by Aaron Einhorn
Every week Aaron goes to The Laughing Ogre in Columbus, Ohio and spends far more money than his wife would prefer. He then comes back here and writes about the comics he reads that he thought were noteworthy. This isn’t everything he picks up, just the things that he feels merit discussion – either for being really good, or for having something really wrong with them.
Booster Gold 22
Dan Jurgens has made the concept behind Booster Gold work a lot longer than I ever expected him to. While the conceit of the book made sense (that Booster would be the guardian of the timeline along Rip Hunter, and no one would ever realize how important he was), I expected the joke to get old. Surprisingly? It hasn’t. Here Booster teams up with the Titans during their first fight with the first Ravager and Deathstroke, and it’s funny seeing how they interact. This isn’t the best book around, but it is consistently fun to read.
Dark X-Men: The Beginning 1
I’ve been reading Utopia, and have been intrigued by it, so I kind of loved this book, where we see how Norman got “his” X-Men assembled. It is fun watching someone who is as clearly insane as Norman play mind-games with other people – and having them played on him in return. The book is actually split into three sections; one where Norman talks to Namor about why on Earth Namor would join Emma’s team of mutants after the fall-out between Norman and Namor in Dark Avengers, one where Norman convinces a deeply disturbed Mimic that the new team of X-Men is the perfect place for him, and one where Norman recruits the Dark Beast – and we watch as two Genius intellect psychotics play head games with each other. Not a lot of story in this book, but the writing is top notch.
Green Lantern 43
The final prologue issue for Blackest Night re-introduces us to William Hand aka Black Hand. This really isn’t a Green Lantern issue, Hal only appears in the periphery, when his path crossed that of William Hand. This is an exploration of the mind of the supervillain, and how someone becomes obsessed with death and being it’s servant. Considering that Black Hand’s costume is ridiculous (and it really is), it’s amazing how terrified of the villain you will become by the end of the book. William Hand makes the perfect avatar for the entity which is the essence of the Black Lantern Corps, and things in the DC Universe are about to become very, very dark. Without a doubt, this is the must-read book of the week.
Red Robin 2
I generally like non-linear storytelling, but it becomes a problem when it slows the pace of the main plot down too much. In theory, this issue is about the fact that Tim has been targeted/contacted by the League of Assassins and Ra’s Al Ghul to figure out who is killing off members of the League, and for Ra’s to offer Tim his aid in finding Bruce Wayne. But it is slowed down immensely by a continuous exploration of how Tim chose to take up the Red Robin costume, and a final encounter between him and Stephanie Brown/the Spoiler. This book has all the right elements to be great – Chris Yost’s writing is solid, and Ramon Bachs and Art Thibert’s art is awesome, but somehow it hasn’t quite clicked yet. I might be more forgiving if Batman and Robin and Detective Comics hadn’t managed to knock things out of the park, but as it is, Red Robin, despite being the book I was looking forward to the most from the new Bat-Family of books, is probably the one I am enjoying the least.
Wednesday Comics 1
Having read the first issue, I don’t know whether I love Wednesday Comics or not, but I do know that I love the idea of it. Taking twelve comic titles and giving each one a full newspaper size sheet allows the creators to do some things that aren’t normally done in comic books. The size of the canvas alone opens up new possibilities, and the limitation of only having one page makes the creators stretch themselves even more. The problem with that is some of the stories feel like they work, and in other cases it feels like the writer doesn’t have a good sense of how to set up a good cliffhanger (Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s Metamorpho is the worst offender here, though they’re not alone in falling short). The other is that dealing with the fundamental shift in how you read your comic books – since once unfolded, Wednesday Comics is the size of a newspaper sheet. I’ve also gotten a bit too used to reading comics on slick, glossy paper, and Wednesday Comics is on newsprint, which just feels off to my hands. Nonetheless, I’ll be back next week for the second issue of Wednesday Comics – because the experiment deserves a chance to succeed.
