Saturday, February 10, 2007

Weekly Comics to Come - February 14, 2007

I'm cheating by posting this late, so these are books I've already read. By the way, stinker of a week, the worst of 2007 thus far. Great hardcovers, single issues mostly disappointing.

TOP FOUR:
Beyond HC (Great superhero action by Dwayne McDuffie and Scott Kolins, delighted that it got a hardcover collection)
Drink & Draw Vol 1 HC (A stunning combination of sketchbook and yearbook, amazing production and great art)
Godland #16 (Wasted opportunity with a 60 cent issue on a somewhat boring recap. A standalone action story would have been better, as would a flashback narrated by Basil Cronus. You want your jumping-on point to reflect how fun the book can be, and Godland #16 doesn't)
Manhunter #28 (Continues to be a good read, but knowing that it has cancelled has put a damper in my enthusiasm for Andreyko's ongoing comics style storytelling. I'll still buy the whole thing if they do all the trades, though)

THE REST
52 Week #41 (Not as bad as week 40, but still a little bit weak)
Justice Society Of America #3 (Atrocious. The influence of the worst parts of Identity Crisis can be seen in the work on this book)
Thunderbolts #111 (Eh. Expected what I got, and sort of bored)
Y The Last Man #54 (These one-shots focusing on lost characters seem weird and out-of-place so late in the series)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

What were your problems with Justice Society? I felt the same as you about Identity Crisis for the most part, but my only gripe with JSA so far is that the pacing is a little slow for my tastes. (It's not as bad as its sis, JLA, by a damn sight.)
Was it the scene with the Fourth Reich? I like the idea of villains actually taking no prisoners.

I don't want that behavior in my *heroes* mind you, but I thought it lent a needed edge.

I'm tired of likable rogues instead of villains. This book needs monsters for the heroes to play off of from where I'm standing.

Now, if they kill Wildcat next issue my story will change drastically.

Randy Lander said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Randy Lander said...

It was the Nazi speedster tearing through a mom and her kid *on panel*. That, along with the slaughter of various innocents that Johns has given us in the last couple issues, runs so counter to what I want to see in my superhero comics.

It makes the heroes look feeble and ineffective. If the villains can freely murder a picnic full of innocents, including children and their parents, then the heroes have lost. I don't care if they capture or kill the villains lately.

I don't want monstrous supervillains. Murderers, rapists, sociopaths... I find them less interesting, and it makes it a lot harder to buy into the heroes "nobler" aspirations of using a system which is obviously failing. If the villains are that bad, and can't be stopped by other means, than the heroes *should* be killing them.

(Kind of annoying to have to delete an entire post to fix one typo, but blogger has no edit function and the typo would have driven me nuts. :)