Since in my last blog I talked about Empowered, this week I’ve decided to talk about another series that is equally sexy, but of a decidedly different tone.

Sky Doll is an exquisitely crafted science fiction epic originally printed by Soleil Productions in Europe and brought to the States by Marvel. It has everything that mature comic lovers can hope for; it’s dark, sexy, and full of surprising insights. The story is set in a world originally divided by two priestesses of opposing philosophies, one representing the spiritual side of love, called Agape, and the other representing physical love, named Lodovica. However, eventually the balance of power tipped, and all hell broke loose.

When the dust cleared, one power stood instead of two. The world became overtaken with vice and carnal desire, and anyone who worshipped the priestess Agape became reviled as a heretic. Best personifying this brand new regime are creations known as sky dolls, life-like androids without rights, resembling a young female, who exists only to serve the state’s desires. Noa, the main character of this odyssey, is one of these sky dolls, although she has qualities that make her a bit…different, including strange flashes of memories, sudden bursts of power, as well as a personality and desires of her own. With the help of two “missionaries,” Noa travels the universe in search of some greater reason for her existence.

The story progresses from there, taking some interesting twists and turns along the way, none of which you’ll hear from me (I’ve given away enough as it is). What I will say is that you would be hard pressed to find a fictional realm like this one. In the world of Sky Doll, religion, consumerism, and science function as a single entity, and differences in spiritual philosophies can determine the shape of entire worlds.

However, appearances can be deceiving, and the more you learn about the world Noa lives in, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish the white hats from the black, and the tormentors from the victims.

Personally, I like a story that keeps me guessing. If you feel the same way this is definitely a series worth checking out.

-Brent

Let me be frank: There is no real critical point to this weekly endeavor, other than my own amusement. Comparing comic books to one another because they were released in the same week is arbitrary, and my tastes are so arcane and capricious that not only is objectivity impossible, but the possibility of me being consistent in my subjectivity beggars reason as well. That’s life for you: Confounding, arbitrary, maddening and endlessly entertaining in its unpredictability.

But believe me when I tell you that this week more than any other the dice were loaded, the deck was cut falsely, there was a magnet under the roulette table and that man standing behind you was a telepath reading your cards and projecting images to me of the most mathematically probable hands you could play before you played them. Which is to say, there’s no way in any incarnation of the Multiverse that anything other than Century: 1969, the new chapter of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, was going to be the best thing I read this week. I’ve waited a long time (has it been two years?) for this book to come out, and every one of my expectations was trumped. Alan Moore is the Black Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, popping up when you least expect it and altering everyone’s perception of reality, and then disappearing back to wherever it is legitimate geniuses go when they’re not breaking our brains open like Easter eggs.

This issue tackles England in 1969, and in true Alan Moore fashion, he exalts the hippies and their free drugs and freer love attitudes even as he shows how their utopian ideal was filtered through the uglier side of human nature. Briefly (looks up at the preceding, shakes head in exasperation), Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain and Orlando exit the Burning World and enter a hedonistic perversion of Swinging London, where notorious British gangsters the Kray Brothers hang out with Basil Thomas (this world’s Brian Jones, original Rolling Stone) while Oliver Haddo (Somerset Maugham’s fictionalized version of Aleister Crowley) is attempting to birth a new moon calf (host body for his spirit) so that he can continue his long-reaching plan to hatch the Anti-Christ. The Purple Orchestra (Rolling Stones) concert in Hyde Park commemorating the death of Basil/Brian will be the culmination of the ritual, and it’s up to our trio to puzzle that all out and then stop it.

But that’s not all, because this is a Moore and O’Neill production. Dozens upon dozens of sly verbal and visual references, call-backs to earlier stories and sight gags cram every inch of art and leak out of the dialogue. Century: 1969 is a palimpsest, with multiple stories happening underneath and behind our main tale. Look for Marty Feldman, Michael Moorcock, Michael Moorcock’s creation Jerry Cornelius, daleks, and characters from Victorian fairy tales; pay attention to the references to Monty Python, Jack Parsons, Rosemary’s Baby, the Boris Karloff film “The Black Cat” and many other familiar-yet-not-quite-placeable pieces of pop culture ephemera. If I had to guess, I’d say I caught about 30% of what Moore and O’Neill hid in plain sight. There are things I recognized immediately, like Andy Capp in a crowd shot, but I didn’t quite understand why they were there. Good ol’ Andy was in the last volume of the book, which was set in 1910. Is his repeat appearance supposed to be a commentary on the timelessness of the Northern British working class, or does O’Neill just like drawing him in crowds? Either way, it matters.

And I have a theory about why the Mick Jagger stand-in here is called “Terner;” Mick released a single called “Memo from Turner” — actually he released two versions of it, one with Brian Jones and one without. “Memo from Turner” is about a psychopathically violent man reveling in the senseless carnage of his lifestyle, but there also seems to be some mockery of the lifestyle as well. So, a song with two meanings exists in two versions — very Alan Moore — and both feature Mick wearing another persona. Is the character in Century: 1969 named Terner as a nod to this dual single, or is he supposed to embody a further perversion of the fictional character, Turner? Again, in a work as layered with meaning as this, interpretation is everything. How you make sense of just one detail such as this will shape how you read the story.

These treats are not strewn about for fancy’s sake — they’re puzzle pieces you have to fit together to see the bigger picture of Century’s arc, they enhance the story’s sense of place, and they presage what’s to come in the next installment, whenever it shows up. Honestly, I don’t care when it shows up — if it takes Moore and O’Neill years to make something like this, give them years. It’s absolutely and entirely worth the wait. They’re making art, a seamless union of facts and fictions that reflects a truth about humanity and society, and that truth is this: The people with the most ambition are the people you’d least want to succeed in their ambitions. No, wait; the truth is that there’s always a little nugget of rot inside every good thing. No, that’s not entirely it either; the rot is systemic, but people make the systems so people can fight the rot and succeed where the system fails. The more I look, the more I find — and then there’s the whole modern magick element of the story that leaks into the real world; as I typed “the more I look, the more I find,” Rory Gallagher’s “Wheels Within Wheels” came on the stereo. This moment of synchronicity was foreseen by Alan Moore decades ago; at least I think it was. And that’s what the Century story does to you. You begin connecting it to points in your own life, trying to use it as a lens to make clear sense of this arbitrary, mundane and magical world we all inhabit.

You see? Century: 1969 is so densely constructed and richly detailed that you can keep finding meanings behind each meaning you find. It is a work of graphic literature that appears in comic book format because this is the only way this story could be told. There is nothing else out there in the wide worlds like it, and for that I’m grateful. The most fantastic element about it is it took me the better part of an hour to read it, and as soon as I was done I had a driving urge to read the entire series straight through to this issue again so I could see what I gleaned on the journey this time.

-Paul

Being a comic book fan is a strange and contrary pursuit. Every week, you look forward to buying your books and maybe picking up something new or interesting while you’re in the shop. Then you get ‘em home, read ‘em and wonder why you bought this, or continue to read that. And yet as soon as you’re done with the stack you remember that more comics are just a week away, and which ones you’re most eager to read. As I said, a strange and contrary pursuit; you’re simultaneously remorseful and eager, except when you’re actually reading the comics.

Which is the long way of saying, “I bought Conan: The Mask of Acheron this week and it made me question not only my sanity, but that of the people at Conan Properties and Dark Horse.” The cover blurb says “Based on the new hit film!,” which is your first clue as to quality, because that movie hasn’t been released yet. Although that blurb is a public service, because if this is what the movie is going to be like, I just saved $8 by buying this. There are some errors that annoy the REH scholar in me, such as the superstitious and magic-loathing Cimmerians keeping a shard of an evil artifact hidden in the heart of their village and while we’re at it, let’s mention that it was the Hyborians, not the Cimmerians, who crushed the evil empire of Acheron, but these things, while telling, are not the major source of my butthurt. No, the fact that Conan disappears for huge stretches of time in his own comic/movie is troublesome. We see him as a kid (*SPOILER ALERT* Once again, Conan will have dead daddy issues), then he sorta shows up in time to kidnap a princess who’s pursued by our evil warlord (how did he know to nab her? No explanation is forthcoming), then he fights the warlord in some sort of temple, magically appearing from off-panel just when we need him. The problem is this whole story is told from the bad guy’s point of view, so Conan is nothing more than a periodic intruder in this guy’s life story. Nobody’s paying to see the life story of the bad guy — we’re paying to see Conan *end the bad guy’s life.* If the filmmakers don’t understand that, they don’t understand Conan and they don’t understand Conan fans. Also, a bad guy who walks around waving a dried up starfish mask is no more threatening than every little kid who walks around the beach waving a dried up starfish. That’s science.

Legion of Super-Heroes 15 is also fraught with science, but in a good way. Paul Levitz and Yildiray Cinar continue their epic battle of Legion of Super-Heroes vs. Legion of Super-Villains, with the LSH finally getting an edge on the villains. Tracking them to their hidden other dimension, the LSH fights back and seemingly turns the tide — plus we get another chapter of the long-running Ranzz v. Ranzz battle, as Ayla (yay!) takes it to her big brother Mekt (boo!). Ordinarily, I’d be very excited about next issue, which is the last issue in the series before DC unplugs their universe, counts three and then fires it back up. However, in their incessant promotional push for stuff that happens in three months, DC has already revealed that a good chunk of the LSH dies and the survivors band together to rebuild. If you bother to look at the cover art for September issues, you can pretty much figure out who dies, who reconstructs and who gets thrown back in time to our era to fight zzzzzzzz … Sorry, dozed off there. The idea of a book written by Fabian Nicieza forces my brain to shut down for self defense. This right here is the huge flaw with universe-wide architectural remodeling. You have a writer as talented and careful as Paul Levitz, and then you ties his hands, blindfold him, spin him around, rearrange all the furniture and then tell him to work around it.

Seeing as I am old and crotchety and wish that you would vacate my lawn, I am the target demographic for DC’s Retrospective one-shots. Sadly, a few of them were shorted in today’s delivery, so all I could get is Len Wein and Tom Mandrake’s Batman 1970s. (Note: all issues should hopefully be on the racks by the time you read this.) Wein’s Batman is a clever detective battling (and losing to) a new Terrible Trio while wondering about the business motives of Gregorian Falstaff, the corporate raider eyeing Wayne Industries. I really miss this sort of Batman story — you know, the kind where he’s not a mondo-dismo maniac — so I appreciate DC throwing all us old-timers a few bones with the Retroactive books. Of course, their interest in the hard-core, long-term fan extends no further than these stop-gap books because someone in marketing had a great idea about Wayne Casino brand poker chips, and that’s what they’re going to put their collective energy into this summer (I wish I was kidding about this; check the last page of any DC book). Story editor Ian Sattler notes, “I was disappointed to learn that [the poker chips] aren’t legal tender.” That’s funny, I was disappointed to learn that DC was going to lean on more gimmicks rather than concentrate on original storytelling. It’s a disappointing summer all ’round, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, the Fear Itself cross-over deal continues. I may hate the company-wide storylines, but at least they’re predicated on the idea of a *story*. The Greg Pak/Fred VanLente/Neil Edwards book Herc further develops that plot (I guess — I’m buying so few of the installments) as Herc battles Hecate and Ares’ son, Kyknos (the Greek God of Affordable Copies), in a Brooklyn that’s overrun with monsters. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth with this book. Hercules is a winning character, the action is plentiful, the dialogue is entertaining, I like Edwards’ pencils and there’s a sense of humor about the whole thing. I guess when you have Man-Bull as a supporting character and you burn off his hesher hair, I’m going to be pleased. See how easy it is?

Skaar: King of the Savage Land 5 finishes off the mini series in some fashion. This whole series read like there was relevant stuff happening in another title — one I wasn’t reading — so I never quite latched on to this. Also, if you have Skaar as a character and you do very little with him other than have him brood in an uninteresting fashion for all five issues, you’re really not using the “barbarian son of Hulk” plot element to its fullest potential. Sure, it was nice to see Kid Colt, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy in a comic again, but their magnitude of interest far outstrips that of Skaar. He could be a great and fun character, but not if he spends his time moping about where he belongs. You were born on another planet, dude, and it blew up — earth’s not going to feel like home. That, again, is science.

Tiny Titans 42 is a special issue devoted to the love of Bizarro Superman for Bizarro Supergirl. It’s fun, like all Tiny Titans stories seem to be, but what makes it great is the running gag of Terra beaning a love-sick Beastboy with rocks every three seconds. I don’t want to build a Three Stooges tower of comedy greatness, but if I did throwing rocks would be at both the base and near the pinnacle. You can’t overestimate the comedic value of a well-timed rock.

Warlord of Mars 8 is the penultimate chapter in this story, with John Carter finally finding out what he has to do to win Dejah Thoris’ hand. It requires nothing more than escaping from an armed fortress, raising an army of Tharks and arranging for someone else to kill her politically-expedient betrothed so John Carter can wed her with a clean conscience when the guy’s dead. Arvid Nelson has done a bang-up job with this series, introducing characters and alien concepts in a clear, concise fashion, while staying true to the series’ pulp roots and Lui Antonio brings the world of Barsoom to life with beauty and a sense of grandeur. This entire series has been a solid, entertaining read month after month.

Conan: Island of No Return 2, by Ron Marz and Bart Sears, is also very solid comic book. These shorter stories are much better for Conan comics, because they’re true to the character’s episodic pulp fiction roots. Marz gives us the simplest of plots — two beautiful sisters, Brenn and Venya, hire Conan to help them recover a treasure from a remote island, but another adventuring party is working toward the same goal — and that’s it. No daddy vengeance stuff, no end-of-the-world threats, no massive pyrotechnics, no starfish; just treacherous women, ruthless rivals and an exotic locale. Throw in a creepy abomination of a guardian monster and point Conan at it and you have a quality adventure. Bart Sears’ artwork has taken some knocks in the forums for making Conan look rather ugly, but that doesn’t bother me at all. His Conesy is rather brutally featured, but it suits him, and his action sequences — and there are action sequences, thank Crom — are well-rendered and vibrant. And the conclusion is suitably REH in its simplicity and characterization. I’ve never rated Ron Marz very highly as a writer, but this changed my mind; This is the sort of Conan book I could get behind on a monthly basis.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Sergio Aragonés Funnies not only because I love his rococo cartooning, but because he’s a natural storyteller. This first issue did not disappoint. We get a couple of his pantomime one-page jokes, two challenging “spot the difference” puzzles and an extended anecdote about his college years in Mexico, when he helped his father’s movie studio round up extras for a Davy Crocket film. Again, nothing complicated here, other than his crowd shots. Aragonés is a singular talent, and there’s a timeless quality to his work. You could pick this book up in 30 years and the jokes will still be funny, the art will still be fascinating and you’ll still think, “This Aragonés guy is certainly the most charming guy in the business.” Sergio Aragonés Funnies is easily the best thing I read this week, because it’s pure entertainment from start to finish.

-Paul

Welcome back to Event-mania. in 2011 we’ve seen the conclusion to Brightest Day, War of the Green Lanterns, The Iron Age, Fear Itself, Flashpoint, Infestation, Reign of Doomsday, Age of X, The Death of (Ultimate) Spider-Man, Spider-Island (soon… very soon), DCnU (starting in September) and so on. So its very likely that you’re tired of all the crossovers and events, but if you think you can handle one more, maybe it should be X-Men: Schism.

The great debate that takes place in my mind about the X-Men always comes down to this: Who is the best there ever was? Cyclops or Wolverine? For anyone who knows me, they know that the answer will always be Cyclops. That’s just the way it is. No offense to Wolverine fans, but eye beams are cooler than claws. Final. Answer. But that isn’t really what Schism is all about. You see, over the years, we’ve always known that Cyclops and Wolverine almost never saw eye-to-eye about anything except for maybe Jean Grey, and even then, she was always grounds for a fight. But as time went on, Wolverine and Cyclops slowly came to respect each other, and one could even say that they’re friends now. Xavier’s Dream. But it looks like the unity of the Nation of X is coming to an end with this X-Event. But what’s the catalyst?

It would seem that the future division of the X-Men will ultimately come down to a difference in approach to the problem at hand. During the events of the first issue, we learn through a terrorist attack by the newly released Quentin Quire, during a UN meeting in which Cyclops is speaking on behalf of mutant-kind for the nation of Utopia, that just about every nation of the UN has been stockpiling Sentinels for years. After the embarrassment caused by Quire to the world leaders, the world shows it hand in hatred and fear as it unites to potentially wipe Utopia and all mutants off the face of the Earth. And it would seem that all of this stems from a gamble from the new Black King of the Hellfire Club. And that’s just the main bit of story. We also see Wolverine take on a new female sidekick while his is worn down from all his other duties as being a member of the Avengers, New Avengers, and X-Force. We’ve also got Hope Summers’ team working towards becoming respected members of Nation X and a bit more that escapes me at the moment. But do you see what I’ve just written?

Do you see how much content was contained in the first issue of this 5 issue series? It’s a hell of a lot more than some of the current events going on, and it isn’t dicking around either. It’s not a jumbo cluster-fuck of things happening without things actually happening. Everything that I just told you about was easy to follow and understand and without it holding your hand through the process. Jason Aaron (writer) is taking the X-Men to a level that they’ve never been to before, and it makes me excited for the future of the franchise. So if you haven’t given Schism a shot yet, do it soon before it’s too late. And be sure to check out the Prelude to Schism mini-series as well. It gives you loads of history and important information about the key players in the X-Universe and its also just a fun read by Paul Jenkins. And when the series is over and done, you’re going to have to make a decision. The X-Men are going to split into two teams. Essentially they are Team Cyclops and Team Wolverine. As a result, there will be two primary X-Men team comics. “Uncanny X-Men” and “Wolverine and the X-Men,” and both are going to be starting at #1. This blows choosing between Cap and Iron Man out of the water. So, that’s definitely something to look forward to.

-Fleet

It’s unseemly to brag, but I bought some great comics this week. Every few months a couple of key titles overlap on their publishing schedules, and the next thing you know I’m at home reading fantastic comic after fantastic comic. Those are the best weeks — this is those week, if you see what I’m saying.

Hey, Northlanders. When last we met, I was underwhelmed for the first time in your entire run. That was a one-time occurrence, though, I’m sure of it. Issue 42 here is the first installment of a triple trilogy — the Icelandic Saga will be three arcs, each composed of three issues, making it the longest and most sweeping story Brian Wood has yet attempted with the title. Part one here begins with Val Hauker bringing his wife and son to Iceland in search of a better life, one that’s far away from the political upheaval of their home in Norway. Of course, this being Northlanders, a little bit of home shortly arrives in the form of the Belgarssons, another expatriate family who want the newly-claimed Hauker lands. Thus begins the history of Iceland, as two families bring their troubles with them to their new homeland, engaging in small-scale nation-building and treaty-making and generally making miserable everybody drifting along in their wakes, despite not officially being “vikings” in the proper sense. If you can’t tell, I’m very keen on this one. This issue feels like the beginning of a storyline that’s going to make “The Siege of Paris” and the recently-collected “Metal” — a.k.a., the Best Comic Book in the History of Everything — seem like an Archie comic. Yes, I’m excited. At least I was until I began image searching for this little review, and discovered that DC/Vertigo cancelled the book. This is the last arc, and the book ends with #50.

I know, Crazy Eyes Viking. I’m sharpening my knives right after I finish writing the rest of this.

FF 6 is a strange one. Jonathan Hickman and Greg Tocchini forgot one small detail this month, and it’s the sort of niggling little error that irritates me as much as getting a popcorn hull stuck between my teeth. Last issue ended with Spider-Man, Sue and Alex Power fighting an evil Reed and the Moleman plus a cast of thousands, when all of a sudden Black Bolt appears on the scene. This issue picks up with Black Bolt and, well, just keeps running with Black Bolt’s backstory for the rest of the comic. It’s kinda interesting, don’t get me wrong, because I think Black Bolt is a criminally underused character, but all this stuff seems like it belonged in the War of Kings miniseries (any of ‘em) more than it does filling up an issue of FF. I know Hickman is a big proponent of the slowly-developing plot that slowly expands to fill your entire field of vision over time, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Ever since Johnny Storm went gently into that good night, this title has moved one step forward and two steps to the side. At this point, I just want an FF story that sets up with a beginning, continues directly to a middle and then proceeds to some sort of end — something linear, efficient and forward moving that unfolds without deviation, tangent, flashback or a one-hour coffee break would be a right treat.

Alpha Flight 2 is kinda the diametric opposite of FF. The Fred VanLente/Greg Pak writing team begins this one with a tidy flashback to the recent past, than plows forward into their plot with aplomb. Actually, the duo crams quite a bit of development — character and plot — into this. We see that Mac and Heather Hudson had their baby taken away by the Canadian courts, we learn why Heather was pounding on Mac at the end of last issue, we discover that she really is a traitor to all Mac believes in, we see the rest of Alpha Flight taken into custody through various means (except for one member, that is), and we get the much-anticipated return of *SPOILER ALERT* Puck. Oh, how I’ve missed him, lo these many years. Despite being a Fear Itself tie-in, this is a great comic. One complaint: We’re not seeing much of certain members of the team, namely Shaman, Snowbird, Sasquatch and Marina. I know Mr. and Mrs. Hudson are kinda the Scott Summers/Jean Grey of the team, but I need more Sasquatch in my life. Ah well — at the rapid rate this story is proceeding, I’ll probably be sick of ‘Squatch by the end of this series. (Note: My love for Sasquatch will never wane nor flag.)

A couple of months ago I opined that Mike Mignola’s Hellboy stories had taken on an urgency and inventiveness that had been missing for a few years. Take that statement to the tenth power, multiply it by “What the?!” and carry the “Holy Schnikey!!” and you have Hellboy: The Fury number 2 (of 3). Mignola and Duncan Fegredo give us a meat-grinder of a story as HB fights the Dragon while the Apocalypse — you know the one that John the Baptist foresaw in Revelations? Yeah, that little thing — ravages earth. Seriously: This comic launches the Apocalypse as its B-storyline. I don’t know how this one’s going to end, and I’m extremely grateful for that. I became a fan of Hellboy because it seemed like anything could happen, at least in the early days. Now *everything* is happening in Hellboy, and it’s all bad. And it’s happening without 17 creative teams trying to knit together a ridiculous storyline across 49 books — three terrifying and nerve-wracking issues and we’ll have a lot of answers about who Hellboy (the character) is and what Hellboy (the book) is really all about. Sometimes comic books really are as simple as telling one story to the best of your abilities.

The Amazing Spider-Man 665 offers a bit of a breather before the Spider Island storyline begins with a one-off story about Betty Brant getting savagely mugged. Honestly, I’m not very excited about the prospect of Spider Island, but I trust Dan Slott to do the right thing. When it comes to comics, the “right thing” is always, always, always telling a good story. And I trust Slott because of evidence like this issue of ASM. Once again Slott reaches way back into the Spider-Man mythology to take an element — Peter Parker and Betty Brant’s long friendship — and then uses it to craft a powerful and moving story that demonstrates who every major character is, what they believe and how they relate to one another. If you haven’t read a Spider-Man book in a decade, this issue will make sense to you; if you have any familiarity with the characters, this book will make you fall in love with Peter and May Parker all over again. I’ve mentioned this before about Slott, but it bears repeating because it happens far too infrequently in superhero comics: Dan Slott understands that the costumes represent abstract ideals about justice, fairness and power, but the people who wear them embody those ideals. Slott never forgets that the people wear the costumes, and not the other way around. Also, I’ve been down on May Parker as a character since, oh, the 70s; Slott has transformed her into someone interesting, worthwhile, complex and worthy of being aunt and de facto mother to a fantastic human being. Wait, scratch that. Peter’s worthy of Aunt May’s love in Slott’s hands — that’s how great Slott has made this book in just about a year.

Last but by no means least this week is Batman The Brave and the Bold 9, which has finally lost it’s “The All-New” prefix. I’ve mentioned before that I think Hawkman is a top-three DC character (the other two being Wildcat and Ambush Bug), so a Batman/Hawkman team-up is exactly the sort of comic that makes me do the dance of joy when I see that cover. Sholly Fisch and Rick Burchett pit Bats and Hawky against Hawkman’s old nemesis, Byth. The two crime fighters quickly beat him (like, on page 3), and then have to transport the shape changer back to Thanagar for trial. Along the way, Batman and Hawkman discuss their lives, police procedure on their respective home planets and other bits of shop talk. Bats also engages in a some quiet, non-broody admiration for Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s deathless love for one another; this being a kids comic, their love is altered to be a very sweet “mom & dad are best friends” kind of relationship, which is refreshing. Batman: TBATB is one of my favorite ongoing titles, and stories like this one only increase my warm feelings for the book. In a perfect world, I’d be giving this book to the nephews at the end of the month, but I can’t bear to part with ‘em. No, wait — in a perfect world, I’d be buying two of these every month and giving the extra to the boys. If you have comic-hungry kids in your life, I strongly recommend Batman the Brave and the Bold for ‘em. It’s age appropriate and entertaining every month.

So, which one of these books is the best thing I read this week? My gut tells me Northlanders, because I can feel this story unfolding with terrible and gory results, and I’m giddy with anticipation — also, the whole cancellation thing makes me want to laud Northlanders as long as it exists. But if I eliminate anticipation (and unbridled fury) and rate ‘em solely on the merits of the issue in-hand, I’m gonna have to go with Amazing Spider-Man. This issue is flat-out fantastic as a stand-alone story and as part of a larger whole, and Dan Slott proves that if you focus on what’s important — who these people are and how they behave — there’s never any need for a soft reboot, relaunch or do-over because the stories are eternally fresh and vibrant.

-Paul

What the lull? The week of America’s birthday and all I get is three comics? I don’t want to get on a high horse (puts on chaps, dons tiny bedazzled cowboy hat), but I think the week we commemorate 235 years of red, white and blue should come chock-full of books about super heroes who fight for truth, justice and the American way. Also, why don’t more super heroes wear tiny bedazzled cowboy hats?

Instead of superheroes, Marvel comics rolls out its prestige series about insidious Nazi Red Skull. Red Skull: Incarnate 1 (of 5) is a Greg Pak and Mirko Colak journey into 1920s Germany and the origins of the Red Skull. And not origins in the classic comic book sense — e.g., radioactive spiders, laboratory explosions or cosmic ray bombardment — but a grim and well-researched exploration of what makes a man embrace evile, murder and mayhem. If you’ve read anything about serial killers — or perhaps seen any of those profiler/crime scene investigator shows that are so popular — you’re not going to find anything too shocking in this. And that’s a problem. Seeing, once again, a character who has no parental love turn to killing animals and fighting authority by making himself into a vicious blackguard is one of the great storytelling clichés of the modern age. It’s prosaic, and yes, at its core, all true evil is prosaic; there’s nothing remarkable or noteworthy about it other than its complete rejection of the common weal. In the medium of superhero comic books, such verisimilitude is deadly. Once we accept that Johann Schmidt has been warped by poverty, cruelty and neglect into a savage killer, how do we rectify those real-world issues with a guy who drank a magic one-time-only potion that turned him into a two-fisted, flag-wearing super soldier who punches out Hitler but never tears out his throat? The Silver Age (and Bronze Age) Red Skull is one of Marvel’s most iconic villains because he’s a comic book character. Trying to make him human and believable makes his arch-nemesis Captain America less credible. Jack Kirby — a Jewish WW II vet who actually fought against Hitler, it should be noted — always kept the Skull and his boss in the key of melodrama and cartoon menace for a reason. If you give him any real weight, there goes all the fun of watching Cap beat him up; Instead, you want Cap to kill the Red Skull out of hand and dump the corpse in the Indian Ocean, and then were are we? Right there in Fascism’s backyard. Let’s keep our comic book super villains in the realm of comic book characters, for everyone’s sake.

A writer who understands maintaining the game of comic book super villainy is Jim Shooter. The antagonist in Doctor Solar 7 continues to be the truly comic-book-evil Tanek Nuro, a power- and money-hungry CEO whose grasping need for more of everything indirectly created Doctor Solar; now he wants to end the good Doctor’s career of superheroing by any means necessary. That means recreating Doc’s powers through technology and using them to transform prisoners into super soldiers. Shooter continues to throw a lot of science into his dialogue — this is one book where having the hero thought-bubble his way through a fight actually adds to the story, as we see how Doctor Solar analyzes his foes and works out how to beat them via hard physics. Sadly, the rumors are that none of Shooter’s Gold Key revival books are long for this world, which is a shame. I greatly enjoy the punching and robot destruction of Magnus, but I think Doctor Solar is the best of the bunch. It’s a well-plotted, entertaining book that packs a lot of story into every issue, and the character of Doctor Philip Solar is likable and quirky. He’s an intellectual hero in the Reed Richards vein, but without the confidence — kinda classic 1960s Marvel super hero in many ways.

Michael Moorcock’s great anti-hero, Elric, is a conscious perversion of the super-hero ideals. Elric kills those who get too close to him, he’s physically weak and he’s willfully bonded himself to a demon to gain more power. He’s also one of my favorite fictional characters — hell, Michael Moorcock is one of my favorite writers — so I’m going to be exceptionally critical of any non-Moorcock adaptation, in any format. I’ve been hesitantly anticipating Boom Studios’ comic version of the character since the Free Comic Book Day teaser, and after reading issue 1 of Elric: The Balance Lost, I give it a relieved thumbs up. Chris Roberson has taken the ambitious route with his plot, which weaves together the many incarnations of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion rather than just going for a straight sword & sorcery adaptation of the early Elric stories; I grudgingly agree with this decision. I would have loved a dark fantasy Elric comic, but this is more true to Moorcock’s writings of the past 20 years. Here we get dumped into the life of game designer Eric Beck, an albino who dreams of being the great sorcerer-king, Elric (also albino), and fighting the forces of Chaos. In the real world, he’s the twin brother of a right-wing nutso who’s trying to restore the rule of Law to a politically divided America — long-time fans of Moorcock have no doubt spotted several familiar tropes. We also get appearances by other incarnations of the Eternal Champion, namely Dorian Hawkmoon from the Runestaff cycle and Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei from the Swords cycle. I love the way Francesco Biagini captures the visual flair of Corum’s reality, and I hate to be that guy

but Corum’s left hand should have six fingers, because it’s the hand of the god, Kwll. In fact, we see Kwll in one panel in this book, and he has six fingers on each of his four hands. And yet Corum only has five on his alien hand — son, I am disappointed. Also, Elric looks kinda buff for a guy who’s always on death’s door without his restorative herbs and the soul-eating powers of his black rune blade, Stormbringer. Corum’s finger population is a total nerd complaint, but Elric should definitely look more sickly and frail than he does here.

Despite those utterly Comic Book Guy complaints, Elric is the best thing I read this week. I expected quite a bit from this comic, and it delivered almost everything I expected and then some, minus a finger. Feel free to give me a finger in the comments if you so desire.

-Paul

No, I’m not recommending the movie. Instead I direct those of you with a hankering for a patriotic comic to Jack Kirby’s Bicentennial Battles, a 1976 epic Cap story that’s 35 years old and yet still relevant to the American Dream. (It’s available as a softcover from Marvel with a nifty little Cap and Falcon brainwashing cult story as the back-up.) Yes, it’s also a bit hokey, but that’s more a byproduct of time destroying all slang than any flaws in Kirby’s storytelling.

Our parable begins with Cap breaking in to a building to answer the summons of one Mister Buda, a little dancin’ baby-looking guy who was later revealed to be The Contemplator. Mister Buda has plans for Cap — he’s going to send him skipping through Time and Space to revisit various points in American history in order to, “See (the American people) in their vices and virtues, their heartbreak and joy.” Cap is against this plan. In face, one of the best things about Kirby’s characterization of the Star Spangled Avenger is that Cap has a bit of an edge. He’s brusquely dismissive of Mister Buda’s ethos and lifestyle and behaves like a bit of a dick. Keep in mind that this was the 70s, and that Kirby was writing from the point of view of a tough, East Coast guy who believed in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and being the change you seek. A little hippy-looking, yoga-practicing, fortune-cookie talking dude like Mister Buda would of course drive a guy like Cap crazy.

Anyway, despite Cap’s quick dismissal of Mister Buda and all the touchy-feely hokum he stands for, Buda gets the last laugh by planting a mystic sigil in Cap’s palm that sends him off on his journey. Along the way he gets to break Hitler’s face one last time, helps a runaway slave escape bounty hunters, talks with Geronimo, bare-knuckle boxes John L. Sullivan for no apparent reason other than the coolness of it all and utters the immortal line, “I’ve been ripped off by Benjamin Franklin!”

Cap and Buda meet sporadically during Cap’s travels, and Cap scolds Buda for making him relive so much death and suffering. Buda reminds him that no history is made “without turbulence and tragedy,” to which Cap responds, “True! But we’d be a nation of manic depressives if that’s all there was,” to America. Welcome to 2011, Captain.

Incidentally, I lived through the 70s, and I can assure you they were a grim and turbulent decade. We’d just come out of an unpopular war, the previous president was revealed to be a huge crook, gas prices were skyrocketing and there was a sullen, defeatist attitude bubbling underneath it all. (Yes, it was a lot like now.) But during the Bicentennial celebrations that swept the country that summer, it really did feel like we’d turned a corner as a country. What happened? Our symbols swept us along. Flags were everywhere, people were reading the Declaration of Independence in public, newspapers and TV shows gave incessant coverage to local heroes and heroes of the past, and fireworks were practically handed out on every street corner. Being immersed in 200 years of American history made everyone feel like they’d played a part in America get to this point, and that we had a stake in going further. It was maybe 90 percent mental, but that’s what turns the tide. Bicentennial Battles absolutely retains the feeling of the summer of 1976, especially at the end, when Cap is dropped into an average suburban neighborhood and is overwhelmed by the unbridled optimism of the neighborhood kids who surround him and tell him all about their grand plans for the future. As Cap proudly declaims on the final page, with kids of all colors sitting in his knee, “That’s America! A place of stubborn confidence — where both young and old can hope and dream, and wade through disappointment, despair and the crunch of events –with the chance of making life meaningful.” Our stubborn confidence was awakened that summer, and there is no better symbol of that than Captain America with Jack Kirby providing the dialogue. Another great American, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, once noted that “Enthusiasm for life defeats existential fear.” If that don’t describe Jack Kirby/Captain America, I don’t know what does.

And because Jack Kirby is Jack Kirby, he rounded out Bicentennial Battles with pin-ups of what Cap would look like if he’d been created during the Revolutionary War and the Wild West era. Why? Because Jack Kirby is awesome, and because he had an enthusiasm for life.

Hessianazi would make a great cosplay costume this summer.

Again, how did Marvel not follow up on this idea and beat DC to the Elseworlds punch by 20 years? I’d rather read both of these comics than a million endless “death of’s” and reboots. But that’s the great thing about Jack Kirby: He was always ahead of his time, so no matter when you read him he still feels relevant.

As the movie commercials and cross-over events dominate the racks at the same time, it seems like a lot of one-shots and smaller limited series are also popping up. I’m not sure about you, but I like the one-offs and the small runs of non-continuity stuff — a lot of it just seems more fun than the constant “end of the world/this changes everything” style of storytelling that dominates the art form. And summer comics should be fun — autumn, winter and spring comics should be fun, too.

In the spirit of no-fun, let it be known that I will not be seeing the Captain America movie. Just the sight of that idiotic helmet/body armor thing they’ve worked up for him to wear makes me nauseous with rage. However, if you give me a deluxe reprint collection of Silver Age Captain America comics by the pillars of my consciousness, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, well, I’ma buy that. Captain America: Rebirth is a one-shot reprinting five Cap stories from 1965, and it includes Cap’s origin, Bucky’s origin, Red Skull’s origin and a crazy story about a ray that makes things disappear. This is meant as enticement/primer for people who don’t read comics but are interested in the movie. It’s interesting that 46 years later, the best promotion for an overblown movie remains the original comics, isn’t it? Kinda speaks to the timelessness of what Kirby & Lee created as opposed to the transient nature of film. Here’s a prediction: No one will care about the movie in 46 months let alone 46 years, but these comics will still be sought after. They’re action-packed, tension-fraught stories that are enhanced by the idiosyncrasies of the most bombastic of writers and the most dynamic of artists. Remember when Cap used to have to maintain his secret identity by pretending to be the most sad-sackest buck private in the U.S. Army? Good times, folks.

FF 5, once again by Jonathan Hickman and guest penciler Barry Kitson, suffers a bit by comparison to the work of the great architects of the Marvel Universe. Hickman has a tendency to create excitement via deep characterization and slow-burning plots that reveal their implications through dialogue and dropped clues; Lee & Kirby relied a lot more on kicks to the face, desperate chances grasped with two hands and solid — and frequent — right crosses to move their stories along. Don’t let my $10 words deceive you; I’m a big fan of a tightly plotted book with sharply-rendered characters, but FF could really do with a lot more boots caving in faces. Here we get Sue, Spidey and Alex Power heading off to Old Atlantis to stop an alternate-timeline Reed and present-day Moleman from destroying the whole area. There’s a smidgen of action in which Alex Power finally reminds us that he does indeed have superpowers — where were you and your walls ‘n’ rifts generating powers when Johnny Storm was getting murderized, son? –and Spidey shoots some webs, but come ON. The cover implies a major fracas between the FF and a certain strong and silent hero whose name rhymes with “Schlack Scholt” — don’t get your hopes up, because no FF’er so much as farts in his general direction and vice versa. On the plus side, Ben Grimm has tea with Alicia Masters and engages in grown-up talk about their relationship, which was recently consummated; Ben’s guilty because his non-rockiness (but he was rock-hard at the time, eh? High five!) enabled him to be physical with Alicia but cost Johnny his life. If he could have had this conversation and then punched somebody across Manhattan, I would have loved this book. As it is, we’ve spent a lot of time with Ben moping about Johnny and doing very little of what he does best, which is “Aunt Petunia, idol of millions, Yancy Street CLOBBERIN’ TIME.” You’ll notice that his signature catch phrase is not “Trenchant Insight!”

Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker 4 has a lot — a lot — of fisticuffs in it, which is a nice change of pace from the previous three issues, which were mainly slightly warmed up Smokey and the Bandit leftovers. Butcher fights three super villains in a Times Square-stand in, and it’s quite beautiful. Mike Huddleston’s handing art and colors on this series, and he makes gorgeous backgrounds — look at the top of page six if you don’t believe me. I still get a Marshall Law vibe off this book, but I think this is the best issue of the bunch so far. I don’t think it’s as epoch-shattering as Joe Casey’s increasingly indulgent afterwards would have you believe, but it’s improving.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s very little that could be done to improve Mike Harvey’s See You Next Wednesday comics. This week’s installment brutalizes the industry practice of killing off characters to increase sales. Once again, Mike sets up his pins and knocks them all down as beloved hero Cap’n Mac — he’s a guy with a computer monitor on his head who’s devoted to saving only the hot ladies of the world — takes a shot to a very sensitive portion of his anatomy and heads for the big Blue Screen of Death in the sky. Relentlessly silly, and with no six month wait required to see if Cap’n Mac is really dead — c’mon, if you’ve been reading comics for longer than six months, you know he’s not dead. Awesome, funny, good-time comic books, right here every week — every week — for a dollar.

After four issues, I feel like I’m finally getting a handle on Xombi. It’s your standard science-fiction/horror comic that deals with issues of theology and super-science by means of unusual and distinct characters and copious amounts of wordplay. You know — the usual. John Rozum and Frazer Irving give us a whole lot of exposition and background in this issue, for which I thank them. Despite this issue being mostly one character explaining who/what/where/when and why about her life thus far, this is a compelling and entertaining book. It’s a tough book to explain to someone who’s never read it, but man is it worth reading. It feels like I’m still playing catch-up on this book, and that doesn’t even bother me. Every issue thus far as ended with me itching to see what happens next, and this one is no exception. If you’re not reading this series, I bet you could start with this one and be engrossed by the end of next issue –maybe. I may be biased because this issue retroactively made the three previous issues much more coherent and fascinating. That’s the word I’d use to describe Xombi to someone who hadn’t read it. This is a fascinating, non-conventional comic that just happens to be a DC book — that’s the weirdest thing about it.

Amazing Spider-Man has been the best superhero book on the stands for at least the past year. I know, I’m still kinda surprised myself — Spidey’s not even my third-favorite Marvel character, and yet Dan Slott has made me care about Peter Parker and about what happens in Spidey’s neck of NYC. Issue 664 features Spider-Man helpless at the hands of Anti-Venom (no bones about it, one of the dumbest characters in Spider-Man lore) while A-V and the Wraith attempt to bring down the evil gang lord Mr. Negative independently of one another. One of the finest characteristics Slott has as a scripter is that he doesn’t let things dangle; this issue features the resolution to two ongoing plots. Namely, we find out who’s behind that Wraith mask, and we see Mr. Negative and his operation crippled by the good guys. So much has happened in Amazing in the past six months — the rise of Peter Parker, the death of Marla Jameson, the return of several classic villains, the growing friendship between Peter and Mary Jane, Peter’s deepening relationship with new girlfriend Carlie Cooper — and yet the plot keeps developing. The book retains its light-hearted feel, but serious and important stuff is constantly happening. Slott’s work rate is phenomenal, and the result is a book that’s thrilling, surprising, uplifting, touching and absolutely worth the cover price.

And yet it’s not the best thing I read this week. I know, right? Read on, there’s more.

The Iron Age Featuring Captain Britain 1 is the sort of comic I habitually ignore. I don’t regularly read any of the Iron Man books and I had no idea what this series is about, but I couldn’t resist a Captain Britain story. I’m a sucker for him, and boy am I glad about that now. Christos Gage and Lee Weeks present a tale of time-travelin’ Tony Stark as he attempts to stop a doomsday machine from being unleashed in his present (our future) by heading back to the 80s continuity. Guess which comic reviewer loves that idea? You’re damn right I do. Tony encounters drunk Tony, has to make amends with an emotionally-fragile Hank Pym who’s recently been released from prison and is still known mostly as a wife-beater, and is once again reminded of his own failings during the Civil War event. It is fantastic to see what I consider to be the classic Iron Man armor once again, and Lee Weeks’ pencils are positively Neal Adams-esque on certain pages. And Captain Britain doesn’t even play a role in this until the second half of the story, but I’m not bothered; this issue is quite a joyride through the Avengers comics of my youth. I don’t know how that plays with you younger people, but I’m gonna have to buy the rest of this series — classic Power Man and Iron Fist show up next issue, and that’s mandatory as far as I’m concerned.

2011 is awful late to do a Watchmen parody. The movie came out two summers ago and the actual comic came out 20-something years ago, which means any sort of extended joke better be pretty good. Patric M. Verrone and Tone Rodriguez come through huge in the Simpsons Super Spectacular 13, of all places. The Splotchmen melds the show’s continuity with a highly-detailed parody of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic to great effect. The Springfield/Shelbyville Bi-City Bake-Off threatens to destroy both towns, but a mysterious set of super heroes (Pie Man and Cupcake Boy, guess who?) step in to protect the innocent and end up uncovering a super hero war from the old days. It would have been easy to superficially skewer the film and call it a day, but Verrone nails all the right notes in this. Dr. Frink becomes Dr. New Haven and Krusty is the Komedian obviously, but it’s the little stuff that makes this so great. The chapter breaks are perfect right down to the font and layout, there are random ridiculous quotes sprinkled throughout the book, Comic Book Guy and Milhouse play the roles of the news stand operator and the boy reading the Black Ship comic (here a Radioactive Man comic), Dr. Hibbert stands in for Rorschach’s psychologist — there are so many glorious details that pay tribute to the comic while the true spirit of the Simpsons shines through. It’s rare that a parody satisfies as both humor and as a story, and rarer still is the parody that cuts so finely it makes you want to re-read the original material in search of other jokes, but the Simpsons Super Spectacular is just such a book. And to think I bought this only so I could give it to the nephews. From out of nowhere, the Simpsons Super Spectacular is the best thing I read this week.

-Paul