Static Shock #2

Static’s encounter with the assassin Virule has ended with one of his arms severed — but then mysteriously healing itself — at the cost of knocking out all the power in New York City. The criminal organization that ordered the hit on Static isn’t happy and threatens to fire the gang in charge of their assassinations — the Slate Gang, a bunch of kids dressed up like something out of “Tron.” Can Static track down the Slaters? And can he survive any more encounters with either them or Virule?

Verdict: Thumbs up, but there’s some seriously weird stuff going on here. Apparently, Static’s sister Sharon has a clone. They both consider themselves the original article, and the family has no idea which one’s the clone — so the Hawkins family has one superhero and a couple of identical mindlinked twins who hate each other. That’s the kind of weirdness that I could accept after a dozen or two issues, but having this pop up out of the middle of nowhere is just mondo bizarro. Even if it’s part of old Static continuity, a big reboot should be your opportunity to remove something that strange, at least initially, to keep from freaking out your readers. I’m still sticking with this one, ’cause I enjoy everything else about the comic, but yowza, that’s just somethin’ else.

iZombie #18

This issue, our focus is on Diogenes, monster-fighting partner of Gwen’s semi-boyfriend Horatio — specifically, we get a look back in time at one of Diogenes’ first missions for the Fossor Corporation, with his mentor Britia, as they track a vampire clan across Brazil. On their way through the rain forest, they encounter were-jaguars, zombies, a poltergeist, and mystic dream-walkers. When they finally make it to the vampires’ secret temple in the middle of the Amazon jungle, the bloodsuckers aren’t anything like what we may have been expecting…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice done-in-one break from the soap-opera drama going on in Eugene, Oregon. And the identities of the jungle vampires were a welcome and quirky surprise.

Justice League International #1

Well, the UN is putting together their own team of superheroes in answer to the newly-formed Justice League, and the diplomatic bureaucracy hammers out a group of mostly random misfits, including Booster Gold (as the team leader, because they figure he’ll be easy to control), Guy Gardner (who immediately quits the team because he can’t stand the idea of Booster leading them), Vixen, Fire, Ice, Godiva, Rocket Red, and August General in Iron. The UN specifically removes Batman from consideration, but he invites himself along anyway. Their first mission sends them to Peru to look for a missing research team — but what they find instead is an ambush by lava monsters! Can the team pull together to deal with this threat — and the far worse threat that comes behind it?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one isn’t trying to convince us that the New Rebooted DC is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s just putting out a decent superhero comic — and these days, that’s unique and wonderful enough all on its own. Gotta admit some of the choices for the team are surprising — I like August General in Iron, but he seems even less likely than Guy to accept Booster Gold — or anyone else — leading a team he’s on…

iZombie #17

There’s an all-out zombie apocalypse taking place on the streets of Eugene, Oregon, and that’s the worst time for a knock-down, drag-out between the government-sponsored monsters of the Dead Presidents and the undercover monster-hunters in the Fossor Corporation. And even worse is the fact that Gwen, a zombie, and Spot, a were-terrier, are stuck in the middle of it. All this while mad scientist Galatea has a face-to-face meeting with Kovsky, a disembodied brain in a coffee maker, Ellie makes a new friend who just escaped from Galatea’s lab, Spot’s chimpanzee grandfather seeks shelter in the diner, and Gwen discovers an unsettling truth about how she died.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of action, lots of drama. The art by Michael Allred is, as always, outstanding, and Chris Roberson’s storytelling skills are still top-of-the-heap. Of course, the big problem for Gwen in all of this is that there’s a lot of fighting going on, and a lot of people who want to kill her — and she doesn’t really specialize in being able to fight…

Snarked #0

Roger Langridge has gotten a ton of good press for his spot-on “Muppet Show” comics — now he’s moved on to a new all-ages project based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Hunting of the Snark.” Our main characters are the Walrus and the Carpenter — Wilburforce J. Walrus and Clyde McDunk, two ne’er-do-wells looking for easy money and large dinners. The king has gone missing, and they manage to get inside by posing as dance masters and later as snark hunters. What’s a snark, asks Princess Scarlett. Well, maybe if the mighty hunters have some time to scavenge around the royal kitchens, they’ll be able to figure it out.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The main story is actually very short, with the rest of the length of the comic taken up with sketches, puzzles, the texts of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and “The Hunting of the Snark,” and plenty of other extras. And it’s all just one measly dollar! Go pick it up, folks.

Avengers Academy #17

Still stuck in the middle of the “Fear Itself” crossover, the kids from the Academy fight off some Nazi soldiers in Washington, DC, and then get given the news that they can leave the battlefield and return to Infinite Avengers Mansion. Veil and Mettle are upset because they had to kill people on the battlefield and start to bond while trying to work their way through their traumas. Meanwhile, the Absorbing Man and Titania, now possessing the powers of Asgardian gods, decide to hurt Hank Pym by killing the students. Once they break into the interdimensional mansion, can anything save the young heroes?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of good character work in this one — and lots of attention paid to the continuing evolution of the kids’ moral backgrounds. Nice to see that Reptil can change into animals other than dinosaurs, and interesting to see that Striker is actually able to talk sensibly about something other than self-promotion.

iZombie #16

Gwen and Horatio finally rescue Spot, but they’re still being pursued by hordes of zombies, leading to a desperate flight through the caverns. Spot’s geeky friends are also chased by zombies, but they’re saved by Spot’s grandfather, still trapped in the body of a chimpanzee. Amon reveals to Ellie that Eugene, Oregon is one of the places on Earth where the walls between worlds are unusually thin, making it a prime location for magic and monsters. The Dead Presidents show up to help stop the zombies, but then Horatio’s old monster-hunting friends in the Fossor Corporation make their appearance — and reveal Gwen’s status as a zombie to Horatio. Is there any way to stop everyone from killing each other?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Tons of stuff happening. Tons and tons and tons of stuff, with lots of slow-moving or dormant plot points finally getting set into motion. This is a plenty exciting comic, and it looks like things are only going to get more frantic.

iZombie #15

Gwen and her boyfriend, Horatio, are heading into the caves under the cemetery to look for Spot, who is lost in the catacombs being stalked by zombies. Horatio thinks he has to protect Gwen, since he’s the big, tough monster hunter. But of course, the zombies aren’t interested in Gwen at all, since she already is a zombie. But that just leads to Gwen worrying about whether Horatio would actually kill her if he ever found out she was undead. Meanwhile, Spot has stumbled into an underground temple to a dark god, Galatea is performing unauthorized brain surgery, and Spot’s father, trapped in the body of a chimpanzee, goes out looking for his son. All that, plus the Dead Presidents, supernatural agents of the government, finally make their way to Oregon to take on the city’s zombie invasion.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of stuff happening, but it all ties together pretty well. As always Chris Roberson’s plot and dialogue are grand, and Mike Allred’s artwork is complete fun.

Robert Bloch’s That Hellbound Train #2

Martin has made a deal with the Devil, in his guise as the conductor of the Hellbound Train, that all he has to do is unwind his watch, and time will stop for him, allowing him to live forever in whatever moment he chooses. He faces numerous temptations to stop the watch, but he realizes there are other opportunities for him to gain greater happiness. He works his way up from the street, gets a job, gets a home, gets a car, gets his pick of pretty girls, and finally falls in love and marries. But there are other temptations, and not all of them are the earthly kind.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Like I said before, I love the stuffing out of this story, and it’s fun to see it re-created here in comic form. The art is still brilliant and creepy and cool, so I’m still very enthusiastic about it.

Today’s Cool Links:

• I think we can make this official: DC’s new “Red Hood and the Outlaws” series has the worst new costumes of the entire reboot.
• Siskoid has some cool ideas about sci-fi movies you could plug Dr. Who into.
• And Bully comes up with a terrible pun that — fair warning — you will only get if you’re familiar with old Marvel creators.

iZombie #14

Gwen finds herself in an even stranger situation than normal — the most recent brain she’s eaten was from a skeeball nut who wants her team to win the league championship. Yes, apparently, there is a such thing as competitive skeeball. So Gwen is posing as a skeeball whiz from out of town who’s doing the team a favor for her “late friend” — and she suddenly discovers Amon the mummy hanging out watching everyone play. Turns out he really is a genuine over-the-moon near-demented skeeball fanatic. Horatio is having to deal with an unusually large number of zombies than Eugene, Oregon normally has to deal with. And where are Ellie the ghost and Spot the were-terrier? Well, Spot’s stuck underground where he’s been fighting off zombies for quite a while, and Ellie is trying to figure out how to get him free. Meanwhile, with the more-secret-than-normal covert ops group called the Dead Presidents, the team is planning their next moves against a mysterious zombie master — and they may be heading for Eugene soon.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The extremely rational and sophisticated Amon’s obsession with skeeball comes completely out of nowhere and is absolutely hilarious. Plus we’ve got tons and tons of intrigue and more fun stuff with the Dead Presidents.

How to improve this series: Definitely keep writer Chris Roberson on board this series. He’s announced he’ll stay on this comic as long as he can, even though DC just kicked him off the Superman comics after he saved them from J. Michael Stracyzski’s mishandling. Roberson is an incredible writer, and Vertigo needs to make sure they stay on his good side.

Hellboy: The Fury #1

Lots of backstory needed for this one: the sorceress Nimue has crowned herself the Goddess of War and plans to lead an army of monsters to destroy humanity. Hellboy has learned he’s descended on his mother’s side from King Arthur himself, making him the rightful king of England, but he’s decided he doesn’t want to lead the army of England’s noble dead, and he’s set out to battle Nimue’s forces alone — and he’s booked passage to Nimue’s castle through the Russian witch Baba Yaga, in exchange for one of his eyes.

As Hellboy gets to the castle, Nimue is having some serious trouble with unwelcome transformations and a growing realization that she’s merely a pawn of the Ogdru Jahad, who will destroy everything on Earth, including her. Alice Monaghan hands Excalibur over to an impossibly old man, who turns out to be Arthur himself, and Hellboy battles his way through Nimue’s army — and through Nimue, who turns out to be Hecate. Having come so far, is there anything Hellboy can do to stop mankind’s destruction?

Verdict: Thumbs up. So awesome to see Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo doing work this amazingly beautiful.

How to improve this series: Right now, there’s nothing that can be done to improve this. It’s pretty near perfect.

B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered #3

Young pyrokinetic Liz Sherman has traveled to a small town with Professor Bruttenholm of the B.P.R.D. to try to stop a haunting. But while the professor and the local priest try to exorcise the house, Liz and a local boy she’s befriended have realized that the house isn’t haunted — it’s the woods around the house. And their attempts to dispel the spirit aren’t turning out well — though Liz assumes the ghost was an innocent woman executed as a witch, it turns out she really was a witch, and not a very nice one. She’s using Liz’s powers to make herself stronger. How will they be able to get rid of the ghost before she kills someone?

Verdict: Thumbs up — but the ending was a lot weaker than I expected. Up ’til then, there was great mood, outstanding art, colossally awesome escalation of the action, especially jumping back and forth between the present and the past. The ending was weak, but it was still fun to read.

How to improve this series: Well, like I said, a stronger ending, with more stuff for Liz to do, would’ve been good. And the art by Karl Moline and Andy Owens was just grand, so I’d like to see more from them somewhere down the line.

iZombie #13

Gwen, Ellie, and Spot are on top of the world — they’ve solved a Scooby-Doo-esque case and have been invited to dine with Amon, the wealthy mummy who’s taken an interest in Gwen’s welfare. Amon tells them about Galatea’s dire plans for the world, Horatio ends up stuck on his own as the lone monster hunter in town, and Spot gets stuck in a bad place during a zombie outbreak. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a new group of characters called the Dead Presidents — government operative with their own strange supernatural abilities.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The entire story was great, but I really enjoyed the Dead Presidents. I suspect they’re being prepped for a mini or ongoing series of their own…

B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered #2

Pyrokinetic teenager Liz Sherman is on her first “mission” with the Bureau — basically tagging along with Professor Bruttenholm while he investigates a low-level haunting. But she’s stumbled onto a much more terrifying haunting in the woods. Liz meets a local boy she likes and remembers how her new powers ended up killing her family. So what’s the secret of the haunting in the forest, and why does it react so strongly to Liz?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m loving the artwork here. The dialogue is good, the story is advancing nicely, but I really am jazzed about the work Karl Moline, Andy Owens, and Dave Stewart are doing with the art.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #4

Sir Edward and Morgan set off to find an abandoned mine that Edward has dreamed about. They argue along the way about Edward’s hard-headed attitude about magic, but as they explore the mine, they discover that Eris has left a nasty surprise for them — a bunch of missing — and dead — churchgoers who have been raised by the witch as zombies. While they escape, Eris has more trouble in mind for them. Can they escape — and do they have allies they weren’t expecting?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The best thing about this series has been the outstanding characterization. Sir Edward, Morgan, and Isaac are all very strong characters, and it makes reading about them great fun.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Just one link today — haven’t had a lot of time for websurfing lately… But I thought this was a really excellent essay on the severe racial problems afflicting both DC and Marvel. The folks in charge think diversity gets in the way of reviving the Silver Age characters that few modern readers really care about — and ultimately, their lack of commitment to any kind of diversity puts the comics industry way, way in the back of the pack. And as long as the people running DC and Marvel feel free to claim that that 99% of superheroes should be white, there’s not going to be very much progress made.

Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #2

Ya know, I’m not sure I can even describe the plot here. Axe Cop and his allies save the dinosaurs from aliens, the evil Psychic Brothers have basically taken over Earth and attack Uni-Smart World, Sockarang meets his supposedly-dead mother, and there’s time travel galore. I mean, the plot doesn’t matter as much as the impossibly awesome details of the story. How do the bad guys beat Uni-Smart World, where everyone has a magic wish-granting unicorn horn? They put magic traffic cones over the horns. What do the Psychic Brothers use to attack our heroes? Truckchucks, which are nunchucks made out of semi trucks. How do you defeat good Vikings? With a world full of evil baseball players. What was so special about the year Zero Thousand and Zero? I’ll save that little surprise for you to read yourself.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s really hard to believe how jaw-droppingly bizarre and awesome this story is. You know it was written by a six-year-old kid, right? Six years old!

iZombie #12

Aww, Mike Allred has the issue off, so we’ll have to suffer through some random fill-in artist who — what’s that? Gilbert Hernandez? Co-creator of “Love and Rockets“? Well, that’ll at least be interesting. And it is pretty cool — like reading a L&R/iZombie crossover issue. Our focus is on hip 1960s ghost Ellie just prior to meeting Gwen for the first time — she hangs out in the cemetery with all the other ghosts, and they tell stories to each other and argue. Ellie reflects on what her own life was like, giving us a nice origin story for her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun story — several fun stories, in fact — and wonderful artwork.

Love and Capes: Ever After #3

We’ve got three storylines running through this issue — Abby and Mark fixing up their new home, and later attending Abby’s class reunion, and Darkblade and Amazonia going through relationship stress over his continuing friendship with Abby’s sister Charlotte.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nothing particularly fancy this time, just solid cartooning, funny jokes, and good dialogue, characterization, and interpersonal relationship design.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Shane and Chris Houghton, the guys responsible for the “Reed Gunther” all-ages Western comics, are about to get a run in Image Comics, with color and everything. They’re running a contest to promote it — get a Wanted poster promoting the comic posted in your favorite comic book store, and you could win a page of Reed Gunther artwork.
• The Village Voice has a nice article about the sad state of the comics/cartooning industries. And some good news that they’re going to pay the cartoonists who contributed art for the magazine, which they originally weren’t going to do.
• Mashing up “Inception” and “My Little Pony” = WIN.
• Mashing up Godzilla and Busta Rhymes = ALSO WIN.
• Okay, fine, I’m a complete sucker for high-concept weirdo movie trailers in which comedians play past and future versions of the Beastie Boys.

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #12

So Bruce Banner sees televised footage of a huge green man-monster tearing up Pecos, Texas — but Bruce has never been to Texas. At least ’til he travels there trying to figure out what’s up. Once there, he discovers a former coworker at his lab named Emil Blonsky who’s dosed himself with gamma radiation and now calls himself the Abomination.

Verdict: I’m going to have to thumbs this one down. Sure, these are all-ages books, and every young comics fan has to be introduced to the Hulk’s rogues gallery someday. But this one was just not that well done. The final slugfest is about as dull as you can get.

Batgirl #19

Stephanie is on the trail of a superspeed bank robber who busts bank vaults open and then leaves millions of dollars alone. Meanwhile, the Grey Ghost, a Batgirl fanboy (wasn’t sure such a thing existed) is stalking Steph, hoping he can help her out. And Wendy Harris, Batgirl’s tech-support and Oracle-in-training, has a rotten attitude about everything. And Batgirl’s first official meeting with the speedster, Slipstream, does not go well. Is she going to get another chance at taking him down?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Have I said before that this is probably DC’s best superhero comic? (with “Secret Six” as their best supervillain comic) Well, it still is, and if you’re not reading it, you’re a dork.

iZombie #11

A lot of stuff happening in this one. Horatio and Diogenes come to an agreement with the vampire girls running the paintball course — and they discover that there are zombies in town. Speaking of zombies, Gwen locates her brother and follows him as he goes shopping for comics. Spot asks Ellie to help his grandfather move from his current chimpanzee body to a human one. And Amon meets Galatea at the local diner, and she tells him that an eldritch horror from between the planes of existence is coming, so she hopes to sacrifice a few hundred people so she can control it.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of great interpersonal stuff, lots of staggeringly awesome artwork. This is so very worth reading.

Today’s Cool Links:

• I loved this entire article about how to create your own original superhero.
• If you like “Axe Cop” and you like the card game “Munchkin,” they’re about to partner up for more justice.
• Awesome Pony Adventure!

Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead #2

Well, Hellboy is trapped in a basement with a monster that’s part zombie, part ghost, part nursery-rhyme-quoting little girl, and he’s not doing so well. The monster can knock him around easily, but she turns insubstantial everytime Hellboy throws a punch. Meanwhile, the vampire who created her and turned her big sister into a vamp gets mad when he finds out that Hellboy killed the older vampire, so he sets a horde of zombies after a couple of investigating B.P.R.D. agents. Can Hellboy figure out a way to stop all this? Or is his usual punch-first-ask-questions-later methodology going to release the monster into the world?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nicely done story that flips between punchathon violent to understated creepy. Best place to find stories like that is, as usual, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy stories.

iZombie #10

Gwen finally goes to see Tricia Nakagawa — a girl who knew her when she was still alive — to let her know that her deceased mother still loves her — and discovers a secret she was not prepared for. Spot discovers that Ellie’s new talent of shoehorning her soul into other people’s bodies might be useful for helping his grandfather. Horatio and Diogenes have some serious trouble with the vampires. And Galatea’s plans get progressively nastier.

Verdict: Thumbs up. But this is a series that’s starting to look like it’s mired down in soap-opera plot developments that never lead to any resolution — it’d be nice to see some plot threads start getting tied down here and there.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #1

Edward Grey, former Witchfinder for the British government, has gone walkabout in the American West. He stumbles into a mostly lawless town with a destroyed church. He ends up gunning down a lot of the locals in a saloon gunfight and gets escorted out of town by a frontier scout — who probably just saved him from getting beaten to death by the rest of the folks in town. The scout reveals some of the town’s past — a mysterious incident that cause much of the population to vanish, leaving only some sort of magic circle etched into the floor of the church. So what’s behind all this? And why do so many people want Sir Edward dead?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice beginning for a new storyline — and I like the idea of moving the very British Witchfinder into a more rough-and-tumble environment.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The proposed Wonder Woman TV series sounds like a great big bag of Epic Fail.
• Best no-parking sign ever.
• Stuff like this makes me laugh.
• Ragnell wonders why the same plots are getting used over and over.

iZombie #9

Not really a cool-down issue — more a things-are-starting-to-slowly-heat-up-again issue. Gwen is out on a date mini-golfing with Horatio, which his monster-hunting partner Diogenes is being stalked by vampires. Scott the were-terrier is worried that one of his friends may find out even more of his secrets. And Galatea is up to something fiendish.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Still good fun. Great relationship work and characterization. And as always, beautiful artwork and dialogue.

Morning Glories #5

The first storyarc wraps up — Ike has betrayed everyone, Hunter buys everyone a little more time with a well-timed fire, and Zoe and Casey are on the run. Zoe gets lost, meets one of the Academy’s supernatural assassins, and gets covered in blood (luckily, not her own). And then the girls get captured again. But somehow, to the Academy instructors’ confusion, Jade is rescued by persons unknown. All that, plus we get to meet another of the psychotic teachers they keep on staff.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Most of the loose ends tied up, with a few left to worry about in the future and a few more new threads to keep an eye on. I’d still love to know what the heck is going on at the Academy, but I wasn’t under illusion that everything would be explained so quickly.

Today’s Cool Links:

I got nothing. I’ve seen no funny or amusing links since the mass shooting in Arizona. And the relevant links I’ve seen since then would probably piss some of y’all off pretty hard, so I ain’t gonna post ’em. But I’ll say something’s gone bad wrong with this country. I don’t really care how crazy this nut was — when your political discourse is dominated by veiled threats of violence, something bad is gonna happen eventually. Don’t like it when people tie the teapartiers to this attack? Too bad. Maybe you should less time waving guns around at town hall meetings.

And no, both sides aren’t just as bad — some random commenter on a blog isn’t equivalent to a former governor, former vice presidential candidate, TV news star/commenter, author, and possible future presidential candidate. It says something pretty unpleasant about her character that her first reaction to this tragedy was to try to hide her infamous crosshairs map, the second was to make a really half-assed apology, and the third was to pretend that the crosshairs were surveyor’s symbols. And it says something much worse about some Congressional leaders and pundits when they get angry because the county sheriff says there’s too much violent political rhetoric.

I’ve said a lot more than I was planning to about this, so I’ma shut up now.