Rogers to negotiate sabotaged by a gunshot.  This Civil War is not dominated by meaningless battles between superheroes, but as a true war of ideology (which is what Kingdom Come was so good at depicting, but more on Mark Waid later).

It's also nice to see Leinil Francis Yu at work again.  He's been a signature Marvel artist for years.  Linking Yu and Soule is hopefully symbolic of past and future.  Although they could certainly continue working together.

Descender #5 (Image) features one of my favorite story tropes, the exposure of a fraud.  Back in the second Harry Potter book/film, The Chamber of Secrets, I was inordinately fascinated by the character of Gilderoy Lockhart in large part because he was exposed as a fraud.  I mention all this because this issue of Descender answers what I was looking for after the previous issue: Why should I care about Dr. Quon, erstwhile creator of adorable boy robot Tim?  Well, as it turns out, because he's a fraud.

And we learn this through the most grisly means possible.  I guess I haven't read enough Lemire to know how typical this is for him, but as far as Dustin Nguyen goes, I wouldn't have expected it, certainly not in his current mode of looking about as innocent as a comic book can, especially with killer robots running amok (although Driller, who is a Killer, can run amok as much as he wants, as far as I am concerned).

Which is to say, Dr. Quon is tortured, in the most direct way possible: a buzz saw is used to amputate his left hand.  Without no warning, mind you!

So Descender continues to surprise, and this is a very good thing, for a series that is proving more and more that what Saga started, other can and might actually do better.  Which is something fans of Saga probably never expected in a million years, let alone less than a handful of them.  (Luckily, ah, Dr. Quon still has a hand to grab things with.  But he won't be clapping again any time soon...)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #2 (IDW) continues to be the most improbably comic book ever (probably), and just as interesting a read for it, featuring the obscure Douglas Adams creation featured in two and a half books and nary a holiday to his credit.  Interestingly, the issue doesn't really try to advance the story at all, but merely let the chaos unleashed in the first one continue.  Although we do get introduced to Kate Schechter, from the second and better Dirk Gently book, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, this time with far less Norse mythology surrounding her.

One has the sense that IDW, and Chris Ryall, totally got that Adams was always a guy interested in nutty concepts and great dialogue, because that's what's to be found here, unabashedly.

And for those keeping score, I offered the theory in my review of the previous issue, which had never occurred to me before (because I hadn't given much thought to Adams's past) that Dirk Gently is another Doctor Who figure for his creator.  And the guys behind the comic seem to think so, too, because (and I can't name which one, because I'm not nearly as big a fan of Doctor Who as I am Douglas Adams) at one point Dirk dons a hat and looks the spitting image of one of the regenerations of Doctor Who.

So there's that.

Earth 2: Society #2 (DC) continues this pocket universe's hot streak.  Conceptually, I've loved the concept since it debuted as one of the second-wave titles in the New 52, because creatively it offered so much potential, which a number of writers at this point have capitalized on.  Convergence gave it the best possible spotlight, but the best possible storytelling has apparently saved for Society itself.

Traditionalists, purists, and other such individuals would probably have preferred the Justice Society of America concept to remain exactly as it was originally conceived, which is what the Justice League continues to represent.  And I think Geoff Johns pushed the original vision as far as it could go.  So, much like the Silver Age gave birth to a new Green Lantern and a new Flash, the same has been done for the Justice Society.

Here's where it truly begins to pay off, because now there is a society, and it's as literal as you can possibly get (in a good way), a whole society defined by the superheroes at its heart, survivors of an obliterated Earth.  And now we see what transpires next.  Terry Sloan, the original Mr. Terrific, has been transformed into a leader of questionable ethics manipulating events to his benefit.  I think there was some resistance to this previously, but at any rate I wasn't reading that material, and as presented here it works wonderfully, and he's in a situation that fully exploits his potential.  The same, hopefully, will be true of all the characters, including Dick Grayson as Batman.  This is a series that is going to take its time unfolding the story, and two issues in that's definitely what's been happening.  There are more introductions this issue, oddly enough, which might as well mean anyone who was reluctant to give it a try before has another opportunity to come aboard.

Because this is suddenly some of the best comics around.  Good storytelling, great art (and I liked Jorge Jimenez's work instantly last issue), and builds on a concept that is becoming better and better all the time.

Providence #2 (Avatar) is part of my continuing efforts to get a handle on Alan Moore.  His reputation has Moore out to be the best writer comics have ever seen, but my own views have been more contentious.  The last time I have him a shot was Avatar's own Crossed  +100, a spin-off of the Garth Ennis series, which to my mind embodied all Moore's worst instincts.

This time, however, Moore seems to be interested in what might actually be his true legacy: creating comics that attempt to be as literally the embodiment of the term "graphic novel" as you can get.  While fans might know him for Watchmen or Batman: The Killing Joke, Moore is also known for V for Vendetta and From Hell, both of which are very much relevant to any discussion of Providence.  When he tells a superhero story, Moore is able to disguise or even distort his best instincts.  But elsewhere he can't.  Even the Guy Fawkes mask can't obscure his real interests.  I have this theory that Moore is actually ambivalent about the comic book medium, or at least superheroes, whatever possibilities they might have, because for him they're nothing but memories he formed decades ago.  When he tells a story about superheroes, it is about them, not with them.  Later, with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he did tell stories with them, but superheroes of a different kind.  The difference is often hard to reconcile.

Anyway, Moore is interested in telling stories about characters interested in what he is.  Providence is a story of the occult, but in the way Stoker's original Dracula was, as something that's stumbled into like The Blair Witch Project.  This is the second issue, mind you, and I didn't read the first, but I'm not sure how much story I missed because of that.  The Alan Moore that exists today will never again have the impact he did in the '80s.  I don't know how he feels about that, but I think he's becoming comfortable with that.  In the '90s he was still trying to recapture what he'd lost by abandoning DC.  Providence might be the first time he's tried to move past that, return to what he once was, before superheroes dominated his legacy.  So if you're interested in that, you might be interested in Providence.

As for me, I found it interested if sedate.  If there must be irreconcilable differences between fans of Alan Moore and fans of Grant Morrison, this is what you would compare, say, Annihilator against.  And as different as the approaches are, for me there is no comparison.  Give me Morrison and Annihilator any day of the week.  Providence, meanwhile, glimpses for a moment the world Morrison's Nameless exists in.  Considering that I wish Nameless were a little less lunatic, maybe Providence actually represents the bridge that might still exist between them...

Saga #30 (Image) is the issue before a hiatus.  Vaughan and Staples have been taking these throughout Saga's run.  As far as I know, it's the first time a comic book has deliberately done this, and it's probably a smart idea.  I mean, other than tradition, there is no inherent reason why an ongoing series  has to publish continuously month after month for the duration of its existence.

The issue also presents a "season finale," which is something I hope future trades will help distinguish (ideally, I guess I'm arguing, there would be distinct collections for each "season," which is to say the material that exists between hiatuses).  For some time now, the story of Alana and Marko has been defined by their being apart.  They finally stumble back into each other's company.

The other major thing is that our helpful narrator Hazel once again reveals something major about what the future looks like, which in this instance (it hasn't always been as artful) is a very good thing, with excellent timing (which is another reason why I think the "season finale" concept should be better emphasized): she won't be returning to mommy and daddy any time soon.

In a way, Saga is taking on the feel of Lost (which Vaughan worked on), recognizing the inherent drama of reunions between characters who have complicated relationships with each other.  For me, this is another very good thing.  Sometimes I struggle to see what exactly Saga hopes to accomplish.  As of now, this is my conclusion, and I'm happy with that.

Spider-Verse #3 (Marvel) is one of the many, many Secret Wars spin-off releases, which I finally decided to be interested in because it's written by Mike Costa.  I was previously reluctant to embrace Costa's Spider-Man material because I feared he'd ultimately amount to about as much as Wasteland's Antony Johnston when he waded into Daredevil material a few years back.  Sometimes my favorite comic book writers don't write for DC or Marvel, and when they do, the results are less than favorable.  But Costa (responsible for so many excellent Cobra stories for IDW's G.I. Joe comics) has been doing his Spider-Man stories for a few years now, and apparently Spider-Verse is becoming an ongoing (as Web Warriors) in the fall, so I decided to quit fighting it.

I want Costa to do the kind of material I love Costa doing, but that's just not happening with G.I. Joe.  I liked Avengers: Millennium, saw the potential to get close to what I wanted, so I decided to give Spider-Verse a shot.  And it seems to be even closer than Avengers: Millennium.  As you may or may not know, Spider-Verse means the Spider-Man version of DC's multiverse, endless variations of the character.  The most famous one recently isn't of Spider-Man himself, but his dead lover Gwen Stacy, who is officially known as Spider-Gwen, and apparently wildly popular.  She's more or less the lead of this issue, too.  Costa has figured out how to present these characters in a group the way he normally does individually in his Cobra stories, focusing on their varying perspectives.  This I was glad to see.

Star Trek/Green Lantern #1 (IDW) is something that could very easily be a bad gimmick, as comics that mix different properties with different timelines must inevitably be (the Star Trek/X-Men crossover, I still have no idea how anyone could ever take that seriously), but as of this first issue, makes perfect sense.  I have no idea what the second issue will have to say about that, but let's focus on the positive!

What's great is that it also gives me a chance to read a good issue of two properties that aren't currently giving me much in that regard.  (As always, I provide the John Byrne caveat; because my local shop doesn't regularly stock his work, I don't have  a chance to read it regularly, unless I wanted to go the digital route.)  I haven't read IDW's Star Trek work with any regularity in a few years, and more often than not discover that I'm not missing much.  Robert Venditti's Green Lantern, meanwhile, is much the same.

This issue takes place in IDW's favorite Star Trek sandbox at the moment, stories set in the Abrams reboot era.  I think it's a mistake to routinely feature Kirk's Enterprise adventures at a time when new movies are still being produced.  Once in a while is fine.  I think there's much more valuable opportunity looking around the corners, which is what IDW used to do, even in the Abrams era.  Anyway, but that's exactly what this comic is doing, too, except with Green Lantern.

Or more accurately, the corpse of Ganthet.  That's a wonderful image.  With all the times the Guardians have been slaughtered over the years, I never imagined such an image would be so impactful, but there you are.  Until Hal Jordan (presumably) shows up on the final page, there isn't even anything to worry about time-wise.  Ganthet could easily have lived to Kirk's time (the Guardian's are the universe's oldest beings in DC speak).  He brought the last rings across the whole spectrum (red, yellow, blue, violet, orange, and indigo) created or embellished by Geoff Johns, and as Kirk's crew examines the corpse and the rings, the comic has ample opportunity to let the reader enjoy the Abrams era for what it is, a distinct version of familiar Star Trek.

Again, I have no idea what the next issue does to affect the continuing viability of the concept, but so far so good...

Star Wars: Lando #1 (Marvel) is unquestionably the one I've been dying to read since I had first heard about the series.  I've loved Lando since he first sauntered into Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back, and this comic is written by Charles Soule.

As I've mentioned repeatedly, I had great misgivings when Soule went exclusive to Marvel.  His Red Lanterns was the work that made me a fan of Soule, and I didn't want to see it end.  (Well, DC ended it anyway, in the end.)  When I saw Lando announced, with Soule as writer, I saw it as the best chance to see Soule in the mode I knew best from him.

Turns out it's better than that.  Never mind what I already said about Soule above, this one's better than I could have imagined.  It not only features Lando, which is obvious, but takes him in new and unexpected directions.  Now, I'm about to reference Lost again.  Unlike a lot of fans, my affection for it not only didn't go away after the way it ended, but was actually amplified by it.  I loved the whole final season, in fact.  This is relevant, because in Soule's mind, Lando is something of a Sawyer, a con man who given the chance could absolutely go straight.  When we meet Lando in Empire Strikes Back, that's exactly what happened to him, but the Lando we meet is difficult to imagine as anything else.  I read and enjoyed the L. Neil Smith books, too, but they were part of the whole thing that suggested if Lando had ever been any different, he was basically Han Solo.

Which is not very imaginative.  Given a chance, Han would never have become an administrator.  But Lando loves a good con, because a con is basically an opportunity, and that's what con men love.  As a con man, Lando suddenly makes perfect sense.  And his Cloud City buddy Lobot becomes fully alive in the comic, too, plus a number of nefarious associates that make it seem just as if Star Wars: Lando is the first time anyone really tried to do additional Star Wars material.  Because this is exactly what Star Wars was always meant to be.

And so why care about Lando at all?  I liked him because he really wasn't involved in Luke's adventures.  Other than snatching Luke from that weathervane, if you think about it Lando really has nothing to do with him in his two movie appearances.  But this doesn't stop him from being, arguably the most confident man in the room, even when he quickly realizes he's got to switch allegiances.  That deal he strikes with Vader turned out to be a bad idea.  So he flips.  He's the only character to do that, too.  Han, if you'll remember, spends most of his time actively trying to avoid entanglements.  That's what he had in common with the old Lando.  He didn't see the opportunity Luke represented even though it was staring him in the face.  He came back because he grew to care about the boy.  Not Lando.

All of which is to say there was always unexplored potential in Lando.  As of now, there's less.  Or, more.

Strange Fruit #1 (Boom!) is the first installment in the Mark Waid story fans have been waiting for since Kingdom Come.

Whereas Alex Ross has been trying to recapture his Kingdom Come glory ever since (just as the project itself was originally embraced as "the next Alex Ross project" after Marvels, which Kurt Busiek followed up with the similar Astro City), Waid seems to have been incredibly reluctant, which is probably because initially he didn't understand what he'd accomplished.  Before Kingdom Come, Waid was a fan who became an editor who got to write The Flash and then anything else he wanted.  But along the way, he had the opportunity to do something big, Kingdom Come.  Even though fans (like me) claim the best of his Flash was incredibly hard to surpass, that's exactly what he did.  He set the bar higher than anyone could have imagined, and I think like Waid himself, everyone has been struggling to catch up with it.

This was transcendent material, for Waid, for superheroes, and in some ways, comic books in general.  Snooty fans won't even take superhero writers seriously, will try and create mainstream credentials by being anything but.  What Waid realized was that this wasn't by any means necessary.  But having someone like Alex Ross around to make it visually distinctive would probably help.

Here he was J.G. Jones, whose most visually distinctive work previously was on the landmark covers of the weekly series 52, which are among the rare covers to get their own collection.  Jones has gone to some trouble to evoke Alex Ross, but where Ross tends to be minimalist, Jones sketches in the rest.

Otherwise the rest is entirely Waid.  The only other times he's invoked Kingdom Come was to try and recapture the scope of superhero storytelling, which resulted in lesser works like The Kingdom and the Irredeemable/Incorruptible universe.  Strange Fruit is nothing like that.  And considering the charged nature of race relations, and even the status of the Confederate flag (interested observers can make much of the issue's final image on that score), it's beyond timely.  It's timeless in the best Kingdom Come manner.  It's Waid coming home to Boom!, yes, but it's also Waid coming to terms with a part of his legacy he has finally come to embrace, a challenge he set aside and has returned to at last.

At its heart, Strange Fruit is a variation on Superman.  It even evokes Django Unchained.  But it is distinctly its own, too.  It looks at politics, too, by the way, but at its heart is a social landscape at turmoil with itself, trying to come up with easy answers and finding that to be a difficult task.  And suddenly, there's this black man standing there, tearing the whole scene asunder, come to Earth like Superman, in a rocket that crashes in a field, but this is a full-grown man.

Who and what he is are matters for the three remaining issues.  I highly recommend you investigate the results for yourself.  And welcome back, Mark Waid.  It's been a long time.

Reading Comics 167 "Comic Bento"

Last week somewhat atypically I didn't have any new comics to pick up, so instead I bought Green Lantern Vol. 2 The Revenge of Black Hand, the second of three New 52 era Geoff Johns collections, and I enjoyed reading that material again a great deal.  I don't have all of the Johns Green Lantern collections (not even close), but now I have all three New 52 volumes.

So, as long as we're on the subject of collected editions, let's talk Comic Bento.  This is one of those subscription services that sends you a bunch of stuff in a box every month.  I figured I'd give it a shot.  May was my first month, and by now I've read June's material as well (boxes ship at the end of the month).

As far as May's shipment goes, here's what I got and what I thought (anyone unfortunate enough to follow me on Goodreads already knows):

1) Marvel's The Avengers: Black Widow Strikes (Marvel) - just an absolute train wreck of a mess that completely wasted an opportunity to do something useful with the one cinematic Avenger everyone wishes would get a little more decent material.  The most disappointing part for me is that the writer is Fred Van Lente, whom I first discovered through Action Philosophers, Comic Book Comics, and Incredible Hercules (alongside Greg Pak), all of which was exceptional material.

2) Green Hornet Volumes 1 & 2 (Dynamite) - an adaption of Kevin Smith's lost movie; not nearly as embarrassing as Black Widow Strikes, and technically, the best stuff in an otherwise mediocre at best selection for the month.  But it's still disappointing both from a guy who's watched Kevin Smith movies and read Kevin Smith comics.

3) Predator: Prey to the Heavens (Dark Horse) - total waste of space.

4) Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness (IDW) - This was by far the biggest disappointment of the two shipments to date.  The original Star Trek Countdown was a terrific selling point both for the 2009 movie and IDW's Star Trek comics in general.  Apparently time has not been kind, because neither is true of Countdown to Darkness.  I mean, I know that IDW's Star Trek efforts have considerably lapsed in recent years (the ongoing Abrams-continuity series I haven't really made an effort to read, but I have read good material within it; John Byrne's New Visions photo comics are easily the best thing the company has done, however, and are the strongest argument against what I'm saying), but this is still shocking.  It wastes time on an irrelevant and terrible Robert April tangent and barely features "the Mudd incident" at all, and by the time it features "John Harriman," it's the end of the story.  I mean, really?  (If Pat makes a comment, he will reiterate that he hates the Abrams era on general principle, so there's that.)

June's shipment was better, with caveats:

1) Captain America: Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection (Marvel) - Features the contents of the first two volumes from the Ed Brubaker era.  A decade ago I would have been very happy to be reading this, because I was in fact convinced to join the bandwagon early on and loved what I found, to a point.  But then it degenerated when it became clear that beyond the return of Bucky, and the complicated way it came about (ably represented in the Captain America: Winter Soldier movie), Brubaker really had no idea what he was doing.  He's just not a superhero guy, and I think he realized that (thank goodness), but only after driving his creative legacy into the ground for anyone worth their critical muster.  Still, I'm happy to have this material in my collection again, if only to commemorate it at its peak.

2) Captain Midnight Volume 1: On the Run (Dark Horse) - Between this and the Predator volume, I don't know if it's Comic Bento or Dark Horse itself that wants to make Dark Horse look terrible in these boxes.  I could've sworn that writer Joshua Williamson responded here when I last wrote about Captain Midnight trying to offer a defense of my calling the character what I will now call a blatant knockoff of Captain America, maybe the comment was deleted at some point (I had Google+ comments for a while).  Either way I'm no longer taking either one seriously.  You don't get a free pass unless your bad material is atypical, like Van Lente's Black Widow Strikes.  (But seriously, Fred Van Lente, what the heck?)

3) Terminator: Revolution (Dynamite) - Strippers have been inserted.  For some reason.

4) The Valiant (Valiant) - Easily, easily, easily the best thing from two months of Comic Bento and kind of making up for the quality of everything else, and perhaps not coincidentally the most recently published material; in fact three of the four issues was originally released this year.  I've become a real fan of Valiant's comics, whether from The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage or Divinity.  When it was originally launched, the most prominent comic in the schedule was Robert Venditti's X-O Manowar, which I finally had a look at when Venditti replaced Johns in Green Lantern.  And at the time, I dismissed Valiant on what I thought was pretty mediocre material.  But apparently that was premature.  Jeff Lemire (Descender) and Matt Kindt (MIND MGMT) wrote The Valiant.  After a slow start they really nailed it, and convinced me that I absolutely have to check out Lemire's Bloodshot: Reborn, because Bloodshot is easily the breakout star of the story, which is bold enough to introduce a dramatic game-changer in his adventures.  Over at Goodreads I compared The Valiant to the next logical progression from Marvel's Ultimate comics, with all necessary freedom to do the best possible comics.  And it looks like Valiant really is.

On the whole, I'm not overly impressed with Comic Bento's quality control.  In an effort to be everything to everyone, it's going for the lowest common denominator.  I guess it's unfair to criticize the approach, and in some ways the company hobbles itself by trying to bring together a theme for each box (May's was movies, obviously, while June's was time travel; July's is supposed to be "the little guy").  The hook, and the argument against hasty judgment, is that every box is a complete surprise, and there's always going to be an appeal to that, because (hope against hope!) there's always the chance that The Valiant will find its way into the assortment, and not just terrible stuff like the Predator and Terminator collections.  And really, seeing something like the Captain America volume is a good sign, regardless of how I feel about Brubaker now, because there was a time when I would have been perfectly happy to come across something like that randomly, just like Countdown to Darkness.  I figure three boxes is a good representation of Comic Bento's overall worth, so I'll give this trial run one more box.

We'll see.

Reading Comics 154 "Blasts II"

My local comics shop tricked me into buying more comics.  Yeah, tough gig.  They were holding a sale on the bins they've been filling with recent comics that needed to be removed from the shelves in order to make room for more comics.  These comics were already discounted.  They told me the discount increased, and so I took another deep dive.  The results:

Batman and Robin #23.1 (DC)
Part of the 2013 Villains Month, that year's version of the annual tradition DC has of celebrating each September as an anniversary of the New 52 launch from 2011.  This one was a tie-in with Forever Evil (surprisingly I had avoided such issues from the month previously), but I wanted to have a look because it was Pete Tomasi writing.  On the cover Two-Face is billed as the star, and what's significant about this is that at the time, Tomasi was gearing up for the Batman and Two-Face arc, "The Big Burn," a detour from the Damian arc that will, post-Convergence, fall to Patrick Gleason to continue solo in the pages of Robin, Son of Batman.  As a visual storyteller, I have full confidence in Gleason.  Hopefully he have as good a grasp with the narrative, because so much has been done in the past year.

Grayson #1 (DC)
Okay, so now I've finally read the first issue!  This was something that initially sold out at the shop, so by the time it was restocked I had a chance to start second-guessing how interested I was in the series.  In subsequent months I've come to various conclusions, but the truth is, Grayson is pretty good.  There's a whole underpinning arc to what Tim Seeley and Tom King are doing in the series, that level alone makes the proceedings intriguing.  It has the proven potential for great individual stories.  But history may be getting made in other ways, too.  More as things develop.  Also, the post-Convergence landscape has already proven one element of Grayson to have borne fruit: a new Midnighter series, after the WildStorm character served as a primary element in Seeley and King's early stories.

Star Trek New Visions: Annual 2013 "Strange New Worlds" (IDW)

John Byrne already has an assured place in comics history.  He's been working at one in Star Trek history as well.  His previous, hand-drawn work has been impressive enough (Assignment Earth, McCoy, and Romulans), but lately he's been working on comic book photo-novels.  This is the first time I've read one of these efforts myself.  (Although the original Star Trek photo-novels are some of what helped me become a fan in the first place.)  The results are impressive.  "Strange New Worlds" functions as a sequel to Captain Kirk's first adventure, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot of the original series.  The fact of its place in canon, first Kirk but also featuring some characters who wouldn't appear in subsequent episodes such as Dr. Piper, is Byrne's effort at turning "Strange New Worlds" into a kind of "Menagerie," the two-part episode that repurposed the first pilot "The Cage," which also featured a different set of characters (Spock is the only one present in all casts).  As in "Where No Man," "New Worlds" features the problem of Gary Mitchell, who accidentally develops god-like powers.  Mitchell was Kirk's close friend, and having to eliminate his threat was a considerable challenge on multiple levels.  Byrne presents a deepening of the whole experience, a good one.  There's an essay on the art of photo-novels included, as well as interview with Byrne.

Star-Lord: Annihilation - Conquest (Marvel)

In conjunction with last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel put out numerous special comic book releases reprinting Star-Lord's past appearances.  The last time I sampled one of them featured Peter Quill's earliest adventures, which were generic and as such, to me, terrible.  Thankfully I gave these things another shot.  I just read my digital copy of how the whole Annihilation thing began, so I have some context, but it hardly matters.  This is the only context necessary: Annihilation - Conquest is the secret origin of the Peter Quill and pals everyone fell in love with in the movie.  What a discovery!  And now it only figures that Keith Giffen wrote Annihilation itself, because his more familiar imprint is all over Conquest.  Brian Michael Bendis is generally credited with a lot of what Marvel has been doing at the movies, and rightly so.  He's the one who took up the Star-Lord ball most recently, but without Giffen, he probably would never have thought of it.  Conquest features a somewhat different team line-up, though Rocket and Groot are present and accounted for (second most surprising revelation of Conquest: at least for these specific circumstances, Groot does not only say, "My name is Groot").  This is seriously good stuff, a great, great find.

Action Comics #23.3 (DC)
This is a Villains Month release featuring Lex Luthor!  You'd think there would have been a little more attention given it, given how significant Luthor was in Forever Evil and later, Justice League.  And what's all the more interesting still is that it's written by Charles Soule.  The Luthor here seems far less redeemable than the one in Justice League (as depicted so far), a diabolical one that tracks well with the past and present of the character.  It's also nice to see Lex Luthor star in an issue of Action Comics again, after the Paul Cornell run that helped signal the character's future potential...

Superman: Doomed #1 (DC)
The "Doomed" arc, naturally, features Doomsday, and represents Scott Lobdell's last hurrah writing Superman, working in conjunction with Charles Soule (who had featured the monster in the pages of Superman/Wonder Woman) and Greg Pak.  I still don't get the massive opposition to Lobdell.  I think he does a great job building on existing concepts.  In the post-Convergence landscape, he's got a chance to expound further on his ideas in a whole Doomed series, which speculation must suggest has some relation to this arc and/or Doomsday.  What I read in this issue looked pretty good, a modern take on the Doomsday issue that takes Superman himself to another level.  How exactly the whole infected-with-Doomsday thing played out, is another thing I'll have to find out...

Swamp Thing Annual #2 (DC)
Charles Soule and Swamp Thing.  There's a lot that I need to catch up on, but the bits and snatches I've caught...this stuff is brilliant.  It's almost as if Soule has taken the idea of the avatars Geoff Johns used in Green Lantern and took a more deliberate, intimate approach to them.  Of course, not the Green Lantern avatars themselves, but various elemental ones as related to Swamp Thing.  And it's always fascinating.  I have no idea why I wouldn't have become dedicated from the moment I read it the first time.  This annual explores more about the history of the avatars, and how they affect Alec Holland's future.  I will continue reading more and more of this...

Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger #14 (DC)
This is the the one I most picked up on a lark.  I like the Trinity of Sin concept.  As far as I can tell, it became less interesting when the three characters were finally merged in a single series.  Yet this issue of Phantom Stranger proves it can work.  Good to have in my collection.

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.

Reading Comics #114 "Rounding Toward Third"

Batman Incorporated #9 & 10 (DC)
The issues that follow the death of Damian Wayne are pretty interesting and speak to the significant impact of the event as well as how it fits into the rest of what Grant Morrison has been doing in his final Batman arc.  #9 cuts between the immediate aftermath of Damian's death as Batman and Nightwing attempt to handle the other Damian (a clone matured to adulthood by proud mama Talia, who was nonetheless displeased that one killed the other) and the funeral, where Bruce lets Alfred know that he too is displeased in the butler's tacit approval of his late son's last caper.  That's probably the best moment of the issue.  The former Squire also decides to replace the late Knight (the two were the most prominent members of Batman Inc., featured in an excellent and very British mini-series by Paul Cornell).  The city of Gotham, meanwhile, gives in to Leviathan a.k.a. Talia's demands and officially outlaws Batman, the agent provocateur.  #10 sees Morrison circle back to his earliest issues in this run, where Manbats were flying about.  It's also a direct evocation of Batman's origins, as Bruce decides that the only way to defeat Talia is to literally become a bat, thanks to the Manbat serum.  It's a powerful, meaning-filled development.  There are three issues left, plus a jam issue a month later featuring the international heroes technically represented in the title of this series.

Batman: Li'l Gotham #1 (DC)
I've been following the blog of Derek Fridolfs for a while now, and by extension his Facebook posts, and it's always been a little weird because Fridolfs is mostly a digital-first creator, his stories originally appearing on the DC website and then being printed later.  He's best known for his comics based on the Arkham City games (and as such that was the basis of the excellent Endgame Joker story I read last year) and Batman Beyond landscape, though recently he's been collaborating with the great Dustin Nguyen on Li'l Gotham.  This issue is a collection of the holiday specials that served as the introduction of these incredibly fun tales.  Fridolfs is clearly a fan of continuity, and he's always finding new ways to explore it, mindful that for some readers, especially in these fringe adventures, it could very well be their first exposures.  Since he doesn't write New 52 material, Fridolfs can do whatever he wants.  Li'l Gotham is technically considered a young readers title, but it can easily be enjoyed by anyone strictly as a humor series.

Before Watchmen: Comedian #6 (DC)
The conclusion of this mini-series and the whole Before Watchmen event, I've been waiting months for this.  Comedian became the only part of the event I tracked for every issue of original publication thanks to Brian Azzarello's masterful character study of Edward Blake and his relation both to the Vietnam War and the John/Robert Kennedy saga.  Azzarello made a few changes to Blake's classic arc; for instance the infamous face scarring that forced him to wear a mask doesn't occur in this comic.  The lead character in this series remains more of a hero than antihero, though certainly stained by the events of his times.  Edward and Bobby end the issue trying to make the best of a bad situation and not really succeeding.  Bobby, of course, is assassinated.  Edward's demons are more psychological, but they're impactful.  I read someone's assessment of the Before Watchmen project, and they labeled Comedian as one of the disappointments.  I still contend it was the best of the whole thing, and I think history will side with me, just as anyone who read Watchmen itself ended up thinking a lot differently about Edward at the end of it than they did at the beginning (or...every other point).  That's the magic of the character.

Django Unchained #3 (Vertigo)
Now that I've actually seen the movie, it's a different experience reading the comic book adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's complete script.  With the first two issues, I was discovering the story outside of the movie's direct influence.  Now it's harder to separate the two, although the adaptation is still making the story its own, retaining all the distinct advantages of the comic book format, and new artist Denys Cowan continues to keep the art equally distinctive, evocative and yet unique.  The series is halfway through, and on the final page introduces Calvin Candie, the character portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film.

Justice League #18 (DC)
This will probably be my final issue of the series.  While Geoff Johns continues work on Justice League (and its spin-off I'll be talking about next) and is gearing up for "Trinity War," the event that he's been working toward since the start of the New 52 and introduction of the mysterious Pandora (very soon to be featured in her own series), I'm not really in the financial means to continuing reading new comics on a regular basis.  I've been in the position to have a much smoother conclusion than in 1999 (known as cold turkey) or my abortive efforts in 2011 (when Flashpoint and the start of the New 52 sabotaged a similar design).  Grant Morrison concludes his Superman and Batman stories this year, and Johns is stepping down from Green Lantern.  I couldn't ask for a better exit.  Justice League has been consistently excellent, and this of all issues is a fine place to stop (and just as well to begin for readers in a different situation than me).  It's the customary recruitment issue.  Morrison did something similar in his JLA run, and it's been a staple for subsequent writers like Brad Meltzer.  Lots of new faces are here.  The issue also features the tenth installment of the Shazam! backup feature from Johns and Gary Frank, where the erstwhile Captain Marvel and always-kid Billy Batson finds it increasingly difficult to avoid the inevitable confrontation with Black Adam.

Justice League of America #2 (DC)
Another comics blog I follow, Crisis on Earth Prime, found this Hawkman/Vibe moment pretty memorable: Vibe says "Are you okay?," to which Hawkman responds "Why?"  Vibe next says "You're covered in blood," and Hawkman says "It's not my blood."  Vibe spends the next two panels putting some distance between them, and there are no words.  They're not necessary.  Johns wrote Hawkman both in the pages of JSA and his own title for years, but this may be the best scene he's ever done with the character.  There's also a pretty interesting Catwoman moment where she realizes how similar she is to Steve Trevor in the department of being spurned by giants.  This is the strength of the series, that Johns is able to write characters who aren't necessarily icons.  He actually writes both his League books in much the same way, but this one just feels more intimate.  These characters all have something to prove and they know it.  There's a backup feature in this series, too, featuring Martian Manhunter, who gets my vote as the best character too many people don't really care about.  He would make for an excellent movie.

The Mice Templar, Volume IV: Legend #1 (Image)
The series featuring fuzzy rodents that everyone who cares knows about is Mouse Guard, but Mice Templar has always had my vote for the better of them.  It's an iconic new take on the traditional hero's journey, always taking original twists and turns.  After a considerable absence, I'm glad to see it return.  I started reading these adventures in 2007.

Nova #2 (Marvel)
I loved the first issue of this new Jeph Loeb series, an integral element of Marvel's renewed Guardians of the Galaxy push (seeing that there's going to be a movie and all).  I didn't just love it, I adored it, one of the best single issues I've ever read.  You may have guessed at this point that I wasn't so wild about the second issue.  That's okay.

Saucer Country #13 (Vertigo)
The penultimate issue of this series (although Paul Cornell contends that he will attempt to revive it elsewhere) busts one of the key bits of mythology.  The previous issue had a distraught Professor Kidd apparently about to commit suicide, which turned out to be a ruse in order to get the "Pioneer space probe couple" stand revealed as a hoax.  The whole series has been about perception and reality in the world of alien abduction, following the presidential campaign of Arcadia Alvarado, who has been trying to come to grips with her own apparent abduction, which has only been complicated by the fact that she shared it with her estranged husband Michael.  It's been a fascinating ride.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Hive #4 (IDW)
The conclusion of this Borg epic that represents Brannon Braga's ultimate vision for the Collective and the roles Jean-Luc Picard and Seven of Nine (featured in Voyager) play in it.  In a lot of ways, it's a rephrasing of Voyager's final episode "Endgame."  There's also a little of a Star Trek Nemesis hangover involved as Future Data reveals how he returned (and not because as fans thought simply reborn as B4), which serves as an excellent ending after an emotional farewell to another character.  Pretty good stuff, although it would certainly be interesting to watch as filmed material.

Star Trek #19 (IDW)
This series is based in the rebooted continuity of the 2009 J.J. Abrams film and was originally set up to adapt classic episodes from the original series with the new interpretations of the familiar characters.  I don't know how many issues have deviated from this mission, but this one in particular certainly does and it's well worth enjoying for it.  Simply put, this is the secret origin of Scotty, from his family heritage to the incident with Admiral Archer's beagle (evoking similar characters from Enterprise but not the exact ones, because that was a hundred years in the past).  Good stuff.

(Justice League of America's) Vibe #1 (DC)
I had to go back and catch this one after initially skipping it.  Both spin-offs of the new series look like they're well worth checking out, this one and Katana.  What's intriguing about Vibe is that it follows a character who in his previous incarnation was all but a punchline, more famous as a casualty of a forgettable League lineup than anything he did or represented personally.  As with Earth 2, this is another series that builds on the initial Darkseid arc of Justice League, and brilliantly at that.  Departing Earth 2 writer James Robinson is still most famous for Starman, a series he cleverly hinged around legacy, but in a twist that no one would have seen coming when Jack Knight quickly replaced his more traditional brother David as successor to their father Ted.  Geoff Johns does something very similar here with the new Vibe, who is also notable for having the ability to see beyond the regular limits of this particular reality.  It's Geoff revising his own Booster Gold revision, the also-ran who became a multiverse champion following the breakthrough 52 experiment.  I don't know how long this series will last, but to my mind Vibe has everything to gain from all of this.  He's just become one of the most fascinating characters in DC.

Quick Hits: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Hive #3 (IDW)

Brannon Braga's ultimate Borg adventure continues, and for the bulk of the issue things kind of happen, and only in the final pages do we finally see hope that something will amount from it other than an epic setup that finally proposes resolution for Picard's link to the Collective.  This is to say Data's role will finally come into focus in the finale.  Data was a key aspect of Star Trek: First Contact, Hive's most obvious predecessor besides "The Best of Both Worlds."

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Hive #2 (IDW)

(via startrek.com)

writer: Brannon Braga, Terry Matals, Travis Fickett
artist: Joe Corroney

As a Star Trek fan, I'm crazy enough to appreciate the work Brannon Braga did in the franchise, including his role in developing Star Trek: Voyager and its use of the Borg, though the Collective remains most famous from the Next Generation cliffhanger "The Best of Both Worlds" and Star Trek: First Contact.  While Voyager did have a chance to incorporate the Borg Queen from First Contact into its adventures, the more famous voice of the Collective, Locutus, remained off-limits (he did appear in the Deep Space Nine premiere episode "Emissary," mostly because that show's central character Benjamin Sisko lost his wife in the famous Battle of Wolf 359).

Locutus, of course, was the assimilated version of Jean-Luc Picard, a moment of his life that he'd sooner forget, but even some of Starfleet wouldn't (such as in the episode "The Drumhead").  Even though the Borg Queen made him relive the experience in First Contact, it seemed as if there would be no lasting repercussions.  Not so for Voyager's Seven of Nine, who continued to use her Borg designation long after being severed from the Collective, even though everyone was perfectly aware of her original human name, Annika Hansen).  Several times, and sometimes with the Borg Queen around, she was tempted to rejoin the Collective, but always resisted it, even though she spent most of her life as a drone.

Because Locutus and Seven didn't share any stories directly, it's sometimes perhaps a little difficult for fans to appreciate their mutual legacy.  This is corrected in Hive, from a story developed by Braga.  In the novels that Pocket Books continues to produce, the origin of the Borg was eventually revealed, at least in that version of the franchise, as well as what eventually became of it.  At the end of Voyager, Janeway had struck a crucial blow against the Collective by destroying one of its transwarp hubs, though the greater threat remained.  After all, "resistance is futile."  The whole point of the Borg is that scientific progress and the quest for perfection stops for no one.  Setbacks are irrelevant.  First Contact was in a lot of ways very similar to the Alien franchise, for any number of reasons.  Imagine a Star Trek movie like Prometheus.

Actually, Hive is a lot like that.  The game plan continues.  Just when he thought he was out, Picard has been dragged back in.  In the distant future he's become Locutus again.  In the relative present he's undergone one of Starfleet's periodic attempts to end the threat of the Borg, and has recruited Seven.  In the continuing story, this dynamic will be crucial.  (It's also worth noting that Future Locutus has Data as an ally.  In First Contact the Borg Queen's best move against Picard was the attempt to recruit his android friend.)

This new end game may turn out to be similar to the last one.  ("End Game" was the name of Voyager's finale.)  Locutus may be attempting to reset time in order to prevent the future he's living.  I guess we'll see.  But it's a worthy adventure, if only to see Braga playing in the sandbox again, and perhaps telling that epic he never got around to.