Prince of Power #3

This was a great example of how to combine “awesome” with “hilarious.”

Amadeus Cho wants to become a god solely so he can find where in the multiverse his friend Hercules has been exiled. He’s recruited the aid of Thor, and they’re opposed by Vali Halfling, semi-mortal son of Loki, who has already acquired two of the four ingredients for the god formula for himself. Now Amadeus and Thor have traveled to the Egyptian underworld, where they have to find the Book of Thoth — but first they have to get past the savage lion-headed Sekhmet, goddess of destruction, and the snake-crocodile demon Apep. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Delphyne Gorgon, smokin’ hot green-skinned snake-haired Queen of the Amazons, is kickin’ ass and taking names inside the Olympus Group’s prison level — but to survive, she’s going to need the aid of her hated enemy Athena.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great action all over the place, but there are two moments that really push this story all the way to mega-awesome — the Death Scrunchie and the sudden appearance of Hathor, Goddess of Love… and Lolcats. No spoilers here — so I’d advise you to go pick it up.

Legion of Super-Heroes #3

Well, let’s see, power-copying xenophobe Earth-Man has a Green Lantern ring that drags him off to some distant planet and commands him to save the sentient life on that world — but he can’t actually find any sentient life anywhere. Meanwhile, Saturn Queen is making more plots to kill Legion members. Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass find Saturn Girl and go to help her find her children.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I’ll grant you, it gets better whenever we can see a few more of the Legionnaires, but on the whole, this comic is boring me silly.

Justice Society of America #41

It’s a crossover with the “Justice League of America” comic — which I haven’t read, and don’t have a lot of interest in reading. Apparently, something has gone wrong with Green Lantern’s Starheart-activated powers, and it’s causing other super-people to go crazy for completely unexplained reasons.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Stupid crossovers are stupid.

Today’s Cool Links:

• It’s Read an RPG in Public Week! So get out there and read an RPG in public!
• Ray Bradbury advertises prunes in possibly the greatest commercial in history.
• Here’s a cool mini-movie promoting the upcoming DC Universe Online game.

I got a great big stack of comics sitting on the desk, all ready to start reviewing for the week.

And I’m also getting a bit tired of blogging. The weather is nice, I’ve got a stack of interesting new games I could be playing, I’ve got a bunch of books I never have time to read, and I’ve got non-blog writing I’ve been wanting to do forever. The blog gets in the way of all of that.

So here’s what I’m gonna do — get all these comics reviewed today, then take most of the rest of the week off, except for Friday Night Fights. Maybe I can recharge my batteries, maybe I’ll get some writing done, maybe I’ll actually finish a book for once.

So here we go…

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #18

Batman teams up with the Martian Manhunter to take on Ma’Alefa’Ak, the other last survivor of Mars, and later, Dr. Fate assists when Batman is possessed by the evil Martian.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun story with a few twists and turns. Evil Batman is lotsa fun.

The Flash #3

Captain Boomerang gets magic black-lantern boomerangs, Barry Allen gets in trouble at work, and the Flash gets chased by the futuristic Rogue-inspired cops

Verdict: Thumbs down. It’s just not particularly fun or exciting.

Green Lantern #55

Lobo’s in town, and that means a bunch of ring-slingers are gonna get beat up. All that, plus the origin story of adorable rage-filled Red Lantern cat Dex-Starr!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of great stuff, including Hal on a space motorcycle. And the Dex-Starr origin is worth the price of admission all on its own.

Heralds #5

Nova has kidnapped Valeria Richards, and all the heroines have to go into space to rescue her. Will Frances the diner waitress be able to assist with her mysterious connections to Nova? Or is someone gonna die?

Verdict: Thumbs down. Not enough of Tonci Zonjic’s artwork. Too much confusion in the plot. A whole lot of stuff unresolved. This series started really well — I’m disappointed it ended so poorly.

Joe the Barbarian #6

Joe makes it to Hearth Castle, a deeply friendly and comforting place, where everyone promises to make his life completely happy. But Zyxy and Smoot track him down and try to get him to return to his quest.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Two issues left ’til the end of this one. Joe has to get a soda and try to save both himself and this weird little fantasy world that may be a lot more real than we expect.

Legion of Super-Heroes #2

While the Legionaires try to clean up after the destruction of Titan, Saturn Queen takes control of Ultra Boy, Earth-Man tries, probably deceitfully, to win his new teammates’ trust, and Saturn Girl travels time to find her children.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Too much stuff happening! Come on, it’s just the second issue — shouldn’t there be a little lead-up before we get this many subplots going on at once?

Madame Xanadu #24

Rosalyn is trying to live a normal life, but she’s begun to see visions of normal people with horrific injuries — visions that no one else can see. Can Madame Xanadu help cure her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice work, great setting details for 1963. Rosalyn is a very appealing character. The art by Marley Zarcone is different than normal for this book, but it works very well.

Supergirl #53

The War of the Supermen is over, and New Krypton is destroyed, and now Supergirl doesn’t much wanna be Supergirl anymore. But a new Bizarro Supergirl may soon force that issue.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice characterization, nice dialogue, cool art. Supergirl’s desire to get out of the spandex-wearing career is written really well.

Aaaaand that’s that. See y’all Friday evening.

Brightest Day #2

Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch are trapped sharing the same body as Firestorm. They can’t figure out how to separate, and they’d really, really like to separate, since they both hate each other. Ray Palmer shrinks down to see if he can manually shut off the so-called Firestorm Matrix at a subatomic level. But the matrix doesn’t want to be shut off, and it tricks both of them into arguing with each other, which heats things up for the Atom. Hawkman and Hawkgirl discover that Hath-Set, a continually reincarnating foe from Ancient Egypt who’s been responsible for many of their deaths through the millennia, is targeting them again, and they resolve to go after him this time and kill him first. The Martian Manhunter returns to Earth, investigates Professor Erdel’s grave, discovers that he had a daughter, now in a nursing home, and visits her in the guise of her long-dead father — while talking to her, he learns that he was actually the second Martian Erdel brought to Earth — and the first one was a ravaging monster.

All that, plus a seemingly normal housewife discovers that J’onn J’onzz is alive again, so she kills her family and tears her skin off. Hey, everyone! It’s the Brightest Day!

Verdict: Thumbs down. We’re getting bait-and-switched with this one. DC nod-and-winked at us to imply it was going to be a less murderous series, and it’s defintely not. And I don’t have to keep wasting my three dollars on this crap.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1

I’m a bit amazed I picked this one up. I’m generally familiar with stories about the Legion — the futuristic superhero team from the 30th century — but this one really requires a pretty in-depth knowledge of the “Legion of Three Worlds” and “Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes” storyarcs from a few years ago. This is a grown-up Legion, largely distrusted by Earth because a villain named Earth-Man had absorbed the Legion’s powers and led his faction of xenophobes to attack all non-Earthlings.

Aaaaanyway, Earth-Man is now in custody, being drained of his powers. Saturn Girl returns to Titan for a visit, along with her children. The rest of the Legion learns that, as a condition of allowing the Legion to remain headquartered on Earth, the planet’s government wants them to accept Earth-Man as a Legionnaire. While Brainiac 5 starts building a special flight ring that’ll allow the Legion some control over the psycho human-supremacist, the Time Institute starts up operations on their new headquarters on Titan. Unfortunately, they choose to use their new time-viewer to check out the moment the universe was created — something that generally leads to disaster for anyone who tries it. Sure enough, the Time Institute explodes and destabilizes the satellites that keep Titan habitable. The Legion tries to save everyone on Titan, Saturn Girl tries to find her kids, and a tiny alien on Oa takes a Green Lantern ring to offer it to one person. Will the Legion save Titan? And who will be the new Green Lantern of Sector 2814?

Verdict: Ehhh, I really don’t know. There’s a lot happening here — always a challenge for any Legion comic, since they’ve got several dozen members — but most of it makes sense. On the other hand, some of the dialogue is spectacularly over-written, and the idea that the Legion would accept a villain like Earth-Man as a member, under any circumstances, goes past my ability to believe. I’ll give it at least another issue, but there better be some serious improvement before I decide to make this one of my regular reads…

Today’s Cool Links:

• Project Rooftop recently had a competition to redesign Black Canary’s costume. Here are the winners.
• Improv Everywhere’s latest mission involved busting some ghosts in the New York Public Library.
• My sense of cynicism was completely helpless before this little girl’s triumphant expression of imminent triumph.

Well, after this weekend’s angst over the economy, you’d think I’d be completely uninterested in dealing with finances, but no! As it turns out, I decided to go ahead and get my taxes done. Wasn’t too bad — as always the biggest pain was spending half-an-hour entering in all the info. Still, I’ll be getting refund — enough to pay another month’s rent — so it was all worth it.

And speaking of taxes…

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #32

Wait, what’s superheroics got to do with taxes? Well, the Avengers owe them — in fact, they owe a lot of back taxes and penalties. Isn’t there some accomodation that can be made between the Avengers and the IRS? Well, sure — all they have to do is track down a bunch of supervillains, like Whirlwind, Man-Bull, the Absorbing Man, Bullseye, and Oog, and get them to pay their taxes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Funny stuff. The Hulk keeps getting lost, Man-Bull can’t figure out the tax code, Oog, a giant hairy monster, strolls around New York City in a beret, and Luke Cage can’t get his momma to leave him alone.

Adventure Comics #0

Basically, this is a reprint from Adventure Comics #247 in 1958, with the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, along with a short story about Lex Luthor trying to escape from prison with a reprogrammed Brainiac.

Verdict: Thumbs up. For one thing, it’s just a dollar. Just a dollar! Second, it won’t do you no harm to read the first appearance of the Legion, even if it is an extraordinarily silly Silver Age story. Finally, the backup story, though ultimately completely forgettable, does reveal something very interesting and ominous about the Guardians of the Universe and the soon-to-appear Black Lanterns.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1

This is a comic series based on the new “Brave and the Bold” cartoon on Cartoon Network, with Batman teaming up with other characters from around the DC Universe. This issue starts out with Bats helping Aquaman take out Carapax, followed by Batman traveling to London, where he and Power Girl fight a giant monster created by Lex Luthor.

Verdict: I’m going to give this a thumbs up, because the story was fine and it kept me entertained, but I probably won’t be picking up future issues of this title. I can’t say it really appeals to me very strongly. Still, I do love the characterization of Aquaman as a very jolly but somewhat dim egomaniac.

Booster Gold #1,000,000

Well, Booster’s time-traveling has already taken him back to DC’s “Zero Hour” crossover — time for him to visit the distant future of the year 85,271. That’s the date of another crossover called “DC One Million,” set one million months after “Action Comics #1.” Anyway, Booster and Skeets get caught up in a timestorm in the aftermath of Ted Kord returning to the past to be killed, and they end up getting a front row seat for the self-promotional theatrics of a guy named Peter Platinum, who reacts angrily when he sees Booster. Apparently, he decided to take Booster’s previous fame-mongering antics to their ultimate point. They don’t interact together long before Rip Hunter appears in his time sphere to fetch Booster and to confiscate Peter Platinum’s stolen costume and time technology.

After returning to the present, Booster, frustrated by Ted’s death and the constant lectures from Rip, quits and goes back to solo superhero duty. He and Skeets run into the Royal Flush Gang in Las Vegas and is in the process of mopping them up when Green Lantern and Green Arrow arrive to help… and also to accuse him of setting up the Gang’s robbery as publicity for himself. He also get a priority message from Batman, who demands to meet with him. Expecting yet another lecture, he is instead surprised to learn that Bats thinks Booster’s been doing a great job, because he learned that he went time traveling to try to keep Barbara Gordon from being paralyzed. He returns to helping Rip, who rewards him with a new teammate. And we also learn a little unexpected info about Rip Hunter’s family life…

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s really cool how much fun this series has been. Of course, it’s going to continue, but without Geoff Johns at the helm. Can it continue being cool? Let’s hope so. Speaking of cool, the “DC One Million” gimmick is pretty nifty here — if only they coulda gotten Grant Morrison to write it, like he did for most of the One Million crossovers back in ’98…

Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #16

First time I’ve picked this one up — it’s the all-ages comic version of the recent “Legion of Super-Heroes” cartoon series. And this one stars a character called “Arm-Fall-Off Boy,” a character who appeared in the original LSH comic back in ’89. His one and only power — he can detach his limbs and use them as clubs. Yeah, whooo. Unsurprisingly, he was rejected for Legion membership. Anyway, this issue focuses on Arm-Fall-Off Boy, or Floyd Belkin, who dreams of membership in the Legion and idolizes Phantom Girl, who he imagines is the most tolerant and least judgemental. However, as is revealed during a battle against a very slimy and see-through monster on an alien planet, Phantom Girl is actually incredibly squeamish about gross and icky stuff, which would certainly include AFO Boy’s detachable arms. However, Floyd still manages to come through when times are tough, defeating a supervillain named Starfinger. But will his feats of derring-do still be enough to get him into the Legion?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Floyd is a really charming and amusing character, and he comes up with some pretty funny ways to use his very limited superpowers. And Starfinger is a really funny character, setting up his evil headquarters in a local department store because he can’t afford a fancy media center like they have in their TV department, and waving enthusiastically at Arm-Fall-Off Boy’s disembodied arm.

Supergirl #21

First things first: No, the scene depicted on that cover doesn’t actually appear inside the comic. Too bad. It would’ve improved things immensely.

After the chaos of wrecking Air Force One last issue, Supergirl runs to Smallville to seek some comfort from the Kents. But the worst possible thing is ahead for her. No, it’s not the oversized cybermonster that wrecks a train a few miles away — it’s a “Countdown” tie-in. Yeah, the much-despised weekly comic shows up and spews its noxious storyline all over the place. Two characters from the old Legion of Super-Heroes, Karate Kid and Una (actually Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel after losing all but one body), hitch a ride on a train that gets wrecked by a steroid freak called Equus. The cops show up and think the Legionaires are infected with a bioengineered virus, mainly because Equus called the cops and told ’em that story. Supergirl shows up, figures the Legionaires are the bad guys until she suddenly recognizes them from the pre-Crisis continuity where she was a Legion member and…

Yeah, the whole thing is like that.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Confusing, useless, and entirely revolving around a tie-in to a weekly series that everyone hates. The sooner “Countdown” and all its tie-ins go away, the better.

On the bright side, the art by Renato Guedes is absolutely beautiful.