"Screw Bob Kane! Frank Miller created Batman!" – Pal Corey
That was pal Corey’s response to my telling him about Miller’s forever forthcoming Batman Versus al-Qaida. It may be no Daredevil Battles Hitler, but I’m sure it’ll be…well, I’m not sure what it’ll be, but I’m sure it’s going to get someone ticked off somewhere. (Oh, and Corey may not have used the word “screw.” I just didn’t want “f***” in the title.)
Anyway, another new comics day, another dollar:
Dear Diamond – please don’t let your employees use one of the books we ordered as a clipboard prior to sending it to us. The House of M book doesn’t look very appealing when we can plainly read the writing gouged into the cover by whoever was using the book to support the paper they were scribbling on.
Question of the day: “So, what’s Apocalypse Vs. Dracula about?” My response: “I don’t think I can explain any better than the title.”
The Rosen Graphic Mysteries: UFOs/Bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster/etc. – Well, at least the text pieces in the back make a token reference to the fact all this stuff is hogwash. Otherwise, so long as you take this material with a big ol’ grain of salt these books can be fun…a little crudely drawn, a bit garish, but still good old fashioned unacceptable entertainment, like comics should be. Kinda wish we didn’t get a dozen of ’em at once (including the related “Myths” line), however.
Planetary Brigade #1 – Boom! Studios‘s newest release is a spin-off of the very entertaining Hero Squared, focusing on the adventures of Captain Valor before he “teamed up” with a parallel-universe slacker version of himself. It’s superhero team hijinks a la the Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis Justice League, which is only natural since these are the folks writing it. Amusing, entertaining, and imaginative…I think my favorite new character is the Mauve Visitor, the haughty and vain alien member of the Brigade, more concerned with his coat and drink than with the troubles at hand. He’s a “Prissuvian,” and that name probably tells you what you need to know about him. Very funny stuff. A variety of artists contribute to the book, including Hero Squared regular Joe Abraham, as well as Cynthia Martin, Eduardo Barretto, and Mark Badger, whose loose cartoony style is always welcome in my book. Anyway, check it out…previous knowledge of Hero Squared not necessary, though you should be reading that, too.
The Identity Crisis action figures have arrived, based on Michael Turner’s artwork, and…well, Deadshot and Zatanna come off okay. Green Arrow‘s head seems awfully out of proportion with the rest of his body, and Hawkman appears to be just a little too buff. And I had about a half-dozen incredibly inappropriate things to say about the Dr. Light figure, but I think I’d better just keep those to myself.
Speaking of inappropriate…Angry Youth Comics #10. That’s all I’m saying. Go look at it yourself, next time you’re in the store.
Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy #2 – That puppy’s going to come to no good end, isn’t it? (I’ve talked about the “avenging the dead puppy” DC war stories before…you know, hero befriends puppy, puppy dies horribly, hero uses anger over puppy’s death to give him the strength to kill the enemy…”this one’s for you, dead puppy!” This is going to be another one, I just know it.)
So were were talking about Infinite Crisis at the shop, and while we all agreed that, as far as crossovers go, this is probably one of the most exactingly planned crossover events in comic book history, with very little minor scheduling hitches (i.e. Supergirl) along the way, something was bound to be screwed up somewhere. Like, hugely screwed up, as in “we better do another crossover series to fix the mistakes caused by Infinite Crisis,” which of course would create more problems for yet more crossovers to fix, and so on. For example, what happened to Hawkman in all the revamping following Crisis on Infinite Earths, which they tried to fix during Zero Hour, which ended up getting sorta fixed in JSA by skipping over the revamped Hawkman entirely and going back to the Golden Age one.
It’s still too early to tell what’s likely to be the problem caused by IC…we’re still in the middle of the story, and they’re in the process of breaking things apart before putting them back together again…and it may not even be until a couple years after the fact before we get an inkling of any problems this series may cause. There was no clue in the original Crisis that Hawkman was going to get the short end of the stick, for example…that was more a symptom than a direct result of the series’ events.
But still, I wonder what “corrective measures” we have to look forward to after IC is over?