Wednesday Already

Man, I love Bart. And also this new writer, some character going by Marc Guggenheim.

Cop on the street: “Have we met? Something familiar about you…”
The Flash: “Dude, I’m the Flash.”

Reading a cape book set in Los Angeles almost feels unnatural. All the capes are supposed to be hanging out on the eastern seaboard, aren’t they? But it’s Bart, so he can be anywhere pretty fast anyways. Though according to this book, running around makes him hungry.

There’s a lot of secret identity shit this time around. Bart bitches out his girlfriend for gabbing about his (even though she didn’t), but it’s okay because his heart’s in the right place because he just doesn’t want her to go and get raped by Dr. Light. The conversation highlights DC’s need to keep their publishing schedule on track because if this book came out last week or if last week’s 52 had been delayed (lol 52 being delayed), it would’ve been a “hey Ralph Dibney’s dead oh oops spoilers above” situation.

Oh and hey, YET ANOTHER BOOK WITH THE NEW GODS. I don’t really care for them all that much, but having Steppenwolf around to say “Step away, stripling.” is worth it, I suppose. And having the friggin’ JLA show up to save the day is always fun. Too bad Ron Adrian can’t draw Hal right. He looked like Kyle in the wrong costume.

And yeah, if you haven’t read last week’s 52, spoilers above.

Cable & Deadpool #37
Marvel Comics

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Staz Johnson

At first I was a little frustrated that I picked up nothing but books that are in the middle of ongoing storylines, but then it occurred to me so much the better. If this column is supposed to reflect the accessibility of comics nowadays, why not make it as challenging as possible.

This brings us to the latest issue of Cable & Deadpooyou know what? I’m just going to type “and” from now on, because hitting shift + 8 to make an ampersand is a huge pain in the ass.

…

Cable AND Deadpool! Yes! So we pick up in what appears to be part two of a two-issue storyline (oh fuck remember those). Deadpool wakes up in a hospital bed after being drugged by some woman at a bar, and wakes up after having been exposed to Pym particles, thus being shrunk to about an inch tall.

So again, Deadpool hits up a hooker at the bar (offering her eight dollars) and wakes up Ant-Man size.

God, I love comics.

I was a little big confused about the overall plot of the book, I guess it ties in to a previous storyline where ‘Pool shrunk The Rhino down and fit him to a keyring (amazing), and there’s the question of if Cable has top-billing in this book, why the hell isn’t he, you know, IN IT? But I don’t like Cable anyway, and i’m assuming he’s caught up in the X-Books right now, leaving Nicieza to play with Deadpool and his subplots. Which, again, serves me fine.

I was a huge fan of Joe Kelly’s Deadpool series in the 90’s, but after it got entirely too dark during the second year, I had to drop it and haven’t looked back since. This book really sold me on the humor, though it was a little confusing at parts, and didn’t really give me a clear idea of what the book is about. Still, if Nicieza writes this good of a Deadpool every issue, I might even be able to stand Cable farting around and having large shoulderpads.

Pull or Drop?

Pull. But again, this is more or less a filler issue. A damn good one, but filler none-the-less. Once Cable turds his way into the book again, we’ll see how long it stays on the pull list. Yes I used “turd” as an adjective. My mom will be thrilled.

Blue Beetle #11
DC Comics

Writer: John Rogers
Artist: Rafael Albuquerque

I like legacy heroes. I think DC has developed a wonderful tradition of passing on a hero’s mantle from character to the next, maintaining a built-in familiarity with a character’s name, while at the same time allowing to reinvent a concept when needed. Maybe it’s the fact that when I started reading comics, Wally West was The Flash, not Barry Allen. Kyle Rayner will always be my Green Lantern, not Hal Jordan (don’t get me started on Rebirth. I’m so serious), but I tend to think of myself as more tolerant of the “passing the torch” from an established character to a new one.

Which brings us to the new Blue Beetle. I never cared one way or another for the Ted Kord version of the character (not that he was even the first Blue Beetle himself), so the Jaime Reyes version of the character had a clean slate to impress me.

And it did. I love this book. Love love love.

It’s the mark of a brilliantly accessible comic book where it can be the 11th issue of an ongoing series, be in mid-storyline, and feature one of the fucking New Gods and still manage to hook me completely. Actually I have next to no idea what on Earth is going on in this book whatsoever. I know that Jaime is the Blue Beetle, and is attempting to gather more information on the scarab that provides his powers. I know Jaime and his friend are somehow marooned on some sort of alien planet. I know there’s a guy in a loincloth and sword and METRON and oh talking animals.

I swear, I should hate this book so hard. But it’s just so, so good.

So what’s good about it? Well the art is amazing. I can see from the credits page that this is the artist’s first issue of the title, and it’s an awesome showing of things to come. He manages to handle the inherent problems with having a 16-year-old superhero protagonist by drawing Jaime, you know, like a 16-year-old kid. Even when “powered up” by the scarab Jaime has bony arms, skinny legs and the frame of a normal kid. Instead of taking away from the superhero-ness, it makes for an awesome contrast for when the scarab goes apeshit and sprouts all kinds of death weapons.

It’s the writing that sold it for me though. Jaime is written as being completely out of his element. As a 16-year-old strapped to a machine of pure death, stranded on a strange planet with his best friend, should be. It’s always bothered me that when new characters gain superpowers writers so rarely take the opportunity to play around with a normal person being put into these fantastical circumstances. It’s just nice to see.

And the book is funny. Really funny. Metron popping up and scaring Jaime, “a forehead full of justice”, there are so many shining moments of my type of humor in here, I honestly can not wait for the next issue. Not to mention devouring the previous 10 issues in the run.

Pull or Drop? Pull pull pull. This is the type of book that should spin out of a legacy character relaunch. Identifiable protagonist, hilarious humor, cool action, mystery, it’s all here. What a cool book.

New Avengers #27

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Leinil Yu

I dropped New Avengers, and everything else on my list, a while back. I’d poked around online and heard this issue would be a decent jumping-on point, what with the Civil War tie-ins winding down, and the debut of the new team.

Well, the new team doesn’t show up until the end of the issue, but it’s a solid enough read.

The book belongs to Maya Lopez, or Echo. Oh, and Ronin. Except Ronin is in the Avengers at the end of the book, only isn’t Lopez. Except Lopez is Ronin up until then in flashbacks. We don’t know who the new Ronin is, like we didn’t know Echo was Ronin at first but now we do, but now she isn’t anymore. ISN’T THIS FUN? The thrust of the book is that Echo is exactly where we left her earlier in the run: taking care of the Hand’s involvement in Japan, and posing as a male ninja named Ronin. The Hand, now led by Elektra, is SUPER PISSED at Maya/Ronin for getting all up in their Kool-Aid and wants her dead.

So they kill her. And then bring her back to life. It’s what they do, you know. As an aside it kind of irked me that Maya was apparently wearing her Echo outfit underneath the Ronin mansuit. I don’t know why that bothers me more than a ninja woman wearing a MAN SUIT and still being able to fight comfortably and well, but I digress.

BOY DO I EVER DIGRESS.

They bring her back to life, and the narrative of the book is an email to (blind, lol) Matt Murdock asking her to track her down and kill her, as she must be either dead or under Hand control if the email was sent.

Bendis’ writing is solid, as I said. The banter (actually bantering about banter) between the Avengers is a little clunky to me, but he still writes the best Spider-Man in the industry. The Star Wars reference absolutely slayed me. The mystery as to who is THE NEW RONIN THIS TIME doesn’t really affect me that much, but he’s making it pretty difficult to figure out at this point.

The team itself hasn’t gelled with me yet, but seeing Iron Fist and Luke Cage side-by-side is worth the price of the book itself. Dr. Strange in the Avengers is a little weird, but i’m excited by it. I just hope he gets utilized well. What an amazing character, and putting him on a team is a bold move, just like Spidey was when New Avengers launched.

It annoyed me that because Civil War still hasn’t wrapped, things like the team roster and Spidey being in the black costume again are still unexplained, but it gave the book a certain level of excitement to me.

Yu isn’t my cup of tea art-wise, but it’s fine.

Soooo Pull or Drop?

Pull. For now anyway. The fact that so much is up in the air is interesting enough to keep me with it, but we’ll have to see how it pans out. I think the book was a decent enough jumping-on point for new readers. But a team book like this is a hard thing to get people immersed in if they aren’t familiar with the characters. Also: God why is Wolverine in this book WHY WHY WH

I like the JSA. I never really read anything before this new series launched and I couldn’t care less about the whole legacy thing, but the team has come together nicely. That said, some of the reviews I have read so far have been complaining about the bad guys in this first arc. The JSA are fighting some Nazis. What’s wrong with that?

The little two line prologue that intros each issue talks about how they’re a WWII-era team, so I say fighting Nazis makes perfect sense. Calling them the Fourth Reich seems a little obvious, but the Nazis were not known for sublety. Reichsmark’s power of turning anyone he touches into a metal statue is pretty bad-ass. The Nazis have kind of hokey dialogue, but you can’t make the Nazis seem cool, that’d come across bad. But I say as villains for the JSA, Nazis are awesome.

And you can quote me on that. “Nazis are awesome.”

Also, Starman being crazy is crazy awesome, especially when Sandman shows up and calls a meeting and Starman starts singing “Mr. Sandman”. And then whispering “52!”

I give this book fifty-two swastikas.

OH HI.

I’m Scott, i’m the co-reviewer for Wednesday Already. Unlike Justin, i’ve only recently been getting back into reading comics weekly. I’m taking this as an opportunity to review books from something of an outsider’s perspective. Not long ago I walked into the LCS and ended up frustrated as to what to buy.

This is a problem, folks. If I, as a reader of comics for over a decade can get discouraged at where to dig into a few weekly books, what does that say for a new reader or (gasp) some kid who wants to get into comics? I hadn’t been out of the game that long, and already everything had chugged along so far I was lost. So in my column i’ll be establishing a new pull list. Picking up a few books a week, and deciding if I should Pull or Drop each one. If the book is good enough to warrant another buy, i’ll keep picking it up. This will hopefully strike a nice balance, allowing someone with a knowledge of comics to rate each individual books accessiblity.

I grew up on a steady diet of X-Men books but my current taste is… well, I have no idea. I love Runaways, but I Wait For The Trade on that one. I’m an unabashed Bendis apologist and read most of his stuff. I’ll update this later as the column evolves as does my pull list.

If anything technical comes up, let Justin know. I don’t know anything about this shit.

Also if you want to contact me for any reason, feel free. I’m fun as fuck.

Email: scott@wednesdayalready.com
AIM: scottsvengeance

Clean your room.

Yes, I know it’s Saturday. Shut up.

I am internet user Justin. Scott and I decided the internet needs another website. This one is about comic books. I have pretty much always loved comics. I think the first ones I read (beyond old Archie digests just lying around the house) was the Archie version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And the first “real” superhero book was probably this anti-drug Spidey book. But now I fucking hate Spider-man because he’s a loser and a whiny jerk. I like Batman instead. BECAUSE HE’S NOT WHINY OR A JERK AT ALL (lol yeah).

I read a lot of DC stuff and a handful of Marvel and an even smaller handful of others. I used to be into indie-er stuff but I can’t afford to be, since I wind up spending like $45 every week just on cape books. It’s pretty ridiculous, really.

The site’s not really entirely setup right yet. Comments will look ugly and stuff. But I’ll get around to doing that soon. If there’s anything technical to complain about, direct it at me, that stuff’s all my job. Scott is just riding on my sexy coattails.

Oh, and we’re both going to Comic-Con in San Diego this year. We will have REPORTS FROM THE FIELD. It’ll be awesome, we swear.

It will probably quickly become clear what our opinions are on things. The site will be mostly reviews of books and reviews of rumours. Stay tuned for more! Tell your friends! And people you don’t even like, I guess.