Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham

This is normally something I’d prefer to review before Halloween. But DC, in its infinite anti-wisdom, chose to release this last week instead of in October, and I’d rather not wait ’til next Halloween to review this. Heck, it took us 15 years to even get this collection, so who knows if DC will leave it in print for the next ten months.

So the plotline? Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City after years exploring the world and discovers a secret conspiracy stretching back years that threatens to destroy the city, if not the rest of the world. So far so typical? Sure, sure, almost every Bat-storyline reads something like that.

But in this case, everything’s been crossed over with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. You’d think that’d be a strained concept, but it works out amazingly well.

Oswald Cobblepot is a mad professor, waddling naked around the Antarctic with a bunch of tumor-covered penguins. Mr. Freeze has more in common with the cold-dependent Dr. Munoz from Lovecraft’s “Cool Air.” Killer Croc is a mutated Deep One. Poison Ivy shows up as a seductive plant monster. Barbara Gordon is a literal Oracle, interacting with the spirit world to see the future. Ra’s Al Ghul shares an origin with the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. We get appearances from Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, Jason Blood, Oliver Queen, and more, all twisted around the axes of pulp fiction and cosmic horror.

Verdict: Thumbs up. If you’re not a Lovecraft fan, you’ll get a very good pulp horror story. If you are a Lovecraft fan, you’ll get shivers of joy every few pages whenever a new permutation on HPL’s creations appears. It’s really pretty amazing how perfectly some of Batman’s rogues gallery fit into Lovecraft’s archetypes.

This was written by Mike Mignola and Richard Pace, and though the art is by Troy Nixey, it’s clear that Mignola dropped some heavy hints about what the art should look like, ’cause it’s very Mignolian (Mignolanian? I don’t know.). Of course, Mignola specializes in pulp, especially pulp horror, and some of the images we get here are just gloriously creepy — Cobblepot wandering in the Antarctic, Wayne’s ship frozen in the bay, Harvey Dent’s transformation.

The only villains we don’t get are the two we might most expect — there’s no Joker, and there’s no Cthulhu. Perhaps Mignola planned them for an eventual sequel?

Again, this series has been colossally rare for the past 15 years — the few copies for sale online would cost you about $50 for each of the three issues. But here it is, all collected into a single volume at last. If you let this one slip away from you this time, you don’t need cosmic horrors to drive you mad.

No Amazon link this time — it’s brand new, so check at your local comic shop.

Bitch Planet #6

Last issue, Meiko Maki was murdered by the guards on Bitch Planet. In this issue, we learn who she was and what she did to piss off the Powers That Be. Her parents were secret rebels against Earth’s male-centric corruption. Her mother is a violin teacher — but her violin lessons are just a cover so she can teach girls forbidden subjects like math. And her father is a spaceship engineer who’s just made a not-so-accidental error on his latest design that would fatally sabotage a spacecraft. Unfortunately, his latest error has been caught by a colleague who plans to blackmail the family — he’ll help cover up the error in exchange for having sex with his daughters. But Meiko has her own plan to save her family, even if it dooms her to an early death on Bitch Planet.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story is really wonderful, the characterization is great. I love the violin lessons as cover for secret math class. And I must say, I’m becoming more and more amazed, happily amazed, by the devotion the series is shown by fans. Women getting the “NC” (Non-Compliant) tattoos from the comic in real life? Do you know of any other independent comic series that inspires fans like that? And I love the way the comic is now including short articles on feminism and related topics in the back pages. This comic is something special, and while I want to learn what happens next in the story, I also want to learn what happens next with the fandom.

The Totally Awesome Hulk #2

Amadeus, Maddy, She-Hulk, and Miles Morales meet up with Lady Hellbender, the Monster Queen of Seknarf Nine. She and her giant lizard mostly knock the Hulk around, mainly because Amadeus is a sexist dweeb. Maddy settles most of the problem, Amadeus loses control of his temper, Lady Hellbender reveals that she collects monsters to take them to her homeworld, and we catch a glimpse of next issue’s Big Bad.

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. I didn’t find myself particularly entertained, and I’m starting to wish this comic had Banner in it as something other than a flashback.

The Ultimates #3

Fresh off their success in evolving Galactus into a being who brings life to the universe instead of death, the Ultimates have just found out that the Shi’ar Empire is good and angry about the change in the Devourer. Meanwhile, it’s been discovered that too much time travel has caused severe damage to the space-time continuum, and in order to diagnose how bad the problem may be, the team will actually have to travel outside the universe in order to get a look at time from the outside. And once they make it to the Neutral Zone, the Blue Marvel discovers an old friend waiting for them.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding superheroic sci-fi, with wonderful characterization and art.

A-Force #1

You’ll get more out of this issue if you followed the A-Force comic during the recent Secret Wars crossover — which I mostly didn’t. But Singularity, a humanoid quantum singularity, appears in the Marvel Universe and starts encountering characters she knew from the first miniseries, only to learn that they no longer remember who she is. Soon, she’s pursued by a humanoid wad of antimatter. Captain Marvel fights the antimatter being but is apparently knocked out. Singularity also enlists She-Hulk’s aid — but Queen Medusa may not be so eager to assist.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It seems fine, though nothing particularly amazing so far. We don’t get to meet Nico Minoru or Dazzler yet, even though they’re on the cover.

Spider-Gwen #4

Gwen knows that Harry Osborne, in his new identity as the Green Goblin, is coming after her, determined to kill Spider-Woman for the death of Peter Parker, but not realizing that she’s actually his old friend Gwen Stacy. She battles Harry mostly to a standstill — but knows she’s making the same mistakes she made with Peter — fighting to humiliate her opponent and not to defuse a conflict she doesn’t actually want. Can she get the fight back under her control before she — or another friend — is dead?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a great knock-down-drag-out battle — and it brings up an interesting point about Gwen’s (and Spider-Man’s) tendency to wisecrack in comics — it’s fun for us to read, but it just makes his opponents that much angrier…

The Vision #3

Well, the Vision family continue to do weirdly creepy things. Virginia scares off some vandalizing kids by beating them up through her own garage door. Vision channels a vast amount of electrical power to heal his daughter Viv. And Virginia seduces her husband, leading us to consider what the heck sex is like for a couple of robots. And enfolded around all this, we get Agatha Harkness, alive, dead, or both, feeding a pet cat a mystical flower, stabbing it in the neck, and then fighting it off when it turns into a large black panther. And then she cuts it open and eats its stomach so she can foresee the future of the Visions…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Super-creepy. Yeah, the Visions were fairly weird, but it ain’t nothing like watching an old woman eat a panther’s innards raw and then babbling predictions of the future…

Step Aside, Pops

Well, now, I’m going to assume that you’re all aware of the awesomeness of Kate Beaton, partly because I’ve recommended her before, and partly because you all seem like sensible people, and I’d hate to think y’all were unaware of awesome things.

Anyway, if you loved the first “Hark! A Vagrant!” collection, it’s a stone solid guarantee you’ll enjoy this new one. If you’ve had the misfortune of not being introduced to Beaton and her cartoons yet, she’s a Canadian webcomic artist who makes fantastic cartoons about literary and historical figures. She’s got a great absurdist sense of humor, and while her characters often behave more like modern-day people, she’s also prone to occasionally dropping a historical truth bomb that makes these comics periodically educational while still being hilarious.

So her new book features Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt, Julius Caesar, Lois Lane, Spider-Man, the Strong Female Characters, Captain Bligh, Nancy Drew, Tiny Hermione, Wuthering Heights, Napoleon, Edward Gorey, Wonder Woman, the Velocipedestrienne, The Secret Garden, the Straw Feminists, Cinderella, Janet Jackson, Black Canary, Halloween postcards, Ida B. Wells, Tom Longboat, the Founding Fathers, Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, and many more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is an extremely fun and funny book — which, again, shouldn’t be surprising if you’re familiar with Beaton’s cartoons. Her historical cartoons alternate between more familiar figures like Napoleon and Caesar and more obscure people, like Ida Wells and Katherine Sui Fun Cheung — so it’s great to be introduced to amazing and inspiring historical figures who you may have never heard of.

My favorite cartoons tend to be the ones where Beaton picks an old book cover or post card and uses that as the basis for a comic — often an incredibly bizarre and hilarious comic. Nancy Drew covers tend to morph into studies on Nancy’s weird delusions. An old Halloween card of a sexy witch in a pumpkin turns into a joke about how damn hard it is to get inside a pumpkin. And an old book cover of an old woman feeding pigeons gives us wonderful insights on how much pigeons love bread crumbs.

It’s a wonderful book, people, and it deserves a spot in your bookcase next to all the rest of Beaton’s comics. Go pick it up.

I had a week or so off from reviewing anything, and I’ve got a mighty backlog of comics. So instead of struggling to review every single comic I got in the last two weeks, let’s just look at the stuff that was most worthy of being looked at.

Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! #1

Marvel’s been producing a lot of fun comics lately, but even matched up against Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, and Howard the Duck, this one was uncommonly fun. The story focuses on Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat — a character who migrated from romance comics in the 1940s-’60s to superhero books in the ’70s. Most recently employed as an investigator by attorney Jennifer Walters, Patsy meets up with a fairly inept rookie telekinetic supervillain who she bonds with and actually reforms, thanks to their shared love of the theater musical “Wicked.”

But Patsy’s going through hard times — She-Hulk can’t afford to keep her employed, and she’s already been living in a storage room. Luckily, Ian, the reformed villain, offers to let her stay at his apartment, and while Ian visits the local gay bookstore, Patsy meets the proprietor, Tubs Hale, an old friend and supporting character in the Patsy Walker comics. She also learns that Hedy Wolfe, her frenemy from the comics, has gotten the rights to her comics and has started republishing them. All that, plus Patsy has an idea for a new business helping metahumans get power-appropriate jobs.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Like I said, it’s a very fun comic, with wonderful writing by Kate Leth and wonderful art by Brittney L. Williams. It’s a great story that combines Hellcat’s superheroism with Patsy’s comedy-romance roots. This one looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Spidey #2

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s teenaged Spider-Man vs. the Sandman! Also teenaged Peter Parker vs. history class!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Holy banjos, for a comic I’d never even heard of the first time I saw it in the store, this one has zoomed up to the top ranks of my favorite books. I love just about everything about it, but definitely gotta give mad props to Nick Bradshaw for his jaw-droppingly amazing artwork. That cover is just plain spectacular.

Astro City #30

The continuation of last month’s adventure on the planet Zirros. Young Zozat is an alien from a species that often comes into conflict with the First Family. He’s been raised to hate Earthlings, but when he encounters an injured member of the First Family, he inadvertantly reads his mind and gets the real story — the FF wasn’t attacking for no reason — they were trying to retrieve a family member who’d been kidnapped by the Zirr. Meanwhile, his military-drafted sister is due to report for duty so she can become part of the Zirr’s latest Ultimate Weapon — a giant monster composed of a huge number of Zirr soldiers. Will the First Family prevail? And how will Zozat be affected by his contact with Earthlings?

Verdict: Thumbs up. More great development of the Zirr cultural mindset, and Zozat is a fun character — I doubt we’ll see him again, but it’s nice to know that he’s out there somewhere in the Astro City universe…

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #2

Devil Dinosaur runs around New York pulling Lunella Lafayette along by her bookbag while the prehistoric Killer Folk get busy learning how to survive in the Big Apple. When they finally get Lunella separated from Devil Dinosaur, there’s gonna be trouble.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Half the book is a wonderful chase scene involving a huge dinosaur, and the other half is the Killer Folk figuring out modern-day customs and language — and both parts of the story are plenty funny.

Jughead #3

Jughead has been expelled from school after Principal Stanger planted a knife in his backpack. Of course, everyone knows it’s a frame-up, including Jug’s parents, so his dad goes to the school and tells the principal, whoops, no, that was my knife that I left in my son’s pack by mistake. Stanger’s stuck — no one believes Jughead is violent, and his folks are sticking up for him, so Stanger can’t leave him expelled. While Jughead is wallowing in misery at Pop’s Diner, he has another one of his dreams and imagines himself to be a superspy uncovering the principal’s latest evil plots — but do his dreams have some basis in reality?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s not quite as inspired as the previous issues — though the badassery of Jughead’s dad is really something to behold. And I’m kinda starting to suspect that Jughead’s final theory on what’s behind all the shenanigans of Principal Stanger and the new teachers may have some merit…

Hey, you guys and gals, Merry Christmas! Hope everything’s merry for y’all — and if it ain’t, well, I hope things are better for you next year. Honestly, I hope things are better for us every year…

While we’re on the subject of merriment, I’m taking a break from the blog for a week or so — just to maybe recharge the batteries a bit and see if I enjoy not thinking about comics for a while. See y’all sometime in 2016!

And now — Christmas comics covers!

Y’all be good to each other, y’hear?

It’s almost Christmas! But there’s still time to do some last-minute shopping! So let’s dive back into the Holiday Gift Bag to look at J.B. Zimmerman’s Spacelore.

I previously reviewed Zimmerman’s first book, “The New York Magician,” a modern urban fantasy novel, a couple years back. This one collects a bunch of his short science fiction stories, and they’re pretty dang keen.

Among the stories we get here are:

• “Radar Ghosts and Dead Cosmonauts” – A motley band of techno-shamans try to save the lives of astronauts who died long ago.
• “The Screams Grow in Green Ice” – An astronaut lost in space, a secret military space station, and something deeply terrifying make for an astonishingly tense sci-fi thriller.
• “Universal Destructor” – Sometimes, when you get the right genius working on the right project, the whole universe can open up for you.
• “Notes from the Long Dark” – Deep space exploration sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? Of course, it’s best when you’re a willing explorer. And when you’ve got more than just your brain tethered to a spacecraft…
• “The Bleeding Machine” – A salvage crew encounters a wrecked spaceship, but once on board, they find themselves being attacked and separated by unseen forces. Who’s trying to kill them? And why?
• “A Trembling in the Sun” – A group of AIs seek to solve the mystery of what’s killing the sun before all life on their planet is ended.
• “Elevation” – A religious pilgrim in a primitive society undertakes a quest to climb a massive rope into the heavens — but where does the rope really lead?

Verdict: Thumbs up. You get over a dozen fantastic science fiction stories in this book — and they’ve got a serious classic feel to them. I think when we all discovered science fiction for the first time, what brought a lot of us in was a fascination with outer space, rocketships, astronauts, robots, and science so wild it’ll break both your brain and the laws of physics. Zimmerman grew up with the same fascination, and the result is this collection of space-based wonder.

And space-based horror, too. Quite a few of these tales feature strong elements of terror, fright, and suspense. Spaceships that keep themselves lubricated on human blood, voices of long-dead astronauts whispering through the radio, space zombies, and more remind us that space can inspire us — but that doesn’t make it safe.

But there’s also adventure and humor and science and daring men and women exploring the galaxy and fighting aliens and performing miracles with newly invented propulsion systems and doing all the things we’ve always dreamed of getting to do out there in the vast, cold, wonder-filled darkness between the stars. There are stories that’ll scare you, but there are also stories to excite you and make you laugh and make you wish we were focusing more of our efforts on making our science fiction dreams come true.

If you know someone who loves science fiction and great writing and the glories of space travel, they’ll definitely love this book. And hey, it’s late enough that you can’t get anything shipped on time, and the malls are just ridiculous, and you still need a good stocking stuffer — well, you can get this one on the Kindle, and it’s inexpensive enough that you can surprise the sci-fi fan with a little extra present without breaking the bank. So go pick it up.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #3

Squirrel Girl is trapped in the past, and no one in the present even remembers her, except for her roommate Nancy. Doctor Doom is hanging around gloating about his triumphs and earning the ire of passing superheroes, but Nancy, hoping she can get him to take her to the past to rescue Doreen, keeps telling everyone he’s just a cosplayer. Meanwhile, back in the past, Doreen has rounded up a bunch of other people who’ve been banished to the past — but when he and Nancy show up, he decides he should just stay in the past and use his advanced tech and knowledge of future events to conquer the world before any superheroes start showing up. That couldn’t possibly work, could it?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Just as much fun as ever. Stand out moments must be Jubilee taking a selfie with Doctor Doom, the fateful Wikipedia article from the future that tells how Doom won, and as always, the wonderful, madcap dialogue.

Lumberjanes #21

April wants to earn her knot-tying badge, but the camp counselor in charge of knot-tying, Seafarin’ Karen, decrees that everyone in the cabin has to pass for anyone to get the badge. Karen reveals that she’s been trapped at the camp ever since her ship was hijacked by selkies, who still float not far from shore to taunt Karen. They claim she’s stolen the skins they use to change into seals, and she claims they use selkie magic to cause whirlpools every time anyone tries to get to the boat. But Karen is, like almost everyone else at camp, hiding a secret…

Verdict: Thumbs up. So wonderfully weird. The selkies are hilarious, April’s homemade bestiary notebook is hilarious, Riley is hilarious, and Seafarin’ Karen is hilarious and also pretty scary. Also, that cover is just fantastic, isn’t it?

The Mighty Thor #2

Loki is tested by his father to see if he’s a strong enough warrior to join Malekith’s Dark Council — he proves his worth by talking a bunch of frost giants into dying. That’s not the frost giant way, so Laufey is unhappy about it, of course. Meanwhile, the Thunder Guard serving the increasingly insane and tyrannical Odin are attacking Thor, and they’ve got her on the ropes ’til Heimdall calls a halt to the battle, sends Thor back to Alfheim, home of the light elves, and allows himself to be taken into custody. In Alfheim, the elves are being slaughtered by hordes of dark elves, backed by Roxxon technology. Can Thor help the situation when Loki is sent after her next?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really, the most interesting part of this story is Loki’s continuing transition from semi-innocent Kid Loki to semi-innocent Teen Loki to not-very-innocent-at-all Slimy Jerk Loki.

Ms. Marvel #2

Kamala raids one of the offices of Hope Yards Development and discovers a strange purple goo being stored there. She takes some of it to Bruno for analysis, then has to play chaperone for her big brother — he’s not allowed to see the girl he likes without his sister there to keep them both honorable. Tyesha is both traditional and entirely cool, and they all discover that all the locals are sporting purple glowing eyes and all act bizarrely happy with what Hope Yards is doing. Bruno calls in to report that the purple goo has nanites in it, and Ms. Marvel goes after the development company. What’s going on here, and who’s really behind Hope Yards?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun story and art, as always, with great character interaction and dialogue. Excellent cliffhanger, too.

It’s Christmas Week, so back we go into the Holiday Gift Bag so you can find great gifts for the comics fan in your life. Today, let’s check out Cleopatra in Space!

Some of y’all may recognize Mike Maihack’s name and art style — he’s the artist behind the wonderful “Batgirl and Supergirl” mini-comics. Well, he also created this astoundingly cool series of graphic novels. So far, there are two — “Target Practice” and “The Thief and the Sword” — but there’s a third one coming up in 2016.

So we start out with Cleopatra, teenaged princess, soon-to-be ruler of all Egypt — and a deeply bored kid who feels stifled by demands that she be a proper princess. She likes to go playing and exploring with a commoner friend, and one day, they accidentally uncover an unknown tomb, which ends up teleporting Cleo into the distant future. There, she discovers a high-tech Egypt-inspired utopia, where talking cats hold many positions of authority — and where she is foretold in prophecy as the savior of their society!

So on one hand — awesome! The future! Talking cats! But on the other hand — not awesome! She still has to go to school! Ugh, school. But on the other, other hand (We can do that because the future probably has three-handed aliens), part of her schoolwork involves combat training — and amazingly, Cleo is really, really good at combat. Which is good, because there are some bad people in the universe, and a lot of them want to kill her.

Oh, and one more bad thing — there’s no way to send Cleo back to her home time. So how can she get back to her friends and family? How is she going to become Queen of Egypt like history says she’ll be?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an incredibly fun story, with great art, characters, action, and more.

If you’re familiar with Haihack’s work, you’ll be pleased to hear that his art is just as charming and wonderful as ever. The main characters are wonderfully emotionally satisfying as art — and the background characters, scenery, and architecture are also really fun to look at. The design of the techno-Egyptian future is outstanding.

Character interaction and conflict are really great, too. Cleo is our main character, but as the Chosen One, a lot of mundane things often come really easy for her, and everyone’s expectations for her are really high — and her more normal, non-Chosen friends just kinda want her to hang out and have fun instead of being the uber-popular badass. This ends up being a lot more fun than you’d expect.

It’s also pretty cool seeing everyone take orders and learn lessons from cats — the cats are generally a lot more intelligent than humans and they hold most of the teaching positions. It’s pretty fun to watch Cleo sassing the cats who hold authority over her.

The action is entirely fantastic. We get just about every kind of action scene — shootouts, chases, melee, mass battles, you name it — and they’re all exciting and fun and amazingly kinetic.

These books will be really popular with anyone, young or old, who enjoys all-ages comics — they’ll probably be extra-fun for girls who crave their own comic book action heroes. Go pick ‘em up!