Astro City #13

It’s an extra weird issue of this comic — each page covers one hour of a single day, and all the pages are out of order. You can read ’em straight through, and the story’s just fine, or you can try to read ’em in linear order, and it’s just fine then, too. But it’s still extra weird.

Our basic story is this: some sort of scientific experiment has brought to our world a being called the Dancing Master. He’s generally benign, but also extremely chaotic, as his presence spurs everyone around him to romance — not necessarily sex, just romance — people seek out their true loves or find new true loves. They often find themselves getting out of their cars to dance. Not that bad, but very disruptive. While all this is happening, a supervillain called Gundog is robbing a bank, despite interference from Jack-in-the-Box. Will Gundog be captured? Will the Dancing Master be corralled?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an extra weird issue, so you’ll have to be a little patient while reading it. Some of the stuff that makes no sense at the beginning will make perfect sense by the end. And I love the shifting art style whenever Brent Anderson draws the Dancing Master — he’s not a corporeal being, so he always looks weird and abstract. I do hope we get to see both the Dancing Master and Gundog in the future.

Captain Marvel #4

Carol Danvers is trying to help out a bunch of aliens trapped on Torfa, a toxic planet. Some of them want desperately to flee, some of them don’t want to split their people up, some of them want the healthy individuals to take off and leave the poisoned ones to their fate. Carol and a few of the aliens start raiding their oppressors for spare parts to rebuild their fleet, allowing all of them to escape, but the Spartax Emperor J’Son is plotting against everyone on Torfa…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice story, with schemes inside schemes and fantastic action. And I really love the art by David Lopez and Lee Loughridge.

Lumberjanes #3

The Lumberjane Scouts are trapped deep underground facing a variety of dire threats, including talking statues, trap doors, collapsing walkways, and secret messages. Will they make it back to camp?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice Indiana-Jones-style adventure, with some of the challenges being solved physically (who knew lovable April had what it took to out-match a giant stone statue?) and some puzzled out with very clever mental solutions. This is the first issue of this one that I thought really rose above the pack.

Astro City #12

Our full focus in this issue is Ned Carroway, a man addicted to fine clothing and armed robbery. He manages to combine his passions into a career as a costumed criminal, usually as a member of a gang of similarly dressed crooks. Besides his solo career as the Gentleman Bandit, he’s been a member of the Sweet Adelines, the Menagerie Gang, the Gatsbys, and more. But can Ned ever find true happiness? Or does happiness for him really extend no further than expensive Italian shoes and a crisply ironed shirt?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wow, it’s the first Astro City comic that doesn’t have Brent Anderson on pencils. Graham Nolan does a fine job, though, and I’ve got no complaints about his art. The story itself is exceptionally grand, even with minimal use of superheroes. Ned is a great character, and it’s especially cool to get a look into the world of the themed bank robbers who populated Silver Age comics.

Captain Marvel #3

After Captain Marvel recovers her spaceship from the alien Tic, she agrees to accompany her back to the planet her race has adopted as their new home — a planet that appears to be poisonous. But Tic’s people place some of the blame for their predicament on the Avengers, and they don’t have a lot of faith in human superheroes who show up insisting they know what’s right for everyone. Can Cap win them over?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A lot of it is really kinda by-the-numbers, but Carol’s conversation with Eleanides, the leader of Tic’s people, is really very grand. She’s calm, wise, charismatic, compassionate, but also quite furious — and probably justifiably so — at Earthlings’ insistence on meddling in things they have no business meddling in.

Lumberjanes #2

The Lumberjane Scouts are going to enjoy a canoe trip down the river. Some of them are eagerly anticipating it — some of them are maybe a little too terrified of the possibility of lake monsters. Everything’s going perfectly well — until there’s a waterfall where no one knew there was going to be one. And then there’s the seriously fer-sher giant three-eyed lake monster that comes up out of nowhere. After some gloriously demented exclamations of surprise and terror (“WHAT THE JUNK IS THAT?” and “HOLY MAE JAMISON!” were my favorites), the girls wind up on land, but far from camp — and their only food is stolen by a mysterious three-eyed eagle. And then there’s the ominous tunnel deep underground…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Still not real into this “Adventure Time” style of art, but the story really is fun, goofy, and scary, and that’s a very good thing.

Ms. Marvel #3

Kamala Khan isn’t sure she’s enjoying her new superpowers at all. She’s already gotten grounded, and she’s just not sure what they really mean to her. She gets in trouble at Sheikh Abdullah’s weekly youth lecture, she’s fighting with her friends, and she gets in trouble when her shapeshifting powers go haywire and she wrecks up a locker room. And then she stumbles onto a convenience store robbery — which may not actually be a robbery at all — and she gets into the most trouble of all.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m really, really enjoying this comic. Kamala is a wonderful character. Love her look, love her attitude, love the way that getting superpowers is completely freaking her out. Love the art — and especially, I love all the funny background bits in the art — the signs on stores, the background characters, you name it.

Lumberjanes #1

Heard enough people talking about this last week, so I figured I should pick it up. Our stars are a bunch of teenaged girls at a Lumberjanes Scout Camp. They’ve gone sneaking out of their cabin late at night after seeing some weird stuff, and they soon find themselves attacked by a bunch of weird three-eyed foxes. And so there’s a tremendous fight sequence! Once the girls run the foxes off, unfortunately, their camp counselor catches them and drags them all off the get lectured by the camp director. But the director is completely cool with it — especially when she hears some of what our heroes experienced.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a cute, funny story, with art that’s both adorable and seriously spooky. Will I keep reading it? I dunno, really — I’ll probably pick up a few issues and give it a chance to grow on me.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Reactions from Comic Book Resources, the Mary Sue, and Comics Alliance make it clear — the comics fanboy community has a serious problem with desperately creepy misogyny. Go read all three, folks — they’ve all got important things to say.
• Did the first emoticon appear in the 1600s?
• I really got no idea why we don’t treat the freaks from Stormfront like the terrorists they are. (For some reason, however, the news networks seem to want me to be terrified of Jay-Z. I wonder what the difference is.)
• Neil deGrasse Tyson is just plain awesome.