Said commitment also means no time for blogging, Doctor Jones. I have a Friday Night Fights scheduled to publish on Friday (thank you Blogger-in-Draft). But that's about it. And I'll be so jammed up I may not get to any more substantial posts until Monday. We'll see.
But I can't leave for the weekend without a few quick and thoughtless jabs, can I? And it will make a nice break some some of my more...ahem...epic-length posts recently. So what do we have out this week?
Green Lantern #30:Many bloggers have asked why is it necessary to have 6 issues to tell the "Secret Origin" of Hal Jordan. There are three reasons:
A) Geoff Johns has a lot of time to kill until he can start Blackest Night.
B) It takes that long to retcon every single aspect of previous GL history so it ties in with your odd color spectrum theories
C) When fully 1/3 of the pages in the book are splash pages, it takes quite awhile to tell a story, bro. Seriously...do we really need a full page splash when Carol Ferris or an unmutated Hector Hammond walks in? Really?
New Avengers #40:For the second week in a row, Bendis has given us an Avengers issue which features absolutely ZERO Avengers, just flashbacks establishing the background of Skrullapalooza. Two questions:
A) Why isn't this stuff actually IN Secret Invasion? Where it belongs if you seriously want to tell this story (and sell the mega-series to newbies)?
B) Why doesn't Marvel just change the title of the books to "Whatever Bendis Feels Like Writing About This Month"?
Action Comics #864:So, for the 7th straight issue (that's more than 1/2 a year) Johns has had Superman reduced to a guest star in his own magazine. I'm just sayin'. At least it looks like next issue he's actually getting back to telling, you know, Superman stories...
Unless you're going to make Action into DC Comics Presents, like John Byrne did...
Blue Beetle #26:Let me assure you that I don't mean this in any Lou Dobbsian way, but...with a series teetering on the verge of cancellation due to low sales, is it at all wise to do an issue all in Spanish? Can you imagine a potential new reader picking this one up? And never coming back?
So: good sign (because DC has enough faith in the book to try something like this) or bad sign (because DC knows the books going to be cancelled, so why not let the creators do something crazy)? I report, you decide.
Legion of Super-Heroes #41:
You know, back in the Silver Age, Shooter's Legion stories were never...this...glacially...paced, were they? Seriously, how many more shots of Lightning Lad bickering with bureaucrats do we need before Shooter believes we understand? How many issues pondering the mystery of the "Destroyers" before the story advances one iota? How many pages of Legionnaires shrilly arguing with one another?
Sigh...it feels as if Shooter is just marking time until Johns takes over (which he's obviously gunning for, with 7 issues of Action dedicated to the Legion, and the upcoming Legion of 3 Worlds).
DC Universe #0:Well, Dan DiDio in this week's DC Nation boasts "this book is the bridge from Countdown to Final Crisis to Final Crisis." Well, as I asked not 3 days ago, "Anyone care to wager on how much of this gets followed up in Final Crisis? Any of it?"
The correct answer. ZERO. Not a single panel of this ties in in any way whatsoever to ANYTHING that happened in Countdown.
I guess DiDio needs to look up the definition of "bridge." Thanks for raping my wallet for 52 (ahem 51) weeks, DC. I expect my refund any day now.
One final note (for now) on the "big reveal": if you want to have it turn out that the entire book was narrated by a particular character, shouldn't Morrison or Johns actually have had SOME of that narrator's dialogue sound like it could have come from that character's mouth? Because that narrator sure doesn't talk like XXXXXX ever did...
Immortal Iron Fist #14:Like bacon in comics form.
Now let it be known I will forever pledge my fealty to Marvel if they get Fraction & Brubaker to write an "Immortal Weapons" ongoing...
OK, gotta jet. I'll be back next week, along with some exciting announcements for something upcoming around these parts...hee hee...
Green Lantern annoyed me. I don't know if I'll make it through another four issues of this crap fest. And Geoff, you are better off removing all references to the word "Pieface", rather than ascribing them to someone other than Hal Jordan while Hal chastises the "offensiveness" of it all.
ReplyDeleteComic book "origins retold" do not require six issues, sorry.
I skipped Blue Beetle this week, after enjoying my first taste of it last month. The Spanish thing turned me off, and I agree that it's not the best time to throw out an experiment like that when the book may be on the block.
Re: Blue Beetle: Could also be an attempt to bring in some Hispanic readers to a book with a 95% Hispanic cast... and if that's the case, they shoulda tried this a while ago...
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it, at any rate.