Long day, short post.

§ July 15th, 2010 § Filed under Uncategorized § 7 Comments

There’s likely going to be a lot of piling-on of Superman #701 today (which is why I posted my main complaint yesterday to beat the rush), so I’m just going to drop this link here to Elliot S! Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman” as that appears to have at least some thematic relation to Supes’ current saga.

Now, I didn’t hate the comic…there’s the germ of a good idea here, and there were a couple of nice moments, but Superman comes off a bit too jerky for my tastes. Also, I thought Superman was keeping himself literally “grounded,” walking across the country and eschewing flight as a travel option. At least, that was the impression I got from the publicity, but he gets a couple of flights in there. Straight up in the air, sure, but our boy Supes is still flying.

On the other hand, J. Michael Straczynski’s work on the new Brave and the Bold (#35, art by Jesus Saiz) with the Legion of Substitute Heroes and the Inferior 5 was actually pretty good. Amusing, some clever time-travel shenanigans, and no heavy-handed moral like in previous JMS B&Bs.

The new Simpsons spin-off mini-series Comic Book Guy started up this week, and that was a lot of fun…the multiple covers wrapped around the book parodying various comics were a nice surprise. That Crisis on Infinite Earths one is the best. The “nerd knowledge” requirement is actually fairly low, with the gags remaining funny even if you aren’t familiar with all the specific comics references.

And if you were one of the four people still waiting for the latest comic book series based on the Wild Cards novels, The Hard Call, to finally wrap up…well, #6 is on the stands and waiting for your cold, hard cash, friends. ‘Course, I’m going to have to go back and reread the previous five, because I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what happened in those earlier installments.

7 Responses to “Long day, short post.”

  • nate says:

    wait…did you just post a link to a illegally scanned copyrighted book?

  • Randal says:

    I’m willing to bet I’m nowhere near the first person to notice this, but was James Robinson’s story in Superman #700 a big F-U to JMS? It’s all about how upset Lois is when Clark leaves, although she understands that sometimes he has to. Clark promises to try not to leave again, and then in the next story he starts walking across America.

  • Mikester says:

    Nate – Yeah, I probably did. For some reason I thought that site was a little more…academic than it was, but that’s still a full scan of the book, isn’t it? I’ll change the link.

  • DanielT says:

    My main complaint was the issue was uniformly awful. Zooming an overweight guy 10,000 feet in the air with no warning? Childish and could’ve given the guy a heart attack. Destroying the drug dealers’ stashes? Illegal search, unlawful destruction of private property and arson (he didn’t even try to stop the huge fires he started). Talking down a suicide? Morrison did it much MUCH better in All Star Superman. And I’m sure I could point out other problems if I could ever bring myself to look at the comic again.

    I find it hard to believe Superman is JMS’ favorite character when he doesn’t seem to understand him at all.

  • DanielT says:

    Oh, yeah. Has it been established that Clark Kent just gets to choose his own assignments of indeterminate length? And Supes was being just a straight-up dick to that guy at the end.

  • TM2 says:

    I’m glad I caught the link to the full-scan when I did. I had no idea Elliot S! Maggin thought the problem with Mexicans (or the poor in general) is that they’re spineless layabouts always asking for a handout.