Reviews

The Boys #26 — Writer: Garth Ennis;  Artist: John Higgins Between Ennis’s propensity for the grossout, and his gleeful skewering of pop culture (this current Boys arc involves a satire of the X-Men mashed up with a tribute to Animal House), it’s easy to forget just how good a writer he can be, too; he seems here to be setting up a crisscrossing skein of mistaken motivations worthy of the Coen Brothers.  Whether the two young lovers at the heart of his story end up in a tragedy or a comedy is still unsettled, but the very fact that he … Continue reading →

Black Lightning #1 (of 6) — Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artist: Cully Hamner How not to launch a superhero revival: fill your first issue with lots of boring grownups talking and doing other boring things, with lots of little panels and murky, generic art, and exactly nothing involving, you know, actual cool heroes in cool costumes using their cool powers. Yes, this kind of slow build might work in a trade, but as an initial comic offering this is disastrous: any kid (and most adults) attracted by the cover is going to feel ripped off, and won’t be coming back … Continue reading →

Incognito #1 — Writer: Ed Brubaker;  Art: Sean Phillips Kind of a step backwards for Brubaker and Phillips, into Sleeper territory — and, since it’s under the creator-owned Icon imprint, there’s no connection to the Marvel Universe, either, which might have been fun (still, noir-with-superpowers is something this team is very good at, so it’s hard to begrudge them wanting to own the whole package, instead of just getting royalties for using someone else’s characters). If you’ve been following Criminal, this is more of the same, except with masks, which is to say that it’s still very much worth reading. … Continue reading →

Ultimate Hulk Annual #1 — Writer: Jeph Loeb;  Art:  Ed McGuinness/Dexter Vines and Marco Djurdjevic and Danny Miki Zarda (from Squadron Supreme, or Supreme Power, or whatever it’s called now) has a big fight with the Hulk involving his lack of pants, after which they eat waffles, and then go to a motel and have sex. No, I’m not kidding.  Loeb seems to be going for some kind of weird satire (the jokey, faux-Stan Lee intros suggest it), but, like all of his Ultimates work, this represents a creepy, repulsive view of an “adult” superhero world, and it just doesn’t … Continue reading →

Batman #683 — Writer: Grant Morrison;  Penciller: Lee Garbett;  Inker: Trevor Scott OK, so let’s get this straight: the whole Batman: R. I. P. thing had no effect whatsoever on Bruce Wayne’s life and/or death; he came out of it fine, beat the bad guys, and then went off to join the JLA for Final Crisis, where he was captured, stuck into a mind meld with that Lump thing from the Kirby Mister Miracle books, and that’s where we are now. The reason I can live with that is that these last two issues of mindplay have given Morrison a … Continue reading →