Secret Six #22

There’s a lot of stuff happening in this one — Black Alice and Scandal Savage fight each other, then bond with each other; Catman remembers his awful childhood, his terrible father, and how he took his first steps into adulthood; and Catman takes care of the last people who kidnapped his son, making one more colossal sacrifice to keep his child safe.

Verdict: Thumbs up. There’s not a single bad moment in this issue. The whole thing is just spectacular and awesome and brilliant. I hope Gail Simone never leaves this title.

Spider-Man: Fever #3

Spider-Man is still stuck in the spirit world, being influenced by a spider spirit that claims it gave him his powers. The Sorror-Fly, a fly spirit that used to be a human, is trying to help Peter and give him some context for the strange stuff he sees, but it’s not doing a lot of good. A magical dart fired by the dog spirits a couple issues back finally hits its mark, destroying the malign spider demon trying to influence Peter, but Spider-Man is still poisoned and dying. At last, Dr. Strange finally arrives on the scene and both drains the poison and turns the Sorror-Fly back into a human being. But can the heroes figure out a way to stop the rest of the spider demons before they decide to invade Earth?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seriously head-trippy stuff. I don’t know that Steve Ditko could have come up with something this wild and weird, but I do think he’da managed something really close to it.

The Unwritten #14

The new Tommy Taylor novel is a forgery, written to be as bad a chunk of writing as possible in order to lure Wilson Taylor, the original author, out of hiding so he can be killed. Tom Taylor, Wilson’s son, and his friends have their own troubles to worry about. Lizzie Hexam’s method of secretly communicating with Wilson through books has been detected by the literary conspiracy controlling the world, and Savoy has been bitten by the supposedly fictional vampire Count Ambrosio, giving the vengeful bloodsucker an unwitting spy into Tom Taylor’s life. And the assassin Pullman is on the scene, too. Once the conspiracy picks up Lizzie, can Tom and Savoy save her and get back underground?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The net is tightening around our heroes — heck, multiple nets are closing in fast. No idea how or if they’re all going to get away from all this. But the ongoing mystery is still enthralling and still very fun to read.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Vote for your favorite Terry Pratchett books in the Discworld Cup.
• The difference between boys bikes and girls bikes? Purely ornamental.
• This has been around for a while, but it’s new to me, so maybe it’s new to you, too. Colleen Coover talks women in comics, both as creators and characters.

Prince of Power #1

In the aftermath of Hercules’ death, Athena has orchestrated to put his friend Amadeus Cho, the seventh smartest person on the planet, in charge of the Olympus Group. Amadeus has accepted the position mainly because it gives him the resources to try to locate Hercules, since he’s learned that Herc isn’t in Hades, the Greek god afterlife. So while he runs around beating up supervillains like the Griffin (using Hercules’ magical Adamantine mace and an energy shield developed by Bruce Banner), he’s also got Banner spending a half-trillion dollars’ worth of the Olympus Group’s money to build a machine capable of scanning the entire multiverse for signs of Hercules. Unfortunately, the quantum observer effect means that the simple fact of making a scan of that magnitude creates even more multiverses, making the search vastly more complicated.

After that, Amadeus gets a visit from a guy named Vali Halfling, an Asgardian supervillain with a tendency to fight the Hulk. Halfling tells Amadeus that he has a plan to steal various mythological artifacts from a number of different godly pantheons to enable humans to become actual gods themselves. Amadeus gives Halfling a whuppin’, but realizes that godly omniscience would sure help speed up the quest to find Herc, so he sets off for the first item on the quest list — the Golden Apples of Asgard.

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the usual brilliant characterization, dialogue, humor, and action we’ve come to expect from Greg Pak and Fred van Lente. The battle against the Griffin is entirely excellent, but there are also some wonderful scenes that are very low-key and quiet — Amadeus’ monologue with the incarcerated and generally displeased Delphyne Gorgon, his snake-haired ex-girlfriend, is nice, and the scene with townspeople from Broxton, Oklahoma running a food drive for the recently wrecked Asgard (the entire realm had taken up residence over Oklahoma until the end of the “Siege” crossover) is both awesome and funny.

Batgirl #10

The Calculator has lost it big time. He’s keeping his son Marvin’s corpse around to talk to, and he’s planning revenge on Oracle for keeping his daughter Wendy away from him — ’cause after all, he’s so freakin’ crazy and criminal, he should have all kinds of visitation rights. Oracle suspects he’s about to pull something rotten, and so she’s unplugging all of her Internet connections — and it turns out it’s for a very good reason, ’cause Calculator manages to broadcast a nanite-technovirus over the Internet that lets him turn half the population of Gotham City into robot-zombies, all trying to track down Barbara Gordon — including the students in her classroom and her own father. And as bad as things start with thousands of Gothamites turned into Calculator-controlled drones, it gets much worse when other costumed crimefighters get added to the mix…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice story with a lot of claustrophobic tension. Very funny dialogue between Steph and Detective Gage. Not a lot else to say — just a really good superhero comic…

Secret Six #21

Catman is on his own, torturing and killing anyone who he thinks might have killed his son. Deadshot, Scandal Savage, Ragdoll, and Black Alice are trying to track him down, either to rescue him or to help him. Bane and Jeannette are trying to keep the Secret Six going under their own leadership by hiring a bunch of other metahuman crooks. Catman tracks his next victim down to South Africa — a big superstrong sadist called Loki. Does he have a chance against someone that powerful? And will the remainder of the team tear itself apart without him?

verdict: Another thumbs up. Loved the background material on Catman’s entirely rotten father. Lots of excellent dialogue, too, and a ton of blisteringly gruesome violence. I know there are other comics focusing on supervillains as the protagonists, but this one really is the best one out there.

Kill Shakespeare #1

How ’bout this for high concept: We start out with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, mad at his uncle for killing his father and marrying his mother, just like Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet kills Polonius by accident, gets banished from the country, gets sent away by ship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — all just like the play. Except not everything is just like the play. Hamlet is having dreams about these three witches who keep pronouncing prophecies, the ship is attacked by pirates, and after he gets knocked overboard, he wakes up to find himself in a strange country ruled over by a hunchbacked monarch named Richard III. Richard claims that the land is tortured by an evil wizard named… William Shakespeare. Richard and the witches don’t need Hamlet to kill Shakespeare — just sneak into his hidden dwelling and steal the magic quill he uses to write his stories. In exchange, the witches say they’ll bring Hamlet’s father back to life.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nicely twisted concept. You may get the most out of this if you’ve got a good grasp of Shakespeare’s works, but so far, most of what I see is fairly familiar stuff. Plus you get Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern fighting pirates. There’s a lot to love about that.

Secret Six #20

I’m a bit leery to spoil this one, ’cause it’s quite good. But let’s set this up. The Six have been out on one of their typically bloody-minded jobs. They check in with the horrible old guy who hired them, and before he pays them, he gets a phone call, then hands the phone over to Catman. The guys on the other end of the line say, “Hi, we just attacked your ex-lover, Cheshire, and have kidnapped your son, and hey, we’re going to kill him, no matter what, but how ’bout this — for every one of your friends you manage to kill in the next five minutes, we’ll let the tyke live for another year.” After that, there follow several very, very tense pages where Catman glares at his team, and the rest of the Six, realizing something funky is up, glare back. What happens after that? That would be too much of a spoiler.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s very, very good. The first seven pages are some of the best, most suspenseful pages you’re going to get to read in comics. The rest of it is pretty good, too. So go get it already.

Anything else? Have I mentioned the Lubbock Comic Book Expo? You remember it’s gonna get started tomorrow, right? I’ll be there for at least part of it — hunt me down and say howdy.

Batman and Robin #10

Let’s review a bit. Back at the end of the “Final Crisis” series, Darkseid hit Batman with his big shock-and-awe weapon — the Omega Effect. Everyone assumed it killed him, but Tim Drake — now calling himself Red Robin — has been insisting that instead, Batman was teleported somewhere in the past. Dick Grayson has taken over Batman’s identity, with Bruce Wayne’s son, Damian, becoming the new Robin. The Bat Family is keeping Bruce Wayne’s death a secret — officially, he’s just being an eccentric recluse and never goes out in public. Since Dick learned last issue that the corpse he believed belonged to Bruce Wayne was actually just a defective clone, he now thinks Tim may be on to something.

So in this issue, Damian starts taking interest in the financial dealings of Wayne Enterprises, while Dick-as-Batman gets a visit from a masked man called Oberon Sexton who has evidence that assassins are stalking Bruce Wayne. Meanwhile, Alfred Pennyworth has realized that if Bruce Wayne was displaced in time, he’d try to send a message to them somehow — and Wayne Manor is a really old mansion situated on top of an ancient cave system, offering a time traveler lots of space to leave clues for the future. And so Alfred has begun to notice subtle clues in the paintings of the Wayne family over the centuries. While Alfred does research on the Wayne patriarchs on the Bat-Computer, Dick and Damian do some snooping around the mansion to see what they can turn up. Damian expresses worries that if Bruce comes back, he’ll no longer get to be Robin — did his mother Talia do something to his mind while he was recuperating from his spinal surgery? Is that why he suddenly tries to kill Dick? And what does Dick find once he falls into the basement?

Verdict: Thumbs up. An excellent mystery to start off “The Return of Bruce Wayne.” And mysteries within mysteries — what’s wrong with Damian? Who is Oberon Sexton? Where is the missing Wayne portrait? What does “Barbatos” mean? This is beginning with a lot of stuff to really get the interest piqued, and I can’t wait for the next issue.

Secret Six #19

The Six are on a mission to track down the fate of a kid who got inducted into the Church of Brother Blood, with Black Alice posing as a cultist wannabe. Bane is willing to let the cultists kill Alice, but Ragdoll gets uncharacteristically heroic and leads the rest of the team in her rescue. And this, in turn, leads to Alice getting a crush on Ragdoll. Which is mostly unexpected and creepy and worrisome. Meanwhile, former Six member Cheshire meets up with a bunch of paramilitary kidnappers — and Cheshire being the scary destructive poisonous assassin she is, she wipes ’em out without too much trouble… up until the REAL kidnappers make it to the scene. And back with the Six, they go to make their report to the extremely wealthy father of the kid who’d been abducted by the Church of Blood — and it turns out that the old coot has a really, really nasty surprise in store for Catman…

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, great characterization and dialogue, excellent action, and a few brutal twists of the knife. DC should let Gail Simone write more of their comic books.

Daytripper #3

Seven years have passed since the events from the last issue, and Brás de Oliva Domingos’ relationship with Olinda has irretrievably soured. He goes through a few weeks of miserable loneliness, his friend Jorge and his father both trying to give him pep talks, before he finally runs into a girl he feels an instant attraction for while at the grocery. He starts to go on with his life, then decides he must at least try to meet her. And then something unexpected happens.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are turning out a fascinating series. The artwork is outstanding, the writing is fantastic, and the mystery behind the entire series is getting more and more interesting with every issue.

Secret Six #18

The Secret Six and the Suicide Squad are under attack at Belle Reve Prison by a squadron of Black Lantern zombies consisting of dead prisoners and dead Suicide Squad members. They all run for the Six’s headquarters, which Amanda Waller has put the torch to. Of course, the zombies follow, and another big fight erupts. Knowing they need something to even the odds, Waller has Nightshade teleport her back to Belle Reve to pick up a remote-controlled Manhunter robot. But can even it turn the tide?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great action and great characterization, even among all the zombie-fighting. And there’s a genuine shocker ending you’ll have to see to disbelieve.

The Unwritten #10

Tom Taylor, Lizzie Hexam, and Richard Savoy have escaped from prison — and possibly landed somewhere much worse — Nazi Germany. On the bright side, it’s some sort of hologram of Nazi Germany — no one can see them or touch them. Nevertheless, something has clearly gone bad wrong somewhere, and everyone is hopelessly lost. Back in the real world, Governor Chadron has taken on his new role as the vampire Count Ambrosio and is willing to do anything to get his claws on Tommy again. Back in the Germany hologram, Lizzie tries to contact her patrons, and Tom and Savoy meet Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ head propagandist — and he can see Tom and Savoy just fine. And if he can see them, is there anything else he can do to them?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A big crazy scene-shift, so there’s some story derailment, since we don’t yet know what the Germany hallucination is about. But the ongoing mystery is getting more interesting, and Tom’s complete inexperience with this stuff means he’s in severe danger.

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.

Suicide Squad #67

This is another of the old cancelled titles that DC has resurrected for just one more issue during the “Blackest Night” crossover. And it’s a bit misleading. There’s only minimal material with the Black Lantern zombies, and the Suicide Squad aren’t the main characters. Most of our focus is on the Secret Six. After the overprotective Bane interrogates Scandal Savage’s date, Liana, the rest of the team gets called out on a mission to rescue a drug dealer from Belle Reve prison. The team gets into the prison no problem — Black Alice borrows Giganta’s powers, which surely ought to make a few kinksters out there happy — but the whole thing was a trap set by Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad. Waller wants Deadshot back on her team, and she’s willing to wipe out the rest of the Six to get him back. But the fight between the two teams may have to wait once the latest crop of Black Lantern rings find the many deceased Suicide Squad members…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A bonus “Secret Six” issue! Huzzah! And co-written by both Gail Simone and John Ostrander! Funny stuff with Bane and Ragdoll, plus Nightshade and the rarely-seen female Fiddler make appearances. All that plus Amanda Waller, DC’s foremost scary, driven, badass government bureaucrat! Everyone loves Amanda Waller!

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2

We jump back to the period when Wonder Woman was a Black Lantern not-quite-a-zombie, fighting Mera, Queen of Atlantis and Aquaman’s ex-wife. The fight doesn’t generally go in Mera’s favor, seeing as how Wonder Woman is way, way more powerful than she is. Wonder Woman is apparently conscious inside, unable to stop herself from trying to kill Mera. Wondy briefly gets control back, flees to some nearby island, then kills Wonder Girl and Donna Troy, tries to kill her mother, and goes all smoochy on Bruce Wayne. Wait, what? Did I forget my medication this morning?

Verdict: Thumbs down. I agree with a lot of what Chris Sims has to say here, but the thing that kept irritating me the most was the way non-zombie Diana, sublimated under the control of the black ring, kept whining. DC’s most prominent, most powerful female character has an inner voice that’s one continuous whine. Better to have the inner voice completely absent than to make the character look that weak.

Tiny Titans #23

Robin’s having to share his home with a whole lot of penguins and bunnies. Bad enough they’re filling his bathtub with ice and trying to get him to eat carrots and fish for breakfast, but they’ve scared all the bats out of the Batcave. And Batman wants his bats back in the Batcave ASAP! Can Batgirl, Batmite, two familiar toddlers, and a bunch of miniature Batman costumes fool the Dark Knight Detective? And where did all those bats go anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an awesome and hilarious story, and that should be enough, but then Baltazar and Franco show us, on the Bat-Computer, the Tiny Titans version of Two-Face:

That may be the coolest Two-Face ever.

And there’s this:

The Tiny Titans versions of Jason Todd and Tim Drake, the first two post-Dick Grayson Robins. I laughed out loud when I saw that. Does this mean we can look forward to Stepanie Brown, Damian Wayne, and Carrie Kelly showing up in “Tiny Titans”?

Batgirl #5

There are a series of arsons targeting a building development on the rougher end of Gotham, and Batgirl tracks down the arsonist, a weirdo named Diesel who has gasoline for blood. Batman and Robin (Dick Grayson and bratty Damian Wayne) show up to grab the glory, and to stop Diesel from torching Robin, Batgirl hits both of them with some freeze-arangs. As expected, this makes both Dick and Damian very snippy, which makes Barbara Gordon, Stephanie’s mentor, very snippy. Once they’re off the clock, Barbara meets a cop that her dad is trying to set her up with and proceeds to get snippy on him for no real reason, and Stephanie spies on a dishy classmate whose dad may be involved in shady business connected to the arsons. Stephanie later has an amusing argument with Damian and tries to meet up with her classmate for an improvised date, only to run into a bunch of kidnappers with murder on their minds.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding dialogue, funny situations, and top-notch superheroics. Stephanie is an extremely charming lead, Barbara is almost as much fun as she was in “Birds of Prey,” and even the normally insufferable Damian comes across as merely a ten-year-old pill. This book is getting some of the best buzz of any DC series right now, and it’s still early in its run, so there’s time for you to jump aboard and enjoy the ride.

Secret Six #16

The Six get hired to help a serial killer escape from the police? But it turns out that one of his victims actually hired the Six, so too bad about your drastically shortened lifespan, Mr. Serial Killer! But they’ve been found out by Black Alice, a somewhat nutty gothpunk with the power to duplicate the powers of any magic-based superhero or villain. And she’s willing to blackmail them into letting her join the group. They stop off at the nudie bar where Scandal’s sweetie works when the rest of the team shows up and tells Alice to get lost. Then the cops show up, Black Alice steals Jeanette’s banshee powers and beats up on the cops… and the rest of the Six. Is there any way to calm her down and get her to lay off?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good grief, Black Alice is awesome. I mean, the rest of the group is fine — Ragdoll gets to crack his usual ton of great one-liners. But Black Alice is just the bee’s knees.

Booster Gold #26

While Booster goes back in time to watch himself fail to give Ted Kord, his best friend and the second Blue Beetle, a proper eulogy after he died, the Blackest Night is running wild in the rest of the DC Universe. And the latest Black Lantern zombie is Ted Kord himself. He ends up attacking Skeets, Jaime Reyes, Daniel Carter (Booster’s ancestor), and Daniel’s girlfriend Rose. By the time Booster makes it back to the present, Ted is thoroughly trashing everyone else. Does Booster stand a chance?

Verdict: Thumbs up. For a “Blackest Night” tie-in, most of the emphasis here was on character issues, particularly Booster’s continuing sorrow about Ted’s death and his ongoing resentment about the shabby treatment he and Ted received from most of the rest of the superhero community over the years.

Secret Six #15

It’s an all-Deadshot issue, and it’s written by John Ostrander, writer of the most acclaimed run of DC’s “Suicide Squad” ever. Floyd is feeling the urge to go on a thoroughly random killing spree, just for the fun of it. He has a long chat with a preacher buddy of his and tells at least part of his origin — spoiled rich kid of a couple of deeply dysfunctional parents, he attended a costume party at Wayne Manor with a plan to use hired thugs to rob the guests — instead, he ended up being the hero of the evening after shooting one of his own men. He roleplays as a hero for a while, all the while taking protection money from Gotham City’s gangs, but he eventually gets taken down by Batman. Does his past hold the key to let Deadshot get control of his homicidal urges?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good, murderous fun. Nice focus on Deadshot and all the weird quirks that make him tick. His origin is great, too, and it’s cool that Bruce Wayne is the only person at the party who catches onto the obscure film that Floyd based his costume on. Gee, they should let John Ostrander and Jim Calafiore make more comics, don’tcha think?

North 40 #5

I really thought this miniseries was over already? I’m a nut, that’s what I am. In this issue, a bunch of mutated EMS workers are trying to sacrifice some people to raise a malevolent god from the crater in the middle of town, but Amanda and some of the other local mystically-transformed folks are able to save them. The mayor is on a rampage because his son has been bitten by zombies, and he wants Sheriff Morgan and his new deputy, the indestructible Wyatt Hinkle to pay for it. Denny Pittman’s giant robot and his superpowered kids interfere, and Wyatt has a vision of the chubby nerd who helped cause all the trouble in Conover County — while his goth friend is trying to make things worse by creating more monsters, he’s trying to improve things by creating new heroes. But is there too much chaos going on for anyone to keep control of?

Verdict: Another thumbs up. I am so glad this series isn’t finished yet. Great dialogue, lots of wonderful and bizarre characters. And hey, Sheriff Morgan, the only normal guy in town, may not be so normal after all. One more issue to go…

Secret Six #14

A demon called Grendel is loose on Smyth’s prison/slave island, half of the team is working to help the imprisoned Amazons escape, and the other half is working to stop the rest of the team. Ragdoll goes after Smyth, while one of his henchmen reveals herself as a renegade Amazon who has absorbed the properties of the purple healing ray. In a pretty fantastically badass moment, Scandal Savage, in an attempt to take on Grendel solo, injects herself with Bane’s venom drug. And the Amazons are prepared to kill themselves rather than face any further imprisonment. All that plus Wonder Woman finally wakes up and kicks some butt. Whew!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Another very good issue. Awesome Aussie artist Nicola Scott’s beautiful artwork is combined with Gail Simone’s outstanding action-packed but still character-driven storytelling. Go get it, guys — a comic this good means DC’s gonna come gunning for it eventually, so don’t miss out.

Booster Gold #25

In a cool-down issue from the last Titans-Trigon time-traveling storyline, Booster wants some time off, but Rip Hunter insists that he return to the Batcave to recover his photos from the new Batman. Unfortunately, Booster didn’t expect to run into the new assassin-trained Robin. Meanwhile, Rip and Skeets head out to interrogate Dr. T.O. Morrow and run into the Black Beetle, now transformed into the even more powerful Red Beetle. And in our second feature, Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle, has his own run-in with the Black Beetle. Jaime’s armor has him stoked into a killing rage — can he resist murdering the time-traveling madman, discover his true identity, and save his friends and family at the same time?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This series has its ups and downs, but this issue was all good. Rip and Skeets uncover some mysteries, and Booster has some great character moments with Batman and Robin. The Blue Beetle backup feature is also fun — great emphasis on Jaime’s awesome supporting cast, and another nice little crop of mysteries. When they can keep the good stuff going, this is an awesome series — let’s hope they can keep the good stuff coming on a more consistent basis.