On 29 March, 2006

As it turns out, preordering things is an excellent idea. See, I preorder FANTASTIC FOUR. Didn't expect to get a copy of this month's issue, though. But I did. So this week's visit to the comic shop was like Christmas.

A very well-balanced week, universe-wise. Three Marvels, three DCs, and one indie.

Annnd... Since this blog's still in the experimental stages, I'm trying a new format on for size!

Reading music: Serenity soundtrack.

Style: Haiku review (clearly inspired by Scipio)

--Warning: Possible spoilers ahead--

Marvel

THE THING #5
Sandman and Trapster,
Unhappy pawn shop owner,
Time to clobber, Ben.

Escape Civil War.
Pull Dan Slott's Thing for peacetime
Comic book goodness.

FANTASTIC FOUR #536
Fantastic Four in fine
Form. Who can heft the hammer?
Could Doom be worthy?

Good guys, bad guys, and
Explosions.* Stop! Hammer time!
(I could not resist.)

NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI
Big talking prologue.
Ethical intrigue and war
Approaches quickly.

Illuminati
Namor's in a snit and there's
Trouble brewing, natch.

DC

ACTION COMICS #837
Depowered Super-
Man team-up with Hawkgirl and
Hal. Not a bad read.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #3
Super Lois Lane.
Her major feat, enduring
Others' machismo.

GREEN LANTERN #10
Confusion, they name
Is Green Lantern. Bad start
For a new reader.

Super Real Graphics

SUPER REAL #2
Extreme parody
Best comic boardroom ever
Hard to wait 'til May.

*Ultimate Showdown lyrics.

Week's most memorable moment: Genuine "aww" moment from the last page of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #3.



Tentative checklist for 5 April, 2006:
DOC SAMSON #4
AMAZING ADVENTURES OF THE JLA
TEEN TITANS #34
BLUE BEETLE #1

On 22 March, 2006

--Warning: Possible Spoilers--

Marvel

Okay, I admit, I picked up BLACK PANTHER #14 mostly for the cover. The previews looked good too, though, and they didn't lie. This is a fun, fast read, and Storm is quite spectacular. Not much of a cliffhanger, though. What will Ororo's answer be? That question has pretty much been answered, hasn't it?

Make no mistake, SHE-HULK 2 #6 is a dramedy. Dan Slott is taking a fairly serious tone with this arc (appropriate, given the subject matter). There's a lot of romancing, and nothing has been resolved in terms of the two love triangles. I really don't want to spoil this book for anyone, so... no plot details. But this is an awesome book, and this issue would be a great place for new readers to jump in, what with the new arc and new artist.

Wow. Quite a bit of courtroom drama this week. I never quite expected to see more of it in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #530 than in SHE-HULK.

So it goes. This wasn't a high-excitement issue, and the subject matter is again serious. The arc should finish off with a bang, though, given the cliffhanger.

Thankfully, they quit with the Editors' notes after the third page...

Loved the first page Q & A section of NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. #3. Hopefully they'll make the primers a habit. Started a little slow what with the uberdirty cop, but it did pick up. As expected. The giant gun contraption tops the giant telephone contraption. And Dirk Anger kind of reminds me of the boss in The Office, if Michael Scott were completely psychotic.

"Beware of Skrulls bearing gifts" is good advice any day, I'd wager. Thank you, ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #28, for the tip.

DC

Can it be? Have I found not one but two DC comics I actually... enjoy? Wow. Good week, this. (On a side note, I seem to be gravitating towards the female solo titles. Odd.)

I think HAWKGIRL #50 is actually my favorite so far. At the moment, it's more horror mystery than superhero.

CATWOMAN #53 was nifty, too. Very dark. Gotham is always dark, isn't it?

IDW Publishing

SUPERMARKET #2: The story just keeps getting better, the mystery deeper. The humour is great, too, between a "Grill Bill vol. 2" restaurant (complete with red-splattered yellow color scheme) and an Aryan Nation-style Swedish porno gang. Wow.

Notes and Rankings (Best to Worst)
*Time and place have stayed pretty much constant, so from now on, no more redundancy. Music this week was the Liz Carroll & John Doyle album In Play, which I, regrettably, never got signed.

It was very hard to rank these, given that I rather liked all of them!

1. NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. #3
2. SUPERMARKET #2
3. SHE-HULK 2 #6
4. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #530
5. HAWKGIRL #53
6. CATWOMAN #50
7. BLACK PANTHER #14
8. ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #28

Not rated: ALL NEW OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z #3

Panel(s) of the Week: A tie between this panel from NEXTWAVE #3 (and proof that Chris Sims apparently has way too much influence)...



...and this panel from CATWOMAN #50 (because who can resist Batman wielding a teddy bear?)

On DC and Marvel

The first computer I ever knew was a Mac. An Apple IIE. It was a nice little computer that came to be a fixture in my brother's room when my dad upgraded to an IBM. My brother and I had a great time with that little Apple. Sure, we learned about the IBM, too, how to access stuff like Carmen Sandiago and Bolo Adventures using DOS. WordPerfect, too. But we spent a lot of time on the Apple, playing Gertrude's Puzzles and a text version of Zork. I also came close to mastering Aquanoid. Well, as close to mastering a computer game I ever come.

Nowadays, I use Windows-based PCs at work, school, and home. Guess it was kind of inevitable, given that they're everywhere. That has a tendency to give me this odd little feeling of inferiority, this feeling that, gosh, I should be using a Mac. Or, at the very least, a Linux-based PC.

But I don't, because PCs are what I'm now comfortable with. So it goes.

Now, I bring this up because I feel approximately the same way about the DC multiverse. Surely, the first superhero I ever knew of, as an American, was Superman. Surely it was. I mean, I don't remember, but the odds are excellent.

The first superhero I probably knew of was DC, but eventually I ended up learning about Marvel characters, too, through X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons. Oh, I watched that Batman cartoon as well, but it was awful dark. X-Men was easily my favorite. (And I still have a soft spot in my heart for Rogue.)

I drifted away from DC, from Superman and Batman (neither of whom I ever cared much about), and found my comfort zone in the Marvel universe. At least, when it came to superhero fantasy, I did. (Mind, this was back when the only comics I ever read were the daily strips in the newspaper.)

But I still feel that odd feeling of inferiority, as someone who prefers Marvel over DC. (It's baseless, but it's there.) Which is why I'm trying out a few titles. Just to see. If only to learn what all the fuss is about. It's not easy to get in the right mindset, but nobody ever said it would be easy. Who knows? While I can't see reading DC over Marvel (anymore than I can picture myself trading in my Dell for a Mac), maybe I'll find some part, some pocket of the DC 'verse that I enjoy, that I can feel. Or maybe not, it's hard to say. All I can do is try. Next on the agenda is HAWKGIRL and CATWOMAN. The previews look interesting. That's a good sign, right?

Heck, today is full of good signs. You see, I'm typing this on a Mac.