Secret Six #17

This story is a direct continuation of the one from the recent “Blackest Night” crossover Suicide Squad #67. The Secret Six and the Suicide Squad are both stuck in Belle Reve prison in the middle of an attack by the Black Lantern zombies, while Scandal Savage is trapped by a bunch of Multiplex clones with a taste for arson. Nightshade and Count Vertigo get close to taking Bane down before Black Alice copies Nightshade’s powers and saves his bacon. Catman and Bronze Tiger try their darndest to beat each other to death. Virtuosa, the new female Fiddler, drops some pain on Ragdoll ’til Jeannette comes to his rescue — then the Black Lantern version of the Fiddler shows up and tries to kill all of them. And Yesemin Soze, killed in the previous issue, comes back from the dead to try to execute Deadshot and Rick Flagg.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of chaos, lots of battles, lots of fun. Lots of funny stuff, as always — my favorite ones were Bane’s complete boredom with Nightshade’s attempts at fisticuffs and Virtuosa’s fangirl glee at meeting the zombified Fiddler.

Daytripper #2

I loved the first issue of this new series by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, and half-suspected I knew what was going to happen in the second issue. I was way, way wrong. Brás de Oliva Domingos is 21 — so this is set about 11 years before the events of the first issue. He and his friend Jorge are on a sightseeing trip to El Salvador. He meets a beautiful girl named Olinda, and while the three of them are visiting the market, she tells him that his dreams of a woman calling him from the water may be about Iemanjá, a spirit of the waters, whose celebration day is coming up tomorrow. Brás and Olinda make love the night of the celebration, then she vanishes, telling him to find her on the beach. He and a fisherman take the flowers, gifts, and offerings to Iemanjá out to sea. And then something unexpected happens.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Holy cow, the art on this one is amazing. The dialogue is fun, the story is great, and as of the last page, this one is now something I want to get every single issue of.

Neonomicon hornbook

Whuzzah? What’s a “hornbook”? Martha, that comic book guy’s gone corruptin’ our youth agin with hornybooks! Git mah shotgun! No, no, wait, a hornbook is an old name for an educational primer — but in this case, it’s a short comic used as a preview for an upcoming series.

So Alan Moore, famed bearded mad genius of comics, and Jacen Burrows, hyper-realistic artist whose most recent work is in Garth Ennis’ bleak pseudo-zombie epic “Crossed,” are going to be making a new Lovecraft-inspired horror comic called “Neonomicon,” a sequel to their series “The Courtyard.” We follow a couple of FBI agents, Merril Brears and Gordon Lamper, as they visit a pschiatric hospital to interview Aldo Sax, a former FBI agent who went bad in a big way and started hacking people to death. Sax speaks in a pseudo-Cthulhoid language, which isn’t real helpful in an interview. Brears and Lamper try to quiz Sax about a copycat killer, but he unexpectedly clams up when they mention a place called Club Zothique.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Nine pages and a script excerpt. Two dollars. Massive rip-off.