Hey, Samuel, got one more for ya!

Now I’ve already mentioned the recent appearance of GOP veep candidate Sarah Palin on the cover of the newest incarnation of “Tales from the Crypt,” right?

Well, lo and behold, there’s another comic coming out focusing entirely on Palin.

This one is similar to the recent comics biographies of Barack Obama and John McCain, and a related one on Hillary Clinton. It’s aiming to be a warts-and-all bio of Palin, but unfortunately, if you’re a Palin fan, you won’t be able to get it before the election. Due to long publication lead times, this one won’t hit the stands ’til early February. And depending on the outcome of the election, you’ll either get the Happy Palin Ending or the Sad Palin Ending.

(Never let it be said that I won’t throw any old thing up just for the sake of nabbing some hits from Republican Palin groupies. Yeah, that’s right, no shame whatsoever here. Just gimme those precious lifegiving hits, ya moose-worshiping Palinmonkeys! GIVE THEM ME.)

DC Universe Decisions #3

Wonder Woman endorses a Republican candidate who’s a former soldier, while Superman saves a Democratic candidate from another bomb — and apparently, the candidate himself placed the bomb. Mind control again, obviously, but a particular kind of mind control. Oh, and Flash gets in trouble when, frustrated that the media only cares about superhero endorsements and not about the threats to the candidates, he endorses the mad bomber for the presidency. Huntress steals Lady Blackhawk’s endorsement rationale, Wonder Woman’s and Bruce Wayne’s candidate endorsements were mainly an excuse to get closer to the candidates to track down other suspects, Clark Kent is sleeping on the couch, and the assassin is finally revealed…

Verdict: I’m not sure. On one hand, the story is generally fine, the dialogue is mostly good, everything generally makes sense. On the other hand, when something goes wrong, it seems to hit EPIC FAIL. Wonder Woman’s endorsement of the Republican former soldier indicates that she only approves of him because he’s a “warrior” — fine, that’s a reason why that character might think favorably of someone, but we also know that Wondy is actually an ambassador for peace from the Amazons, so being a soldier wouldn’t be her only reason to pick a candidate. Besides, Wondy’s long-running status as a feminist icon, both in the comics’ continuity and in real world pop culture, would suggest that she’d certainly want assurances from a candidate that he’d be favorably inclined towards feminist issues. (But I gotta say, the Republican candidate makes a great speech — really excellent dialogue there.)

We also get some more superhero endorsements, and this time, there are more of them who support candidates because of issues — Blue Beetle supports a candidate who favors universal health care, and Jay Garrick likes the moderate GOP candidate because she’d “get big government off our backs, without getting us into another world war.” It’s nice to see some actual issues being cited, instead of the same old shallow stuff.

Oh, and the big bad assassin? Last time I checked, he had become a good guy. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Booster Gold #13

Booster, Skeets, and Goldstar save the life of a single woman in a tremendous disaster, because she was the only person who’d been fated to live. When they return to Rip Hunter’s HQ, they discover that Rip has been taken over by a Starro spore! He gets away in his time sphere and changes history so that the entire world has been dominated by Starro for centuries. They foil the initial plot, but Rip gets away, and soon they’re attacked by a bunch of Starro-dominated supervillains. Can Booster get away without getting a mind-controlling starfish slapped over his face?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The giant Starro the Conqueror may have been a middleweight villain, but the little Starro starfish are just plain wonderful bad guys.

There are not a lot of explicitly political comics that operate from a conservative point-of-view. One of the few — in fact, it originally promoted itself as the very first conservative comic book — was 2005’s “Liberality for All” from ACC Studios, by Mike Mackey and Donny Lin.

I’ll be perfectly honest here — in my opinion, if you’re a conservative or Republican, you should be absolutely mortified and embarrassed by this comic. I picked up the first issue when it came out, because I have a lot of interest in political matters, and I wanted to see how a conservative comic book would play out. It was pretty danged close to being the worst comic I’ve ever seen.

Now it wasn’t that the specific quality of the book was bad — it’s not like this had art by Rob Liefeld or something. The characters were depicted with the right number of arms and legs and noses and whatnot. The script wasn’t full of misspelled words or anything of that nature. But the entire premise of the story was simply howlingly idiotic.

Let’s set the scene: It’s about 20 years in the future, and the Democrats have taken over the country and instituted a dictatorship. I was actually willing to try to accept this, just for the sake of getting the story moving. We’ve seen plenty of stories through the years about authoritarian conservative governments — “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “V for Vendetta” are all about dictatorships with a hard conservative edge. A liberal-leaning dictatorship is fairly unique in fiction (Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron” is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head), and I was willing to accept the idea…

…Or I would’ve been willing, if there’d been an attempt to construct the story’s dictatorship out of something other than strawmen. All the liberals in the comic are virtually depicted with devil-horns — they have no real purpose other than being painted with all the capital-E Evils ascribed to non-conservatives in the fantasyland of talk radio. In fact, most of the great boogeymen of the right, 20 years later, are still running around — the Clintons are still in charge (This time, Chelsea is the president), filmmaker Michael Moore makes an appearance, and Osama bin Laden is a U.N. ambassador.

The evil liberal dictatorship is opposed by a small number of conservative freedom-fighters, gifted with special cybernetic powers and apparent immortality. Who would be the best heroes for a conservative comic? Ronald Reagan, perhaps? Barry Goldwater? William F. Buckley? George W. Bush — who, at the time this was written, was near his highest point of political popularity?

Nope, they go with talk-radio howler Sean Hannity, Watergate plumber/head-shot enthusiast/actual-fer-realz Hitler admirer G. Gordon Liddy, and Iran’s favorite arms merchant, Oliver North.

I’ll wait a moment for you to pick your jaw up off the floor.

Seriously, you’ve got your pick of any conservative icons you want, and with this type of story, you could probably go with long-dead historical figures — “The Spirit of Liberty, long thought vanished from this nation, has returned Abraham Lincoln to life, to fight for justice in America!” Yes, it would be completely mad, but it would work, and it would probably be fairly awesome. So you could choose any conservative heroes you want for this story… and you go with a bunch of talk-show hosts?!

Ohh, wait a minute. You don’t think the entire story was just a ploy to get invited to appear on Hannity’s, North’s, and Liddy’s radio shows, do you?

Mmmmm, could be.

So there it is — the most painfully inept political comic book I’ve ever seen. Not just because the story and premise are poorly rendered, but because it could have been good, if the creators were more interested in creating a story about conservative characters and ideas, and not just in stroking the egos of talk-radio hosts.

I told myself I’d save my money and ignore these two, but in the end, my love of politics had me dropping a little extra coin to check these out.

Presidential Material: Barack Obama

What’s it about? It’s a biography of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama!

Presidential Material: John McCain

What’s it about? It’s a biography of Republican presidential candidate John McCain!

Verdicts: To my surprise, thumbs up. I’d really expected a couple of drawn-out biographies, with a little slapdash art, to sell for some quick speculator cash. But I was pleasantly surprised by both of these. The art isn’t perfect, but it’s just fine here — a bit of the traditional comic-book look ends up serving this material well. The biographies are far more complete than I was anticipating. These aren’t just ripped off of Wikipedia — they’re as complete as you’re going to find in a coupla 22-page comics, and they actually list their research sources in the back — magazines, newspapers, the candidates’ official Senate biographies, the books they’ve written, even a few less-than-friendly sources. These are pretty warts-and-all bios, too — Obama’s drug use, connections to Jeremiah Wright, and campaign missteps are included, as are McCain’s party-animal days in the Navy, his controversial divorce and re-marriage, and the Keating Five scandal.

They’re definitely not complete biographies, but the creators do as good a job as they can in a very limited amount of space. These are both extremely text-heavy comics — it’s gonna take you a while to read ’em cover-to-cover. But I’m pleased that IDW took these comics seriously enough to do a good job on them.

And on a related note, yesterday, Samuel said in comments: “I’ll bake you some cookies if you can find a comic with Sarah Palin on it. You betcha!” Well, people, I’ll do anything for cookies!

Probably not exactly what Samuel was looking for, as I suspect he’s a Palin fan, but that’s the cover of Tales from the Crypt #8, a revival of the classic EC Comics franchise published by a company called Papercutz. Palin is saying “Didn’t we get rid of you guys in the ’50s?” as she menaces the Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper, and the Old Witch with a hockey stick. That’s a reference (A) to Palin’s reported interests in banning library books in Wasilla, Alaska during her tenure as mayor (No books were actually banned, but a librarian briefly lost her job until local supporters pressured the local government to re-hire her), and (B) to the anti-comics Senate hearings in the ’50s that ran EC out of business. Inside the comic is an anti-censorship editorial by Cathy Gaines Mifsud, daughter of legendary EC publisher William Gaines, that stops just barely short of endorsing Anybody-But-Sarah-Palin.

This is an issue I haven’t read yet — I don’t even know if it’s been released yet, or if I’ll be able to find it. I reviewed the first issue of this series last year and was not at all impressed, so I may not pick it up at all.

So there ya go, Samuel — like I said, it’s probably not the pro-Palin cover you were hoping for, but I’ll be happy to take those cookies now. Mmm-mmmm, delicious chocolate chunk cookies, so yummy and — hey! What’s this? These are full of black widow spiders, blowfish spines, and cyanide capsules, not chocolate chunks! Samuel, I oughtta…

(KLUNK)

Even for an election year, there is a lot of wild comics-related political news out there.

For example, there’s this new organization called “Comics Industry for Obama” — to the best of my knowledge, the first time a bunch of comics creators have gotten together specifically to support a single candidate. Eric Powell, creator of “The Goon” is a member, as is Mike Mignola, creator of “Hellboy.” More than likely, Erik Larsen, creator of “The Savage Dragon” has signed on with ’em, too. Buncha others — Mike Allred, Jimmy Palmiotti, Denys Cowan, Steve Niles, Cully Hammer, Rick Remender, Sarah Grace McCandless, Jennifer Grunwald, Andy Diggle, probably a bunch more whose names I just don’t recognize.

And with this group out there in the public eye, it probably won’t be long before we see a “Comics Industry for McCain” group — or maybe more likely, considering their actual popularity levels, “Comics Industry for Palin.” Eric Powell, for one, seems to feel like that’s A-OK.

I spoke about this with a fellow comic creator who signed up. We both acknowledged the fact that we could face a backlash from some readers for being associated with this. We were both of the opinion, “Oh, Well.” It’s time to grow a pair, people. I love my readers and if your views don’t mesh with mine, fine. If you don’t like Obama, work for McCain’s campaign. That’s your right. Just like it’s my right to support the candidate of my choice. That’s what the process is all about. Why does it have to be about getting pissed off and hating a guy because he has a different point of view?

It is kinda weird, isn’t it? There are folks out there who’ll actually quit reading Mignola’s “Hellboy” comics because his choice of candidate doesn’t match up with theirs. Did “Hellboy” and “B.P.R.D.” somehow stop being awesome? Did “The Goon” stop being the most hilariously violent comic out there? Of course not — but there are really people out there willing to stop reading Mignola’s, Powell’s, and Larsen’s comics in an attempt to punish them for having opinions that don’t mesh with their own. And of course, there may be liberals out there who won’t read old “Spider-Man” comics because Steve Ditko is conservative, or “Fables” because Bill Willingham is a Republican. It’s almost Stalinist — those who oppose the cult of personality must be cast out and erased…

I certainly recognize that there are legitimate reasons why someone might want to boycott an artist’s work, but boycotting someone because they want to exercise the right to vote seems a bit much…

DC Universe: Decisions #2

DC’s superheroes are still trying to track down the telepath who’s mind-controlling people into trying to kill the four presidential candidates, and Green Arrow’s endorsement of one of the Democratic candidates has thrown a spanner into the works. Not long afterwards, things get worse when Guy Gardner endorses one of the Republican candidates, and after that, the floodgates are opened, as just about every superhero starts endorsing their favorite candidates — Vixen, Power Girl, Wildcat, Hawkman, and Plastic Man lean Republican (though Plas is mainly exercising his libido in endorsing the lone female candidate), while Dr. Light, Beast Boy, and Firestorm favor the Democrats. There are still more attempts on the candidates’ lives, and there’s one more surprise endorsement, as Bruce Wayne announces his support for one of the Democrats.

Verdict: A little from Column A and a little from Column B. On one hand, I’m enjoying the story, with everyone trying to track down the would-be assassin. Character interactions seem pretty good — the fight between Green Arrow and Green Lantern is familiar, but it hits all the right notes. And the art for this issue is provided by Howard Porter, one of my fave DC artists ever since he drew Grant Morrison’s “JLA” series. (And speaking of Porter, here’s a really interesting interview about why his work has been so hard to find lately.)

So what are my quibbles about this issue? Well, the entire point of the story is supposed to be about politics, and just about everyone has really shallow reasons for supporting their candidates. Plastic Man likes one of the Republican candidates ’cause he’s a horndog. Beast Boy cites a candidate’s “gravitas” while Wildcat praises another’s toughness. In most cases, all they’re talking about is the candidate’s image — which is, of course, how a lot of folks really do pick their preferred candidate — picking the guy with the best slogan, who looks best on TV, who has the best public relations flacks.

But most of these characters aren’t saying they support a candidate because they agree with their political platform. No one says, “I’m pro-choice, so I support Candidate X” or “I dislike gun control, so I support Candidate Z.” People care about politics because they care about issues, and most of the superheroes don’t appear to care about any issues at all. The closest we get are Hawkman, who prefers his candidate because he has a military background, and Firestorm, who favors one candidate who has experience in international matters.

And one more thing that particularly irritated me — Power Girl’s reasoning for supporting her candidate is “He’ll keep us safe.” That’s a perfectly legitimate reason for someone to support a candidate, but it just doesn’t make sense coming from Power Girl. She doesn’t need a presidential candidate to keep her safe — she’s superstrong and bulletproof, so depicting her as someone who’s been suckered by the “Candidate X will keep you safe” routine is just crazy.

Heck, in Comic Book Land, who keeps you safe? It ain’t a strong military that repels alien invasions, it’s superheroes like Power Girl. Someone launches a nuke at New York? Power Girl’s up there swatting it down. It’s a minor point, sure, but it’s another piece of poor characterization that shows that the writers weren’t really thinking that hard about the sound bites they had the characters spouting.

I reckon I’ll keep reading this series, because I am enjoying the story, but the political content is, so far, just plain dorky. I hope the next two issues improve some in that regard, but I suspect they’ll remain fairly embarrassingly poor…

Let’s take a quick break from comics. Let’s focus on the real world for a few moments.

We got the presidential election coming up in just over a month, right? Election Day is on Tuesday, November 4th, and I expect y’all to git out there and vote. I don’t particularly care who you’re voting for, but I do expect you to head out on November 4 and do your civic duty.

And that means, for a lot of us, the deadline to register to vote is coming up very soon. For most states, the deadline is this upcoming Monday, October 6th. Some are later than that, some are even earlier. There are a few states where the deadline is tomorrow. Holy moley, that’s early. But for most of us, including those of us here in Lubbock, the deadline is this Monday.

If you’re not sure about the registration deadline in your state, click here for a handy table that’ll tell you when you gotta register.

You can register lots of different places. City hall, the county courthouse, the post office, libraries. You have tons of options. But seriously, go register. Even if you don’t know if you wanna vote, go register, just in case you change your mind.

Git going — time’s a-wastin’!

DC Universe Decisions #1

DC gets into election season by tapping conservative Bill Willingham and liberal Judd Winick to write about the impact of politics on the world of superheroes. An unknown villain is mind-controlling campaign workers into turning themselves into suicide bombers to try to assassinate a quartet of presidential candidates. The Justice League mobilizes, with everyone assigned to guard a candidate, either publicly in costume or undercover. Green Arrow breaks an unofficial superhero taboo by endorsing the liberal candidate he’s guarding.

Verdict: Thumbs down. This one already had an uphill battle, due to half of its writing team being an incompetent dope who is never happy unless he’s killing random characters. Yes, I mean Winick. Jeez, I hate that guy. Anyway, the investigation into the would-be assassin is entertaining enough, I suppose. We don’t really get much insight into the political beliefs of our superheroes — everyone knew Green Arrow was a liberal, and it was a pretty good bet that Lois Lane, daughter of a general, would be conservative. Perhaps a bit weirder is that Lois has no clue whatsoever about her husband’s political beliefs, and he absolutely refuses to tell her. Wow, that’s a really awful depiction of married people, don’tcha think? Superman keeps incredibly pointless secrets from his wife, and Lois Lane, big-time investigative reporter, can’t figure out what her husband thinks about the important issues of the day.

Captain Britain and MI:13 #5

Captain Britain is getting adjusted to his new powers, and Faiza Hussain and the Black Knight talk to Faiza’s overprotective parents, finally winning them over to accepting her new powers by showing off the shiny magic sword she pulled from a stone. Spitfire revels in her control over her vampiric nature, and everyone welcomes the team’s newest member, Blade. Hold it, Blade? Yeah, turns out he was brought up in England. Hey, wait a minute, Blade really, really doesn’t like vampires, does he?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A conditional thumbs up, as long as Spitfire gets outta this okay. I love the characterization they’re doing for Faiza Hussain — she’s really turning out to be a very appealing character.

The Spirit #21

A former crime boss named Buzz Viviano is facing regular attempts on his life in prison, and his old gang kidnaps Ellen Dolan, daughter of Commissioner Dolan and girlfriend of the Spirit, to try to get Viviano released. The Spirit has a makeup artist disguise him as Viviano so he can track down the gang and rescue Ellen. Unfortunately, the gang actually wants Viviano dead, so a nice big fight erupts. Ellen gets away, meets up with a cycle gang and enlists their help. The cops release the real Viviano, hoping he’ll lead them to the rest of the gang. The whole thing ends with a fairly epic brawl between the Spirit, the crooks, the bikers, and the cops, with Ellen enthusiastically joining in the mayhem.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The fight at the end is lots of fun, and the rest of the story is pretty good, too.

 

Ambush Bug: Year None #1

The return of Ambush Bug! HUZZAH!

The world’s greatest comedic, fourth-wall-breaking, teleporting, deelybop-wearing superhero is investigating the murder of Jonni DC, Continuity Cop, accompanied by his ever-loyal buddy, Cheeks the Toy Wonder. We get appearances by Argh!Yle!!, the evil Dr. Doomesque sock, and a new hipster villain called Go-Go Chex, as well as cameos by Yankee Poodle, Egg Fu, Ace the Bathound, ‘Mazing Man, Jean Loring, the Source Wall, the Golden-Age Batgirl, Jack Kirby’s Sandman, and bunch of gratuitous Women in Refrigerators. The entire thing is almost entirely plotless — the only real purpose is to dump an obscene number of jokes on the readers.

Verdict: Thumbs up! This is complete and total brilliance. A six-issue series? Surely this could be padded to a dozen or two? Pretty please?

 

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #1

A new Marvel all-ages book! HUZZAH!

Looks like this will be a team-up book, and the first issue features Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk. Hercules shows up and asks the trio of heroes to dog-sit his pets for him for a few weeks. No problem, right? Oh, wait, they’re Cerberus and Orthus, giant multi-headed guard dogs of the Underworld. They decide to try to train the dogs, mainly to keep them from using Iron Man as a squeaky chew toy.

Verdict: Another thumbs up. This is another extremely funny book, what with Spider-Man sticking to the Hulk, Iron Man constantly being chewed on by giant dogs, the spectacle of Cerberus being entered into a dog show, and frankly, almost everything the Hulk says and does.

 

Hoverboy #1

A comic subtitled “The Republican Super-Hero!” Umm, huzzah?

This is set up as a revival of an old character from the Golden and Silver Age. Hoverboy is a guy with a bucket on his head who undertakes a mission to spy on Iran and start a little trouble over there. Unfortunately, George W. Bush is not the greatest mapmaker around, and Hoverboy ends up running around Iraq killing Iraqi police officers and generally starting needless trouble for American troops. Who’s going to get the blame for this? Hoverboy? President Georgie? Or some random stooge in the Bush cabinet? Once the main story is over, we’re treated to a bunch of “historical covers and reprints” from old “Hoverboy” comics.

Verdict: Ehh, bit of a mixed bag. The main story is okay, but not particularly any grand shakes. I actually graded them down a little for dropping this so close to the end of Bush’s term; publish it in 2003-2005, when everyone was in “All Must Love Bush” mode, and I’d give ’em marks for courage, but now, when he’s got approval ratings around 20%? That’s jumping onto the dogpile after the ref’s already blown the whistle. I’m not even sure the usual Limbaughian extremists will even bother issuing the standard denunciations and fatwas at this point…

Anyway, the cover gallery is actually funnier, what with the ad for the “Hoverboy Flying Belt” from the ’40s that tells kids that they’ll really be able to fly, a Hoverboy PSA that warns kids about the dangers of Canadians, and a reprint of a story that features Hoverboy killing every animal in a zoo while searching for a Japanese detainee. The cover gallery is mostly the work of Marcus Moore, who really does a great job of re-creating the look of various old comics.

If you were trying to come up with the ultimate conservative superhero, it’d be hard to miss with Captain America, don’tcha think? I mean, the guy was a soldier, so desperate to serve his country that he volunteered for a dangerous chemical experiment and agreed to wear just about the gaudiest red, white, and blue costume imaginable. He was plucked out of the 1940s and revived about 20-40 years later, depending on what version of Marvel continuity you go with. By all rights, he should be almost a cartoon of nationalistic fervor. Indeed, he’s often been parodied as an over-the-top patriotic extremist.

But Cap really is a dream assignment for anyone who wants to write about public affairs, the nature of patriotism, or the state of the nation. One of his most amazing appearances came in a comic that was actually outside of Marvel’s regular continuity.

In 1984’s What If? #44 by Peter B. Gillis, Sal Buscema, and Dave Simons, we take a look at a parallel universe where Cap’s disappearance leads to the creation of an alternate Cap. But the new Cap’s patriotism comes in a decidedly dark flavor. His paranoia about Communism leads him to denounce anything that threatens the status quo, and he becomes a propagandist opposing civil rights and free speech. In time, a faked assassination attempt on him allows a group called the Secret Empire to take over the country and declare martial law.

The real Captain America thaws out of his iceberg many years later, awakening to an America that looks more like Nazi Germany than the United States. Jackbooted thugs wearing Cap’s “A” on their jackets terrorize the populace, no one has any rights to speak of, and everyone is required, almost by law, to idolize Captain America, for fear that the Commies will take over if the nation shows any weakness.

Of course, there’s a terrific battle between the two Caps, with both spouting off entire political soliloquies between every punch. As expected, the real Captain America emerges triumphant. But that’s not the end of it. Cap makes a grand oratory to the crowds who just watched him beat up the fake Cap, and the result is both shocking and inspiring.

Here it is, along with my transcription, just in case you can’t read the text in the panels.

“Listen to me — all of you out there! You were told by this man — your hero — that America is the greatest country in the world!”

“He told you that Americans were the greatest people — that America could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly!

“He went on about how precious America was — how you needed to make sure it remained great!

“And he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great treasure that is America!”

“Well, I say America is nothing! Without its ideals — its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!

“A nation is nothing! A flag is a piece of cloth!!”

“I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could as easily be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different from them!

“When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn America into nothing!

“And the only reason you’re not less than nothing — ”

“– is that it’s still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!”

Caption: “There is a long silence, then…”

Spectator: “Th-That is him!! That’s the real Captain America!”

Those five panels are just amazing. Everything you need to know about the dangers of blind nationalistic jingoism, everything you need to know about our susceptability to power-hungry demogogues, everything you need to know about the fragility of democracy and freedom. Everything you need to know about what a real patriot is like, minus the funky chainmail costume…

Cut it out, send it to your Congressional representatives, to your preferred presidential candidates, to your favorite Supreme Court justice. Send it to your local hate-radio blowhard, to the howling TV pundits, to the national columnists who still insist that any criticism of the figurehead in charge of the government is the same thing as high treason.

Happy Independence Day to everyone. Celebrate with some burgers and hot dogs, with some fireworks, by listening to some of those great old Sousa marches. But don’t forget to spend some time celebrating your nation by reading this and by reading this. Heck, if you’ve got time, here are some more links to great things you should read this July 4th.

(Lots of folks like this comic book a lot. For more in-depth analysis, read this, this, this, and this)