Everything about this week was weird. I could have sworn this was not only a Conan week, but a Savage Sword of Conan week, which is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Still, it’s not like the shop was empty — I found some things to buy.

Bulletproof Coffin #3 was the best issue yet. David Hine and Shakey Kane briefly hand the book over to Ramona, Queen of the Stone Age, with highly entertaining results. There’s definite Jack Kirby homage in form and content, and that’s always welcome when it’s done well. There’s also more comic-within-comic fun, this time complete with antiqued margins on the page and some “torn” corners that reveal part of the next page. The two plots of the book are beginning to intersect in a strange way: Steve Neuman, collector of kitschy stuff, is now inhabiting the Coffin Fly identity, and Coffin Fly’s adventures consist of trolling a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of kitschy artifacts from before the war. Wheels within wheels, with heart on sleeve and tongue in cheek. It’s a good read, and it’s only getting stronger.

Jack Staff #4, while as fun to look at as just about everything Paul Grist does, was less coherent. I don’t know if I forgot everything in the first three issues (could be) or if Grist is dropping references I’m not picking up, but I really had little idea what was going on. Well, I had some idea what was going on — Jack Staff is in a future realm with a masked woman and watching himself get his butt kicked, waiting for “the Hero” to come along and save creation, while in the real world John Smith doesn’t know he’s Jack Staff. I dunno — that *sounds* like the sort of book I’d enjoy, but I seem to have lost the plot. I believe I’ll have to re-read numbers 1 through 3 and pay more attention this time.

Power Girl #15 is, and it hurts me to say this, a total dud. Everything that was fun and delightful about this title went out the door with Jimmy Palmioti and Amanda Connor, including and especially the zippy pacing. Judd Winick has us trapped in your standard “everything Kara Starr values is being taken away from her” story, complete with a non-super guy figuring out her secret identity (the handling of which was so clumsy and obvious that I rolled my eyes so hard one of them fell out of my head) and, oh yeah, she’s still fighting the same guy she was two issues ago. If you’re interested in cardboard characters going through cliché motions while nothing much happens for 20 pages at a time, I strongly recommend this book. Actually, if that’s what you’re into, I still wouldn’t recommend it.

World War Hulks is wrapping up this month (already? It’s only been 17 years since it started), and so I picked up Hulk #24 and Incredible Hulk #611 just to see how it all ended. I loved Planet Hulk enough that I bought all the attendant titles for a while, but after a year of Skaar and Son of Hulk doing permutations of the same thing with only the minutest differences between them, I dropped all Hulk books cold turkey. You know what? I had no problem following the action after more than a year away, most of which consisted of Banner Hulk beating up Red Hulk (he’s Thunderbolt Ross, of course! Betty is Red She-Hulk and Rick Jones is A-Bomb — everybody’s a hulka-hulka-burning hate!) and Banner Hulk beating up Skaar, which was exactly what was happening when I last bought a Hulk book. Both issues hinge on Banner Hulk clapping his hands together really hard, a move I’ve never seen Hulk pull off. Nah, I’m just messing with you; I’ve seen it so often that I believe Marvel has a secret licensing deal with The Clapper, and this is how The Clapper buy ads these days.

The issues weren’t a total waste, however — Hulk 611 ends with a hug, awwww. I was hoping Betty and Rick would give Banner a round of applause then, and blow everything away, including my memory of these two issues.

You know what’s the exact opposite of endless crossover non-eventful “event” books? Tiny Titans, that’s what. I don’t buy it every month, but I buy it pretty regularly. Art Baltazar and Franco are comic book geniuses, and I’m dead serious about that. Every month they cram an issue full of corny jokes that also double as sly commentary on the mainstream DC heroes and villains. My nephews have not one-tenth of my comic knowledge, and they find Tiny Titans to be hysterical — if you can make a 10- and a 7-year old laugh at the same things a 40-year old laughs at, you’re a genius. This issue involves a birthday party at the Fortress of Solitude with Match (the little version of Bizarro) consistently mistaking Psimon for a snow cone. There’s also a one-panel exchange between Superman and Lex Luthor that reads more like they’re a couple of bitter divorcees, and a special appearance by Ursa, Non and General Zod — that’s the sort of brilliant surprise that will make you forget your worries.

Is Tiny Titans the best thing I read this week? Aw yeah it is.

-Paul

---

Both comments and pings are currently closed.