Y: The Last Man #60 (of 60) — Writer: Brian K. Vaughan; Penciller: Pia Guerra; Inker: Marzan, Jr.
By rights, this should be on the “buy” list, but I stopped following this title closely sometime around issue 20; I knew it was good, but just lost interest (a lot of these self-contained Vertigo series sag in the middle — even Preacher was kind of tough sledding for a while there), and so haven’t actually bought it for a few years. I’ve still been flipping through it, though, and can acknowledge that Vaughan and company have kept up the quality, and that this last issue has a lot to recommend it: the way the cover plays off the very first one; the leap-ahead trick; the way “old” Yorick looks like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future; the last-page splash, with both the straitjacket forming a “Y” and the title, which made me blink in puzzlement and then grin. If you haven’t been reading this all along the finale won’t make much sense — but the whole thing’s in trade form, so the first volume might be worth your time.
Countdown to Final Crisis #13 — Writers: Paul Dini with Tony Bedard; Story Cnsultant: Keith Giffen; Art: Tom Derenick and Wayne Faucher
Superman-Prime and Monarch throw down in the Earth-51 universe, and things go about as well as you’d expect (let’s just say that universe shouldn’t be taking out any long-term magazine subscriptions…). We seem to have abandoned the lots-of-little-stories tactic (Jimmy O? Mary M? Trickster?) in favor of just the main event, but that makes the story flow considerably better, and it’s actually a good extended fight scene, if you like that sort of thing (although the ending has problems: Why can’t the one character leave, exactly? Are either of those two other characters actually dead? That would be impressive, although I’m not holding my breath…). Bottom line: in spite of myself, I’m starting to feel a twinge of anticipation for the main event in a few months.
Black Adam #6 (of 6) — Writer: Peter J. Tomasi; Penciller: Doug Mahnke; Inkers: Alamy and Ramos
Depressing ending, although we sort of knew that going in — in fact, everyone loses but the bad guys. The trigger-word thing is OK, I guess, although I’d love to know if that was the original plan (assuming there even was an original plan): Mahnke’s darkly attractive art continues to be the best selling point for the book.
Spider-Man: With Great Power… #1 (of 5) — Writer: David Lapham; Penciler: Tony Harris; Inker: Jim Clark
The biggest problem with this series is that we really don’t need yet another retelling of what happened to Peter Parker between the time he got bit by the spider and his Uncle Ben’s death; it’s well-traveled ground, and no matter what you do people just aren’t going to care. I’d be more optimistic about the Lapham script, but the lingering bad taste from that meandering, opaque Batman story from a few years ago suggests that super-hero stuff just isn’t his comfort zone, in the way that Stray Bullets was. Pass.
Project Superpowers #0 — Plot, Covers, Art Direction: Alex Ross; Plot, Script: Jim Krueger; Interior Art: Doug Klauba and Stephen Sadowski
Ross’s Golden-Age revival project, featuring characters like the Black Terror, the Fighting Yank, the Green Lama, the ’40s Daredevil, etc. The bit with Ross “directing” the art, but not actually doing it, and having Krueger do the script, is reminiscent of the Earth-X/Paradise-X/Universe-X stuff; if you liked those books, this one’s probably for you, too. Me, I got three issues into Earth-X before my eyes started to glaze over, and this series looks to have the same effect — the bring-’em-back-from-limbo plot mechanism is creaky, and all the characters and situations just seem… bleh. Check it out, because maybe I’m just missing the spark of excitement here, but… bleh.
The Spirit #13 — (First Story): Glen David Gold and Eduardo Risso; (Second Story): Dennis O’Neil and Ty Templeton; (Third Story): Gail Simone, Phil Hester and Ande Parks
Suffering from not being Darwyn Cooke, and from being three short stories instead of one extended piece (hey, just because Eisner could do ’em doesn’t mean that modern writers can). Scan the credits to decide if anyone will make this worth buying for you; the first one does have the Risso art, while the O’Neil script helps the second, and Simone’s picto-dialogue experiment makes the third interesting. Still, following Cooke’s run is a thankless job, and next to that these efforts, while not horrible, just don’t seem worth it.
Phil Mateer
