Image Previews for December

Lee: Image is starting to kill me again. Now that the series are starting to get collected my budget is getting crushed by all the new trades.

Thomm: I think it’s well established that my budget pales in comparison to, well, everyone. I’ll pick and choose.


THE ACTIVITY #1
story Nathan Edmondson   art / cover Mitch Gerads
32 Pages/ FC / $3.50
The evolution of global warfare necessitates the evolution of special forces to rise and meet the call. The U.S Army has therefore looked to its last secret special operations tribe, the Intelligence Support Activity, or Gray Fox. Within Gray Fox is a team of elite men and women whose mission is flexible, whose technology is bleeding edge, and whose execution is precise and lethal. They are Team Omaha, and they serve The Activity.
Lee: This reminds me of that great series from Oni, Queen and Country. If it’s anything like that then this is something to look forward to.
Thomm: Team Omaha? Where’s the steaks? In fact, with reference to a bleeding edge rather than cutting edge, I think this is slyly telling us it’s about butchers.

One of comics' great lost opportunities

So last week I noted how much Geoff Johns’ Aquaman went out of its way to address the widely held perception that its title character was lame. This is a stigma that has been attached the character since Superfriends. And creators have tried to address it in a multitude of different ways – playing up his royal heritage, making him a bad ass with a hook for a hand, writing a first issue that did nothing that talked about how cool he was, etc.

I think what disappointed me about Johns’ first issue was how much he drew attention to the character’s negatives. What really frustrates me about this isn’t just that he is accentuating the character’s biggest weakness, but that it reminded me of one of comics’ greatest lost opportunities – Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s Aquaman.

Dark Horse Previews for December

Lee: DH continues to surprise me. This month it’s a spotlight on overly expensive hc’s.

Thomm: Oh, sure that’s right up my alley.

EMPOWERED DELUXE EDITION VOLUME 1 HC

Adam Warren (W/A)

bw, 712 pages, 6 1/2" x 9", $59.99

Enough Empowered to crush your nuts! The steamy cape-and-tights comedy so outrageous that the bonds of regular graphic novels could not hold the laughs within, Empowered has expanded into a tome so massive that even the superpowered can barely lift it! Empowered Deluxe Edition Volume 1 collects between its rock-hard covers all the material from the first three Empowered volumes, plus several metric tons (okay, like forty pages) of top-secret, never-before-seen extras (except by Adam Warren, a few close friends, and some ninja), including the very first Empowered stories, sketches, logo variants, Adam’s story notes, and more, more, more! That's seven hundred pages, chief, and printed on way nice paper, too! Only you deserve so much! Hardcover edition, limited to one printing!

Lee: Empowered has been around for awhile and seems to have a dedicated cult following. It has always looked really funny and I keep meaning to read it. But, for $60 it just might be too pricey for me right now. And, DH is one of the few publishers that I actually believe when they say there won’t be any more printings.

Thomm: Never heard of it. Not gonna be getting’ it.

What I read this week... Oct 03

This week I was worried that I wouldn't have very much quality reading time due to conflicts between work, dance practice (Girl and Tiny), soccer practice (Boy and Tiny), and other misc commitments.  But, Wife decided that she wanted to see all the soccer games this weekend so while she stood in 50 degree weather with a lovely wind chill, I went to dance practice, sat in the heated lounge reading for 2 hours.  It was excellent! 

Overall it turned out to be a mixed bag of books: 1 great, 1 very good, and 1 eh-ok.

Details below the break...

The Week in Review – September 28

Well the DCNu’s debut is complete. All in all I think DC did a great job and since next week I will not have the time to do a week in review post I will probably prepare a first impression and some sort of rating scale regarding all 52 books as I sampled each and every title. I have heard that Didio is micromanaging stuff and driving creators crazy and I can believe that aspect. The flip side is that he was right about a lot of the changes that were needed to get things right and he is enforcing what he believes is the right thing to do. Didio maybe was the force needed to bring DC in to a new era and eventually he may need to be the person pushed out the door also. Time will tell. Success always brings detractors and if everyone likes you then you must be doing something wrong.

I have a fair number of books to cover this week so I will be trying to keep it brief while talking about each book. I find it hard to do a proper review when just giving a brief bit to each book so they often become more about my feeling towards the series then an actual review. All in all September has been one of the most exciting month in comics in decades which offsets the never ending rain in Baltimore, Maryland area has been suffering through.

A big surprise for me is how much I enjoyed The Ultimates #2. While I love Hickman’s high concepts and ideas his execution and ability to actually tell a story often fall short or more accurately go on forever (see FF). This issue we get a tale of a science fiction city that cuts itself off from the world and inside the city time passes at a hyper-accelerated rate. In the span of minutes a futuristic people who have evolved a 1,000 years re-appears on Earth. A battle ensues with super heroes and they discover Asgard and succeed in killing off the power source and much of Asgard.  Great concepts, a very cool story, the plot moves fast, the art is enjoyable and we get an actual story. In FF Hickman’s story has been dragging on for years with no end points to the plot. Here we get a great story where we have plotline that resolves in one issue, but it is part of a greater whole. This book appears to be showing the payoff of Hickman finally marrying his great ideas into a great monthly comic.

The List - September 2011

And here we are with another end of month rush to get the List up. This one's a bit inflated, too. I checked out several of the DCNu #1s, though nothing approaching Jim's catholic approach. Not surprisingly, most of them didn't make my top ten.

1. American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest 4 - This mini just keeps on rockin' to its bloody conclusion. Dr Pavel is front and center for this issue, starting with his narration of his story up to the point where we've met him in this series. Through his work he discovered the ancient, giant sized breed of vampires we now see in the cave below the castle. The vampire's we know better from this series and its progenitor have been destroying the ancient ones whenever they're found, so Dr Pavel has hidden these three in this cave and is now seeking to wake them to fight the vampires on their tails. There's a nice bit of realism when Felicia and Cash go down hard and fast when they're surrounded by vampires. A couple of good punches to the head, and they're down, as they should be. The big, ancient vampires are awake and active by the end of the issue. We'll see how that bodes for Felicia and Cash. I hope we learn why one of them looks like a werewolf, too.

The Flash #1 -- A Review (2011 Version)

Do you remember when the Flash was a long running title, numbering in the two hundreds (and once upon a time in the three hundreds)? It seems like a lifetime ago and here we are again on the third reboot in as many years, and only 18 months since the last one. I gave that issue an “A”, but less than a year later I’d dropped the book before issue 12 and was so dissatisfied that I skipped Flashpoint altogether. After hearing that Barry’s marriage to Iris was kaput; I wasn’t planning on picking up The New 52 incarnation either. However, I ended up getting it anyway and unfortunately this will not be a repeat of my last Flash review.