Recommended Reading & Listening for 3/21: The Thrilling Adventure Hour

Recently, writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker were announced as the new writers on Marvel's Thunderbolts. If you're a comic fan not familiar with Acker & Blacker, it's understandable; their Marvel credits include a couple annuals and the Wolverine: Season One graphic novel. But for some of us, Acker & Blacker are huge names. They are the creators of the live show/podcast The Thrilling Adventure Hour, "America's favorite new time podcast in the style of old time radio." This doesn't sound like something I'd talk about on my blog that is dedicated to comics, but there is  The Thrilling Adventure Hour graphic novel, released from Archaia last year, so there is an actual comic to work with, along with themes that tie in to a lot of what I like to talk about here.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour has been playing in Los Angeles for about nine years, doing a night of different recurring serials. It's a wonderful mish-mash of genres, taking a couple of the story types that would have appeared on classic radio and mixing them together to come up with something wholly new and hilarious. The show presents stories with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but still finds a way to make you really care about many of the characters.

The regular cast of The Thrilling Adventure Hour, called the Workjuice Players, includes many actors that you might recognize, including Paul F. Tompkins, Paget Brewster, Marc Evan Jackson, Mark Gagliardi, Busy Philipps, James Urbaniak, John DiMaggio, and others. Guest stars include such Hollywood luminaries as Nathan Fillion, Molly Quinn, Joshua Malina, Gillian Jacobs, Linda Cardellini, Natalie Morales, and a whole bunch more. Each monthly show in LA is usually bookended by two recurring segments, Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars (starring Marc Evan Jackson and Mark Gagliardi as Sparks Nevada and Croach the Tracker) and  Beyond Belief (starring Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster as those married mediums, Frank and Sadie Doyle), with other segments in between, as well as ads for the show's "sponsors," Workjuice Coffee and Patriot Brand Cigarettes.

Last year, through Kickstarter, a graphic novel was created based on The Thrilling Adventure Hour (abbreviated TAH from here on out for brevity's sake), with a short story for each of the recurring segments and a couple of the occasional ones. I'll give you a rundown of each of those segments, along with a quick discussion of the short in the graphic novel. It's a lot of information, but once you dig into the series, it'll all come to you pretty quickly, trust me. The graphic novel, by the way, had introductions from Patton Oswalt (who has guest starred) and Ed Brubaker (who has guest written), so if you don't entirely trust me, that's a pretty dang fine pedigree.

Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars
Illustrated by Randy Bishop

Sparks Nevada is a mash-up of western and sci-fi, about a swaggering square jawed hero, the titular Sparks Nevada, and his loyal Martian companion, Croach the Tracker. Sparks is the stereotypical western hero, at least on the surface, who has blasters and a pair of robot fists that he uses to stop rogue robots on Mars. Croach is under "onus," as he puts it, to Sparks for having saved his tribe, and thus must work off the onus by aiding Sparks. The onus never seems to run out, or if it does it comes back pretty quickly, so the two are always stuck together. Sparks doesn't really get Martian culture, and so pretty much brushes off much of what Croach says and does. Their dynamic is hilarious, and is one of the bedrocks of the series. This is by far the most serialized on the segments on Thrilling Adventure Hour, with recurring characters like The Red Plains Rider, a human raised by Martians who now defends her adopted home, The Barkeep, Felton, the typical western townsperson who runs in begging the Marshall for help, Rebecca Rose Rushmore, space Western novelist, Pemily Stallwark, champion of the punishment soccer, and Cactoid Jim, King of the Martian Frontier, who I'll discuss more in his own spin-off segment later. The short in the graphic novel is not continuity dependent, and does a great job of giving the reader, who might be unfamiliar with the series, a good introduction by giving a tale of Sparks and Croach fighting robot outlaws. Once you've finished the story, I would suggest starting the podcast archives at the first Sparks Nevada and working your way forward.

Phillip Fathom
Illustrated by Jeff Stokely

Phillip Fathom, the Deep Sea Detective, is a supporting character in another segment we'll get to shortly, Captain Laserbeam, but was given his own short in the graphic novel. I feel this works because he is a character who is firmly rooted in the comic book tradition. A merman of some sort, his origin remains unclear, whose parents died at sea, he now defends the harbor of Apex City with his San Andreas Trenchcoat, that seems to have an endless supply of gadgets. He has been voiced by a couple of different actors on the show, but that voice always resembles the growl of a recent actor who played a certain Caped Crusader on the big screen. The story in the graphic novel clearly draws those parallels even tighter with a villain who resembles that hero's arch foe. I would suggest podcast #79, "Tinker Taylor and Tyler Too!"

The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock
Illustrated by Chris Moreno

Colonel Tick-Tock is the chief agent of her majesty Queen Victoria's Royal Chrono Patrol, who keep time working on schedule. This is possibly the strangest of all the segments on TAH, with Colonel Tick-Tock and his Trick Clock often stop dinosaurs, vikings, and the like who have wandered into time anomalies and arrive in the wrong time period from hurting important historical figures. The fun of Colonel Tick-Tock is often how ridiculous these historical figures are, very much in a Mel Brooks History of the World Part 1 way, and include Saccho and Vanzeti as The Odd Couple and a recurring roll for none other than Nicola Tesla, a Matt Signal favorite. The story in the graphic novel deals with Colonel Tick-Tock going back to the dawn of man to stop a brilliant caveman from using his time machine to accidentally destroy history. So, yes, weird and silly. I would suggest podcast #31, "Electric Rivalries"

Captain Laserbeam
Illustrated by Lar deSouza

Captain Laserbeam is a classic, do-gooding superhero. With the aid of his Adventurekateers, he protects Apex City from supervillains who would feel very much at home on the classic Batman TV series, to which the segment owes a lot of inspiration. The running gags are familiar to comic fans, with a hero who is too good to be true, and kind of goofy; there is also a serious Tick vibe here. The motifs that run through each episode are the same, with the details shifting, feeling a lot like comics in the 50s. Particularly fun is the use of "team-up" between heroes to mean something very different and specific. The story in the graphic novel shows Captain Laserbeam's numerous number themed villains, especially Sudoku. Yes, a Sudoku themed villain with accompanying traps. I would suggest podcast #89, "Uncanny Exes!" or #49, "Poetic Injustice!"

Cactoid Jim, King of the Martian Frontier
Illustrated by Evan "Doc" Shaner

Cactoid Jim is part of the Sparks Nevada universe, a time displaced astronaut who now serves as one of Mars' defenders. Jim is good at pretty much anything, and is handsome and good natured to boot. His persona is drawn somewhat from the public persona of the actor who voices him, geek culture darling Nathan Fillion. The graphic story has Jim doing battle with Murdermen, creatures who, well, their name pretty well sums it up. Jim outfoxes them, like he usually does, and winds off riding off into the sunset after doing good. The difference between him and Sparks Nevada is that Jim has more of a "Golly gee, twas nothing, ma'am," attitude, versus the more jaded Sparks. I would suggest podcast #83, "Mayor's Retreat"

Jefferson Reid, Ace American
Illustrated by Evan Larson

Jefferson Reid is a segment that appeared early in TAH's history and then seemed to fade away, I want to believe partially because Nathan Fillion also voiced Reid, and frankly Cactoid Jim is a more fun character and the writers would rather write for Fillion as Jim. Reid is a World War II era Nazi smasher, with kid sidekicks and a can-do American attitude. With his best girl, Agent Abby Adams, and his boss, General Rex Flagwell, he is the star agent of the AVC, the American Victory Commission. In the graphic novel, he fights dead American soldiers reanimated by Nazis, a Nazi impostor, and his own reanimated dead sidekick. I would suggest podcast #21, "Ace and Mr. President"

Tales of the USSA,United Solar System Alliance
Illustrated by Natalie Nourigat

The final short in the Sparks Nevada universe, Tales of the USSA is a Star Trek like travel through the galaxy, with a touch more soap opera mixed in. Captain Gene Peeples captains a ship with his wife as XO, his daughter as an officer, and his least favorite ensign dating his daughter. The graphic novel has Peeples and his crew arrive at the planet of the Spiderpeople, where they have to make a treaty. Well, you can imagine since this is a comedy, that things go about as well as you might expect. I would suggest #58, "T-Minus"

Down in Moonshine Holler
Illustrated by Joanna Estep

Down in Moonshine Holler is the story of Banjo Bindlestuff, the hobo name of millionaire Jasper Manorlodge, who gave up his riches and rides the rails to find his true love, the Hobo Princess, alongside his hobo mentor, Gummy. Banjo and Gummy get into different wacky adventures, usually involving finding a woman who might be the Hobo Princess who turns out not to be, and Banjo must think of a way to get them out of a predicament by using, "The Hobo Way." The story in the graphic novel is, as far as I can tell, the only straight adaptation from an episode of the show (I'm still working my way through the entire archive of episodes, so I might have missed one), adapting episode #23, "The Lottery." This will be appreciated by you literature buffs, as Banjo and Gummy wind up in the town from Shirley Jackson's classic short story, The Lottery, and have to stop the stoning from happening so it doesn't poison the stone soup stone of the Hobo Duchess, Lulu Pepper. I would suggest #84, "Nativity Ploy."

Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flier
Illustrated by Joel Priddy

So, when Amelia Earhart disappeared, she didn't die. Instead, she became part of the AVC (from Jefferson Reid), and is now their secret time travelling air force, stopping Nazis from altering the timeline. Amelia Earhart has a similar vibe to Colonel Tick-Tock, since they both involve time travel and ludicrous versions of historical figures, but Amelia is much less passive and has the goal of stopping any number of classic Nazi-type villains, including a scientist brain in a jar, Otto Drangt, who appears in the graphic novel, along with Der Schneemann, a Nazi Yeti pilot. Amelia must rally a crew of pirates to help her stop the Nazis from altering the 1700s to take over America before it was America. I would suggest #44, "Vive Le Reich?"

Beyond Belief
Illustrated by Tom Fowler

And saving the best for last. Beyond Belief is the story of Frank and Sadie Doyle, boozy high society couple who just happen to be mediums and unwilling supernatural detectives. This is far and away my favorite segment, and I think many fans agree with me on that (Not to say the rest are bad, mind. I just love this). The relationship between Frank and Sadie is priceless, with the two of them deeply loving each other, and wanting nothing more than to enjoy their lives together with their other great love: booze. Alas, things keep coming to them asking for help, including ghosts, vampire, werewolves, mummies, witches, and chupacabras. The dynamic is based on Nick and Nora Charles, Dashiell Hammett's society detectives from The Thin Man, only with even more booze and some monsters thrown in for good measure. A lot of the episodes toss classic genre tropes on their heads, as well as classic horror stories. While there is some continuity here, more than most of the other segments, it is more episodic than Sparks Nevada, and can really be picked up anywhere. The story in the graphic novel involves a war between Irish vampires and mummies, a Japanese ghost girl, and forbidden love. As well as booze. Lots of booze. I found it hard to pick one or two episodes to recommend, so I wound up picking six, which I had to cull down from a longer list:

 #5 "Wishing Hell" (the origin of Frank)
#25 "Rosemary's Baby Shower" (The introduction of Sadie's best friend, vampire Donna Henderson)
#76 "Djinn and Tonic" (the Doyles find a lamp with a genie, and there's a great play on David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross between JK Simmons and Joe Mantegna)
#80 "Sarcophagus Now (The Doyles in an Egyptian pyramid meet Bast, the cat goddess, who is more catlike than usually presented)
#147 "The Complete Christmas on Mars Show 2012 (the Beyond Belief segment is guest written by Ed Brubaker, and called "Claus and Effect")
#153 "When Cthulu Cthalls (Acolytes of Cthulu come knocking. What more can you ask for?)

This is just scratching the surface of all the fun that can be found in The Thrilling Adventure Hour. There are other segments, recurring characters, and guests that can be found by looking up the show's web-site, which I'll link to below. I love old time radio, and The Thrilling Adventure Hour takes it, dusts it off, slaps on a new coat of paint, and creates something magical in its own right.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour graphic novel is available at any comic shop or bookstore. To learn more, you can go to the show's website, or download podcasts from the store of your smart phone or mobile device.

I’ve Got the Runs: Ed Brubaker’s Captain America

Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, 2005-2013 (Vol. 5 1-50, Reborn miniseries, renumbered 600-624, Vol. 6 1-19, Winter Soldier 1-14, assorted one-shots, minis)

The latest Captain America movie, in theaters April 4, exists for two reasons: One, because the first movie and subsequent Avengers movie made boatloads of money. Two: Ed Brubaker.

Brubaker spent nearly a decade swimming in the deepest ends of the Captain America mythos. And he started by taking The One Thing That Was Never Supposed to Happen and executing it in a way that was fanboy-complaint-proof. Wait, who am I kidding?

Bru did his homework on Cap, mining decades of Simon, Lee/Kirby, Steranko, Stern/Byrne, Mark Waid and more to craft a dark, cool spy thriller starring colorful, easily-written-off-as-uncool characters such as the guy who talks to birds, the guy whose face appears in the abdomens of robots and the French guy who fights with his feet, wears lots of purple and has a pointy mustache. Brubaker doesn't hide from the ridiculous parts of Cap's past. Instead, he welcomes them, gives them a warm blanket and a bowl of hot soup and says "Come on in here, fella, let's see what we can do to get you on your feet."

It should be noted that Brubaker had great help in these endeavors from artists like Steve Epting, Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice, whose shadow-heavy lines helped strike the perfect high-espionage, low-cheese tone for the book.

"It's no secret that Cap, as a character, has had some great runs, but in between them he has also had some seriously not-so-great runs,” Bru writes in the forward to the first of three hardcover omnibi encapsulating his run. “What I cared about (was) the characters."

And somehow Brubaker manages to cram them all in: the Red Skull, Bucky, Sharon Carter, Nick Fury, Nomad, Falcon, Arnim Zola, Batroc the Leaper, Namor, the original Human Torch, Union Jack, Crossbones, Sin, Baron Blood, Dr. Faustus, Mother Night, Spitfire, AIM, Baron Zemo. Each with their own role to play in the magical history tour.

The run starts with Rogers at a low point, not long after the "Diassembled" storyline and the deaths of several Avengers (don’t worry, most of them got better, except for this guy). It’s the perfect time for the Red Skull to launch a multi-city terror plan involving a branch of AIM, his old henchman Crossbones and a cracked Cosmic Cube. Except he’s assassinated at the end of the first issue by the Winter Soldier, a “Cold War myth” revived by Aleksander Lukin, a Russian energy tycoon and former military.

In creating the Winter Soldier, Brubaker pulls a long-con retcon, rewriting Cap’s history all the way back to the Golden Age, but at no point did I roll my eyes like I did, say, when I found out Hal Jordan went crazy because he was possessed by a fear monster, or Xorn was real despite being made up or (insert your least-favorite retcon here).

Cap goes missing for entire issues, giving his supporting cast a chance to tell their (sometimes convoluted) stories. We see how Jack Monroe, the ’50s Bucky who spent the ’90s looking like Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade, lives his last months, and an entire issue is dedicated to Crossbones torturing Sin, the Red Skull's daughter, until she remembers who she is. PS: Crossbones and Sin come off like the Bane/Harley team-up the Batman writers never thought of.

Every few issues, though, all the puzzle pieces are put on the board at once, and you get to see Cap and Sharon, WS, Skull/Lukin and Sin/Crossbones all get in the way of each other, such as in issue 21.

The bulk of the run is collected in three hardcover omnibi. The first covers issues 1-25 and introduces the Winter Soldier and begins his redemption arc. The second covers issues 25-42 and starts with the death of Captain America and ends with WS assuming Cap's identity. The third covers issues 43-50, 600-601 (there was a renumbering), and the Reborn mini, and tells the stories of the new Cap leading up to the return of Steve Rogers and defeat of the Red Skull. Following those omnibi is the so-called "Heroic Age," the period during which original-recipe Cap served as "Commander Rogers," head of SHIELD, while WS continued in the stars and stripes. Not long into that period, new Cap's identity is outed, and WS is called to account for his Cold War crimes by both the U.S. and the former USSR.

One thing you have to wonder as you read on is whether the world will ever tire of these two men from the past – Cap and the Red Skull – imposing their World War II beef on the present, forcing Invaders team-ups, creating new Master Men, digging up old Doom Bots, forcing the past to repeat itself because it's the only world they understand. You can definitely see why, when Rick Remender took over the book, he decided to start with a story that involves almost no actual knowledge of Cap continuity outside of Cap good guy, Zola bad guy.

There is some repetition, which probably can’t be helped over eight years. There are at least two stories about small Midwest towns that are fronts for the science-terror cell AIM, one as Brubaker just begins tracing the Winter Soldier’s redemption arc, another in a backup strip not long before Fear Itself.

Brubaker’s run made such an impact that, not two years after his creation, the Winter Soldier appeared as a miniboss in the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance video game. The soldier also appeared in a few episodes of Disney XD’s Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes cartoon, and Lukin’s Kronas Corp. building is part of the New York skyline in the Lego Super Heroes: Marvel Universe video game.

Final thought: The identity of the Winter Soldier was revealed fairly early in Brubaker’s run. Theoretically, his identity has been known to the public for nine years now. However, I took an informal, wholly unscientific Facebook poll, and there are still plenty of non-comics readers who don’t know, but who saw the first Cap movie, liked it, and plan on seeing the sequel. And while some of them have had the secret ruined for them by nerdy friends and spouses or by press for the movie, I prithee, let them be surprised. I mean, I thought it was obvious from the commercials that WS is the ski patrol guy from Hot Tub Time Machine, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing the movie with someone who, when they see the big reveal, drops their jaw in shock. I say let them have that moment.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 3/12

Batgirl #29
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Fernando Pasarin

Gail Simone's Batgirl has been a consistently enjoyable comic, one that does a good job of mixing action, emotion, and character. This most recent issue was the second part of a two part story where Batgirl and her friend and sometimes partner Strix, a Talon of the Court of Owls who abandoned the Court, are up against Silver, a vampire hunter who believes the Batman family are vampires who have taken control of Gotham. Silver is a good addition to the pantheon of anti-heroes or villains, as he is clearly unbalanced, but is trying to do something good. He has kidnapped a small child, but I don't think I'm spoiling too much of a twist when its revealed he was actually right and she is a vampire.Artist Fernando Pasarin does a great job drawing the fight scenes between Batgirl and Strix and Silver and his companion/valet Miss Targa; they're well choreographed martial arts fights. What I found very interesting was also an interaction between Batgirl and Strix. After Silver escapes at the beginning of the issue, Strix makes it clear to Batgirl that she will kill Silver if he has harmed the girl that was kidnapped. And while Strix tells Batgirl she will not kill, she is lying. And while there is no murder by issue's end, I think we're going to see further conflict between the two; Strix was trained to be a killer, and it'll be hard for her to break that training. Next issue is a fill in, and the one after that sees the return of one of my favorite Gail Simone creation, Ragdoll of Secret Six fame, so I have a feeling you'll be hearing about Batgirl again here soon.

Batman #29
Story: Scott Snyder
Art: Greg Capullo

Batman is one of the few books I right about here every month, and for good reason, and that reason isn't just that I love Batman. Scott Snyder has an excellent feel for Batman as a character, and his "Zero Year" story has been a great re-imagining of Batman's early days in Gotham. This issue marks the end of the second act of the story, called "Dark City," with Batman escaping the Riddler's death trap from the end of last issue to go and try to stop Riddler from taking over all of Gotham's technology. I believe it was Paul Dini who once said that Riddler is the hardest Batman villain to write, since he has to be as smart as Batman, and his plans need to make perfect sense on a second read through. Snyder has really captured this; Riddler feels like a real threat, something many writer have failed at, and a perfect intellectual nemesis for Batman, without descending into the unctuous snobbery of the Riddler in the Arkham video games. The issue also pays off the confrontation between Batman and Doctor Death, a freakishly re-imagined version of the first name villain Batman ever fought. That re-imagining is part of a truly impressive issue from artist Greg Capullo. Capullo has splash pages inspired by Frank Miller, as well as the horrible Dr. Death, and scenes of destruction in Gotham that sent shivers down my spine. The issue also has a scene with the Waynes and young Bruce, and its a scene that I feel is important. The Waynes are a touchstone in Bruce's life, the great incorruptible past, and seeing them with him, not as absentee parents who left their son for Alfred to watch, makes the great tragedy of Batman's life more resonant. "Savage City" begins next month, the concluding third of "Zero Year" where all the seeds Snyder has sewn will bear fruit. If he can pull this off, this is an arc that could go down as one of the great Batman stories; I'm hoping he can do it.

Batman : Li'l Gotham #12
Story & Art: Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs

All good things... Batman: Li'l Gotham has been one of the most enjoyable books on the racks for the past year, and I've been expecting the final issue to really hit a high note, and I was right. The two stories are Thanksgiving and Christmas, and each show the charm and knowledge of Batman history that have defined this series. The first story sees Damian on the hunt for Jerry, the turkey he took on as a pet in the previous Thanksgiving installment, and winds up running afowl (see that pun, folks, that's why you read this blog) of the Condiment King. Yes, a Z-List villain created as a gag for Batman: The Animated Series who showed up one or twice as a gag in Chuck Dixon's run on the Bat titles. It's a fun story to see just how Damian has actually grown to care about the turkey, and to be less of a little sociopath. The final story is a Christmas tale of Alfred and Damian looking through a family album of the family. Pictures of Bruce growing up, as well as all the Robins, adorn the pages, and are narrated by Alfred and Damian's commentary. The issue is a survey of Batman's life, and shows a Batman that we'd never see in the mainstream comics: one who leaves gifts for the inmates at Arkham and gently carries his sleeping son to bed. Batman is a character with so many facets, it was nice to have a book on the racks that showed a different Batman.I hope that we see more Batman from Nguyen and Fridolfs sometime soon.

X-Files: Season 10 #10
Story: Joe Harris
Art: menton3

The X-Files was a TV series that depended on its mystery and mythology. It was a series where for every answer you got, you got three questions. With the debut of the comic series that picks up where the series left off, the mythology has picked back up, and there are new mysteries. One of the major mysteries was how various cast members long thought dead are back. This issue, "Further Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," a follow up to a classic episode, gives us a few answers. The Cigarette Smoking Man, also known as Cancer Man, was one of the principal antagonists, and a character whose history was shrouded in mystery. This issue gives the reader snapshot views of moments in his past that may or may not be true. Ties to the Bay of Pigs and various other historic events, as well as his connection to the Mulder family, are explored, and moments with his own family show the history of the enigmatic figure. The art by menton3 is in the style of Ben Templesmith, heavily lined and full of shadow, works with the subject matter and character. As I said before, the issue gives the reader new questions to ask by the end, but those questions keep the reader coming back for more, and that's a big part of the appeal of The X-Files.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 3/5

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #3
Story: Sholly Fisch
Art: Dario Brizuela

Sholly Fisch's Scooby-Doo Team-Up is one of the most fun books on the rack. While absolutely an all ages book, and completely accessible to everyone, it also is full of great nods to DC Comics past and the history fo Scooby-Doo. Last issue featured the Mystery Analysts of Gotham from the 60s, including many classic DC detectives, and this issue brings us not only two serious C-List Bat villains, The Spook and False Face, and references to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, but also brings in Bat-Mite. It reads like most Bat-Mite stories, with Bat-Mite coming in to "help" Batman and in the process making everything much worse, but adds in Scooby-Mite, a fifth dimensional imp who is Scooby-Doo's biggest fan. This leads to an amusing deconstruction of the whole Scooby-Doo formula that still shows the value of the characters. Fisch does a perfect job of blending the Caped Crusader and Mystery, Inc. It would surprise no one that Fisch wrote the tie-in comic for Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a series that was based around such blendings. The issue's end adds in another reference, this one to the Teen Titans cartoon that serves as a nice little cherry on top of the issue. If you enjoy Batman or Scooby-Doo this is a great issue to give a read.

She-Hulk #2
Story: Charles Soule
Art: Javier Pulido

Charles Soule has been doing a great job picking up where Scott Snyder  left off on Swamp Thing, but as good as that book is, his She-Hulk is an even more impressive feat. Two issues in, and it's already creeping high up on my list of best comics on the rack. After hanging out her shingle for her own law firm at the end of last issue, this issue sees Jen Walters, She-Hulk, attempting to get her firm going. We start to meet the rest of the cast of the series, including her new paralegal, Angie Huang, who has a pet monkey that goes everywhere with her and whose cryptic answers to Jen's questions clearly indicate there's more to her then meets the eye, and Sharon King, the owner of the building Jen has set up shop in, who is a mutant who lost her powers and now rents to exclusively super powered clientele. After a day of making no progress thanks to the law firm she left last issue who are out to blackball her, Jen heads out for a night on the town with Patsy Walker, another former Avenger, Hellcat. Patsy seems to be as hard up as Jen is, and when she gets a few too many in her, she leads Jen to assault an A.I.M. lab that she heard about. We get a short but comedic battle between two A.I.M. goons in cyber suits and Jen, and by the end of the battle, Jen has one more employee in Patsy. One of the nice touches is hearing the A.I.M. goons talking about how taking out She-Hulk will get back to his higher ups and help him make more money to support his kids. That kind of dialogue adds a nice touch of realism to the book. The final page looks to be setting up Jen's first big case and setting her firmly in the sights of one of the Marvel Universe's biggest bads. If you've been enjoying Marvel's sleeper hit Hawkeye, this is definitely a book you should be reading.

Velvet #4
Story: Ed Brubaker
Art: Steve Epting

Velvet is a great example of everything Image Comics is doing right. It reads like nothing else on the rack and takes it's genre by the throat and does amazing things with it. After her disastrous mission in the previous issue to Belgrade, Velvet Templeton has a lead on Agent X-14's movements, hopefully getting her closer to who framed her for murder. Set in Monaco at the Carnival of Fools, we get Steve Epting at his best, drawing opulent and realistic backgrounds and characters in classy clothes and wild costumes. Velvet is hunting Roman, and Ex-KGB agent who has gone freelance, and finds him at a casino, playing Baccarat. Brubaker makes a fun joke about Baccarat, something I think many of us who have read James Bond has thought, and pretty soon, Velvet is caught up in another fight with spies. The fight scenes that Brubaker writes and Epting draws are brutal, and I like the internal monologue playing in Velvet's head; Brubaker makes it clear that fighting isn't a game to Velvet, that this is part of the job and she's willing to do anything to end it as quickly as possible. The issues ends with some classic spy banter, and another hint of Velvet's mysterious past. Brubaker has done a great job of balancing the plot driving each individual issue with the overarcing plot of the series, allowing for each issue to feel almost complete in itself, something many writer's can't do. With Captain America: The Winter Soldier, based on a series by this book's creative team, coming out in less than a month, this is a great time to jump onto Brubaker and Epting's creator owner spy series.

Recommended Reading for 3/7: JL8

And now for something slightly different...

I've written about Tiny Titans before, the Art Baltazar/Franco Aureliani book about the sidekicks of superheroes as little kids in Sidekick Elementary. Well, this week I'm writing about a webcomic, the first one I've ever specifically recommended. It's called JL8, written and drawn by Yale Stewart, and when I heard about it, I thought it was going to be similar to Tiny Titans, only featuring the Justice League. But it's something else entirely, and something really great at that.

JL8 centers around the students at Schwartz Elementary (named for DC Editor Julie Schwartz, the editor known to be principally responsible for the Silver Age at DC Comics), and their adventures in and around school. It's a blend of schoolyard hijinks, character pieces, comedy, and a little bit of action here and there. Stewart does a great job in balancing the humor with the character, like many a good comic strip does. The characters are all eight years old, and the plots maintain a threat level that works with small kids; the main nemesis we've seen the young heroes deal with is a schoolyard Legion of Doom, but we'll get to them later.

The principal cast of the strip are most of the traditional Justice League, and read perfectly like younger versions of those characters. Clark (Superman) is kind and thoughtful. His best friend, Bruce (Batman), is brooding and a bit standoffish, but is a great friend to Clark. Barry (Flash) is always in a hurry, and talks faster than he thinks. Hal (Green Lantern) is swaggering and confident. Diana (Wonder Woman) is sweet, but maybe the toughest of the kids. J'onn (Martian Manhunter) is the transfer student from Mars, still learning what it's like to be an Earth kid. The one main cast member who isn't one of the original JLA is Karen (Power Girl); it's nice to have another girl in the cast to give Diana a girl friend to talk to. She's spunky, and loves ponies.

Stewart's webcomic works like a classic comic strip, where each installment stands on its own, but if you read for a little while, you get caught up in the larger plotlines that he's been building for some time now. The strange little kid "romance" between Bruce and Karen has been going for a while, with Bruce revealing he likes Karen, and her being interested since he has horses. Or the various scenes of J'onn learning about what it means to be an Earth kid.

There have been a couple of major arcs over the course of the series. In one, Bruce, Clark, and Hal save a grandma from a mugger, and when the paper calls them "kids," they get tough new costumes to show what big guys they are (costumes that funnily resemble the New 52 versions of their costumes), but there's a lesson about heroism and what it means to be a grown up that is smartly done. There's also the story of Diana's birthday party, where we see a lot of typical kids party tropes, mixed with a bunch of party chaperones who are Amazons and a clown that Bruce really doesn't like.

There are some strips that really stick out for me. A personal favorite of mine is strip 27. In the previous strip, Bruce left Clark at Clark's house, and after seeing the warm welcome Clark got from his parents, Bruce walks away looking sad. So the next strip picks up right after.

That little bit of character there, developing the relationship of Bruce and Alfred, is not just heartwarming, but it does a good job of fleshing out Bruce, who is often portrayed a grumpy and a know it all.

Aside from the well thought out plotlines and cute young versions of the Justice League, the series is littered with DCU cameos and easter eggs for those who know their DC Comics. Julie Schwartz, who I mentioned earlier, is the kids teacher, Darkseid is the gym teacher (a better job than his lunchlady gig in Tiny Titans), and Neil Gaiman owns the local bookshop. Other DC Comics characters pop up in the background or in cameos, and there have been a couple of great ones from Mikey and Ted (Booster Gold and Blue Beetle). In the same vein, if you know your "Bwa-ha-ha!" era of Justice League, then this strip is worth a good laugh.

The other recurring group of characters are what I think of as the Lil' Legion of Doom. They're all recognizable, but I have to admit, I love the version of the Joker the most (not exactly shocking, huh?). Not a clown yet, he's still the Red Hood, made clear by his red hoodie, which is a great touch. Aside from Joker, we get Lex Luthor, Cheetah, Captain Cold, Toyman, Poison Ivy, and Solomon Grundy.

JL8 is a webcomic that does so many things right. It takes advantage of the serialized format, and does fun things with characters that you wouldn't see in DC Comics. It's an all ages strip that you can share with your kids to help foster a love of these great characters, and isn't that something that we all should do?

JL8 is updated usually twice a week, and can be found HERE. You can also follow the strip on Facebook and Twitter.

Oh Warren, You and Your Ideas

Writer Warren Ellis launches a new volume of Moon Knight for Marvel this week, with art by Declan Shalvey. In many ways, Ellis is the perfect writer for this character, whom he previously worked with in a six-issue run on Secret Avengers in 2011. Ellis is a man who loves throwing high-concept, futuristic, pseudoscientific ideas at the wall to see if they stick, and Moon Knight is the vessel of vengeance for an Egyptian moon god or something. In a recent CBR interview, Ellis said of writing MK, “You can get really weird. Also, you can provide, as an entire plotline, the sentence ‘punching ghosts,’ and nobody bats an eyelid.” Stop. You had me at hello, I’m Warren Ellis.

As we look to Moon Knight’s future, let us also look to the past, to but a small sampling of Ellis’ most outré ideas:

The alien race that killed its own god (Excalibur): In 1994, Marvel gave Ellis the then-third-tier X-book Excalibur to infuse with his dark, distinctly British sensibility. Among his first acts was creating the snarky but haunted spook Pete Wisdom and teaming him up with not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman Kitty Pryde. Together they discovered Wisdom's employer, Black Air, was experimenting on an alien race called the Uncreated, self-named because they killed their own deity as a means to conquer their inferiority complex. After doing so, the race traveled the stars looking to exterminate any lifeforms that did not embrace their atheism. Ellis next used the Uncreated in 1995's Starjammers miniseries, in which the titular space pirates defeated the nasties by projecting an image of their god, leading the Uncreated to commit seppuku. (For more on Ellis’ Excalibur run, read Matt’s Recommended Reading column from last May.)

The most obvious visual representation of Darwinism ever? (Storm 1-4): Ellis and Terry Dodson did a four-issue Storm mini in early 1996 that picked up a few dangling Morlock/Gene Nation plot threads from earlier in the ’90s. Storm is shunted into an alternate dimension run by Colossus’ brother Mikhail Rasputin, last seen flooding the Morlock tunnels and disappearing with the undercity dwellers. In Rasputin’s pocket world, where time moves in erratic patterns, the Morlocks were trained to become Gene Nation terrorists by climbing The Hill. Literally, every denizen of this world had to scale and survive a giant hill to prove their fitness and worth to Rasputin.

The bowel disrupter (Transmetropolitan): “Now, what setting? Watery, loose … prolapse.” One of Ellis’ greatest triumphs and crazy-idea farms is this 60-issue Vertigo series starring Spider Jerusalem, a futuristic Hunter S. Thompson whose work for The Word uncovers the dirty deeds of one president after another and puts a big old target on his back. It’s a near-future world in which people fight for the right to change species and there’s a children’s show called “Sex Puppets.” There’s also a gun that makes people poop themselves, which Jerusalem uses to threaten stripper turned “filthy assistant” Channon Yarrow and actually uses on the president known as The Beast in issue #4 in 1997.

Superman and Batman as a gay power couple (The Authority): Ellis ported Superman analogue Apollo and Batman analogue Midnighter from Stormwatch to The Authority. In their new book, the two were revealed to be a gay couple. Back in 1999, this didn't happen all that often, and so the book received a GLAAD award. Arguably these two paved the way for other gay couples in comics such as Northstar and Kyle Jinadu, Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer, and Wiccan and Hulkling.

Right-tool-for-the-job expert-dispatch service (Global Frequency): This 2002-04 Wildstorm book may be the best example of what happens when Ellis favors concepts over characters. Global Frequency was a 1,001-member organization (about on par with Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers cast) of the world’s foremost experts in their field, who are called in as crises warrant based on field of expertise and proximity. In a way it was like a super-serious version of G.I. Joe, with a mix of military, intelligence, scientists, ex-cons and the like all working to save the world, except the characters didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to decipher who the Shipwreck and Roadblock analogues were. Even the artists changed from issue to issue. Also it was almost a TV show.

The guy who buggers cars (Two-Step): In 2003-04, Ellis wrote a quickie three-issue miniseries for Wildstorm with Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti about a bored, cheeky London camgirl named Rosi and a zen gun-for-hire named Tony who run afoul of a gang whose trademark is having artificially large wedding tackle. Among their number is a Baby Huey of a man named Ron who enjoys having sex with cars to the point where they explode. According to TLC’s My Strange Addiction, this is a real thing.

Having Iron Man inside you (Iron Man: Extremis): In 2005-06, Ellis got to tinker with Iron Man's origin, tying the creation of the first Iron Man suit to the war in Afghanistan as part of a six-issue arc that introduces the concept of Extremis, a nanotech virus that allows fir the constant healing and enhancing of the body in the latest attempt to re-create the Super Soldier Serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. Tony infects himself with Extremis and in so doing becomes one with Iron Man, allowing parts of it into his bones and give his brain a complete upgrade. Elements of the Extremis story were used in the Iron Man movies, including the updated origin story.

Supervillain marketing (Thunderbolts 110-121): Ellis took over Thunderbolts after Civil War in 2007-08. During that period, the ’Bolts were Colorado’s Initiative superteam and were run by a Tommy Lee Jones-looking Norman Osborn. Osborn used his business acumen (when he wasn’t using his crazy acumen) to market the team through Saturday morning cartoon commercials, brainwashing kids into rooting for psychotic killers like Bullseye, Venom and the Strucker twin who was in love with his dead sister.

Honorable mention: Warren’s novel ideas (Crooked Little Vein, 2007; Gun Machine, 2013): Ellis’ two published novels are every bit as idea-rich as his comics. Without going too deep into either, it should be noted that in Crooked Little Vein, the two main characters inject saline into their genitals to artificially swell them and then have sex, and in Gun Machine, a Wall Street financier explains that the key to the future of financial-market real estate is pingback, the time it takes information to transmit from a given location, to ensure the fastest, most competitive buying and selling.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 2/26

So, do to various things this weekend, I was not able to finish this week's stack. I might try to get in some more reviews tomorrow, but here are a couple for today.

Beware the Batman #5
Story: Mike W. Barr
Art: Dario Brizuela

Oh, Beware the Batman... Just as it was hitting it's stride on TV, it gets cancelled, and the DVD that had the two unaired episodes left it on a cliffhanger. But even with that, there were two issues of the comic left, and this was the first one of those. It's a great little comic for many reasons, but the first thing that grabbed my attention about it was that it is written by Mike W. Barr. I've written about Barr's run on Detective Comics before, and once I finally dig out the rest of the issues from the move, I plan to talk about his tremendous Maze Agency. He's one of the best writers for a good mystery, and this issue is exactly that, a fun play fair mystery (for those unfamiliar with the term, a play fair mystery is one where the clues are laid out and you can figure out whodunnit). The plot involves someone posing as Katana, a character Barr created for Batman and the Outsiders, and killing people. We are presented with three suspects, and while Batman goes to hunt down Tobias Whale, gangster, Katana investigates the suspects. After a well orchestrated action sequence, Batman deduces the identity of the killer. I won't give away who or how he figured it out, but it makes perfect sense. This is a fun comics, and shows what this series could have been if it weren't cut tragically short.

Sheltered #7
Story: Ed Brisson
Art: Johnnie Christmas

Sheltered has been building slowly over the course of its seven issues so far in the best possible way. After killing their parents, the kids in a survivalist encampment have been degenerating into a Lord of the Flies-esque community. After last issue, when adults arrived and the kids went off half cocked and started shooting, things are happening fast. Lucas, the leader of the community, is doing his best to maintain control. The hunt through the forest for the one adult who managed to escape the shooting is drawn beautifully. It's an intense sequence, and brutal; artist Johnnie Christmas keeps the sequence intense with shadows and you feel sympathetic for both the poor schmuck who is being chased through the woods by automatic weapon wielding kids, and for the kids themselves when things start going south for them. Meanwhile, back in Safe Haven, Victoria, the series protagonist, finally escapes the bunker that she was imprisoned in a few issues back and goes out to have words with Lucas. The character development on the series principal characters is continuing really well, and the supporting cast is feeling more fleshed out with each issue. The high concept of this series and writer Ed Brisson are what got me to try it out, and while it isn't one of those major Image releases, the ones that get all the press, it should be; it's a quality comic getting better with each issue.