Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 1/20

Batman #48
Story: Scott Snyder
Art: Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, FCO Plascencia

Well, here it is: the next confrontation between Batman and the Joker, and it is honestly like none you've ever read before. As Bruce Wayne, his memory slowly returning, sits on a bench in a Gotham park, he is joined by the Joker, seemingly normal, healed, and doing fine. And they just talk. Talk about life, about peaceful places, and about life. It's a strange scenario, with the Joker now being the one who is talking about how important it is to simply be and to let your actions carry forward. There are moments where it's clear that both of these old enemies are fighting their true natures, although I think this arc has made me question of that nature is true or just a construct of what they lived through. I knew that it would be devastating to watch Bruce give up what he had built in this life to once again become Batman, and while he hasn't taken up the cowl at the end of the issue, it's obvious that's where it's going. The only thing sadder is seeing Alfred, denying, ignoring, hoping that Bruce will keep the happy ending that he has wished for him for so long. I think, when Snyder's run on Batman ends I'll miss his Alfred even more than I'll miss his Batman or Jim Gordon.

The conversation between Bruce and Joker only takes up half the issue, as the rest spotlights Mr. Bloom and exactly what his plan and thinking is. We lean exactly what Bloom believes, why he made his move now, and why he's the perfect arch-enemy for Jim Gordon's Batman. His beliefs about a twisted almost natural selection about how the city is a failed experiment, stands in direct opposition to Jim Gordon, who has always fought to keep order and keep the city alive. I give a lot of credit to artist Greg Capullo, who makes Bloom this distorted, twisted monster, whose physiology continues to morph and change, and whose minions are equally strange and monstrous. And part of the climax of the issue guarantees even more monsters by the end of the story. The last three pages of this issue are some of the most tensely paced and put together pages of any comic I've ever read, the first ending each of the plotlines running in the book on a dark note (if this were a different kind of comic, I'd think there was no going back), the second dealing with Alfred, and the final is one of the best, most exciting splash pages I've seen in a long time. He's coming back next issue, folks, and while Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are winding down their run, it looks like it'll end on a high note.

Lucifer #2
Story: Holly Black
Art: Lee Garbett & Antonio Fabela

Mike Carey's Lucifer is one of the best series ever produced by Vertigo, maybe second only in my estimation to Sandman itself, and so a new series with the character made me leery. But the first issue was strong, and this second one was as well, strong enough to want to call out for anyone else who loves Lucifer Morningstar and had my doubts. Holly Black, a writer I'm mostly familiar with from various fantasy anthologies, was clearly a fan of the Mike Carey series and hasn't thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Lucifer retains the scars, both physical and mental, from the previous volume, and he's in a buddy cop drama with the Archangel Gabriel, the same one from Garth Ennis's run on Hellblazer; we're deep in the weeds of Vertigo continuity without getting lost, and that says a lot for Black as a writer. In their quest to find out who killed The Presence (the DCU/Vertigo codephrase for God, although both of our leads just call him father) and assaulted Lucifer with a weapon of the same metal, this issue takes Lucifer and Gabriel to Hell, because where are there going to be more beings who want God dead, not to mention Lucifer suspects Hell is the source of whatever hurt him and killed God. But Hell seems to be in a state of civil war, with Lillim and some demons serving the current queen, Lucifer's former lover Mazikeen, while others seek to place a demon upon the throne again. Lee Garbett draws some great demons, and the battle between Lucifer and Gabriel against one of Hell's army is phenomenal. While Lucifer is still the star of the show, and rightly so because he's amazing, Gabriel is sort of the comedic foil to Lucifer, making glib comments and giving someone for Lucifer to talk down to; also, didn't this guy learn his lesson about consorting with demonesses in Hellblazer? Sheesh, We do get to see Mazikeen again, and Lucifer and she have a brief reunion before she gives him his next lead, sending him and Gabriel off to another famous Vertigo location for next issue. But as is the way with most comics that exist in the same world as Sandman, we also get to spend time with some mortals who are being drawn into the workings of these mighty beings. Teena Hornick has found the jar that contains the demon Azazel from Sandman with the expected malign results, and I'm curious if we find out how Azazel's jar escaped the Dreaming next issue, and Lorin Hammon, a young man who found a feather from the wing of an angel, continues to feel the pull of the feather to who knows where. Holly Black is beginning to weave a tapestry like all great Vertigo series, with threads that will intersect in hopefully unexpected and new ways, and in a way worthy of the name Lucifer.

Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat #2
Story: Kate Leth
Art: Brittney L. Williams & Megan Wilson

After Dan's sterling review of issue one, I couldn't resist picking that issue up, and loved it so much I added the book to my pull list, and I'm very glad I did, as issue two is just as fun as issue one. So, Patsy Walker now has an idea, to set up a temp agency for super powered folks who don't want to be either superheroes or supervillains, but she needs capital to start it. So she gets a job. A retail job. A retail job at a mall. I don't know how many of you out there reading this have done that, but I worked for a year and change at the Borders Books (remember Borders? I miss Borders) at the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, and boy howdy does Kate Leth capture the nightmare of mall retail.  But this is a superhero comic, so Patsy has bigger problems than being recognized by Millenials as Patsy from the comics or her painful 17 year old manager (I never had that problem. I was the 17 year old shift supervisor! Take that establishment!). When a superpowered shop lifter shows up, Hellcat gives pursuit, and not only doesn't catch her, but she hears that a mysterious "she" has ominous plans for her. But one of the charms of the book is that supervillains don't seem to be the biggest pain in Patsy's life. No, that's Hedy Wolfe, the Veronica to Patsy's Betty in the comics Patsy's mother wrote about Patsy's teen years, and the current publisher of those comics. Patsy dealing with Hedy is the highlight of the book, as Patsy reads Hedy the riot act and Hedy doesn't care. I like that Hedy doesn't seem to be supervillain evil, just mean, selfish person evil, which is way more difficult to deal with, just like it is in real life. But Patsy doesn't just have enemies. We get some more time with Ian Soo, Patsy's new roommate, and he's a great guy, and an excellent entry point into Patsy's world; she's been a superhero for so long now her life is super crazy and Ian reacts like most of us would when she casually mentions having been dead. And after the crappy day at work, Patsy calls a bunch of her friends, who all happen to be superheroes (they're all on that cover above), and they go out for burgers. I would love to see a series that as just superheroes hanging out doing normal stuff if Kate Leth wrote it; even f it's only two pages before crazy superlife interferes, it's absolutely fun. I'm glad that Marvel continues to publish these kind of fun, all ages titles, and Patsy Walker is a great addition to the bunch.

Star Wars #15
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Mike Mayhew

After the "Vader Down" crossover, it's nice to get a little break from the main action of the Star Wars ongoing, so going back into the journal of Obi-Wan Kenobi is an excellent choice  for Jason Aaron. Making the issue even more exciting is the choice of Mike Mayhew, best known to Star Wars fans as the artist on The Star Wars, the comic mini-series based on George Lucas's original draft of the Star Wars screenplay. Mayhew's art, which he colors himself, looks painted, although as I'm no expert, I'm not sure if it's done with actual paints or digitally. Still his character look phenomenal. He's doing a great job transitioning Kenobi from the Obi-Wan of the prequels to the Old Ben of A New Hope, and the same can be said of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru Lars. I will say the artistic high point of the issue is two pages of Obi-Wan going toe-to-toe, unarmed, with a raiding party of Sand People. It's a reminder of the great Jedi Obi-Wan was before the dark times sent him into hiding. The story has Obi-Wan trying to help young Luke Skywalker in a way that isn't just stopping thugs from interfering with his life or saving him from sand storms, which is a nice touch. It's not like Obi-Wan had much to do for the nineteen years he was on Tatooine other than watch out for Luke. The highlight of the issue for me, though, is a scene where Owen shows up at Ben's hut with some parts that Ben acquired for Luke's skyhopper (picture a flying go cart) and had Jawa's give to the boy, telling Ben to take them back and leave Luke and the Lars family alone. For a character who appears in three of the first six Star Wars films, Owen has very little story of his own. And while this scene is still just him talking about Luke, it really cements something that was strong subtext in A New Hope; Owen really cares about Luke and honestly thinks he's protecting him. Sure, he's gruff, but when you see things from his perspective, you can sympathize more with him. I'd like to see a similar small spotlight on Luke's more patient Aunt Beru in an upcoming issue. And from the end of this issue, I assume we have at least one more of these Obi-Wan stories in the future, as we get an appearance by the Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan without the facial scar he has in the present, a scar that could easily have been inflicted by a lightsaber. Jedi vs. Wookiee, huh? That's an issue I look forward to seeing.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 10/7

Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #2
Story: Brian Clevinger
Art: Scott Wegener & Anthony Clark

Atomic Robo is back! Again! After the first issue of the current volume of Atomic Robo, where a few of the action scientists of Tesladyne were able to retrieve the head of Atomic Robo from a warehouse currently controlled by the international super-science secret police, Ultra, we get a return of everyone's favorite super genius robot. Well, his head in a box anyway. The first few volumes of Atomic Robo had our heroes with nearly unlimited resources, but now, on the run from Ultra, they have to make due. I've missed Robo himself all these months, and it was wonderful to see that, as much as I missed him, those who work with him miss him more. I can only imagine what a great boss Robo must be to inspire so much loyalty in his employees, and how much joy in  his return. But there's much more for the team to do, and so they set off for the Disputed Zone, a stretch of the South China Sea that has dubious political ownership, where sales the Vasilia, a ship with the international super science black market (God, I love writing sentences like that), which comes from the remnants of Department Zero, the Soviet Tesladyne-analogue, which just screams for a story of its own. While the team is working on getting together everything they'll need to restore Robo, Ultra continues to prepare for the Biomega threat, which I'm sure will have nothing to do with the plot going on involving Robo, nothing at all... And back with the Tesladyne crew, well, things go well and they're able to put together a temporary body for Robo, only to be raided by Project Zero's security guards, led by... Phil, one of their old coworkers! I love that we're slowly getting the band back together, and I love the genre awareness that Robo has, when he's told that Jenkins, his right hand man of butt-kicking's body wasn't found, and Robo is completely sure he's not dead. This scene also has a great Hackers reference, which every comic should have more of. Oh, and a Biomega attack. Biomega are naturally big scary kaiju things, which are designed incredibly by artist Scott Wegener; they feel right at home in the tradition of kaiju without looking like Godzilla knock offs.  So, two issues into the new volume, we've got more of Tesladyne together, Robo back (well, he doesn't have one, but he is anyway), and giant monsters. Yup, it's Atomic Robo, and it's wonderful.

Nailbiter #16
Story: Joshua Williamson
Art: Mike Henderson & Adam Guzowski

After declaring Nailbiter my favorite horror comic on the racks a couple weeks back, how could I not review this excellent one off issue this week? It's Halloween in Backaroo, and you'd think that a town filled with so many day to day horrors wouldn't celebrate Halloween, but I looks like they do it in spades. But being Backaroo, there are certain very specific traditions, as we follow a group of kids who plan to knock on the door of the current local boogeyman, Edward Charles Warren, the Nailbiter. There's a lot of typical and classic kids out on Halloween in a spooky story/urban legend, with the one kid who's kind of reticent and his friends who keep egging him on and teasing him. And when they arrive and knock on Warren's door, they find it... unlocked. And when they go in to investigate, well, they find more than they bargained for, but less than what they might have feared. Warren is such a complicated character. I know he's a monster, a killer of multiple people in the coldest of blood, but it's very hard not to like him. He has his principles, he's a monster with a very particular code, and his kindness to the kid left behind, like telling him how he did he same thing when younger at the home of another the Buckaroo Butcher, the Bookburner, is the kind of thing that makes you hope there's something in Backaroo making people monsters and there's a cure. Of course, Nailbiter is an ensemble book, and we spend a few pages off in the hospital with Sheriff Crane at the bedside of her daughter, Alice, recovering from her stabbing and talking with Morty the Mortician, and Agent Finch runs afoul of the FBI, finding out not only that Carroll, his fiend and the instigator of so much of what has happened, has awakened and disappeared under the auspices of FBI Agent Burke, who we know has been infected with some of Buckaroo's madness. Things aren't looking good for Carroll, and Finch's hot temper has once again gotten him into trouble, which is par for the course for him. But this issue is Warren's, further digging into his mindset, and setting him of on a roadtrip. The final pages look like they're setting up a new Butcher, and the title of the next arc, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," has me already haring fiddle music. Nailbiter is a comic perfect for a Halloween issue, and this one did not disappoint.

Paper Girls #1
Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Art: Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson

Credit where credit is due, Brian K. Vaughan has range. Paper Girls, his third series currently running through Image Comics, is a completely different animal than either his space opera/love story Saga or his revolutionary tale We Stand On Guard. Set in the '80s, Paper Girls starts on Halloween night, as Erin goes out to deliver her paper route, and quickly runs into three toughs who are scared off when three other paper girls, Mac, Tiffany, and KJ show up. Erin is taken in by this sisterhood so they all have cover on this particularly dangerous night, only to encounter weirdoes in robes who steal from them and lead them to a house with a device that looks alien in the basement, and once it goes off, they find themselves in a world with a strange sky. Even stranger, when they confront the berobed men again, they are something less than human underneath and drop a device with a version of a logo familiar to us but foreign to the 80s. This is Vaughan hearkening back to Runaways, his last teenager coming of age story, but adding in psychedelic prophetic dreams with elements of the Challenger disaster, fewer evil parents, and more weird alien languages. The first issue spends much of its time giving us a feeling for Erin and Mac, who interact the most, but still spends time making more Tiffany and KJ more than cardboard characters. As always, Vaughan is working with an impressive artist, in this case Cliff Chiang, who is a favorite of mine from his work on Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and Human Target. One of the important things about Chiang in relation to this title is when he draws teenage girls, they look like teenage girls, not shrunken adults. They are also wonderfully expressive. But along with the normal stuff, he also draws a great alien machine and freaky guys under robes. And Erin's bedroom has a movie poster from The Monster Squad up in it (Seriously folks, it's around Halloween, and if you haven't seen that movie, or seen it in a while, do yourself a favor and go out and watch it. It holds up). With a wealth of mysteries, well thought out characters, and excellent art, Paper Girls looks like it will sit nicely with Image's current crop of series.

Rowan's Ruin #1
Story: Mike Carey
Art: Mike Perkins & Andy Troy

Mike Carey's comics work usually has a touch of horror; Lucifer had it's share of monsters, as did The Unwritten, and even his run on X-Men had a giant consciousness eating monster. But Rowan's Ruin is the first time in a while Carey has dived in to pure horror. Opening with a young woman being pursued by some sort of revenant, we flash back to see the woman as Katie, who has just agreed to swap houses with a British girl, Emily, so Emily can see the States and Katie can see England. Arriving at Rowan's Rise, the house she will be living in, Katie gets a bad feeling, but she ignores it, and goes about seeing the local landscape. But things are off, and Katie's bad feelings about the house get worse; it seems to eat electricity, for one, and is old and lonely. Most of this first issue is dedicated to getting to know Katie. Narrated by her blog, we get inside her head, and even see her starting to get involved with a local constable, James Hallam. But there's a pall hanging over Rowan's Rise. Inside Emily's bedroom, locked but suddenly mysteriously opened after a fuse blows, we see the room of someone disturbed; not necessarily insane disturbed but haunted disturbed. Mike Perkins is a great artist, but the scene that really sent gooseflesh up my arms was Emily's room. Festooned in horseshoes hanging from the ceiling, with a circle of salt around her bed, and a booby trap of nails under the window, this is the room of someone who is trying to protect herself from something. More disturbed than ever by this, Kaie confides in Hallam that as a child she had feelings about places, and after years of therapy she got past it, but now those feelings are creeping back. Carey plays with atmosphere, contrasting the beautiful English countryside near Stratford with the dark foreboding of Rowan's Rise. Even without the opening flashforward this would all have the feeling of a classic haunted house tale, but with that it takes on the drumbeat of the inevitable, moving inexorably, horribly towards the monster's coming. Tension is the key to a good scary story, and Rowan's Ruin #1 sets up the tension for the remaining issues perfectly.

Southern Bastards #11
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Jason Latour

One of the best parts of any of Jason Aaron's books, and especially his crime comics, is the depth and ambiguity of his characters even the blackest of villains has a side that is not so dark, and nearly all his heroes are far from spotless. The new issue of Aaron and Jason Latour's southern crime epic Southern Bastards introduces a new character, and one who I found absolutely fascinating, a character I couldn't take my eyes off of. Boone is a southern man, a woodsman. He is a bow hunter, but not for sport. He kills to eat. He's a self professed holy roller and snakehandler. He is a man of faith, who goes to church, but who kills a man because that man committed an unspeakable crime, and this is what God would want him to do. He might be the first character we've met in this entire series who can't stand football. And he hates Coach Boss, the series' principal antagonist. Listen, I'll be up front if you haven't figured it out yet: I'm about as much the stereotypical Yankee intellectual as you can get. But this issue so deeply dives into Boone's mind that I get a real feeling for the man. In one issue, Aaron has found a way to define a completely different southern man than any other we've seen, a study in contradictions in many ways, but a man who is confident in what he's doing, because he has his faith. Jason Latour's art is stellar as always, crafting the world of Craw County, and this issue really drew my attention to the colors he's using. I wouldn't say the color pallet is muted, but it's unique to the book, really setting it apart from everything else on the racks. The scenes of Boone in the woods, of him facing down some of Boss's men as they encounter each other on boats travelling along the river, and of snakes crawling all over him at his church are indelibly grafted onto my memory. Aaron and Latour are setting up a board with many different pieces in place, and this new one, Boone, strikes me as far more than a pawn. He's a knight, maybe a tarnished one, but an important piece that will be making his move against Coach Boss soon enough, and I can' wait to see what that move is.


And Dan Grote brings two reviews for two of this week's most anticipated launches...

Jughead #1

Story by Chip Zdarsky

Art by Erica Henderson

When I found out Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals) and Erica Henderson (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) were going to be teaming up on the all-new, all-different adventures of Archie’s be-crowned best friend, I pretty much yelled “Shut up and take my money” at my phone.

I was not wrong.

Jughead’s solo sojourn fits perfectly in the retooled Archieverse but also stands perfectly on its own. Whereas the main Archie book by Mark Waid and, until recently, Fiona Staples, is more teen soap, Jughead is quirky teen comedy, hence the creative team, which specializes in quirky characters and generally laugh-out-loud comics. There’ll be no talk of the Lipstick Incident here, but there will be plenty of talk about hamburgers.

With the new series comes a shakeup in Riverdale’s status quo. Longtime Principal Weatherbee is out, clearly not of his own volition, and a younger, leaner, angrier-looking Principal Stanger is in. Stanger is immediately positioned as Jughead’s nemesis when he changes the cafeteria menu, replacing lasagna Mondays with a high-nutrition gruel. As someone whose one true love is food, this will not stand.

This leads into a terrific parody of Game of Thrones, complete with a dragon, an incest reference and football player Moose in the Hodor role. Such dream sequences and other flights of fancy appear to be a regular part of the book, as next issue teases the return of Jughead’s Time Police.

The thing to remember about Jughead is that he appears lazy, but he can be quite resourceful when compelled to action (which we saw in Archie #1 when he set about his own plan to reunite Archie and Betty). The book opens with him spending an entire night killing people in a video game, then, upon arriving at school, mocking Betty for protesting the clear-cutting of trees by Veronica’s developer father. Once Stanger implements the new food policy, Jughead makes his own protest sign, has the home ec teacher show him how to make his own burgers, then bypasses Stanger’s rules by selling burgers for charity in the cafeteria, piggybacking on Betty’s open-space initiative and turning the new principal’s face new shades of red.

Also, he dispenses this nugget of wisdom by which I will now live my life: “Teach a man to fish, and he’ll bring home fish, which are gross. Teach a man to make burgers, and he’ll be the hero Gotham deserves, or something.”

Doctor Strange #1

Story: Jason Aaron

Art: Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend

Stephen Strange has an odd place in Marvel’s pantheon. As the Sorcerer Supreme, he’s arguably one of the most powerful people in the universe. As a member of the Illuminati, he’s helped manipulate events over decades. Heck, in this summer’s Secret Wars, he was literally the right hand of God (till, you know, God killed him).

Yet the one thing he hasn’t been able to do, at least in the past few years, is carry his own book.

But with a movie coming out next year, Marvel can’t afford to let its top mystic ride the bench anymore. And so, in the first week of the All-New, All-Different age of Marvel, we get Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo.

First of all, how has Chris Bachalo never drawn Doctor Strange before? His dark, psychedelic, heavily inked style is a perfect fit for the doctor. Artwise, this book is all giant-mouthed soul-eaters, tentacle porn, mystical bacteria, and floating teddy bears. Everything is in constant, swirling motion, even Strange’s cloak, which he can ride like a magic carpet or tie around his neck like a hipster scarf. (His tunic also transforms into a sleek denim jacket when he’s on the street).

Storywise, Aaron is creating a Doctor Strange for new readers, much the same as he’s done with Thor in the past couple years. An intro page quickly retells his origin, reprinting classic Steve Ditko art, but that’s all the continuity you need for this book. Baron Mordo, Clea, Dormammu, Wong and the rest of his normal supporting cast are all on the shelf, at least for now. This Strange is too busy making house calls, casting interdimensional bogeymen from children’s nightmares, wrestling soul-sucking leeches on the streets of Brooklyn, hitting on women of all planes of reality, and showing up late for drinks with his fellow Marvel mages.

Aaron’s Strange eschews shadowy meetings with Namor, Black Panther and Reed Richards in favor of pub crawling with Doctor Voodoo, Shaman of Alpha Flight, and the Scarlet Witch, all of whom take pot-shots at Strange as if he were their version of Andre from The League. I quite like this unexpected circle of friends, both for its diversity and the fact that no one is treating Wanda like the delicate continuity wormhole she’s been for the past decade.

The book’s long game appears to involve some sort of interdimensional migration (there should probably be a blanket ban on the word incursion after Hickman’s Avengers run/Secret Wars), with all sorts of be-fanged nasties fleeing other realms ahead of a coming slaughter (“Great. Another one of those,” Wanda says casually). There’s also some talk about keeping the cosmic balance by sacrificing a life for every life saved through magic. As of right now, I plan on sticking around to see how these themes play out.

Gone Before Their Time: Series That Were Cancelled Too Soon

This past week, DC Comics announced it would be cancelling a group of comics, many of which barely made it six issues, leading to a good deal of head-shaking among fandom; also this week marked the sadly premature end of Secret Identities, Jay Faerber and Brian Joines's excellent super-hero title from Image (but more on that come Monday). I'm not going to talk about the pros and cons (mostly cons, I admit) of cancelling low selling titles before they get a chance to get their feet under them, because it's not a new phenomenon. What I am going to do is talk about some of my favorite comics that ended before their time. I went back and forth on what constituted "before its time"; whether it was a plot thing, where the book felt incomplete, or a number of issues thing. I settled on an admittedly arbitrary number: no comic that lasted more than twenty four issues would make this particular list. So without further ado, here are ten series that I feel should have been given more time, presented in alphabetical order.

Captain Britian and MI-13
Ran: 15 issues and 1 annual

I wrote a whole recommended reading for this series a few years ago, but when it comes to short-lived series, it's one of the ones I miss the most. Captain Britain and MI-13 was a supernatural superhero book starring a group of British characters, including Captain Britain, Spitfire, Black Knight, Blade, a new character who was named Excalibur, and my favorite British Marvel character, Pete Wisdom. Over the course of its short run, written by Paul Cornell, the team fought Skrulls, demons, and vampires, and has the distinction of being the final appearance of what I like to think of as the real Marvel Dracula, the classy cape wearing one from Tomb of Dracula. Cornell captured Wisdom's voice just right, and did interesting things with Blade and Spitfire, pairing off the two daywalkers in a way no one had thought to before. In a time before Marvel's push for diversity, Excalibur was Faiza Hussain, a British Muslim doctor, and is more than just those things, but a fully formed character in her own right. Sadly, the introduction during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover and the tangential ties to the X-Men family of titles didn't get enough attention to the title, though Cornell was able to wrap the book up in the exciting "Vampire Nation" story. The trades for the series are sadly out of print, but with some digging you should be able to find them, or the original single issues.

Chase
Ran: (9 issues and an issue 1,000,000 as part of a crossover)

Chase is a case of unfortunately bad timing. A superhero adjacent procedural, about a government agent who dislikes superheroes but is forced to investigate and work with them, is a great pitch, but the industry wasn't quite ready for it in the late 90s. Writer D. Curtis Johnson built a hardass yet multi-dimensional character in Cameron Chase, one who had an elaborate backstory that the series only scratched the surface of. Factor in early work from now superstar J.H. Williams III and you have a book that a few years later, at the height of popularity for titles like Powers, Alias, and Gotham Central, would have gotten more attention and would have lasted a few years. Instead, we got ten issues, counting a crossover with DC One Million. Still those nine issues included Chase having to work with the Suicide Squad, investigating Batman's secret identity, and a glimpse into her father's time as a member of a 70s superhero team called The Justice Experience. Johnson and Williams were able to co-write a series of Chase shorts that appeared in various DC Secret Files issues (these sort of primer issues that gave readers backgrounds and lost stories of different major characters and teams), and Chase went on to appear in a good number of other series, including John Ostrander's Martian Manhunter and a regular spot as a supporting character in Marc Andreyko's Manhunter (both series I would have liked to last longer, but they both ran well beyond the twenty four issues limit I set for this piece). Williams even brought her back as a character in his run on Batwoman as part of the New 52. But those first issues are outstanding, and should be read even if you have no intention of following the character. DC released a trade of the series a few years back, and it should still be in print.

Crossing Midnight
Ran: 19 issues

In between epic runs on Lucifer and The Unwritten, Mike Carey wrote another series for Vertigo. Crossing Midnight was a series that mixed Japanese mythology with a more Western fairy tale aesthetic. The tale of two twins, one born just before midnight, the other just after, they each have distinct abilities that attract the attention of supernatural forces. Carey mixes in some social commentary along with the mythology, and built an interesting take on many tropes. I wish I had a chance to reread it before I wrote this up, so I could lay out more details, but time is at a premium right now, and so I might have to do a fuller "Lost Legends" piece on it in the future. Jim Fern's art is luscious and he draws some excellent monsters throughout. Carey clearly had a long game planned on this series, and the last arc, and especially the last issue, are rushed, as he knew the series was ending, but there is at least a degree of closure. The trades are currently out of print.

Loveless
Ran: 24 issues

For this title, I pushed the issue limit of this piece from eighteen to twenty four. Loveless was a western from 100 Bullets auteur Brian Azzarello and initially his previous Hellblazer collaborator Marcelo Frusin (and later with Danijel Zezelj and Werther Dell'edera) that is in the traditions of the darkest of tales of the old west. Wes Cutter arrives home from his time in a prison camp after the Civil War to find his home occupied by carpetbaggers, and the people of the town, Blackwater, hating him. The series follows Wes's reunion with his wife, Ruth, and their plans to revenge themselves against the people of the town for all the ills that occurred during the war. As with much of Azzarello's work, pretty much every character exists in varying shades of grey, no one being a purely good character, and frankly the characters here are even greyer than those in 100 Bullets. Wes and Ruth both have their reasons to be as angry as they are, and in many cases rightly so. The series moved forward in time shortly before the series ended, after a final conflagration at Blackwater that saw one of our main protagonists dead, to a series of stories that dealt more deeply with racial and social issues in America. Azzarello had a four year plan for the title, but with the end after just two, there were a lot of plot threads left dangling. The trades are currently out of print.

The Movement
Ran: 12 issues

Here's an example of how even a big name creator can have a title that ends too soon. The Movement was a noble experiment by Gail Simone to create a team of brand new young heroes set in the DC Universe. Set in a new city, Coral City, the team was fighting against a city that is even more corrupt than Gotham City. The series had a slow build, and it gradually revealed more and more about the characters, who worked outside the law to try to defend the people of the city who had no other respite from the corrupt establishment. As with much of Simone's work,the cast is diverse in all respects, and I enjoyed the simple fact that all but two of the cast were brand new characters (of those two, one, Katharsis, was introduced by Simone in her run on Batgirl, so was practically new as it was; the other, Rainmaker, was a member of the Wildstorm team Gen13). Part of the title's problems was in how it was marketed; lumped in with another title, Green Team, it seemed to be DC trying to catch the rising tide of the then very relevant Occupy movement. Simone had to explain in interviews it wasn't just Occupy DC, but was a book about power and disenfranchisement, with more of an appeal than the particular pigeonhole it seemed to be set in, but from responses I got when working at the comic shop, most people didn't get past that initial advertising to try it out, which is a shame. Simone has also said DC stood behind the book, and it did last considerably longer than Green Team. The entire series is collected in two trades, both of which are still in print.

Near Death
Ran: 11 issues

Near Death was a title I reviewed on my very first week writing this blog. A crime comic out of Image, Jay Faerber and Simone Guglielmini tell the story of Markham, a cold as ice hitman who has a near death experience and sees what is waiting for him on the other side. With that in mind, he decides to clean up his act, not only not killing anymore, but defending those who other professional killers are after. Through a series of crime stories, we see Markham's progression from someone who views other people as a means to an end into someone who can make the right choice for the right reason. He's a layered and morally grey character, which is something I always like in my crime story protagonists. Add in Guglielmini's great art, and you had a crime comic that I would have loved to read more of. Faerber has indicated on Twitter that he's working on another Near Death story now, so in a few year's time, adding the series together, this book might fall off this list, and I would be pleased to see that. The original series is available in two trades that are available at finer comic shops and on-line.

Saucer Country
Ran: 14 issues

Paul Cornell makes a return to this list, this time with his Vertigo series, Saucer Country. A mix of politics and modern UFO legends, the title was often addressed as a combination of The X-Files and The West Wing, which are two of my favorite TV series of all time, so I was sold from the moment it started. The series focuses on Gov. Arcadia Alvarado, who is running to become the first Latina president of the United States when she is abducted by aliens. Or is she? She and her campaign team, along with a scientist who is studying UFOlogy, begin to dig deep into a web of conspiracies that may or may not involve aliens, but certainly involves the US government, to find out exactly what happened to Arcadia. Was she abducted? Is this part of a decades long project? Is it just her opponents trying to discredit her? And what do the visions Professor Kidd, the scientist, has been having of the couple inscribed on the gold disc from the Voyager space probe have to do with anything? Filled with interesting characters and more twists and turns in one issue than most series have in a year's worth, Saucer Country was a great series for those of us who love a good conspiracy story. The series is currently unavailable, but Cornell has stated he would love to do more when the rights revert to him.

She-Hulk 
Ran: 12 issues

She-Hulk, the gamma powered lawyer Jen Walters, has had plenty of series over the years (four ongoings at least). And this most recent volume, from Charles Soule and Javier Pulido isn't the first to focus on her career as a lawyer as much as her superheroic one (that goes to the Dan Slott series from the early 00s). But this series impressed the heck out of me. Soule, who is a practicing lawyer as well as a comics writer, balanced Jen's two lifestyles beautifully, and wrote some great courtroom cases for Jen, including an asylum request from Dr. Doom's son, someone seeking to sell his patent for knock-off Pym Particles, and a suit for wrongful death against Captain America. All of this was set against the backdrop of a mysterious Blue File that names Jen and a group of other superpeople as defendants in a case no one can remember. I love how he portrays Jen, as someone trying to make it in a world that isn't cooperating, and her supporting cast, her investigator Patsy Walker (that's Hellcat) and her mysterious paralegal Angie Huang are delightful. And Pulido is one of the most capable artists in comics, doing great things with She-Hulk and her... it's not really a transformation, but bulking up (Ron Wemberly, who pinch hits for a couple issues, also does an able job). Soule was able to wrap up his plotlines before the book ended, but I hope to see She-Hulk show up in his upcoming run on Daredevil. Oh, and the series created a phenomenal new character who I hope we see again somewhere: Matt Rocks, an unabsorbed duplictae of Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man who is now and entertainment lawyer. Comics, everybody! The whole series is available in two trades, and if you want to see more about the series, check out my reviews here.

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire
Ran: 10 issues over two mini-series

Dark Horse Comics losing the Star Wars license saw quite a few books come to a premature end. Both Dawn of the Jedi and Invasion could have been on this list as well. But the title I felt got the most disservice was the excellent Agent of the Empire. John Ostrander, Matt Signal favorite creator, created Jahan Cross, an Imperial Intelligence agent who is the James Bond of the Star Wars Universe. The two mini-series, Iron Eclipse and Hard Targets, had very different feels, the former a techno thriller and the latter a tale of political intrigue, but both featured Cross as a slick operator with complex morality; this wasn't a goatee stroking villain like Grand Moff Tarkin or Cross's boss, head of Imperial Intelligence Armand Isard. No, Cross was doing what he was doing because he thought he was making the galaxy a better place; he is one of the tradition of Noble Imperials, a trope I love that includes characters like Thrawn, Admiral Pellaeon, and Baron Fel. Over the course of the two adventures we saw, Cross crossed paths with such characters as Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Bail Organa, putting Cross firmly in the thick of the Star Wars universe. The second mini-series ended with Cross starting to question some of the Empire's methods, and I would have been curious to see where his story went (and what would have happened if he had a run in with Armand Isard's daughter, the notorious Rogue Squadron villain, Ysanne Isard). None of the Dark Horse Star Wars material is available to order any longer, but many stores still have it in stock, so you can find it with some industrious searching.

SWORD
Ran: 5 issues

By far the shortest lived title on this list, SWORD was a series dedicated to the alien fighting military organization of the Marvel Universe. Starring Abigail Brand, thee head of SWORD, her boyfriend Hank McCoy, the Beast, her lieutenant, the alien Sydren, and Lockheed the alien dragon, SWORD only got one story before it was cancelled, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Steve Sanders, has Henry Peter Gyrich, described as the Marvel Universe's answer to Ghostbuster's Walter Peck, gets all aliens banned from Earth, and SWORD must do its best to balance obeying their duty with finding a way to get the law overturned. It's a great story, and introduces the strange villainous android UNIT, who Gillen would use to great effect in his run on Uncanny X-Men. The five issues of SWORD were collected in a trade, which was recently on one of Diamond Comics Distributors clearance sales, so you should be able to find that at a lot of comics shops.


So those are ten series I wish had lasted longer. I would love to hear from you, readers, what series you wish had some more issues. Reply to this post, over on Facebook, or on Twitter (@mattlaz1013) with your suggestions.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 1/28

Arkham Manor #4
Story: Gerry Duggan
Art: Shawn Crystal

The mystery murderer in Arkham takes a backseat to the menace of the Joker/Clayface monster "Clownface" in the new issue of Arkahm Manor. Batman is still in his identity as inmate Jack Shaw, and has to deal with the Clownface without burning this new identity and without any of his trademark gadgets. I like stories where Batman has to operate on wits alone, and so this speaks to something in me, and having him work with Mr. Freeze makes perfect sense. Gerry Duggan writes a good Freeze, one more in line with the more homicidal and emotional version in the New 52. The issue has much more action than the previous ones, less mystery and more punches, which is fine with me in this case. There are some nice character beats mixed in, with Batman finding one of the crooks he beat pretty badly in issue one, an emotional lapse I was uncomfortable with, and Batman feeling empathy and remorse for that beating this issue worked for me; a Batman who relishes beating on criminals is a step too close to the Punisher in my book. I still think Duggan's Batman could use a little work; as clever as he was in defeating Clownface, I can't picture him not being clever enough to find a way to keep Freeze from escaping, or just shrugging his shoulders and saying that is the lesser of two evils. Batman finds a way to stop both evils. It's what he does. We do get a nice character moment out of Freeze in that moment, though, so I guess it's a writer's choice moment. We also get the escape of Sybil Silverlock, a plot point I see playing out in future issue's of Gotham Academy, so I'm glad to see that plot moving forward, and more on Gotham Academy shortly. The issue ends with both a return to the over arching Arkham killer plot, and hints that Jeremiah Arkham is slipping again. Jeremiah has never been the most stable guy, and if this book was surviving the upcoming DC cull, which it isn't, I could see this playing out further. With only two issues and a special left, it's sad to see this book hitting it's stride, mixing black comedy, superheroics, and a touch of horror, just for it to end. But I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Batman #38
Story: Scott Snyder & James Tynion IV
Art: Greg Capullo & Sam Keith

Is there any more I can say about "Endgame" that I haven't in the first few parts to indicate how exciting this story is for me? Well, I guess I'll try. Scott Snyder has built a very nice corner of the Batman universe for himself over the course of his run on this book, and he calls back to it in a story that if it were his last with Batman, would serve as a perfect coda. Joker's plan continues to roll out, and every new step makes it more macabre. Using Jim Gordon as a pawn in his attack on Batman is well within the Joker's usual psychosis, and it delivers the emotional gut punch to Batman, and makes for a perfectly eerie visual that Capullo runs with in a Jokerized Gordon. Getting Julia Pennyworth out of the Batcave and aiding Batman is something I hope we get more of in this story and the future of the Bat books; she's a capable, competent agent, and I like how she plays off Batman. Speaking of capable and competent agents, it was nice to see Batman getting in touch with Dick Grayson; Snyder writes their rapport perfectly, and how he clearly cares about Batman is something I miss. Dick's horror when Batman tells him Joker knows Batman's identity is tangible. Having Batman hunt down the doctor who helped Joker create the new Joker virus is a logical step, and I was a bit shocked to see it was Paul Dekker, better known as Crazy Quilt (OK, probably not better known as anything. Crazy Quilt is about as D-list a villain as you can get). The only connection to his pre-New 52 identity is the quilt he has wrapped around him, one matching the pattern as his old costume. This new version of Dekker is a scientist, one obsessed with immortality, and he continues to propagate the story Gordon discovered and that Julia reinforces with her own research, the the Joker is an immortal. I like how Snyder ties Vandal Savage and Ra's al Ghul together with Joker in this immortality, and creates a single mythological point in the DC Universe where all immortality springs from. Whether or not that's true, though, we'll have to wait and see. And speaking of waiting and seeing, that last page of the main story is a real kicker, and something that ties all of Snyder's run together. For a story where the Joker doesn't appear for more than a few panels, his presence and madness permeate the whole story; like Dracula in Stoker's novel, the Joker doesn't need to be present for him to cast a long shadow. This month's back up is a soldier who was part of the squad injured during "Zero Year" (another nice call back to earlier in the run), who believes Batman is actually a military program of numerous super soldier. As crazy ideas go, it's not the wildest, but the extent to which it's taken is what makes it nuts. And when you're drawing a story from the point of view of someone not quite in touch with reality, there are few artists better than Sam Keith, whose style always seems a bit out of line with reality.

Gotham Academy #4
Story: Becky Cloonan & Brenden Fletcher
Art: Karl Kerschel

The mysteries at Gotham Academy are starting to unfold, and Olive Silverlock is up to her neck in it. After the encounter with something in the North Hall last issue, we start the issue with a shell shocked Olive and her frenemy Pomeline, trying to figure out what they saw. But soon, Olive is called before the headmaster who delivers veiled threats, and we get another cameo from Olive's mysterious benefactor, Bruce Wayne. Olive and her friend/sidekick, Maps (who continues to be my favorite part of the book, this buzzing, energetic geek girl), continue their investigation into the school's mysteries, now focusing on the symbols etched into the stones around the school. Their good cop/bad cop interrogation of outsider kid Eric is charming and hilarious. And as the mystery of ghost of Millie Jane Cobblepot comes to a conclusion, new mysteries open as Olive discovers the secret passages throughout the school. The cast is an ensemble, and while Olive and Maps get the most face time this issue, we still get hints of others. The couple scenes with Pomeline continue to develop her beyond the stereotypical mean girl, and her hipster boyfriend Heathcliff gets a great scene with Olive. It's a testament to Karl Kerschel's skill that Kyle, Olive's sort of ex and Maps's brother, appears in one silent panel and we still get a good impression of what's going on in his head. There's also the matter of the mysterious blonde haired boy who seems to know far more about Olive's lost summer than she does, but we can't expect answers to everything in one issue. We also meet another member of the Academy staff, and it's another wonderful Easter egg for long time Batman fans. Along with Aunt Harriet and Bookworm from the classic 60s Batman series, the matron of the girl's dorm and librarian respectively, we now meet Simon Trent, drama teacher, who was the actor who played Batman's boyhood hero, the Grey Ghost, in Batman: The Animated Series. Speaking of B:TAS, we get an appearance from Killer Croc this issue, whose design is very much reminiscent of the design from the seminal series. It seems answers are coming about Olive's mother as well, but I'm sure that even with those answers, there will be plenty more questions coming up in Gotham Academy. With it's large and diverse cast, it's plots that feel like classic teen mysteries mixed in with Gotham's usual sense of dread, and love letters to classic Batman, this is a book that has all the charms to be a breakout hit.

Gotham by Midnight #3
Story: Ray Fawkes
Art: Ben Templesmith

While the first two issues of Gotham by Midnight were enjoyable, they felt like they suffered from a case of first-issue-itis, a condition where exposition abounds, although they did better about having stuff happen around the exposition, so that was a point in their favor. This third issue, though, feels like a home run, versus the solid grounds rule double of the previous two. With the mystery of what dark is rising in Gotham firmly established, we see Jim Corrigan and his partner called to a Gotham hospital to investigate a girl who seems to be demonstrating signs of smallpox. While this doesn't sound mystical, we soon see the girl has an autonomous shadow, like a very malignant version of Peter Pan's shadow, and that the shadow is what is carrying the disease. I like the new dynamic for Jim Corrigan. I didn't read his appearances in Phantom Stranger, so I don't know if this was established there, but this Corrigan seems much less inclined to let the Spectre, the angel of vengeance he houses, get full reign, something that is understandable if the Spectre is always like he is like when he was released in Batman: Eternal; collateral damage isn't something the Spectre seems to care about. We got some more time with Szandor Tarr, the team's resident scientist, who for some reason jumped out at me as one of those quirky characters I tend to like. The spotlight of this issue falls on Corrigan's partner, Lisa Drake. I liked the flashback's to Sister Justine's past last issue, and I'm glad to see Drake get hers this issue. It looks like we'll be getting flashbacks tied into each issue's A-Plot as a regular occurrence in the style of Lost and Arrow, which I like as a way to get backstory out there without tons of exposition. I didn't see the twist of what Drake is coming, and it's not something I want to spoil in this review, but I also like that she used her brain to defeat the shadow demon and didn't rely on her gift/curse. There are comics like Justice League Dark that are superhero comics with trappings of horror; my problem with early issues of Constantine was that they had that vibe as well, while I thought they should be different. Gotham by Midnight is a horror comic with some superhero aspects just sort of thrown in for flavor. Gotham is a city that lends itself to horror, and now those threatened by the mystical in Gotham have the hero's they deserve.

Harley Quinn #14
Story: Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti
Art: Chad Hardin

There are certain characters that would have an issue titled "A Day in the Life," and would give you exactly what you'd expect. Then there are characters like Harley Quinn, where any day in their life is so screwy you get nothing that you'd expect. Harley's been burning the candle at every end you can imagine between being landlady to a building of bizarre characters while holding down a job as a psychiatrist and one in an illegal roller derby, and this issue all that collides. Between one the exo-suits of the egg man who lives in her building running amok, a broken water heater, reports and patients, and a derby bout, there aren't enough hours in the day for Harley. Oh, and she has her first real date in ages lined up. If you've never read Harley Quinn, this issue does a great job of both throwing you in the deep end and letting you know everything you need to know to get the fullest experience out of this issue. We see Harley in and out of costume, and we see exactly what kind of person she is. The Harley we get from Conner and Palmiotti is much more akin to her classic personality, and less in line with the more deranged version from the recent Suicide Squad series. Harley will chase after muggers who steal from a little old lady, but will still tie up an annoying S&M enthusiast at the nursing home she works at, and then save the life of another old lady whose oxygen tank was stolen, the latest in a series of thefts at the nursing home that are a plot point that seems to be building towards something. And she is still haunted by her past with the Joker, as we see from her nightmares. By issue's end, everything has gone completely wrong: she missed her bout, lost her date, and still has problems at her homestead. This is all done with a ton of humor, something artist Chad Hardin captures beautifully. If Amanda Conner herself can't be drawing this comic, Hardin is an excellent choice. If you're looking for a madcap comedy that is deeply comedy driven, you should definitely be reading Harley Quinn, and this is a great jumping on point.

Multiversity Guidebook #1
Story: Grant Morrison
Art: Various

Grant Morrison is a writer who can take something simple and twist it around into something you don't expect. Here, he take the typical guidebook and crafts a narrative comic around it, creating stories within stories in the way the readers have come to expect out of Morrison. More akin to DCs Secret Files and Origins of the 90s, this isn't simply pages after page of each of the fifty two universes, although that's in here too. It mixes the narrative around Earths- 42, 51, and the comic books that tie the worlds together. Earth-42 is the home of the Little League, childlike versions of the DC heroes, and ones who are attacked by the legion of Sivanas from the previous Multiversity story, "Thunderworld," before the Batman of the radioactive Earth-17 arrives on his grail hunt. Morrison makes the Atomic Knights of that dystopian world more akin to the Knights of the Round Table, which is one of those Morrisonian tropes that seems perfectly logical when you read it. Pretty soon Li'l Batman has opened a comic that gives him a view of Earth-51, the Jack Kirby Earth created out of the end of Final Crisis, where Kamandi finds caves that have a history of the multiverse on them. This elegant bit of story lays out how all the Crises that have affected DC continuity exist in one continuum, a love letter to DC history. We do get the breakdown of the 52 Earths (or 45, as seven are mystery Earths), and the issue ends with the more details of the menace of the Gentry and the Empty Hand that they serve. The Empty Hand is something DC fans can recognize from the past, as nearly everything in this issue nods to past stories. Morrison loves DC Comics, loves it's history, and this series is him telling us why. Mix in Marcus To's art on the top level Batmans narrative, Paolo Siqueira's on the Kamandi narrative, and a murderers'  row of artists on the guidebook pages, you have a comic that speaks to everything we love about superhero comics.

The Unwritten: Apocalypse #12
Story: Mike Carey
Art: Peter Gross

Bidding goodbye to a long-running series you've been reading since the beginning is a part of being a comic book fan. I've done it before, and I'll do it again. But The Unwritten is a special case. It's a book I went into super psyched for, and came out of even more psyched for. There was never a lag, never a wasted moment. This final issue ties up the story in a neat bow without seeming pat. The way that all the worlds are saved, how Leviathan (the great beast of story, not the DC terrorist organization or the Marvel Cold War Soviet Hydra-analogue) is healed, it's all a perfect, elegant solution that stared you right in the face from issue one of the current volume but only on second reading. It's a tragic ending, like most endings to long term Vertigo series are, but every character gets the end they deserve, or have earned. A heroic death for a man who never viewed himself as a hero is a good death. And some characters have learned something about themselves. I will say the Pauly Bruckner gets to return to Willowbrook Wood, and Wilson Taylor, like Roland Deschain at the end of Stephen King's Dark Tower, sets out on a journey he's made before in a way he never would have before the last journey. Tommy does finally face down Pullman and Madame Rausch, the (pun intended) puppet master behind everything that has gone before. And we get to see the fates of pretty much every important character from the book's long history. More than any other comic, this final issue is appropriately meta, and if you've read the series, you know that is a high complement.  I'm planning a longer retrospective piece on The Unwritten timed to post around the time the final trade is released, and this isn't an issue new readers can just jump into, but take it from me, this is a comic that is well worth the time to read.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 10/22

It's Halloween week, folks, and so for this week I'm going to review some comics with tales of horror and the supernatural this week. Plenty of other great books hit this week, including a double dose of Greg Rucka in Lazarus and Stumptown, a  new She-Hulk from Charles Soule, a delightfully funny issue of The Delinquents, and the debut of an interesting new direction for Catwoman, but for this week? Horror reigns in the Matt Signal reviews.

Colder: The Bad Seed #1
Story: Paul Tobin
Art: Juan Ferreyra

I did a recommendation for the original Colder mini-series on Friday, and so I'm happy to say I can review and recommend the first issue of the second series, The Bad Seed, today. Since the defeat of Nimble Jack, Declan and Reece have been living happily together. Reece is working again, and Declan is using his powers to help the insane recover; she even brings him to work to meet her coworkers and to let him help some of the patients. This bit of idyllic life isn't going to last. There is a hint that Reece is still effected by the events of the first series, as she asks him if, with Jack dead, they are safe from the Hungry World, the world of the insane, and Declan assures her they are safe, although there is a hint he is unsure. And he is quickly proven right. A new monster appears, one who has a hunger for fingers, and who is using them for some macabre planting, walking around with a clay pot and planning for something to grow. He also shows a fascination with Declan, whose fingers he "feeds." Whatever this monster has in mind, it's not going to end well for our protagonists. The plot of the issue is simple, and sets up the new series, but since it's been quite a while since the last series, I can see why. It also establishes the powers and creep factor of our new monster, which is high. He doesn't seem to have the same macabre madness as Jack, but is more focused on his planting and harvesting, which is somehow more disturbing; planting is associated with growth and nature, so to see something using it in an evil way seems wrong on so many levels. Juan Ferreyra's monster designs continue to impress, as we see the madness of the people Declan is looking in on embodied by horrors surrounding them, and of course our new lead monster is, as you can see from the cover, made out of fingers. Again, there is something particularly unnatural about that, something off kilter that just made my skin crawl. It's good to be back in the world of Colder, but beware, as its a world where something dark waits around every corner.

Five Ghosts #13
Story: Frank J. Barbiere
Art: Chris Mooneyham

Five Ghosts is back, and just in time for Halloween. While the first arc of the series, about treasure hunter Fabian Grey, who has five ghosts of great literary figures/archetypes in him, was an Indiana Jones-style pulp adventure, and the next was a pirates/shipwrecked adventure, this third arc is cemented deeply in the horror genre. Set in Romania, the story opens with Fabian saving a young boy from what seem to be vampires, and finds out the boy is bringing medicine to the nearest village, where a plague has set in. Arriving in a village, we find that Fabian is following a clue to his the whereabouts of his best friend, kidnapped at the end of the last issue. When the village elder sees the symbol that is the clue, we hear a tale of the rich family who once lived in a nearby manor, a story that is gothic and horrible, with sickness, death, and elder gods. Fabian has dreams where he must confront one of his ghosts, the Vampire, who is being brought out by being in its native, for want of a better word, genre, and though Fabian wins, the Vampire has always been the most insistent of the ghosts and I wonder if Fabian will be able to hold him back forever. Finally, we see a man in a wagon dressed as a plague doctor, you know, with the creepy bird mask, and we learn that he is not curing the plague, but spreading it, and is creating more of the vampire/zombies from the beginning of the issue. Five Ghosts is a comic that has the best kind of pulp vibe, taking all the tropes of classic adventure genres and mixing them together. It's take on horror is atmospheric, both from writer Frank Barbiere's script, full of portent and mystery, and artist Chris Mooneyham's moody, dark art working to add to the sense of gloom. The vampire/zombie monsters are threatening and wreak of evil, and there's something I've always found unsettling about plague doctors, and Mooneyham makes this one all the more unsettling. With mystery, monsters, and heroics, the new arc of Five Ghosts looks to be another exciting adventure of Fabian Grey.

The Unwritten: Apocalypse #10
Story: Mike Carey
Art: Peter Gross

The final arc of The Unwritten, "Annals of Comparative Literature," begins with Tom Taylor, the man whose father sewed his life into the life of his fictional character, and his band of allies preparing to make one final attempt to stop the evil Pullman from wiping out existence. Meanwhile, Pullman and his allies are attempting to, well, wipe out existence. But it works for neither of them. The Unwritten is a story about stories and their power, so everyone quickly realizes that tools of power from a story have no power out of that context, so a race is on, as the story ends with Tommy coming face-to-wand with his fictional counterpart, boy wizard Tommy Taylor. The action of this issue is a lot of talking and planing, so it gives the characters time to have some great moments, especially Pauly Bruckner. When Bruckner was originally introduced, he was a comedic figure, a hitman trapped in a Winnie-the-Pooh type story where he was in the body of an  anthropomorphic rabbit. But as the series has continued, a character I thought was a one off gag has grown in depth, filled with anger at his fate, and now a more pathetic figure, just wanting to get back to the story. Having betrayed Tom to Pullman, he now abandons Pullman to warn Tom. That evolution of Pauly is one of the things that makes The Unwritten great, taking something so minor and making it so deep. There's also a wonderful moment between Tom and Lizzy, his romantic interest. I've been rooting for these kids to get and stay together for years, so seeing that they are now really a couple is nice. In the world of Tommy Taylor, Pullman's messenger encounters Count Ambrosio, Tommy's arch nemesis, who has appeared in our world a few times, possessing people, but to see him in his full vampiric power (see, vampires, bringing it back around to horror) makes him seem a more daunting foe. And of course, in the background, the literal puppet master, Madam Rausch, plays the two sides against each other. I'm wondering if the story with Pullman will be wrapped up next issue, leaving Tom to deal with Rausch in the very end, or if the final battler will have three sides. One way or the other, this issue starts what should be a grand climax to The Unwritten.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 4/16

Batman #30
Story: Scott Snyder
Art: Greg Capullo

The final arc of Zero Year begins here, and "Savage City" answers some questions that have been in this book since the first page of the first part of the story. After the end of the last issue, we see exactly what the Riddler has had planned for Gotham all along, and its not what I expected. There is a touch of the Dark Knight Rises in the story, but Snyder has done a great job over the course of Zero Year of picking and choosing the best of Batman's history and working them together, and his use of the last of the Nolan films is no different. Bruce is recovering from the trouncing the Riddler has given him so far, and its good to see a young Batman who still has doubts; Miller's Batman in Year One, while inexperienced, had that singularity of purpose that epitomized Miller's Batman, the Batman who was always right on the edge of madness. Here, Bruce isn't sure if he can really beat Nygma for a moment, despite feeling he needs to and of course making the decision to with little doubt. It's also great to see Snyder's Jim Gordon as a man of action who doesn't give up. Gordon as tough guy also really has its origins in Miller (although there were times in the earlier Bronze Age before where Gordon proved that he was a good cop), but here we see him working with whatever and whoever he can to get Gotham back. After the somewhat tenuous relationship between these two characters the story started with, it's nice to see that they've now grown to the point where the friendship readers are used to is something that can be built over time. The Riddler is often a character who is hard to write, coming off as silly or simply obnoxious, but Snyder gives him a real air of menace, of being a threat to Batman. Snyder has each of his characters pitch perfect, and does something fun with his new character, Duke Thomas, the young boy who saved Bruce Wayne. Snyder has spent the past year fleshing out the early days of Gotham, and now the endgame is in motion. Buckle up; it's going to be a bumpy knight.

Batman and Wonder Woman #30
Story: Peter J Tomasi
Art: Patrick Gleason

The quest for the body of Damian Wayne continues, as Batman heads to Paradise Island, chasing Ra's al Ghul, who plans to resurrect his grandson, and Batman's son, by using a Lazarus Pit he knows to be on the island. One of the first things that impressed me about this issue was how it deals with a lot of the events that are currently playing out in Wonder Woman (it didn't hurt that I has just read the most recent issue of Wonder Woman right before this issue). I'm hoping that this gets some people who might not have tried Wonder Woman to give that book a try, as it is excellent as well. We see Aleka, Wonder Woman's chief Amazonian antagonist, interact with Batman, and we see just how near the edge of things Bruce is right now. It's interesting to see how Tomasi deals with Bruce and his feelings for his lost son, and Wonder Woman and her feelings for her lost mother. The emotional connection between the two characters is something I've always enjoyed, be it in Joe Kelly's JLA where he teased the possibility of a relationship, to other Justice League stories that simply play the two as good friends. And the end of the issue, where Bruce reflects on the choices Damian made in life as a sun rises over Paradise Island, is touching; writers are mining some excellent character material out of Batman through the death of Damian. In the middle of the issue, between the Amazonian politics and the introspection, we get a battle between our heroes and Ra's al Ghul's League of Assassins, as well as an ancient monster trapped in Paradise Island's Lazarus Pit. Artist Patrick Gleason draws the hell out of that monster and the combat. He also does the introspection well, with great facial expressions from Batman as he rages at Aleka, but boy, that monster was something creepy. The team-up book has a long tradition in comics, and Tomasi and Gleason have done a good job with this one. As the end of the "Search for Robin," story nears its end, as much as a new Robin centric book will be nice, I'll miss this format when the book becomes Batman and Robin again.

Justice League #29
Story: Geoff Johns
Art: Doug Mahnke

As Forever Evil limps to an end, we actually get one of the best tie-ins yet, with the resolution of Cyborg's battle with The Grid in Justice League #29. So much of The New 52 is gory, and dark, and at times hard to look at. While this issue does have a couple of gorier moments, it is actually full of happiness and hope. The Metal Men are inherently silver age characters, crazy robots who want to be human, but it would be very easy for writers to try to make them edgy and modern. Instead, we see them as they always have been: hopeful, helpful, and just a bit goofy. It's also good to see Cyborg out there, really up front and making a name for himself. The problem with a team book is usually that the characters in it are in their own books and that's where the that character gets most development; this is why a team book usually has one or two characters who are unique to that book to allow character growth and a central arc. This issue wraps up Cyborg's development from his first appearance, with Cyborg coming to terms with his own dual nature. As for the villain, The Grid, his arc is also wrapped up, with him dealing with his inability to feel emotion; that Pinocchio syndrome ends with a dark little twist. The issue ends with a cliffhanger that ties into the final issue of Forever Evil, which is still three weeks to a month off, but if you ignore that last couple pages, it's a great resolution to one of the plots that has been running since the first issues of the New 52. It feels like the end of the first act of this new regime is really playing out.

The Unwritten: Apocalypse #4
Story: Mike Carey
Art: Peter Gross

Speaking of endings, the first arc of the final year of The Unwritten ends with the return of a couple of characters and a revelation or two. Tom Taylor gets to finally have it out with his father, the manipulative Wilson Taylor. Tom has been through so much, and has learned so much about his past, its good to see Tom confront Wilson and have it out when they're both in their right minds, have their memories, and are alive. Tom gets a pleasant moment where he gets his private reunion with Lizzie Hexam, his love interest, and after he drifts off to sleep, he heads off to meet with the person he thinks can help him defeat Pullman, the man responsible for the collapse of stories. Madam Rausch, the puppeteer who can effect reality, makes her final plans clear, and how Tom factors into them. It's a strange and somewhat creepy confrontation, when Rausch demands her boon for giving Tom the information he needs, and while he accepts it, I feel there's more to this than what we've seen, despite Madam Rausch saying this is the last time she will see Tom. The presence of the fictional friends Sue Sparrow and Peter Price, which seem to be with him even when he is out in reality, and who seem to see him as Tommy and not Tom, is a sign of the continuing slippage between reality and the fictional world. With these deeply nested stories, the wheels within wheels, I am going to miss The Unwritten when it wraps in less than a year.


And on a couple of Batman 75th Anniversary related notes:

I really do intend to get around to writing some general Batman posts in celebration of the 75th anniversary, I swear, despite having missed the actual 75th anniversary.

I will be doing weekly analysis of the weekly Batman: Eternal series. The next couple weeks are busy for me, but I will be doing the first four issues daily after Free Comic Book Day, and then moving on to a weekly piece after that.

And if you haven't seen them, check out the two animated shorts that have been released for Batman's anniversary from Bruce Timm (Strange Days) and Darwyn Cooke (Batman Beyond). They're amazing.