The Littlest Zombie #1

Okay, I think we’re quite aware by now that I’ve got a weak spot in my heart for zombies.

So it’s the end of the world, the dead have risen from their graves, and only a few survivors continue to struggle against the inevitable. Of course, we don’t care that much about them, ’cause our main character is an adorable little kid who ain’t exactly on the breathing side of things and who likes to nosh on cerebellum. All the little tyke wants is the occasional decapitated head, but the bigger and meaner zombies knock him around and take all the good bits for themselves. But things change when a bunch of human survivors get trapped inside a bank, stuck between a bunch of hungry zombies, including one of the zombie tyke’s tormentors, and their own greed, addictions, deceit, and weaknesses. Is the rotten little squirt going to be able to get some dinner out of all this chaos?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Simultaneously adorable and disgusting. Huzzah! It’s like Christmas came early! Writer/artist Fred Perry is best known for manga-esque cheesecake/furry art, like in his “Gold Digger” series, but this definitely shows he’s hidden talents for both pitch-black humor and nicely tense drama. Good fun — go pick it up.

Justice Society of America #37

Twenty years into the future, Mr. Terrific is a prisoner of an all-powerful Nazi army that’s on track to conquer the whole world. He’s recounting events from our present for the benefit of his captors — Alan Scott has been killed, Flash and Liberty Belle have been defeated, Obsidian has been kidnapped. Lightning and Mr. America take down a dragon-riding Nazi, Dr. Mid-Nite squashes Kid Karnevil, and Wildcat and Mr. Terrific take out three different super-Nazis. But the Nazis have a secret weapon — something called the Darkness Weapon that uses the kidnapped Obsidian as a power source. It’s a machine that drains superpowers, and it can be turned up high enough to kill anyone within its range. The JSA decides to surrender, hoping to rally back later… but that chance to rally never comes. And in the future, Mr. Terrific and a small number of remaining superheroes are held powerless and scheduled for eventual execution. Is there any hope for either the future or the past?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I was generally unimpressed with the stuff set in the present, but the future-world gets points for being unusually depressing. Bruce Wayne is scheduled for a dawn execution, Clark Kent lost an eye, and they’re all trying to put some almost hopeless plan into effect to topple the entire Nazi empire. Of course, we know it’ll be successful, but how is it supposed to work, and what kind of monkey wrenches are going to get thrown in the way?

Detective Comics #863

Serial mutilator Cutter has kidnapped Kate Kane’s cousin Bette — and he’s got an accomplice as crazy as he is, a heavily bandaged woman who wants Cutter to cut off Bette’s ears so she can have them. Bette used to be a superhero called Flamebird, but she wasn’t wildly successful and she’s kinda tied up now, so she doesn’t have much of a way to resist. Batwoman is trying to track Cutter down (paralleled by how Bruce Wayne tried to track Cutter down years ago, the first time he kidnapped someone), but can she find them in time to save Bette?

Meanwhile, in the backup feature starring the Question, Renee Montoya and the Huntress have been caught on Oolong Island, international haven for mad scientists, and get tortured to find out what they’re doing there. Soon, they’re brought before Veronica Cale, president-for-life of Oolong, and they persuade her that directing them to the smuggler they’re after is a lot easier than having to deal with a bunch of superheroes who’ll eventually come looking for them.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great art, great storytelling. And that’s for both the main feature and the backup. Don’t know that I need to say a lot more than that — this is just a wonderful, wonderful comic book. Greg Rucka is going to be greatly missed when he leaves this book.

Madame Xanadu #21

This series finally leave pre-Arthurian Britain and returns to 1950s America, where Nimue has been ambushed by her sister Morgaine le Fey and buried under the rubble inside her shop. Luckily, the mysterious, super-strong, telepathic detective John Jones comes to her rescue. While Morgaine cavorts with her suburban Satanists, Madame Xanadu and Detective Jones locate a group of mobsters who have transported a strange magical artifact from Chicago to New York. They take out the gangsters fairly easily (and Mr. Jones gets to show off some more of his unearthly talents) and finally gain control of Morgaine’s artifact. But what is it, and what place does it play in Morgaine’s plans?

Verdict: Thumbs up. So very, very glad we’re finally continuing this part of the story again. Aside from getting more of Amy Reeder Hadley‘s fantastic art, we also get a lot more of the disguised Martian Manhunter, and the story is proceeding very well. Weirdly, one of my favorite parts of this issue was the dialogue between the gangsters, both playful and menacing at the same time.

She-Hulk Sensational #1

It’s the 30th anniversary of the creation of She-Hulk, so Marvel has put together a commemorative comic starring the Jade Giantess. We start out with a new story about Shulkie worrying about hitting her 30th birthday and getting visited by a bunch of spirits, including Stan Lee (Why is Stan Lee a spirit?) and the Ghosts of She-Hulk Past, Present, and Future. After that, there’s a story from a couple years ago where She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel team up with a possible Skrulled-version of Spider-Woman to fight HYDRA. And finally, we get a classic and thoroughly goofy story from the John Byrne era of She-Hulk’s comic.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Loved the new story by Peter David and Jonboy Meyers — it had a lot of funny stuff in it, like a few nods to Shulkie breaking the fourth wall, a cameo appearance by former “She-Hulk” writer Dan Slott, and Iron Man proclaiming that “I just barfed in my helmet.” I also loved the Byrne story — it really does encapsulate a lot of the things that make Shulkie so much fun as a character. I actively disliked, however, the more recent Skrull-clone-Spider-Woman story, ’cause it’s mostly just lame and unnecessary. Still, on the whole, it’s all fun and worth reading.

Wonder Woman #42

A trio of Green Lanterns, including the Khund GL introduced a couple years ago in “Wonder Woman,” investigate a planetary genocide caused by an unusual bioweapon — billions of tiny snakes that ate everyone, grew larger, then turned on each other, growing larger and larger as they ate themselves. Two of the three Lanterns make their escape, though the third gets eaten by the snakes. Turns out it’s a really impractical way of raising a really, really big snakey food source — and this time, it’s a food source that’s got some Lantern energy in it. Later, we find these snake-producing aliens attacking Earth — they’re all women, they want 100 Earth women to induct into their society, and they plan on exterminating everyone else for food. Can Wonder Woman stop a bunch of crazy alien cannibalistic snake fanatics all by herself?

Verdict: I hate to say it, but thumbs down. Decent dialogue, nice art, but the background is just too corny to take really seriously. Any society that has to rely on a food source as unreliable and inefficient as self-eating snakes is too stupid to survive at all.

Well, an extra two days away from the blog didn’t exactly recharge my batteries, but it gave me two days away from the blog, and I guess that’s saying something.

Part of the problem may be that last week’s comics, with only one or two exceptions, were perfectly competent, but just not that enjoyable. But I guess we gotta start reviewing somewhere, so let’s start with one of the few that I thought was really fun.

Blackest Night #8

And hey, if you haven’t read this one yet, I’m gonna spoil the heck out of it. You have been warned.

Well, Sinestro has merged with the Entity, the incarnation of all life in the universe, making him the extremely powerful White Lantern. He doesn’t have too much trouble killing Nekron — or so it seems. How do you kill an undead god? You don’t, ’cause he can recreate himself with any of the billions of Black Lantern zombies in the universe. And it doesn’t take long for Nekron to separate Sinestro from the Entity. The Black Lanterns make a recovery until all of the Lantern Corps and Earth’s superheroes join the defense of the planet. Deadman briefly possesses Guy Gardner to suggest that the Lanterns should focus on Black Hand instead. Hal Jordan realizes that, though Nekron claims to have allowed all of the resurrected heroes to return to life, they all chose to embrace life on their own. He joins with the Entity and inducts all of the resurrected heroes, including Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Kid Flash, Green Arrow, Superboy, Donna Troy, Ice, and Animal Man, into a new White Lantern Corps, which lasts just long enough to bring Black Hand back to life.

Black Hand ends up puking up a bunch of white rings, the way he used to puke up black rings. He brings the Anti-Monitor back to life, which breaks the Black Lantern power battery. Nekron banishes him back to his own universe (which also frees up the Anti-Monitor for use in future crossovers), but he is then destroyed by the white rings. A bunch of white rings then start flying all over the place, resurrecting the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Firestorm, Jade, Hawk, Captain Boomerang, Maxwell Lord, Professor Zoom, Osiris, and, most surprisingly, Deadman. Mera’s heart stops beating after her love for Aquaman frees her from the Red Lantern ring, but she’s saved by Star Sapphire and Saint Walker. Maxwell Lord makes his escape, and Hawkgirl is revealed to no longer be Kendra Saunders, but the classic Hawkgirl, Shiera Hall.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is what every single giant comics crossover of the last few years has wanted to be. It has all the epic stuff that a big cosmic crossover needs, with some good human level drama, too.

The few things I’m less-than-happy with are all related to the aftermath. Why bring Deadman back to life? Isn’t the entire point of Deadman that he’s, um, dead? I assume they’ll kill him sooner rather than later to get the status quo back, so why even bother resurrecting him? And my irritation about bringing Shiera Hall as Hawkgirl is mainly that I thought Kendra Saunders was a really cool character. And there’s going to need to be some explanation why these specific characters got brought back to life, and not, for instance, Ralph and Sue Dibny, Solovar, Trickster, or any of the dozens of other dead DC characters.

Astro City: The Dark Age – Book Four #3

A new player is on the scene, born partly from a rip in reality and partly from the current mood of darkness and violence in Astro City. A hooded figure riding a flaming horse skeleton, he calls himself the Pale Horseman, and he specializes in killing criminals — metahuman assassins, safecrackers… and jaywalkers and kids stealing shopping carts. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Charles and Royal Williams again miss the chance to kill Aubrey Jason, the supercrook who murdered their parents decades ago. While Jason is having trouble holding himself together after being converted into an energy form, he still manages to escape. The Williams brothers give chase, and Mirage tries to convince the Silver Agent not to keep traveling into the past, to avoid his own execution — and of course, the Agent refuses, because it’s still worth it to him to go out and save lives, even knowing what’s to come.

Back in Astro City, the Pale Horseman’s continued assaults on “transgressors,” combined with uncommonly bleak weather, has everyone in the city alternately terrified that they’ll be next on the Horseman’s list and eagerly anticipating seeing someone else get slaughtered by him. A former hero named Street Angel who’d once been mind-controlled by another vigilante into killing criminals tries to live a clean life but is targeted by the Horseman. Royal Williams runs into another ex-hero who the brothers were acquainted with when they were kids — and then Charles tracks down Aubrey Jason again.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is still a great contemplation of the Dark Age of comics history — it’s probably one of the best of its type out there. The Pale Horseman is certainly one of the most vivid and terrifying symbols of the Dark Ages that we’ve seen, and he makes a great antagonist, too. On top of that, the Silver Agent’s scene with Mirage is really very well done, and an excellent re-statement of the Agent’s Silver Age morals. If I’ve got a complaint about this issue, it’s that it’s going to be really difficult for new readers to follow. There’s a short recap of the action at the beginning, but there’s been so much happening in this series, it’s just not enough to explain everything that’s going on.

Hey, folks, I’m taking a very short break from the blog — I’ll be back on the job on Monday, but I just feel the need for a couple extra days of enjoying the beautiful weather, working on some other projects I’ve had on the back burner, and not thinking too hard about comic books.

So it’s basically two days off. Y’all can survive without me for that long. There, there — no need to cry…