Who Wants to be a Superhero?: Defuser #1 — Writer: Jeremy Barlow; Art: Kajo Baldisimo
Pretty bad — but not bad enough to derive any real pleasure from ripping on it. Save that for the one-page profiles of the other nine contestants whose characters could have been featured in this Dark Horse marketing crossover bonanza, complete with “Who’s Who”-type dossiers on each character. Look, particularly, at the entries for “Braid,” “Hygena,” and, um, “Mister Mitzvah,” a character so ill-conceived (“A direct descendent of King David!”) that words fail me. Yeesh. It’s all done with a straight face, too; the lack of irony is, you know, ironic. Only Stan Lee himself could have written these stories with the proper panache, but, alas, he’s nowhere to be found here — his name isn’t on the cover or anywhere inside. Hmmm… I wonder how the “winner” reacted to the news that, far from scripting his one shot at comics fame, Stan was going to be nowhere near this project?
Captain America Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1 — Writer: James Robinson; Art: Marcos Martin
A 23-page retelling of the origin, and a 15-page Simon and Kirby story (“Death Loads the Bases”) from 1941. The new story is about the pre-Super-Soldier-serumed Steve Rogers finding the courage to defy two Nazi fifth columnists with his own bad 98-pound-weakling self, therefore demonstrating that it’s not the steroids that make the man, or something. Better they’d cut it to seven pages, and used the other 15 for another S&K reprint; the one here is 68 years old and totally, completely, blissfully awesome. If just one 12-year-old buys this book and reads it, and it blows the top of his head off and turns him into a comics junkie for life, then this project will have been worth it; imagine if there’d been two of them….
Dead Romeo #1 (of 6) — Writer: Jesse Blaze Snider; Penciller: Ryan Benjamin; Inker: Saleem Crawford
Horrible title: it’s not the zombie comic you’d think, but a tale of a vampire who gets resurrected by hell, along with eight other guys, to perform… um, something; not sure yet. Generic TV plotting — of course when the title character claws his way out of the grave, the sole other inhabitant of the graveyard is a homeless Goth chick and her dog, who just happened to be passing by, and of course they meet cute, with feisty-but-flirty dialogue, and of course later she turns up, in an incredible coincidence, as… well, never mind; it’s actually got some nice bits, and the characters are all kind of likeably put-upon, cliches and all, so I don’t want to make too much fun of this. I will complain about the over-the-top violence in a non-warning-stickered DC comic: A bound girl’s throat is cut, graphically, over a corpse; at least two heads/faces are chewed apart in showers of blood; a man is ripped in half; etc. (and yet, unlike, say, a Vertigo or Wildstorm comic, nobody swears: the mainstream DC brand’s OK with the gore, apparently, but God forbid anyone should say “fuck”). There’s no question this book should have had some kind of “mature readers” label to warn parents about its graphic content.
Prototype #1 — Writers: Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti; Art: Darick Robertson and Matt Jacobs
I didn’t know this was based on a video game, but I read the comic and went, this has got to be based on a video game, and sure enough…. Gray and Palmiotti continue to demonstrate that, while they can hack it out with the best of them, their true mojo is reserved for Jonah Hex. The consolation prize is the Robertson art: his clean realism (with just enough cartooniness to give it depth and character) is perfect for stories of horrible things happening to ordinary people; if you want a horde of pregnant nude female zombies chowing down on hapless soldiers, he’s your go-to guy.
The Destroyer #1 (of 5) — Writer: Robert Kirkman; Art: Cory Walker
Kirkman often starts from a standard plot, here, he offers an aging superhero who, faced with impending death, needs to tie up loose ends from his career. That’s not a new idea, but he approaches it with such enthusiasm, and such gleeful carnage (blood splatters everywhere, in bright crimson gushes, but at least Marvel gave this a “Max/Explicit Content” banner on the cover), that you can’t help but read along and be entertained. The art and coloring are clean and shiny, a good match for the story; if you’re looking for standard-but-very-competent superhero fare, you could do worse than this comic.
Strange Adventures #2 ( of 8 ) — Writer: Jim Starlin; Pencils: Manuel Garcia; Inks: Al Milgrom
The same cosmic DC space opera that Starlin’s been providing for years now. Worth reading, although the mere term “Aberrant Six” makes me laugh instead of gasping in dramatic awe, and, minor wrinkles aside, Lord Synnar is the same damn nigh-omnipotent, not-quite-entirely-bad Thanos clone that we’ve been getting for over thirty years. Added feature: a ten-page backup drawn by Starlin himself.
Teen Titans #69 — Writer: Sean McKeever; Pencils: Allan Goldman with Yildiray Cinar; Inks: Julio Ferreira
Teen Titans Annual #1 — Writer: Sean McKeever; Pencils: Fernando Dagnino; Inks: Raul Fernandez
McKeever, citing “creative differences,” has announced that he’s leaving this title in two issues; Rich Johnson, in his “Lying in the Gutters” column over at the Comic Book Resources website, points out that the credits for both of these books read “Original Story by Sean McKeever,” a clue that he’s pissed at editorial meddling with the script. The regular book introduces the new team (Wonder Girl, Aquagirl, Kid Eternity, Miss Martian, Blue Beetle, Bombshell, an unpowered Kid Devil, and, of all people, and so quietly that you can barely tell he’s there, Static), and the annual kicks off a multipart initiation-of-the-new-team story. As has been standard with McKeever’s run, the little character bits and interactions are the best part; the plot, wherein Our Heroes battle an enemy that wrecks Titans Tower, and turns out to be Oh No Not Him Again (no, not Trigon, and not Deathstroke; the other one), is not particularly inspired.
Phil Mateer
