Disturbing trends.

It's been awhile. A confluence of events forced a little break: on the road a bit due to some health and family matters and amidst that, trying to avoid the April Fool's computer virus resulted in a week of hell trying to fix what the solution did to the computer.

Twenty years ago and some change, Jim Shooter had an idea of a story and had founding Avenger Hank Pym suffer a breakdown, slap his wife and betray the team. Today, the character still routinely suffers from that storyline, not the betrayal of the team so much as him slapping his wife. Writers were unable to just let it go and move past it and instead kept revisiting it, trying to explain it away or to further mire the character.

Just a year or two back, Black Canary punched Green Arrow during a spat. Barely anyone made a comment. Black Canary is a trained martial artist, one of DC's top fighters. And, she lost her temper enough with Green Arrow to punch him. Not slap him. Balled up fist and punch to the jaw. This month, she does so again, both in JLA AND Green Arrow/Black Canary with even less provocation than before. Neither story gives any solid reason why Black Canary should be angry enough to even slap Ollie much less haul off and punch his lights out. And in the latter we actually see some spittle of blood from the punch. Again, this passes by with little fanfare, little outrage. I'm cancelling both of these titles from my pull list. Not just because of these scenes. They're just indicative of the bad writing that has plagued the books.

I had high hopes with a new writer for Green Arrow as Winnick seemed to just be spinning his wheels, as if he really didn't know what to do with a married Green Arrow. The new writer sets out to create a few new villains. Good. However, he does so by having Black Canary be a loose cannon with her powers, injuring innocent bystanders. He also commits the sin of building up his Mary Sue villain Cupid at the expense of other characters. This character who couldn't even defend herself in an abusive relationship, has the resources and abilities to track down various bad-guys and KILL them and even go toe-to-toe with Black Canary? Lazy and bad writing. And, while Green Arrow doesn't have the most impressive gallery of villains, it's a complete waste of characters to just kill them off panel instead of trying to find ways to make them interesting.

JLA has been suffering for awhile. And, I tried to give McDuffie a chance. After all, he inherited a whole bunch of subplots from a previous writer who had no intention of following up on any of the mess he made and then obviously editorial making the book a vehicle for introducing various characters and storylines to be continued elsewhere. It has gotten so bad, that Hal Jordan (and Green Arrow agreeing) has decided to appear in a different JLA book under a different writer that is at least promising the team will be doing things. This too is probably editorially driven, but WE JUST HAD THE TEAM BREAK UP AND REFORM! It's too soon to just all of a sudden announce another break up, with another reforming of a new team with new team members. Instead of giving us a whiny issue reaffirming what a load of crap the book and the team basically has been since the relaunch, actually write a god-forsaken story where the team is doing something, facing a huge threat. Ultimately, the only reason why the book has been floundering is that the storytelling has been lacking. The two-parter with the Milestone characters made little to no sense, it did a poor job with setting up the characters and explaining who they were and how they fit in. Their inclusion into the JLA may have been an editorial decisision, but it doesn't mean that there couldn't have been a good story to do so. Even the worse JLA-JSA crossovers made more sense and at the very least, told a complete and coherent story (even if you suspected the writer eating some bad mushrooms). Instead of Black Canary whining about the loss of Superman and Wonder Woman, show her be a person of strength. Have her a) be understanding about the concerns and issues that have made a bunch of the team leave or b) basically fire them for being undependable and seeking members to replace. Even with the wholesale slaughter of secondary and tertiary characters of the DCU, there are still bound to be enough characters left to draw upon, especially with MILESTONE and MLJ being folded in. It's not as if the whole team left, she is left with a good core group consisting of Vixen, Dr. Light, John Stewart, Hawkgirl, Zatanna. And, it's only McDuffie's writing that insists on having Red Tornado unavailable. Go to teams past and recruit the original Hourman (who stays out of the picture mostly in the JSA anyway), Lionheart, Maya, Major Disaster (in his old costume please), Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Connor Hawke.

Flash: Rebirth. Dead at the starting line. Starting off with a graphic murder scene, Johns delivers a mopey and dark comic. He doesn't tell us why we should be excited that Barry is back. He shows us why the characters in the book are excited for his return but not why we as readers should care. If McDuffie used Hal Jordan as a mouthpiece to express just how lame the JLA book has been, Johns uses Barry Allen to show how depressing comics have gotten as he ruminates about his rogues and the villains and things that have happened since. Len Strazewski did something similar in his JSA series, where various characters had recognized how much darker and dangerous the heroes and villains had become since their day. The difference being that he had the heroes recognize this and choose to be something more, to show a better way. Barry Allen on the other hand chooses to be the wet blanket on everybody's parade. This is supposed to be interesting enough to make me want to come back to a second issue and read about this character? The only hopeful thing about the storyline, if Savatar was able to escape also from the Speed Force (and Bart elsewhere), can we hope that Johnny Quick and Max Mercury nee Quicksilver won't be too far behind?

I will give props to Van Sciver's art. It has dramatically improved. It is still as detailed as ever and a merger of the similar styles Perez, Bolland and Jimenez. His storytelling is better though, his setting the scenes and letting each panel tell its story without the detail obscuring the message. His figures are more dynamic and natural.

Recognize the dapper fellow to the right? That's Deadshot in his first appearance. The Secret Six misses a chance to acknowledge the character's past for the sake of the humor of Floyd Lawton not having enough social skills to even recognize a decent suit (he was going to wear a Johnny Thunder reject of a green plaid jacket). Whatever suaveness the character has had, he is now just a plain sociopath. As much as I like Gail Simone's writing, I realize that comics have gotten to the point (especially with my economy), that I just don't care enough about these characters to really continue. It's a funny and often insane book with creative characters and concepts and wild action. Yet, the characters are for the most part ones I don't really care to spend money and time with each month. It's a sad decision to have to reach for what is one of the best written and best drawn books out there. It's just not my cup of tea.

Similarly, I've decided to draw to a close with Guardians of the Galaxy. In this case though, it's because while I normally would like these characters fine, I just don't identify with any of them, they are all too greatly changed in both looks and demeanors from previous incarnations. I don't care for the structuring of the stories around the de-briefings. Once in a while would be fine, but it is proving to be the rule and not the exception. And, there seems to be an illusion of stories happening. What we've had was events and subplots progressing and unfolding, but the big storylines seem to have been hampered by them and the various little cross-over stories happening. By dropping it, I don't even have to pretend to care what's going on with the War of the Kings crossover-itis.

Interestingly, in Captain Britain and MI:13, the illogic of the vampire base on the lighted side of the moon is actually brought up (don't really recall what their answer was other than "magic"). Think they may read this blog? Nah, probably not. It's an otherwise well-crafted tale, really setting Dracula up as a master planner and threat with logical goals for an undead vampire living on the moon. A pity that Spitfire has to be made just a bit more pathetic of a character.

Looks like the Sci-Fi channel has decided to go the same route with the Phantom as they did Flash Gordon. With probably about as much success. Arbitrary changes to the character (new names for him and his love interest) and a costume that is similar to the original in only that it is purple. You can change everything (such as their Battlestar Galactica) but it's an uphill battle from there. You have to make sure that what you are producing is so good that the changes are accepted (such as hot Asian Grace Park in the role of Boomer instead of an overweight guy). Let's face it, the Batman movies succeeded and failed despite the suit. In fact, once the stories became noticeably bad, the jokes about the suit became more prominent. The recent Batman movies would have been just as good if not better with the more iconic suit. The internet video of Batman vs. the Predator actually shows that the suit DOES work and makes all the efforts of Hollywood second-guessing and showing they know better than the creators of the character just look completely ridiculous. Likewise, the problem with the Billy Zane Phantom movie wasn't the suit. Although the scenes of him with the mask showing that he clearly has black grease paint on underneath that seems to magically appear and disappear when he puts on and removes the mask was annoying for its stupdity. And the movie had a good cast of actors. The problem was a story that erred too much on being campy and over the top with a supernatural menace that came off more ludicrous than threatening. It's possible to treat subject matter in both a fun and respectful manner, that takes itself seriously without being too serious or pretentious. Look at The Rocketeer and The Iron Giant for examples. Or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Dynamite is doing something similar to Buck Rogers. Granted, Buck never really had a costume per se other than being associated with jet packs. And he's been away for awhile, so I can guess some upgrading can be forgiven. However, he also has the problem that now plagues DC's Legion of Superheroes. He's been "updated" several times now. This gets to be a problem when it starts diluting the concept of the character, that readers are never sure how much of the characters they know are actually "true." It's why for 40 years, most characters were invisibly rebooted, there were changes in the backstories but with readership changing and continuity not meaning then what it does now, people were never really aware that the Superman or Batman they were reading was substantially different than before. The Blondie strip today just doesn't make mention of the fact that Dagwood was rich and disinherited and that Blondie herself was a flapper in those pre-WWII days. Invisible reboot as opposed to a story that tells us a whole new backstory, that they no longer have any kids and are now newlyweds, etc. Invisible reboots are generally concerned with what was the status quo last month, and continue on from there as opposed to just chucking everything and starting over. However, in the 80's, thanks to the fallout from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the latter style of reboots became the norm. For every one that worked, there were multiples that didn't. And, once you started that precedence, it became the norm to just do a reboot with little to no provocation. And, because you could just reset things, then it was ok to deviate from the median as much as you wanted, because the odds are that a writer or editor after you wasn't going to like what you did and reset it anyway. However, as I noted, this weakens the characters and concepts. It's difficult to impossible to hold to the semblance that these characters are in any way "real", that they exist outside of their reality (which is ironically the whole point of why you have continuity).

Buck Rogers already has this problem as he's a multi-media property and has been re-translated a couple of times. There was the original pulp story, the comic strip (which had some steady evolution of styles ie invisible reboots over the years), the Gil Gerard series which completely recast the character, and then the selling of the character to TSR which resulted in a novel with a new origin by Martin Caidin alongside an updating of the character for paperbacks, comics and RPG's by TSR themselves. All I can say is that 1) I've been less than impressed with Dynamite overall as a publisher and their heavily decompressed storylines that seem to sap the sense of wonder and fun out of their characters for the sake of "realism" and 2) with all the changes of the character, it might be time to take the character a bit more back to his actual primal roots. Everybody knows the name, present the characters in a manner that befits that iconic nature. I'm not really clamoring for something nostalgic but classic, not something that looks merely like the flavor of the month. A big step, would be not re-inventing the wheel. Don't start from the very beginning; just give a brief synopsis of the character, the history and status quot and introduce the new/old threat (such as bringing back Killer Kane to bedevil him).

Off with the top of their heads!

It's been awhile since I've actually looked forward to checking out a bunch of shows on tv. While some of my off-season USA shows are done with their cycle (Psych, Monk, and Burn Notice), the new season has started with Smallville, Supernatural, House (and Criminal Minds and CSI in the background to catch when I can). Fringe has debuted, I hope to catch My Own Worst Enemy and 11th Hour (the latter a definite re-working of a British mini, while the former sounds similar to BBC's Jekyll while I will pass on America's version of Worst Week of My Life... it was painful the first time around).

As I had planned to talk to my gal Monday, we taped Heroes, and I watched it on Tuesday along with House and Fringe. Which made for an odd day of television watching as each show featured a bit of brain surgery/probing. It was a wise move to kick off the season of Heroes with a recap special as the show is so continuity heavy and it has been a long while thanks to the extended hiatus due to the writer's strike. Plus, I had apparently missed the final episode as much of what they covered from the end of the series was unfamiliar to me.

The continuity is going to kill this show though. Much as J.J. Abrams realized when watching a random episode of his own Alias, the show is so dense in its own story, it is impenetrable to a casual or new viewer. The show is too much about its own insular mega story, that everyone is part of one big story. It's sorta like how the X-Files tended to get bogged down at the end in trying to tie everything together as part of one tapestry of conspiracies. It starts feeding on itself instead of realizing that there are thousands of stories out there. This gelled for me when we see Hiro adrift because after saving the world, he has no quest and no destiny until it comes looking for him. There are still crimes and all out there, lives to be saved and helped. However, the writers have lost sight of the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of stories out there that can be told with these people with superpowers, because they are too focused on the One story to be told that the various characters share.

Just as they missed the boat with Sylar. He should have been killed off and stayed dead or at the very least, put away for a long time. By not actually resolving his storyline satisfactorily, it wears on viewers' patience. Most great villains are used sparingly. And, by writing him out of the storyline, it frees up the characters for a really new story. Instead, there is a feeling that it keeps going back to the same well for its inspirations, until its creatively dry. Thus, we have a shocking ending that is more tiring than anything else, it's so deliberate and contrived for shock value.

Mohinder's transformation was an interesting choice. One of the things I like about the show is the balance between those with powers against those without. Ando is my favorite character and I wished they had kept the female detective. I thought earlier scenes, it looked as if Mohinder wasn't quite as scrawny looking as before, it appears as if he's been hitting the gym in preparation for his "Fly" transformations. Kristen Bell's character was growing on me as well.

Although, doesn't Adrian Pasdar look like he'd be perfect as Lamont Cranston/the Shadow?

With the surprising death of a character last season and what looks like the departure of Dr. Wilson this season, House is interesting in that it seems to be forcing a little more inspection and possibly introspection with Dr. House and his misanthropy. The Wilson character was a nice guy and as such, I feel sorry for what he went through and will miss him when he's gone. However, from a story angle, it's needed. For his friendship with House really was one-sided and his personality wasn't strong enough to really stand up against House's. In a sense, it's the story of his leaving that we finally get a sense of what House really gets from the relationship beyond an enabler. Although, it's not as if House would admit this, so we get it from the point of view and exposition by a private detective that House has hired.

What's really cool that struck me at the episode's end where it's revealed the p.i. will be back for at least another show, we have gotten a truer skewed reflection of the Holmes-Watson relationship: that of the doctor and the private detective.

Fringe is still a new show, exploring its niche. By J.J. Abrams, it sets out to mimic X-Files in that while there is an over-arcing story, the individual episodes are to be largely self contained. Well, that's the desire anyway. In actuality, while the plots of the episodes center around different cases, they still all tie together. Federal agent Olivia Dunham investigates bizarre events that make use of impossible science that higher ups and others have deemed the pattern. Each of these events make so far make use of science and experiments that Dr. Walter Bishop came up with years ago before he was committed to an insane asylum. With the aide of his son Peter (who my brother and I surmise is his clone) who helps keep ole Dad focused, Dunham tries to find those who are behind it all and the ties they have to a super mega company founded by Dr. Bishop's one time partner. A decent show, but things haven't really come together yet, the show is still trying to find its grounding. I'm reminded of the first season of Smallville with each episode being about some hapless person of the week with powers due to kryptonite. It took a little while for the show to get comfortable with expanding the scope of its storytelling. Hopefully, we'll see that soon here too. For it is a well-done show with air of menace as well as some humorous dialogue between Dr. Walter and his son. Like Heroes, it just needs to realize it can be about more than it's One Story.

Comic News


Have you seen the new previews for Solomon Kane? Kane is an interesting Howard creation. He's intense and fanatical in ways that would make Batman take notice. A soldier, swordsman, monster-killer, and yet a devout puritan. Interesting contradictions there (there are contradictions in everybody, some just keep them better hidden than others). One cannot say he's insane, because the monsters and all do exist, his violence is a logical and possibly even noble response. A little girl is kidnapped by pirates, he will do all in his power to rescue her, even if he must go Old Testament. He's Ditko's Question placed in a barbaric and horrific world.

The pencils are great in their sketchiness, give off some kind of weird Kaluta/BWS vibe. The backgrounds with the coloring tend to look as if they are from a Renaissance painting. It all falls apart when it comes to the inking and coloring of the characters, least in the scenes revealed so far. The figures have no weight and they are all colored with the same pastel density and no variation. The skin tones are all pale with tinges of purple like day-old dead grubs. Kane looks more like Dracula than someone flesh and blood.

Dynamite has announced it's releasing both a Black Terror and The Death-Defying Devil comic. I want to be excited. Really, I do. Superpowers has been such a let-down with the arbitrary changes, it's hard to muster interest. We have gotten precious little in the main series to even give us a reason to want the individual comics. The ' Devil is to bridge the stories between the current Superpowers book and the next one and explore a little more about the urn that kept them in suspended animation and corrupted them (and the Fighting Yank spiritually). Except, shouldn't that really have been a big part of the plot of the first Superpowers mini? After all, the whole plot and mystery of it is set up there. And, yet, the scope of the comic has been so far beyond Krueger that it's been all but ignored. The fact that Joe Casey off the pointlessly out of focus The Last Defenders is writing it doesn't really bode well either. Lastly, someone should point out the fact to them that as a superhero name and comicbook title "the Death-Defying Devil" sucks eggs. It's a moniker for a circus acrobat but not an actual code name. Do what DC has done for ages with Captain Marvel. They didn't rename him just because Marvel had locked up the trademark, they just came up with an appropriate name for the book. Since, most GA characters appeared in books under names not their own, it'd even be in keeping with the spirit. The one positive, Daredevil's costume is such a classic and so iconic, it's great to just see him in print again regardless.

Comics:

I enjoy the Harry Dresden books (along with Salvatore's fantasy novels, the Harry Potter books, various and sundry pulp books) and television shows like Buffy, Angel and the original Nightstalker. Like Heroes, they are very much comicbook/super-character stories with some different window dressing. And, as comics, they almost uniformly don't live up to the potential of their original medium.

We are seeing an explosion of comics based on works from other media. Roy Thomas has a whole classics line at Marvel, various sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers are seeing their works adapted. And, I cannot say I try them all or even interested in it. Direct adaptations don't interest me much because the pacing and all is all wrong, even for books that were written to be action stories. Horror is hard to pull off because so much is dependent on playing with the mind whether it's the author's skill with language or the tv/movie having the extra range to play with to control the viewer through sound and pacing of the film (it's why horror movies don't work as well on tv, especially with commercials, that pacing and immersion into the environment is lost outside a darkened theatre). The other problem with the adaptations is one can be reasonably sure the status quo will be maintained. Not much significant is going to happen to Dresden in the comic because he still is appearing in books. The few Buffy and Angel comics I've tried have been ok, but they don't capture the creativity of the shows which is strange considering they have the original writer overseeing it all and there's the benefit of no special effects budget.

I've been getting Moonstone's Kolchak comics, based on the original tv series not the new one that turned him into a young-good looking type. It was Kolchak that got me into journalism in the first place. The plotting has been decent and some good old-fashioned styled horror stories in there. The art is largely uneven, partly with the struggle to maintain character likenesses. The most recent issue, the artist spends a good amount of time putting the character into shadows. I imagine the writer must look a bit like Darrin McGavin as each story that comes along has him being somehow oddly attracting the attention of a beautiful young woman and usually bedding them. Now, Kolchak did have a kind of crusty charm about him, but he wasn't a ladies man by a long shot. The books are decent enough though and have lasted longer than I would have expected.

Captain Britain and MI:13: Pat Oliffe does a fine job on the pencils; it's good to see him on a title after the end of The All-New Atom. He doesn't have to stretch himself as much as an artist as he did there, but he is capable of drawing almost anything well that a writer throws at him with a good command of storytelling. You don't have to backtrack to try and interpret what he's trying to get across.

Wish the writer was as clear. Last issue we saw the formation of the team to be similar to the Avengers or Thomas' WWII All-Star Squadron, a calling together of all of the UK heroes to come under one banner with Government clearance and resources to fight incredible threats but with no killing says ole Captain Britain. The Skrulls were a special case because it was War but that war is now over as far as Britain is concerned.

That was last issue. This issue we have all of that amended somewhat. We get the an obligatory appearance by Union Jack explaining why he is NOT a member of this team, he works for a different branch of the government (though one would imagine if this was an order...). We get a different mission statement saying that the team comprises public heroes because England needs to see them, it's good for morale, but the public wouldn't be aware of just how nasty the buggers are they are going up against, including all those mystical threats that have been released on England which takes precedence over the global war against the Skrulls. And, somehow, despite the statement against killing (which frankly, Captain Britain may not have had the authority to make anyway), the whole thing about public heroes in costumes and their first real recruit is NOT Union Jack who was part the Knights of the Pendragon, has been fighting vampires for some time AND is a patriotic costumed hero with a history with the government BUT Blade. Blade who has been in America so long that only the hardest core fans would know he's not from there. Blade who doesn't wear a costume, whose SOLE mission is to kill his opponents.

I'm not against the character or even against the character appearing in the comic. What I'm against is the shoddy ill-thought out way it's done. The comic reads as if the writer is making things up as he goes along without really thinking anything through. It's full of incongruities and contradictions, but it's not written in a way that suggests these are deliberate and setting up story conflicts and character tensions but that the writer doesn't really know what this team is supposed to be about and keeps changing it from issue to issue (to be honest, this could also be due to editorial interference, but unless we know otherwise, the blame falls mainly on the person said to be responsible for the story. The editor is to be blamed for not holding the writer's feet to the fire and have it make better sense).

If the team is a government op, then Captain Britain doesn't have the authority to call for "no-kill" clauses before the team even meets, there should be all sorts of ramifications for the Black Knight joining. After all, the point of Civil War was that all American heroes had to register and be accountable to the laws and government. Furthermore, Dane Whitman was a member of the Avengers and thus privy to all sorts of cutting edge technology and state secrets. It's inconceivable that all of the characters treat his joining a foreign government's spy organization as such a simple matter of him just happening to be there already fighting the Skrulls.

The one thing the story does handle well is the meeting between Faiza, Dane Whitman and her parents. While one might wonder just how much of Dane's history and backstory is such common knowledge, it makes for some great exchanges between the characters.

Sadly, the coloring falls down on the job. Dane, Faiza and her parents are a colored with the same skin tones, and all the midtones from their faces to the backgrounds are too rich intense and dark. This is so common it seems, I wonder how much of the coloring is done for what looks good on the computer but not taking into account what happens when it prints?

Guardians of the Galaxy: The issues have been getting better. Thankfully, none of the interviews with Counsellor Troi, excuse me, Mantis this issue. The main plots are skyjacked by crossover-itis but still some nice moments as we see the Guardians are not completely trusted on their floating Celestial head and we see a bit of the inner political workings. There could be a lot of interesting stuff played up. We see a different Starhawk this time out, a female version. She makes cryptic remarks about time anomalies and vanishes. And, we learn just who the Skrull traitor is. But, given the nature of this book, there might be a little more to it than what's readily apparent. After all, the Guardians don't have much to do with Earth right now and the station is full of aliens from other worlds. Drax starts off as going John McClane on the space station but his solution to rooting out the Skrulls is a little more final than any would like.

Not sure if I'll continue with this as the previews of upcoming issues have the book tying into yet another crossover event. Part of the reason I dropped so many books.

Secret Invasion: Thor: Yet I'm getting another crossover book. Remember what I said about us all having our inconsistancies up above? The one good thing with this book and Guardians is that you really don't have to be getting any of the other Secret Invasion books. Plus, this is a really good Thor story. It's a story that would really be hard to do with another character. It is the type of story that JMS wishes he could write. There are great character moments all the way around from the epic heroes to the very humans on the outskirts of the war. The art manages to capture the chaotic epic scope of the battles and the quiet more human dramas and have it all work well together. Forget the SI tag, if you like Thor, you should enjoy this book. The cover is slightly misleading as the Thor in action of this comic is Beta Ray Bill, Thor is busy being somewhat heroic in his Don Blake identity. Still, fun stuff.

Comic Reviews

The Twelve #5: This cover has been about the best of the series so far. It both captures the nature of the Witness (as he is in the comic) as well as the 40's pulp-style cover art. A pity the rest of the comic didn't really work as well. The whole issue felt off to me and most of it seemed to finally denigrate into what I feared this series would be. All the characters were different shades of pathetic, whether they were criminal or just embarrassing.

JMS seems to think that because the characters are actually from the 40's they'd be nostalgic of that time period as our grandparents are. This mistake is what lead writers to portraying Captain America as being so far out of touch with today's society and ultimately killing him as well. Sure, their original time period is long past, but these are all characters that are still young, mostly under 30. They haven't lived all those decades in between. They aren't going to see the past in those rose-colored glasses any more than you pine for last month, and they are still young enough to adapt rather quickly. The nostalgia comes when youth has passed, when your mind follows your body in no longer being able to keep up with younger crowds and things no longer seem as new and fresh.

Coming from being kids in the Great Depression, where most kids didn't go to college and teenagers were treated far more as adults, Captain Wonder wouldn't be thinking of kids in the naivete of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER or FATHER KNOWS BEST. There are many things he'd be shocked by, but kid gangs and violence wouldn't be it. He'd be telling them to grow up and take some responsibility for their lives. At worst, their attitude would reinforce the latent sexist and racist attitudes of his time and think the minorities are just proving they don't belong, wasting the opportunity given them to better themselves. After all, he comes from a time when even Captain America thought little of taking a teen-ager into battle.

Likewise, the Blue Blade sequence seems to be confusing decades as the Blue Blade thinks that the best venue for him in Hollywood is a variety shoe. A variety show? Just a couple of issues the characters were confused even by the concept of a tv show. So, why on Earth would the Blue Blade or his agent even think of something so 50's, 60's, and 70's as a variety show as being the outlet for him? And this is coming from a Hollywood writer! We should be seeing something plausible and hopefully interestingly satirical as some kind of swashbuckling fantasy/super-hero/reality show. The whole thing is so lame, the only purpose I can see for it is so that it just highlights what a pathetic character the Blue Blade really is.

Dynamic Man's rant also makes little sense when taken in the context of the fact he's in the Marvel Universe. No flying cars and such? While the future may not be exactly what he was expecting, it should still be far more than he was prepared for (and the FF has their flying tub, SHIELD does having flying cars) in a future that accepts as fact space aliens, space gods, mythological gods, men in flying armor, fully operational independent robots and androids, as well as real world advances such as super sonic aircraft, putting a man on the moon several times, robotic missions to Mars, everyday tech and power of computers, cell phones, microwave ovens, etc. The MU is far closer to the future he imagined especially when combined with the real world. What would and should shock him are the changes and things that he didn't look for nor expect and what was touched on in earlier issues but what he didn't mention: race relations, women in the workplace, different attitudes towards sexuality and public decorum. Much of the same stuff that should have been off-putting to Captain Wonder in the classroom than the rose-colored notion of teen-agers being "innocent".

The only positive thing from the whole issue was finally plugging a plot hole from the very beginning, that of why didn't Electro's creator contact someone about what happened. Again, though, the decompressed writing and pacing works against it, as this was an obvious question from the very first issue. It's a question that should have been on the detectives of the group's lips almost as soon as they woke up. What took so long in finding them? Yet, the story doesn't address this plot hole until now, months later.

I didn't really care for the origin of the Witness. For one, it takes a non-powered hero and gives him a supernatural origin. But, it also makes him come across as quite a bit of the tool. While it's a bit cliche in that it smacks of DC's Spectre, the Spectre came back as a ghost with actual powers and a mission to punish the guilty. Here, it seems as if it's the Witness that's being punished or tested as he already knows what's going to happen, the question is whether he should allow it. And just letting something bad happen to someone just because they are a bad person, that's not really punishment. A death camp guard getting run over as an old man isn't justice. He's not being made to face his crimes or his sins and account for them.

There might be a larger plan on JMS' part here though. A couple years back, Nighthawk got his own mini-series. Quite an achievement because he had been dead up until then. He was brought back, revealed to have been in a coma, only he came back with eyes that could see evil. Eyes given to him by Mephisto. The Witness' new origin is similar in that he sees visions of bad things happening to people and must seek them out and judge them. Meanwhile, we also have Black Widow who got her powers from the Devil and must hunt down evil and send bad men on their way. As I noted, the Witness' mission doesn't seem too Heaven sent, there's no real sense of justice to it. I'm thinking that both Witness and Black Widow are possibly getting their powers from the same source. Or that they are being set up for as opposing forces in a larger conflict. How would he view her actions if his visions compel him to sit in judgment? Or if he finally decides to save someone, not because they deserved it by their original sins, but out of granting mercy, not wishing to see another person die. Yet they have been condemned by the Widow.

And why is the Fiery Mask just hanging around the mansion? I have a little trouble buying that the government aren't green lighting him, Dynamic Man, Captain Wonder, and Rockman for Avengers or other superteams. Especially when they have the recently arrived Challenger already headlining a team. Seems natural and logical to bring him aboard to help their re-entry into society and form an all new All-Winners Squad. This normally wouldn't be a problem for me, but from the onset, they have chosen to bring up the larger continuity of the Marvel Universe with having the heroes register if they wanted to keep operating as heroes. The Laughing Mask's storyline grows out of that. And yet we also see the Fiery Mask who is immensely powerful and seemingly well adjusted. So, it begs the question why isn't he part of the Avengers. We at least see Dynamic Man joining the FBI. It's a logical extrapolation from the issues the comic itself has raised.

The Laughing Mask plotline also shows up one of the problems I have with the whole heroes registering deal, where it doesn't make sense. A big part of superheroes and especially characters like the Laughing Mask is there is a reason they chose to become masked heroes, operating outside of the Law. If he wanted to work within the structure of the law, he'd have become a cop or agent or been satisfied with being the best darn lawyer he could. Instead he chose to devote himself more to Justice which meant standing outside of the law. He's a hero because he sees where it doesn't work. It's a choice he had already made way back, when he chose to put on a mask and use lethal force when he thought necessary in fighting crime. Thus, it makes no sense that he'd just blindly cooperate by registering AND turning over his guns or even whining about being carried off to jail without even a fight. It's a violation of the basic nature of his archetype. He's turned into a complete sad joke of a character. And technically, any deaths of villains at the hands of the other vigilante heroes of the 40's might also be construed as manslaughter or murder if the hero was already technically breaking the law to begin with.

Weston's realistic styled art doesn't work well at all with Laughing Mask or the Witness. He wants to show the former as being thuggish and the latter as looking tortured. However, with his style being so realistic, the two come off looking like grotesqueries than real people.

Superpowers: Like The Twelve, this issue is much like the past issues. It doesn't deviate any. Characters are randomly introduced, with abilities and powers that didn't have anything to do with them originally. Where The Twelve is a book of characters standing around talking and doing a whole lot of nothing waiting on the plot to happen, Superpowers is all about a barebones plot, a whole lot of stuff happening where nothing really gets explained or makes much sense.

The Phantom: In the same vein that we're a couple of issues into an ongoing storyline, and the quality hasn't slipped. We see a complicated plot grounded in real world issues but with some larger than life villains. The Phantom actually has a case that will test him physically, mentally and emotionally. And he uses all the resources he can muster, using not only his skills but his reputation and legend to fight extremely ruthless foes.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Didn't hate it. But for the most part it didn't grab me either. The characters just don't look or act right to me. The new designs are nowhere close to being as visually exciting as the older looks of half the characters. There was something epic and larger than life about the way that Starlord, Adam Warlock and the Destroyer looked. Part of that is that both Kane and Starlin knew how to design comicbook costumes that worked well with the natural lines of the human body. An all new team with all new characters, it would've worked. Instead, I see characters that once seemed glorious and awe-inspiring and now are made to look and act very mundane.

And right off the bat, we have the bad guys yelling "burn them!" which Rocket Raccoon replies as sounding a bit severe while he and Starlord are mowing them down with their guns and considering that the worshippers could rightfully see them as intruders... hmm, hypocrite much? We even get a death total later on.

Captain Britain and MI 13: Despite my misgivings, I likewise purchased this book. The artists on both this and Guardians do a great job with the story material. Here, we have a little more fidelity to the looks of the characters as Spitfire sports a look a little more in keeping with her classic look than what she wore in the last Invaders series. As much as I don't care for tying in with "Secret Invasion" the book has the luxury of being separated enough in geographic location to stand on its own. You don't really need to know everything going on elsewhere. As the book is taking an "All-Star Squadron" approach in claiming every British superhero being a member, I hope we will be seeing far more than just these few in the future, even if as a Yank I'm sometimes a little confused by the distinctions between England, Great Britain and United Kingdom. I hope maybe we'll see more in the way of other European nations and locales as well. I wonder if my quibble about the killing was shared by the writer, maybe he wasn't expecting the artist to be showing Captain Britain punching the heads off of the Skrulls because he does have the good Captain make a comment to the effect this isn't normal procedure for him.

The Black Knight's way of combatting the curse doesn't really make much sense. As long as he acts shallow and care-free, the curse doesn't work as well regardless of how many sentient beings he has to skewer? Guess we'll see how well that works when he's viewing death up close and personal. If the curse is that problematic, why not go back to his light-sabre sword, which made more sense than carrying around a weapon designed to be maiming if not lethal anyways.

Another disconnect for me was early on. We have a Skrull masquerading as John Lennon. He claims to have been up front to being a Skrull since 1963! The problem with that is that unless Marvel history has changed, it's generally been accepted that while Skrulls have been on earth for some time, it's their first appearance in the FF title that their existance became widely known. Now, originally, that would fit in the time frame, the FF first appeared in comics in 1961. However, thanks to the sliding timeline and such, in terms of the Marvel Universe, it's only been since the late 1990's. The First Line died fighting a truly secret Skrull invasion, and even that is supposed to only pre-date the FF by just a couple of years. So, a Beatles tribute band made up of space aliens in a world that didn't have that many superheroes would be VERY significant to the ongoing history of the Marvel U.

Looks like I'll have to amend my assessment that the previews managed to be exciting by accident though. Reading the issue, it's clear that the pages that showed up online are not just consecutive pages, but pages that prominently featured each of the more colorful characters in action. In other words, someone was doing their homework and took pages that gave a good feel as to not only the art but also who was in the book instead of just the first 6 pages of said book.

Overall, a good first issue even with two strikes going in. Good enough to get the second issue, to give them a little more rope.

Zorro also travels across the ocean. Or rather young Diego does in the flashback scenes as he travels to Spain to learn from a fencing master as well as seeing more of the casual prejudices and evils of the world. To Wagner's credit, he does a great job in making the flashbacks compelling. If anything, young Diego's journey is far more interesting than his adventure as Zorro. Wagner walks a dangerous line though. So far he's managed to balance both positive and negative aspects of the time. Yet, a lot of it is more of a politically correct latter 20th Century view, very simplistic and shallow representations. Those that claim to be civilized are corrupt, those that are of rougher nature (the native tribes, sailors and gypsies) are not. The balance is he does not want to show the world in too cynical a fashion or else one wonders why Diego would bother trying to save it. We want him to be a hero, but there has to be some kind of universal grounding to it, he cannot be too at odds with his time and setting or else you have what feels like a 20th Century Man in Colonial Times. It's an element that I felt ultimately made Sandman Mystery Theatre unconvincing to me. It treated everyone in a too cynical view via hindsight except for the two lead characters making them seem like anachronisms in their own book, a 1980's male in 1930's New York.

Green Arrow/Black Canary continue their adventures across the pond as well. If anything with this storyline, we see a "writing for the trade" mentality that actually seems to manage juggling concerns of the trade vs. the monthly. While the story seems overly long, as if Winnick is filling time between this and whatever DC decides to do next that upsets the status quos, Winnick does have something happen in every single issue. It doesn't just stay in place, marking time. New characters get introduced, each issue tries to end on a bit of a surprise as it pulls something unexpectedly from the left field. Such as the character found in stasis wasn't Connor as we knew it wouldn't be, but definitely didn't expect to see who it did turn out to be. Suddenly, I'm wanting to see the next issue. Part of me is telling me, I'd probably be just as happy reading this in trade, there's not a lot of meat to the individual issues, but they do remain just fun enough and interesting enough to keep plugging away. Especially with so many titles already having been culled from my reading list.

Both Spider-Girl #20 and FX #3 show us a little high-school cheerleader action on the covers. With Spider-girl, it's an inner conflict of the character, just barely touched on as one of several ongoing subplots that get addressed in this issue. The issue delivers on some action as she finds herself between two different hate groups, otherwise it's just setting the ball rolling on some of the upcoming storylines and conflicts. Wayne Osborne, Creator and writer of FX, manages to do something that many more accomplished writers seem to have forgotten. That is, he manages to have mysterious origins for his characters, but still also delivers clues and some back-story instead of just letting the characters be cyphers. And it's delivered clearly without actually being spelled out. Issue 1 introduces us to FX and he gets powers and a super-suit and being a teenager with little to no detective skills or inclinations, he doesn't question it overmuch. We also get a cameo of a mysterious villain and some references to other super-powered heroes. Thus, we automatically have a world that has a past, even if we're not seeing it in much detail. Issue #2 introduces another character with mysteries and powers. It's pretty obvious there's more to them than readily apparent. And we get another mystery villain who turns out to be a henchman of m.v. from issue 1. Issue #3, instead of dragging out the obvious mystery of the girl's powers, the mystery is revealed! Mostly, anyways. Because her back-story gives us more context on the mystery villain's powers and nature such as he's been around for a really long time. And, there seems to be links to the powers of the 3 characters involved. And, this is only the first half of the issue #3 as FX blunders into another situation, which the cover ties into for the 2nd act. Lord Erevos, the villain from issue #1 and the first half of this story has a great look. Here's hoping we haven't seen the last of him nor his ghostly foe.