Saturday, December 06, 2008

It’s been a while but I’ve been busy

So here’s two weeks of comics reviews. Spoilers ahead for:
Buffy #19
Teen Titans #65
Superman & Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves (try typing that with a bad W key)
Superman # 682
Terror Titans #3
Terra #3
Superman/Supergirl Maelstrom #3
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer #19
Evil future Willow has set up Buffy and Faith to fight each other. Also features Fray’s cop sister.
This has lots of Fray future speak, which I like, and can’t quite see why Buffy had such a problem with when she first arrived. It’s perfectly understandable to me. Willow has been lying to Fray, Fray’s brother and Buffy about what will happen when Buffy both arrives in future land and when she leaves for our present day. This turns out to be a long winded ploy to get Buffy to kill Willow. And she does. She murders her best friend, and she does it easily and swiftly because she knows it is what is needed. It’s a clear cut decision. This doesn’t mean she isn’t sorry about it, she is, but she’s a warrior and she’s tough as nails and she does what needs to be done.
This reminds me of Wonder Woman killing Max Lord. Same reasons, carried out in a similar fashion.
Poor Buffy.

Teen Titans #65
Cassie kicks back and beats her crazy nephew (Lycus). I’m not quite sure how she did this. We saw crazy nephew choking her and then her eyes went starry, next thing we know, she’s got a new costume, she’s awake, she’s found her own power and she’s winning. I hope how this happened will be explored satisfactorily later. Her new costume looks pretty darn good, and mature, except….the gold W looks like it’s made of metal, so how’s she moving her arms? They should be clamped to her side..
Bombshell blows up the dog from inside him! Way to go. Violent, icky and messy but she keeps her cool and is hard as. Loving her. But I hope they are not gonna try and make her a Rose substitute, what with the snarking at Cassie. There’s room for two tough as hardcore morally wobbly super powered teenage women on the Teen Titans.
(And despite the previous sentence they aren't clones of each other, but they do have similarities)

Superman & Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves # 4
It’s got Ollie in it. J I like this issue. Far better than the last one. We see a kid turned vampire who hasn’t descended to drinking blood yet and we learn where the Vampires & Werewolves came from. Then Etrigan is summoned and starts rhyming, in a non annoying way. The art is lovely and murky too.
So far so good.

Superman #682
Ok so I do like this New Krypton cover.
Bizzarro mourns Pa Kent. Kryptonians are idiots, and as some other astute blogger observed, (who exactly I can’t remember, if anyone knows please tell me and I’ll credit them) if they are going to go to the trouble of locking up Supe’s enemies, they really should have put Lex out of action first.
I’m surprised Kara went along with her folks requests. I thought she had more mind than that. Renato Guedes draws an awesome Silver Banshee.
That page is just so colourful, so sunny and bright, (and Kara's wearing pants!)

Superman/Supergirl Maelstrom #3
God Superman is a dick. I am completely with Kara here. He is acting like her father, and a very short tempered dictatorial father at that. They’re cousins, she should be treated as an equal human being, not as someone of lower status who should be deferential to the mighty Kal.
Teaching her not to be reliant on her powers is a good thing, but taking them to a hostile planet with a red sun where they could be killed by all the aggressive attacking wildlife is not a good thing. It’s a stupid stupid thing. And arrogant. What if they were to die? What would their loved ones back home do? What would it do to Lois if they were to die off planet where (presumably) no one knows where they are?
And Kara's origin? Rocketed from Krypton as it exploded? I thought her last issue fixed it so she rocketed from a bubblised Argo City after a rampaging Brainiac was set on destroying it? And I got the impression this was Argo City after it had separated from Krypton and Krypton had exploded? Did I misunderstand?

The cover is beautiful though, especially Kara.

Terror Titans # 3
Well Rose won her match against Aquagirl, and I’m sure she’ll win against Static. Whoever the hell he is. I’m still appreciating the art (women with muscles!). Terry (a bad guy whose code name I’ve forgotten) fused his Dad into a wall. You can see the horror and the anger.

Terra #3
Still good fun. I’m loving the under earth civilisations. It seems that Terra, or Atlea, is not a simple clone of the previous Terra and I think it works. No Peej in this issue, sadly. The art is still looking gorgeous though, and Terra’s outfit is brilliant.

JSA: Ghost Stories
Trade paperback, incorporating ‘Ghost in the House’ and then the first 5 issues from 1 year later. I did enjoy this - the Gentleman Ghost flashback sequences are beautifully rendered. The rest of the art, pencilled by George Perez, Rags Morales and Jerry Ordway, I did not like. The story was fun, but I think may have bored me if I’d read it as a floppy monthly title.
Finding out Wildcat comes from English nobility tickled me. I was cringing through the fight sequences in London, at Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and possibly Westminster Cathedral, cringing because I was thinking you can’t fight there, you’ll destroy our national treasures!
That’ll be the first patriotic thought I’ve ever had.

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