John Buys Comics, All Continues as Normal

This may be it, folks. We may have hit my point of karmic balance for those two astonishingly good weeks of new comics: a week of decent comics that are components of pretty good series. And that's okay, I guess. Kind of leaves me high and dry for reviews though. Let's see what I can do with talking about series rather than issues:

Legion of Super-Heroes - By Gar I'm happy to have a Legion series coming out, especially one that features lots of focus on Legionnaire interpersonal drama and sweeping future society hijinks. And heck, even if Matter-Eater Lad left for parts unknown off-panel last issue, the fact that Quislet and Tellus are hanging around balances my humours sufficiently to be joyful. Best of all, I kind of think that this series could be jumped onto with minimal research. Sure it's filled with callbacks to olde schoole Legion history, but none of it is actually necessary to understand what's going on. Pick up the trade of Geoff Johns' Legion storyline in Action a few years back and you should be good, plus you'll have a really fun comic to read.

Power Girl - Sure it's not as amazingly great as the first twelve issues were, but honestly I don't know if there's another creative team on the planet who could have continued the Connor/Palmiotti/Gray magic. Anyone who could have produced something equally as marvellous would have also done something completely different with the series, which would have paradoxically made it less good. So hooray for decent continuations, yes? Winick and Basrai have taken the reins with a minimum of fuss and have produced some genuinely enjoyable stories - I can be happy with that.

Supergirl - I read this comic, along with maybe four others, at lunch today and for some reason this was the one that the office wags mined their material from. "Supergirl!", they'd exclaim, a one-word challenge to my masculinity. "Why not Superman?", they would continue, but that was dangerous territory, and my boss for example got a pocket explanation of the House of El and its doings on Earth that he wasn't quite prepared for, mwaha. Besides, how can I stop reading what has been the most consistently entertaining of the Super-books for, like a year and a half and counting?

Justice League: Generation Lost - Wait, so the white lantern wants to prevent the events of Kingdom Come from happening? Isn't that, like Earth K-12 now anyway? How much do I have to pay for a multiverse that doesn't double up on themes? At least it kind of looks like Brightest Day might end with someone bumping off Magog.

Cowboy Ninja Viking - This is one of those series, one with a basic idea - folks with multiple personalities being trained as assassins - that could turn into a bunch of stupid and repetitious jokes by issue three but instead we have an engaging if somewhat silly character-driven tale of extremely violent international espionage. How did this happen? The main character is just a collection of memes, and yet I was genuinely heartbroken over a plot development in this issue. Bravo, I say, from my nest of perplexedness.

Hit Monkey - Okay, I guess that this one is over. But it was good, and that is important. See, you may have noticed that I don't read a lot of Marvel comics. At first, this was because I came back to reading the comical booklets just as Civil War was kicking off and DC was in its astonishing couple of years of excellence post-Infinite Crisis. Nowadays, it's mostly inertia that's keeping me away from the Marvel books, that and the event banner that most of them are sporting across the top of the cover. Books like this, that tie in to the Marvel Universe but don't really require outside knowledge, are really helping me ease my way in. Plus, you know: monkey assassin.

Sleep tight, folks. I am out of here.

Ain't That A Kick In The Skull?: A Special Early Skullkickers Review

 Skullkickers is the latest Image series to garner crazy accolades and fevered speculation before the first issue has even hit comic shops, alongside recent hits like Chew and Morning Glories. Fueled by positive early reviews, the first issue of Skullkickers has sold out at the distributor level before it’s even shipped (a second printing has already been announced). There’s always an element of hysteria surrounding this kind of pre-release excitement, and I find that, as both a reader and a retailer, I’m usually a bit suspicious that somehow, somewhere, somebody has manipulated the internet and/or media to give the book an added promotional push. I’m happy to say, though, that like Chew and Morning Glories, Skullkickers is a fun book with broad appeal that, unlike most of the offerings from the Big Two these days, makes a point to reach out to potential new readers with an accessible concept rather than trying to squeeze even more money out of an existing, ever-shrinking readership. The breezy script and slick artwork don’t hurt, either.

 Written by Jim Zubkavich and drawn by the art team of Edwin Huang, Chris Stevens, and Misty Coats, Skullkickers stars a couple of hard-drinking, two-fisted, medieval badasses who make a living tracking down and destroying supernatural menaces for money. The story opens with the duo busting up a werewolf cult, but they’re screwed out of getting paid by the local constabulary. Broke, the heroes—one a bald giant, the other a feisty Scottish dwarf—witness a political assassination and find themselves caught up in some kind of paranormal body-snatching conspiracy.

 The tone of Skullkickers falls somewhere in between Joe Madureira’s Battle Chasers and Todd DeZago & Mike Weiringo’s Tellos. The art by Huang, Stevens, and Coats has the exaggerated proportions and fast-paced action of the former, with the light touch and clean lines of the latter. Despite some gruesome subject matter, Zubkavich’s script maintains a fun tone—the back-and-forth between the leads, not to mention the barking city official who attempts to stymie them at every turn, brings to mind a buddy cop comedy transplanted to a fantasy setting.

 Skullkickers isn’t perfect—so far as I can tell, the two protagonists aren't given names in the first issue, and I’m still not entirely sure what’s going down on that last page—but, it is only the first issue, and the positives outweigh the negatives to be sure. What’s more important, though, is that Skullkickers is a comic that anyone can pick up and read without any prior knowledge of characters or continuity as a requirement. It’s also not trying to jump on the bandwagon of some existing concept that happens to be hot stuff right now (the supernatural angle means that either zombies or vampires could conceivably pop up at some point, but there aren’t any in the first issue at least), but is instead carving out its own place in a popular but under-represented genre. That kind of willingness to break away from the pack is always worthy of praise, advance or otherwise. 

The Unfunnies: Henrietta Needs Ten-Spot

Man, I've really been delving into the depths of time with these things lately. This one, for example, is from Action Comics No 11:

I'm not too partial to the "young child so naive that they're effectively stupid" type of character, but I do have to admit to having a soft spot for Henrietta thanks to this comic. That kid is a problem-solver.

John Buys Comics, huzzah.

Lots of indie books fulla monster-fighting this week, which is just how I like it.

First up, Mystery Society hit the magic number and so it's time for the long-absent THIRD ISSUE RECAP to make its triumphant return. Here's the poop: young wealthies Nick Hammond and his wife Anastasia Collins have started the Mystery Society in order to investigate/bring to light the occult, aliens, government conspiracies and so forth. All of the usual stuff. The story starts [[in media res with Nick in prison, then flashes back to the formation of the Society, which involved a) advertising for members and b) breaking into Area 51 to liberate a pair of pshychic twins who had been cryogenically frozen since the 50s. The break-in has had repurcussions (specifically, trumped-up murder charges) and now the whole society is on the run from government forces.

There is nothing inherently and explosively original about this setup, but I am very much enjoying the execution. Rather than defaulting to the standard "paranormal investigation" cliches (bigfoot, the Greys, yadda yadda), Niles and Staples are making up interesting new weird things for the heroes to encounter - in this issue, for instance a remote-controlled alien blob monster that occupies a brutish humanoid battlesuit. Heck, the two members of the Society that joined up via the advertisement are themselves pretty neat: the first is Secret Skull, a twentysomething girl who died and then kept on moving around and now wears a skull headpiece and a costume reminiscent of a 1940s movie villain. The other is a Victorian robot with the brain of Jules Verne. Together, they are my favourite new motorcycle-riding comic-book duo.

Next up, King! from Blacklist Studios, the folks behind John-favourite R13. Here is King! in a nutshell: take Bruce Campbell's rendition of Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep and make him a young man, then drop him into the Evil Dead series. As someone who enjoys a good comic about monster-punching, I have to shine the full light of my approval on Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford for this one.

Oh, hey! There's a zombie Elvis in Zatanna! How many other cultural icons can claim to have simultaniously occupied both sides of the undead/monster-puncher duality? Not too damn many.

I didn't weigh in on Morning Glories last month and now here it is at number two. This is one of those comics that I am happy to have impulse-bought: it's the tale of a group of problem and/or gifted high school students who are offered admission into a prestigious new private school, which is very exciting, I know. But then they figure out that they all have the same birthday, and then their parents start claiming not to know who they are, and then things start getting sinister. Writer Nick Spencer has done a terrific job of hinting at a lot of deep dark secrets and now he just has to dole them out at a measured pace and I'll keep on getting this. Well, as long as it doesn't turn out to be one of those books that is totally dumb once you knwo what's actually going on. I'm going to be optimistic.

 

Grant Morrison, you have fooled me once again. Joe the Barbarian almost seemed like it was going to end this issue and now I am in a heightened state of suspense which, coupled with my sadness over the fact that this most excellent of series is almost over, will surely wear me down to an emotionless nubover the next month. I will refer my loved ones to you, sir, when they accuse me of neglectful, robotic behaviour.

It kind of looks like I was wrong about Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors being a police procedural in space, but I suppose that I can deal with the crushed dreams. At least it's a good time, even if it is full of the sort of fluid-spewing grievous bodily harm that the various GL books have become known for in recent years. I can definitely have a good time with a comic about Guy Gardner, Arisa and Kilowog meeting and greeting with a selection of colourful Lanterns while en route]] to a confrontation with a snake-barfing evil mastermind. And I think that it might not engender a massive crossover, even!

Henchman Fashion File: The Rocketeer's Rocketeer-Racketeers

It's that time again: time to over-analyze the fashion choices that the super-villain on the go is making for his underlings. What fun we shall have!

The Villain: This is the guy, and I'm going to call him the Rocketeer (more on that later):

The Rocketeer (no relation) had a cunning plan to steal missiles in-flight for... some reason. The issue was actually less about whatever he was scheming as it was about the personal heartbreak of Batman's pal, who hadn't followed his family's tradition and gone into the armed forces and so had to be the best scientist ever in order to have some semblance of self-respect. And the fact that people were going to the trouble of stealing them mid-flight wasn't proof that they were good rockets, either, so don't bring that up in the comments.

The Rocketeer (no relation) was also notable for having a much worse costume than his underlings, but again, more on that later.

The Henchmen: These guys I'm calling the Rocketeer-Racketeers, because it's on the cover.

As far as henchmen go, the Rocketeer-Racketeers have it pretty sweet: they get to fly, they have great costumes... The only problem is that they just aren't all that good at their jobs. Or possibly that they were hired solely for their abilities in the stealing-a-rocket-in-flight field and were never actually tested for Batman-opposing skills. What I'm trying to say is that they are incompetent, to the extent that I don't know if I have any more pictures that feature them not being punched out.

Attractiveness of Costumes:

I'm going to come right out and say it: these things are totally awesome. Flared gloves? Goggles? Head and shoulder fins? Hell, even their pistols look like they were stolen from a moon-man. It's only the fact that the whole thing is bright orange that disqualifies this from my list of potential Halloween costumes, and the little rocket on the chest almost outweighs that.

4/5

Utility of Costume:

Also surprisingly high, actually. As opposed to some of our earlier examples of henchman couture, the Rocketeer-Racketeers  appear to actually be appropriately attired. There are no awkwardly-placed tail-fins just waiting to get stuck in an inconvenient hedge, no giant rocket-shaped helmets to make them top-heavy, and they reliably fly! Well, semi-reliably. Also, I'm concerned about the placement of the jets - I reckon that over the long term the Rocketeer (no relation) is going to be dealing with a lot of lower-back injury related workman's comp claims.

There's also the issue of speed. As far as I can tell, these particular rocket packs must fluctuate wildly. After all, they managed to catch at least three rockets in-flight, but later on:

It sure does look like they get overtaken by a couple of guys in parachutes. And even if that's not the case, they definitely get out-manouvered by them. Happily for the Rocketeer-Racketeers, though, they regain some of their lost points via this little innovation:

Given the amount of time that these fellows spend crashing into the ocean, an amphibious mode is basically the best option that they could have thought to build into their suits. Hell, they kind of out-thought Batman on that one. Good call!

4/5

Budget for Costumes:

Exactly where it should have been, in my opinion. If you're going to go into super-crime then you have to go all the way. If there's one place that they skimped, it was on the surplus Orange fabric that they used to make the things. At least they all have the same colour.

The high quality of his henchmen's uniforms, in fact, is likely to be the reason behind the Rocketeer's abysmal fashion choices. Desperate to distinguish himself from the common hench-rabble, he added element after element, little caring that each one took more and more away from the attractiveness of the whole. Especially the writstbands and rocket-fin helmet. Only the rakish moustache was a good idea.

3/5

Chance for Bonus Points: Does the Villain Have a Lieutenant with a Marginally Cooler Costume and Possibly a Name?

Kind of? Actually, the Rocketeer 9no relation) himself fills that role, as he's kind of a first among equals. In the context of the story, it's the group that's referred to as the Rocketeers, or the Racketeers, or maybe the Rocketeer-Racketeers. So even though he's clearly the leader, the Rocketeer is also kind of the one henchman with a nicer more elaborate uniform. But no name. 

I just kind of confused myself, so I arbitrarily decide that he gets no bonus points. Still, the final total is a very respectable 11/15. Good job, you orange-clad crash-monkeys.

Enjoy your victory, Rocketeers!

IN JAIL.

Archie Sunday: Getting With the Times for Sixty Years

 

As ridiculous as Punk Jughead or, well, this is, you have to give Archie and the gang some props. I just don't know if I could have handled being a teenager for the entirety of the Twentieth Century with anything like this level of joviality. Godspeed, you red-headed panderer.