Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

I guess “GLUB” counts as a sound effect.

§ May 28th, 2014 § Filed under this week's comics § 8 Comments

Jim Starlin, the creator of Thanos, returns with artist Ron Lim to fill in a gap or two in the character’s past while setting up yet another Infinity Something-or-other series, which is fine with me, actually, so long as Starlin will be involved. The annual comes with three variant covers, and of course there’s only one choice as to which I’d get.

Collecting Jason Yungbluth’s longform post-apocalyptic Peanuts (and other comic strips!) parody, both from previous print appearances and the online strips, plus other goodies new to this collection. I’ve been a fan of Weapon Brown since first encountering it in Yungbluth’s Deep Fried comics, though I sort of fell behind keeping up with the webcomic and am glad to have it all here in one giant lump.

This is supposed to be the “Batman ’66” variant, though that mostly has translated to “‘characters drawn by Mike Allred in the usual Mike Allred style’ variant,” which is perfectly fine, don’t get me wrong. But everyone’s costumes need to be, I don’t know, a little baggier, maybe? At least one giant “KA-POW!” sound effect, somewhere? Swamp Thing (looking more like the Dick Durock portrayal from the first film) dancing the Swamptusi with an Abby Arcane who looks suspiciously like Eartha Kitt in a white wig with black stripes?

Been digging Matt Kindt’s covers on this series. The story’s interesting as well, giving us outsiders’ views of the Original Trilogy’s core characters. I suspect this and the other ongoing Star Wars monthly may be the last hurrahs for these characters in this form for a while, as the franchise switches over to Marvel and the ramp-up to Episode VII begins.

This issue goes a long way to establishing that the Fantastic Four are dangerous and possibly crazy people, which is something that probably should have been obvious from the get-go but James Robinson has a lawyer really go after the team on this and it’s hard to argue that the lawyer is wrong. It’ll all wrap up with our heroes coming out of it just fine, surely, or at the very least forgotten when the next writer comes along or the new first issue comes out, or both, but it makes for a compelling story in the meantime.

Was actually sort of surprised this wrapped up as quickly as it did, in only six issues, but there probably isn’t much more to say on the topic, really. A lot got squeezed into these comics, and the tone of the last issue swings from touching to appalling and back again, in true Garth Ennis fashion.

REMINDER: Swamp Thing appearance in Aquaman this week, about seventeen years since the last time that’s happened, so, you know, we were about due. Also, I have just dropped dead from old age, in case you were wondering.