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.

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.