The Wicked + the Divine #7

Laura and Inanna believe that the people who tried to assassinate Lucifer (waaaay back in Issue #1) weren’t actually opposed to the gods — they were really fans. So Laura has traveled to Fantheon, a huge London convention for god fans. She’s a minor celebrity here, as one of the few confidants of Lucifer, so she has to sign a lot of autographs and attend a few panel discussions. She finally gets to meet up with Woden — he wears a Daft Punk/Tron costume, his only power lets him empower his specially designated Valkyries, and he’s considered a creepy racist, at best. When he humiliates a former Valkyrie at the convention, she tries to take the fabled Prometheus gambit — murder a god, and you gain his powers. It doesn’t work out for her at all. After that, she meets up with Baphomet and the Morrigan, who invite her to party, and reveal there’s a new god being introduced: Dionysus.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great art and story, but I say that every time. Gotta give extra credit to the great pun-filled map of the London Fantheon. And do we talk enough about the outstanding work Matthew Wilson is doing on the coloring? ‘Cause a lot of the reason this book looks so gorgeous is because of all the amazing work he does with the colors.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #4

Cap has recently been de-inverted and is back to his old self, but he’s still dealing with all the bad publicity he created for himself by going hardcore fascist. Luke is also back to normal, but he’s pretending to be evil so he can find out what’s up with Jason Quantrell, the thoroughly evil CEO of Cortex, Inc. But he’s not quite as undercover as he thought he was. And Power Man and White Tiger are investigating the death of racist supervillain Gideon Mace. What monster is waiting for them? What’s the connection to Cortex? And will Sam Wilson get his spirit back?

Verdict: Ehh, not at all bad. But it’s nothing earthshatteringly fantastic either.

Lumberjanes #10

While April, Ripley, and Jo decide they’re going to finally get some merit badges — starting with the badge for cake decorating — Molly and Mal go off in the woods for their picnic, but before anything romantic can go on, they end up chasing the mysterious Bear Woman, who then accidentally leads them through an otherworldly outhouse into a world full of dinosaurs! Will they be able to make it back home?

Verdict: Thumbs up. What we expected to be a low-key day of loafing around ends up with dinosaur chases. Holy cheese. And that’s not even counting the oh-so-awkward-and-sweet picnic or Ripley dancing with a raccoon.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Milestone Comics are coming back!
• Never forget that the nerds won the war that the moral guardians fought against Dungeons & Dragons.
• This is something that should happen a lot more often. Not enough people are willing to run the Klan, the neo-nazis, and the teabaggers out of town on a rail.

Ghosted #16

Wealthy old supernatural bastard Markus Schrecken has taken over-her-head medium Edzia Rusnak to a wedding in Italy — two families that have been feuding for generations are finally going to be united by the marriage of two of their children. Unfortunately, Schrecken has arranged for his own choice as minister to take care of the ceremony — the mad cult leader in Mexico who ran the Brotherhood of the Closed Book. And they’ve decided to create their own ghost town — a village where every single resident is ghost they can manipulate.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not a lot for the heroes to do, and lots of opportunity for Schrecken to show off what a scumbag he is, plus a decent twist on the Romeo and Juliet theme, too.

A Voice in the Dark: Get Your Gun #2

Zoey continues building her friendship with Rio, a fellow serial killer, while also effortlessly making it through a police interview as they try to find out who killed noxious sorority girl Mandy Jenkins and her thuggish boyfriend Brock. And Mandy’s father, obsessed with finding the killer himself, might be even worse than anyone else in the cast.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Beautiful art by Larime Taylor, and great writing as well. There are lots of scenes of people sitting around and talking, which is just fine with me, because Taylor does dialogue and characterization very well.

Daredevil #12

The new Stunt-Master has faked the death of the old Stunt-Master, George Smith — and Smith has been forced to dress as the new guy, so he and Daredevil can have a motorcycle race up the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. When Daredevil rescues George, the new guy tries to run — and Matt pursues him driving a car in city traffic while shifting gears with his feet, punching the gas with his cane, and steering with the hook of his baton! But who’s the secret villain pulling the new Stunt-Master’s strings?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Absolutely fantastic action — maybe one of the best car chases I’ve seen in comics — to go along with Mark Waid’s wonderful writing and Chris Samnee’s outstanding art.

Today’s Cool Links:

• HOLD THE PHONE! Atomic Robo is turning into a webcomic?! WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT?!?
• Do you think the weirdos who freak out about pentagrams ever stop to think what’s all over the flags and on top of their Christmas trees?
• I really don’t care much about this Guardians of the Galaxy/Howard the Duck story, but it does include an image of the Guardians making duckface selfies at a peeved Howard, so that’s something.

Astro City #19

This issue has nearly all of its focus on more of Quarrel’s backstory, as she establishes herself in Astro City, saves Honor Guard and is then inducted into the membership, meets and starts working with Crackerjack, and suffers what could be a career-ending injury. How did she survive it and remain a superhero?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m really enjoying learning more about Quarrel. She’s always been a background character, so it’s great to see her step into the spotlight.

Captain Marvel #11

Carol has come back to Earth at Christmas to visit friends. She spends the night at the hospital with her ailing friend Tracy Burke, but she ends up getting captured by Captain Marvel-hating mad scientists Grace Valentine and June Covington, who dampen her powers, kidnap a homeless mall Santa, and prepare to torture and kill both of them. But it turns out the homeless guy has a very big trick hidden up his sleeve…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Probably would’ve been better if they’d released this one before Christmas, and if they’d explained the huge coincidence of kidnapping that specific mall Santa. But I still had a lot of fun reading it. The writing and art were top-notch, just as we’ve usually come to expect with this comic.

Batgirl #38

Barbara decides she wants to make sure no one else is able to coopt her identity as Batgirl, so she starts making sure she gets in social media a lot — mainly, letting fans take pictures of her to put on Instagram — and sometimes, taking selfies of herself fighting crime. Not everyone is happy about this — Black Canary thinks she’s grandstanding and not being a serious crimefighter, while her cop boyfriend thinks Batgirl is just as bad as any villains she fights because she wrecks police investigations. All of this makes Babs want to win over even more people, and she decides to do this by taking down the local bad boy, Jordan Barberi, who likes to wreck things up in his fancy sports car while his lawyers make sure he gets in no trouble. But things don’t work out the way she planned.

Verdict: Ehh, I don’t know. The action is excellent, and the characters are fairly fun. The main problem I’m having with this series right now is that every issue has an extremely strong focus on social media and nightclubbing. More realistic, maybe, for someone about Barbara’s age. But I think a lot of people had an expectation that this title would become more all-ages friendly, and while we’ve got a cooler costume, and Batgirl isn’t a relentless downerfest like it used to be, it’d be tough to find a reason to put this comic in a little kid’s hands when there’s so much in here about drinking and hookup apps. That probably just makes me an old fogey…

Today’s Cool Links:

• A dad reacts to how few comics there are for his seven-year-old daughter. On one hand — it’s not quite that hard to find comics that little girls can enjoy. But the comics industry mostly just doesn’t care if little girls (or little boys) (or grownup girls) (or anyone who’s not a white, heterosexual male, actually) are reading comics. And that’s why so many comics are so bad.
• And speaking of sexism in comics, here’s a rare example of an actually insightful Wikipedia article. It’s definitely not exhaustive, but it has a lot of depressing stuff in here.
• And in lighter news, here’s a cop getting down to a Taylor Swift song.

Shutter #8

Kate Kristopher and her recently-discovered half-brother Chris have been captured by one of her other previously-unknown siblings, the vengeful Kalliyan, who takes them both to her home in Cambodia. Chris is making new friends, and he’s being treated a great deal better than Kate, who Kalliyan appears to blame for a lot of her misfortunes over the years. Meanwhile, Alarm Cat recently lost his head. He’s still functional, but he’s settling into a bout of serious depression. Can Chris help him recover?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It was all fine, but I found myself a lot more interested in the backstory of Alarm Cat (told through a bunch of excellently created comic strip knockoffs) and his struggles with the loss of his head.

Rat Queens Special: Braga #1

We get a story fully focused on the one-eyed orc princess Braga and her history — she started out as Broog, the son of an orc chieftan, and the mightiest orc warrior around. But he was less interested in battle and more in pushing orc society higher — and that meant education, less slavery, and a lot less war. But his father wasn’t happy with that, and his younger brother saw a way to advance his own cause. What finally pushed Broog out of his tribe and deprived him of the people he loved?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A very cool story and great art, along with an unexpected story about a character we never knew was transgender ’til now. There’s action and intrigue and humor and smart dialogue and characterization and even a little sex. Worth picking up if you love the Rat Queens characters.

Lazarus #14

Forever Carlyle has been sent to kidnap her traitorous brother Jonah from the diabolical Jakob Hock — and then to kill him, while making it look like Hock did the deed himself. But Forever isn’t so keen on blindly following every order her father gives her anymore. So she helps Jonah escape — in a desperately risky way that makes it look like he’s dead. But they’ve gotten away with it — everyone thinks Hock had Jonah killed. But Hock has his allies among the families, and he’s going to order one of their Lazarii to fight Forever to the death.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fantastic story and artwork, with lots of action, claustrophobic intrigue, devilish double-dealing. Jakob Hock is a desperately awful villain, and I hope he gets what’s coming to him.

Silver Surfer #8

Norrin gives Dawn Greenwood a chance to drive his board, and her entirely unpredictable surfing style accidentally leads them to a world the Surfer has never seen before — Newhaven, where the entire population is composed of the sole survivors of lost alien races — in fact, they’re all from worlds devoured by Galactus! And when they learn that Norrin is really the Silver Surfer, Herald of Galactus, they reveal to Dawn his history helping to slaughter entire worlds. Is this the end of their budding relationship? And is it the beginning of a new rampage by the Devourer of Worlds?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent story and art — though I do wonder how Dawn never managed to hear about who Galactus was…

Today’s Cool Links:

• They’ve knocked down Ray Bradbury’s old home, all so some dubious “starchitect” can build a house that probably won’t look all that great.
• Rare set photos from the making of “Frozen.”
• An interesting long-read about an international chain of theme parks that lets children live in a grown-up world.
• A town in Alaska where almost everyone lives in the same building.
• Lo and behold, it turns out guns aren’t a magical talisman.
• This is a definite fact: there’s almost zero chance that I’ll be murdered by Muslims. There’s a far greater chance that I’ll be murdered by white Christian wingnuts.

Lady Killer #1

It’s a fairly straightforward concept — a stereotypical 1950s housewife who lives a double life as an assassin for a secretive organization. She takes out a fellow housewife with her own secret past, cooks dinner for her family, tries to avoid her suspicious mother-in-law, and gets pressured into taking on another difficult hit by her superior in the organization.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The art by Joelle Jones is fantastic — rooted in the ’50s but wonderfully kinetic and fun. The seemingly docile but secretly murderous housewife is a trope that’s been used before, but this one looks like it’ll be pretty enjoyable.

Trees #8

It’s a major shakeup for this series, as various crises suddenly come to a head, and a lot of people we thought were main characters turn out to be a lot more expendable than anticipated. Yeah, not saying more — I don’t mind spoiling surprises sometimes, but these are so perfectly, breathtakingly unexpected that I don’t want to do much to reduce the shocks.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a gloriously shocking issue, and though I was genuinely sad to see some of these characters leave the stage, I’m eagerly anticipating what’s to come. Ellis raised the bar in very interesting ways in this issue.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Political cartoonists are a dying breed in America, and it may already be too late to save them.
• A nice analysis on why action/superhero/horror/comedy movies rarely win the big awards.
• Gotta love this libertarian crybaby who renounced his citizenship and is now whining that he can’t get back into the country.

It’s another gruesome Monday, and I’ve got no interest in blogging anything.

So here’s a chicken and a little boy smoking a cigarette.

Now back to the salt mines with all of us…

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1

Squirrel Girl finally gets her own solo series, written by Ryan North, creator of “Dinosaur Comics,” and illustrated by Erica Henderson, creator of “Subatomic Party Girls.” The mutant girl with squirrel powers who’s somehow beaten the snot out of almost every major Marvel supervillain decides to attend Empire State University. To do that, she has to work out how to maintain a secret identity — she hides her tail by tucking it into her pants, but she mostly fails to remember not to talk to her squirrel pal Tippy-Toe and mostly forgets that she’s not supposed to show off her squirrel strength. Still she meets a few new friends, including her intensely weird roommate Nancy and a potential love interest Tomas. And she has to battle Kraven the Hunter! But can a mere squirrel-powered college student hope to defeat the perfect hunter? Ha ha ha! We are, of course, talking about Squirrel Girl!

Verdict: Thumbs up. There’s a lot of stuff to love in this first issue. The art is nicely fun, the writing is a winner, and there are a vast number of wonderful jokes, from the “Squirrel Girl” theme song to Deadpool’s trading cards to Doreen’s tail stuffing technique giving her “a conspicuously large and conspicuously awesome butt” — which is immediately checked out by a passing guy in the very next panel. And Doreen defeats Kraven in a fairly cool way, too. I’m hoping this series runs for a nice long time.

X-Men #23

I dropped this series when former writer Brian Wood got outed as a colossal douchegoblin, but with G. Willow Wilson working on the comic, I figured I should give it a try again. This new storyarc seems to be a mostly Storm-centric one — when a sinkhole and superstorm start up at the same time in the Utah desert, Gambit just happens to be on hand and phones up the X-Men for help. While the X-team works on solving that issue, Jubilee discovers that Krakoa (the Living Island now turned Living Landscape of the Jean Grey School) has gotten oddly ill. Hmmm, could there be some sort of disease affecting the Earth itself? Anyway, Storm tries to shut the unusual hurricane down, but it somehow turns against her and leaves her buried deep underground with only a hallucination of Wolverine to keep her company.

Verdict: Ehh, I dunno. It’s not that bad. But the art is severely wonky, especially compared to the great Terry Dodson cover. I’m also less-than-keen on the way Gambit completely vanishes from the story after he phones the X-Mansion, and the way Storm just randomly dreams up Dead Wolverine to comfort her. Too much Wolverine worship going around in comics right now, to be honest.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Here’s a great tribute to the awesomeness of “Astro City.”
• What was behind the terrorist attacks in Paris? It was less about hating cartoonists and more about trying to trick non-radical Muslims into supporting terrorism.
• Speaking of terrorists, Bill Donohue of the Catholic “League” strikes me as the type of person who really wishes he was in Paris to help pull the triggers.

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed #8

Lylesberg’s attempt to learn Boone’s story gets him a lot more detail than he was expecting — Boone’s lived an entirely rotten life, with the death of his mother getting him moved into a succession of terrible homes, some run by his own family members, some utterly horrible foster homes. He finally meets up with his true love, Lori, but realizing he has a lot of emotional issues built up through his rough childhood (and his then-unknown kinship with the Nightbreed), she recommends he visit a therapist — though Dr. Decker probably doesn’t mean to do good things for him. Meanwhile, Otis and Clay, literary twins sharing the same body, grant an interview to a reporter who’s managed to find out some of their secrets.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m still fairly astounded that this series has been so much fun, and I’m incredibly glad I picked it up in the first place. If you were ever a fan of this awesome movie, you should be keeping an eye out for the TPB so you can get the backstory on all these characters you always wished you could know more about…

Gotham by Midnight #2

The threat that Precinct 13 is facing — the villain kidnapping and warping the brains of children — is apparently some sort of supernatural, demonic nun. While Jim Corrigan tries to hold her attention and dispel her, Rook, the Internal Affairs cop assigned to shut them down, has to try to get the kids to safety. We also learn some of Sister Justine’s backstory, complete with demonic priests. Hey, you don’t think there’s some sort of connection between the various demonic Catholic clergy, do you?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m still getting used to some elements of the series — Ben Templesmith’s art is not the kind of thing you usually see in the rebooted DC — but so far, I’m enjoying what I see.

Today’s Cool Links: 

• It’s the new “Ant-Man” trailer!
• If you hate Jerry Jones like I hate Jerry Jones, this is going to make your day.
• Proper British actresses from Downton Abbey play Cards Against Humanity.

Daredevil #11

Matt Murdock talks to a former villain, George Smith, who used to call himself the Stunt-Master. He gave up crime years ago, but is frustrated that there’s a new stuntman running around and calling himself the Stunt-Master. He specializes in impossible stunts — and in fact, he seems to die every time he tries a stunt, before revealing his survival. Anyway, Smith is unhappy that he’s getting no money for the new Stunt-Master’s routine, and he wants Matt to do something about it. Matt isn’t too encouraging — Smith sold the name years ago — but he gets more interested when the new Stunt-Master starts calling himself a daredevil, a man without fear, and just outright calling out Daredevil to face him. And when Smith commits suicide, he decides to take direct action. How does the new Stunt-Master defy death? And why is Daredevil willing to risk his own life for a cheap stunt?

Verdict: Thumbs up. We get the standard outstanding writing and art we’ve come to expect — ain’t nothing wrong with awesomeness month after month after month, is there? I love the way this series puts mysteries together, letting Matt’s superhuman senses show us how the scheme is put together and then letting us watch him figure out the motive and work out a way to put the bad guys away…

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #3

Y’all hold on, ’cause this is gonna get a little confusing. The regular Avengers — Iron Man, Thor, Captain America (formerly the Falcon), the Scarlet Witch, the Wasp, Medusa, and Luke Cage — have all turned evil. And the Mighty Avengers — Spectrum, She-Hulk, the Blue Marvel, Power Man, White Tiger, and Kaluu — are not evil, but don’t know what the heck is going on. So now there’s gonna be a big ol’ fight. It’s gonna be pretty short, right? The evil Avengers don’t have anyone who can handle the Blue Marvel. But Tony Stark arranges for a global crisis on the opposite end of the planet, knowing the Marvel will fly off to take care of it. So the sides are much more evenly matched now — and the evil Avengers are guaranteed to cheat. Can the Mighty Avengers emerge from this with their skins intact?

Verdict: Thumbs up. These crossovers are often pretty silly, but this is a nice way to get the parts of it that work without having to spend too much money picking up every other issue. And beyond that, the writing’s great, and the art is nice, too.

Wow, completely forgot blogging for a week, then had to scramble to find a decent entry for this week’s Friday Night Fights. So we’re going to an old favorite — March 2004’s DC: The New Frontier #1 by Darwyn Cooke, as pacifist pilot Hal Jordan is locked in a life or death struggle against a North Korean soldier.

And before I forget entirely, Happy 2015, everyone — hope it’s a good one for you and everyone you know.