Reading Comics #140 "Bull Moose Bargains IV"

Atomic Robo: The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur #1 (Red 5)

via Razorfine

From 2013.

Hey, so I love Atomic Robo.  The genius creation of Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener is, among other things, the perennial highlight of Free Comic Book Day, the headlining act of Red 5 Comics, and the indy answer to Hellboy.  And Dr. Dinosaur is the best thing about Atomic Robo besides Atomic Robo himself.  I missed this whole arc last year, so once again I have to give thanks to Bull Moose's new trend of importing random back issues into its dying comics spinning rack.  Savage Sword opens in a pretty bleak scenario, with Robo having fallen out of public favor thanks to a trumped-up scandal, which adds valuable emotional context to his adventures.  By the time Dr. Dinosaur shows up late in the issue, it gives the story an unexpected twist, which only an Atomic Robo comic could do with the spoiler in the name of the mini-series.  Dr. Dinosaur is a character who breaks the fourth wall all over his dialogue ("It was I!  Behold, the dramatic reveal!"), just a fun character who knocks all pretension out of what comics are supposed to be.  This is exactly what fans are talking about when they ask for comics that younger readers can enjoy without be condescended to and not featuring some previously-established-in-another-medium properties.  That being said, how about an Atomic Robo cartoon?  A live action Robo might even be better!

Black Science #3 (Image)

via Image Comics

From 2014.

Having finally cracked the Rick Remender egg in the pages of his Captain America comics, I've become more interested in exploring his other work.  Black Science is a little like Sliders if it were done in the Fringe manner, a team of scientists who are able to cross between dimensions.  It's pretty interesting stuff, and once again defies my previous impressions of Remender's work.

Green Arrow #26 (DC)

via IGN

From 2013.

"The Outsiders War" is an arc I wanted to have a look at all year.  It's another instance of DC repackaging a concept for the New 52 era.  In other words, this is not the Outsiders as you remember it.  This is a new vision that is tied directly into Green Arrow's mythology, concerning that all-important origin on the island (in a lot of ways, DC has finally realized that Oliver Queen has all along been a kind of Lost figure).  The Outsiders this time are a whole network of clans that are like a human version of the spectrum of power rings introduced by Geoff Johns in Green Lantern.  In the past it's been difficult to define what exactly makes Green Arrow special, and sometimes that answer has been making him a modern Robin Hood, and sometimes a very political, liberal figure, and even sometimes, his unique relationship with Black Canary.  Finally, it seems, they've hit the nail on the head.  A couple years into his New 52 tenure and several creative teams later, the archer is being handled by Jeff Lemire during this arc, and this is exactly what the comic needed to be as relevant as the popular Arrow TV series (the emphasis on the island is the greatest link between them).  Great, great stuff.  I will have to read the whole story at some point.

Imagine Agents #3 (Boom!)

via the Geek Girl Project

From 2013.

I thought this looked pretty interesting, but it kind of degenerated into gibberish and so I guess I was wrong.  It happens.

Katana #9 (DC)

via DC Wikia

From 2013.

Along with Vibe this was one of the risky simultaneous launches along with Justice League of America last year, and it's another series I've long wanted to have a look at.  It's very similar to Lemire's Green Arrow, actually.  Unfortunately, there was only one more issue left in the series at this point.

Saga #18 (Image)

via Image Comics

From 2014.

Okay, seriously, Fiona Staples does the best covers ever.  Just look at that!  Oh, and by the way, that's Lying Cat, who's able to tell when you're lying (as you may or may not have guessed).  Saga is packed with these seemingly simplistic characters who are nonetheless dynamic figures, and always shifting around the story, which this most recent Bull Moose Bargains selection from the series helps fill in a few more of those gaps that cropped up from my erratic experience with Saga last year.  There's a great moment in which Marko tricks Alana into flying, forced to happen thanks to Marko's reunion with Gwendolyn, who's trying save The Will, while Prince Robot IV is walking around desperately needing a reboot.  Is this also The Brand's first appearance?  The Brand is The Will's sister.  A seriously awesome series.

Swamp Thing #26 (DC)

via Pick of the Brown Bag

From 2013.

I wish I had been reading Charles Soule's Swamp Thing all along.  It's the DC commitment he'll be finishing out next year before his exclusive contract with Marvel officially kicks in, and his work in the series has been seriously good, another case of a DC property with a mythology a creator has been able to lucratively crack.  Much of what Soule has done has also been undermined by fans, though, because of the tie-ins the series has had with other comics in the post-Vertigo line.  Batshit insane logic.  Anyway, Alec Holland is no longer the avatar of the Green, which is to say he's no longer Swamp Thing.  His role has been usurped by Seeder.  There's a great sequence involving Animal Man, too (part of that post-Vertigo line).  After the places Alan Moore took Swamp Thing and Grant Morrison took Animal Man, it seemed impossible to do relevant material with either character again that had nothing to do with that material.  Proven wrong.

Thumbprint #2 (IDW)

via comiXology

From 2013.

Joe Hill, in case you didn't know, is Stephen King's kid.  He's also likely the reason King finally started actively dabbling in comics.  Until Hill came along with Locke & Key in 2008, King's efforts were few and far between, and suddenly there were adaptations of The Stand and the Dark Tower series, the American Vampire stint (if you want to be technical, King started these efforts a year prior to Locke & Key's launch, but c'mon), and various other projects.  This issue marks the first time I've read Hill, though he certainly seems to have established a reputable career all his own, in case there was any such fear on my part.  Like his old man, some of Hill's comics are not by Hill himself, but are adaptions of his prose material.  Thumbprint is one of those.  It concerns a hardcase of a woman who was a soldier and now an investigator.  I like this particular bit of narrative: 

"Everyone has a story, a secret.  That's what I want...the secrets.  Most humans are terrible at keeping secrets.  We're storytelling animals.  It hurts to keep things inside and feels good to spill.  The act of confession feels as right as breathing and as good as a kiss.  If you can use your voice to tell your story, you must be alive.  Only dead men are comfortable with silence."

Is there some King in Hill's literary voice?  You bet.  But I like what I've seen...

Trillium #5 (Vertigo)

via Weekly Comic Book Review

From 2013.

Lemire is a heck of a talent, one I've started appreciating in 2014, thank goodness, and Trillium was his latest creator-owned opus that concluded earlier in the year.  The nifty yet tricky first issue I've caught recently, the flip book that introduced the parallel narratives of the story, was adapted to even trickier heights in later issues, it seems, a flip book on every page.  Helpfully, there's always instructions or at least an indication as to which side to read first, and of course it's not always the one you expect it to be.  Maybe not the best way to read Trillium, though, in fits and starts.  I'll have to catch up on this one later, too...

The Unwritten: Apocalypse #1 (Vertigo)

via Yuko Art

From 2014.

Previously I may have suggested that Vertigo dumped The Unwritten at the worst possible moment, after its Fables crossover, just at the moment that readers (possibly including me) might have finally started paying attention.  But it was relaunched, as it turned out, with a concluding mini-series.  And.  Holy.  Crap.  Mike Carey knocked this first issue out of the park.  It's the kind of material I've been expecting from The Sandman Overture, just a creator completely letting loose with full-on narrative fantasy potential.  Instantly became one of my favorite comic book memories of 2014.  And now I'll have to read the rest of Unwritten...

Reading Comics #134 "Bull Moose Bargains II"

The second (possibly of two) batch of comics I got for fifty cents each at my friendly neighborhood Bull Moose:

Justice League #26 (DC)
I used to have an excellent track record with this series.  I'd like to think I used to be one of its biggest fans (a statement not to be misunderstood as meaning I decided at some point I don't love it anymore).  But I lost track last year and have had a hard time getting back into it.  The whole Forever Evil event was something I failed to follow monthly, and so I skipped the majority of it.  Unfortunately that meant skipping out on a lot of Justice League, too, because throughout the event this series was directly tied into it.  So I've slowly started making my way back in.  This issue features an origin story for Power Ring, which allowed Geoff Johns to write an alternate version of the classic Green Lantern origin.  Obviously he had great fun with it.  Obviously it made me wish all over again that he was still writing Green Lantern.  The other most interesting element of the issue, for me, was the page dedicated to Deathstorm, who of course is the evil version of Firestorm.  This made me nostalgic for the great Stuart Moore Firestorm comics.  Anyway, a lot of fans had a hard time with Forever Evil.  I still don't get that.

The Mysterious Strangers #4 (Oni)
A while back I wondered whatever would become of Chris Roberson, who was part of a flood of writers who fled DC over creative rights issues.  Well, here he is again.  I have to admit, he impressed me here, turned the Beatles into accidental harbingers of a near-apocalypse, based on their Maharishi period (John Lennon receives the brunt of the blame).  The Strangers who help prevent it are a little less distinctive than that, but it was certainly interesting to read another comic based on classic 60s rock (after the Hawkeye issue that spun off from the Smile! project that was such an issue between Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys).

Nova #5 (Marvel)
You may recall how much I loved the first issue of this series, and how disappointed I was that subsequent issues didn't seem to catch the same vibe (and how I love Starlight so much in part because it does).  The cover to this issue

via IGN

strongly suggests that Jeph Loeb, before he abruptly left the series, actually did what I'd hope he would, and return to the emotional crux of Sam Alexander's quest to reconnect with his father.  But it's basically a case of bait-and-switch, alas.  There's a stronger link to Nova's appearance in the Original Sin prelude.  I suppose there's nothing wrong with the series if it doesn't have what I want to see from it.  You can enjoy it for other reasons.  But for me, if it doesn't feature what for me is clearly it best material, then I personally have no reason to read it.  And besides, Loeb left.  I don't see a point in sampling it again.  Feel free to give me a heads-up if any of that changes in the future, if you haven't given up on it like I have.

Steam Wars #2 (Antarctic)

I caught the first issue back on Free Comic Book Day and was surprised to find that I loved it a great deal.  So when the opportunity came around to read another one, I figured I might as well, right?  As the title may or may not imply to you, Steam Wars is Star Wars as steampunk.  It's from Fred Perry, who otherwise is better known for his long-running Gold Digger.  Alas, once again I am quasi-disappointed.  It's not particularly that the second issue is worse than the first, but I guess, for me, much more so than with Nova, the magic simply wore off.  But we'll always have FCBD!

The Unwritten #51 (Vertigo)

This was a series that perhaps was impossibly high-concept when it debuted.  Mike Carey envisioned Harry Potter as if Harry Potter himself were a real boy whose life inspired his author to create a fictional version of him.  The author disappears and Tom Taylor (our Harry; it strikes me as funny that DC later acquired the services of a writer named Tom Taylor, current writer of Earth 2) has to put up both with his celebrity status and the apparently very real magical life his father left behind.  As I said, almost impossibly high-concept.  When it launched I was hugely intrigued, but I wasn't sure Carey pulled it off, or I simply didn't stick around near long enough to find out if he had.  It's a series I definitely want to revisit in the trades at some point.  And it's also a series that came to an end last year without my realizing it, right around the time of a tie-in arc with the more popular Fables.  Kind of an inglorious end, being told in no uncertain terms you're not as success as that, so we'll bring that in to make the point clear, and then we'll cancel you.  It does seem as if Tom became Harry pretty literally by the end.  I guess I want to see how that happened.  As convoluted as my relationship with Unwritten was, I'm sad to have seen it go so relatively early.  Vertigo already had a Harry Potter kind of comic years ago, before Harry even existed, in Neil Gaiman and subsequent writers' Books of Magic.  Because I'm obliged to reference either Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison as often as possible, I'd love to see Morrison do an out-and-out magic series.  The dude did make himself known as a practitioner of chaos magic at one point...

Wonder Woman #22 (DC)

Clearly these bargain comics were/have been a great way for me to catch up with some series and/or creators I've been meaning to revisit.  Some of them have been ones that in other circumstances I would probably have been reading religiously.  This is one of those series.  I've been impressed with the level of quality Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang have brought to Wonder Woman, not the least for the apparent fact that this is much harder than it seems.  When Orion and/or the rest of the New Gods was brought into the mix, I was beyond intrigued, so it's nice to finally read some of that material.  This is one of those developments that seems like it should have happened a long time ago.  Maybe it's because Jack Kirby created his Fourth World with Superman in mind that someone didn't think of it sooner (although for some reason Darkseid long ago made the jump to Legion of Super-Heroes lore with the "Great Darkness Saga," while this much more logical conclusion remained ignored).  Anyway, half the reason Orion joined the narrative was as a way to link the series with the rest of DC proper, which was always the one stumbling block.  As great as Azzarello's run has been, it's also been isolated.  Orion serves as a romantic possibility, and therefore default rival for Superman, which became a thing last year and then became a whole series (Orion/Big Barda Superman/Wonder Woman).  Wonder Woman as a result also boasted the distinction of getting a jump on the New 52 version of the New Gods, which is fast expanding this year (Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, Infinity Man and the Forever People).  I skipped out initially because I didn't particularly want to see just Orion hanging around.  I wanted to see the whole line-up.  Rest assured, they're here this issue.  

X-O Manowar #13 (Valiant)

This is the series that won Robert Venditti the right to write Green Lantern.  I've meant to sample it ever since I learned he'd be succeeding Geoff Johns (a very tall order, one he's sometimes seemed up to) in that regard.  X-O is one of those heroes who keeps getting revived in the hopes he'll be a legitimate alternative to the DC/Marvel big leagues.  This does not appear to have been the best issue to sample.