A/V

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Old Man Logan #18

Spider-Man #13

Cave Carson #5

Invincible Iron Man #4

Captain America: Sam Wilson #19

Mighty Thor #16

The Wild Storm #1

Doctor Strange #17

U.S.Avengers #3

WWE #2

Poe Dameron #11

Unfollow #16

Archie #17

Batman #17

Ultimates ² #4

Walking Dead #164

Sex Criminals #16

Kill or Be Killed #6

-LOOKING FOR A WILDER STORM

I’m pumped whenever Warren Ellis writes a new thing. No one is as creative or as funny as peak Ellis, and even on his worst day he’s a mess of amazing ideas. Sadly The Wild Storm is off to a slow and muddled start. It introduces somewhere around a dozen characters, peeks into a not-too-far-from-real techno-futurism, and generally overwhelms with information while underwhelming with actual connections. As long as I can track who is who and what group they work for and which bad dudes are after this guy or that, I’m sure this is going to get better and fast. But right now I could read the first issue again and I wouldn’t be able to name most of the characters an hour later. Ellis is no slouch and I don’t doubt that there’s a hell of a story coming from this little side-universe he’s getting to play with. It’s just a shame that the first step is such a weak one.

WARNING:  Contains words.  Lots of them.  This ridiculous rambling is why I do one word reviews in the first place.   But if you have the patience, enjoy the change of pace.

10. Black Monday Murders #1

9.   Legacy of Luther Strode #6

8.   Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #12

7.   Deadly Class #21

6.   Bitch Planet #6

5.   Southern Bastards #13

4.   Clean Room #4

3.   The Fade Out #12

2.   Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #14

1.   Secret Wars #9

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Mother Panic #3

Wonder Woman #13

Civil War II #8

Black Widow #9

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #14

Great Lakes Avengers #3

Spider-Man #11

Snotgirl #5

Mighty Thor #14

Star Wars #26

Infamous Iron Man #3

East of West #30

All Star Batman #5

Clean Room #15

Spider-Woman #14

Saga #41

Deadly Class #25

-SNOTGIRL IS A MESS

There’s a lot to like about Snotgirl. The characters are all terrible people but in an enjoyable way. There’s more to the plot than what’s on the surface, appropriate for someone who presents only the finest outward appearance. But unfortunately the crux of that plot is a drug haze that makes it next to impossible to follow what’s real and what’s not, and if you can’t trust the story you can’t invest yourself in it. And so it’s not nearly as good as it should be. Breaks my damn heart.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Thanos #2

Cage! #3

Invincible Iron Man #2

Doctor Aphra #2

Ultimates² #2

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #3

Captain America: Sam Wilson #16

Doctor Strange #15

Archie #15

Batman #13

Locke & Key: Small World #1

-A WEEK OF WEAK STARTS

You may notice that the bottom half of my list is exclusively second and third issues that didn’t make my day. Cage! is stylistic as hell but the story is so thin it may as well not exist. Doctor Aphra looks to be getting where it’s going, but this issue didn’t do it any favors. Ultimates² is setting the cosmic stage in service of the longer story. Invincible Iron Man had good backstory, which is very necessary, but the “fight scene” was a snoozefest. Thanos is a lot of talk on the one side and nihilistic genocide on the other, and it’s much blander than I’m making it sound. And Cave Carson has all the elements there, and Oeming’s art is amazing, but it’s missing some amount of spark this month.

I hope they all shape up before I decide I’d rather have four dollars each month than to see what happens next.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Totally Awesome Hulk #13

Jessica Jones #3

Old Man Logan #15

Wonder Woman #12

Power Man and Iron Fist #11

New Super-Man #6

Babybel Wax Bodysuit

Poe Dameron #9

Hawkeye #1

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #15

Clean Room #14

Spider-Man #10

-OH, JESSICA

Jessica Jones has fallen into the Bendis trap. It’s a character I love, and I’m thrilled every time I turn a page to see more Michael Gaydos art, but the story is moving like molasses and nothing feels like it means anything. I was hoping it would be the other kind of Bendis book, where BIG THINGS happen to shock and awe the reader and it gives the comic a sense of purpose, but at this point you could pick up issue 4 next month and read four sentence synopsis and get the same amount of plot.

—

Jessica was in prison.

Jessica is hiding her child from her husband, Luke Cage.

Her last client has been murdered.

A lady wants her to take down the super heroes.

—

There. That was the full impact of half a story arc. Much like Powers, I’m invested too deeply to stop buying it but I regret being stuck reading a nothing story.

Shape up, Jessica. You’re better than this.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Ringside #8

Avengers #2

Champions #3

Doctor Aphra #1

Shade, The Changing Girl #3

Josie and the Pussycats #3

Walking Dead #161

Unworthy Thor #2

The Wicked + The Divine #24

Unfollow #14

Batman #12

-JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS AND THE SILVER SCREEN

I’d like to start by saying this: I am an unabashed fan of the Josie and the Pussycats movie. I thought it was a brilliant directorial followup to Can’t Hardly Wait, it had scads of people I love in it, and its message about commercialism and product placement only rings more true as the years pass on. This issue of the Josie comic featured a nice piece of connective tissue to it, in having a moment where Alexandria calls out the medium and snarks all over the story for a moment. It was a glorious slap in the face, reminding me of that love and connecting the two interpretations if not in content, in spirit. The new Josie comic is very much its own animal (that animal is a giraffe wearing a shirt), a funky world where anything can happen if it needs to, even outcrazying the last Jughead arc where he dated AN ACTUAL TEENAGE WITCH.

Josie is one of those comics that is wholly skippable at the end of the day, but if you do you’ll end that day with a few less smiles.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Civil War II #7

Superf*ckers Forever #4

Wonder Woman #11

The Goddamned #5

Snotgirl #4

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #13

Star Wars #25

CAGE! #2

Mighty Thor #13

Han Solo #5

Ultimates² #1

Black Monday Murders #4

A.D.: After Death #1

-THE WONDER WOMAN PROBLEM

This is something I’ve mentioned before, but Wonder Woman just hasn’t been all that good. It has the all-star team of Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott, but in 11 issues they’ve only done four or five, and it’s wasted on a reimagining of her and Steve Trevor’s first meeting, which is the “Batman’s parents get killed” of modern Wonder Woman. The modern day stuff isn’t nearly as good in either art or story, but it needs to be because that’s the story that will actually drive forward into the future.

I’m sticking on it for a bit longer just because I need more Rucka in my life, and if Nicola Scott is making drawings I want to deliver them into my eyeballs, but I hope it solves its identity crisis soon or I might be done with the whole affair.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Thanos #1

Jessica Jones #2

Infamous Iron Man #2

Captain America: Sam Wilson #15

Archie #14

Doctor Strange #14

Old Man Logan #13

Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2

Kill or be Killed #4

Batman #11

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #14

Kaijumax: Season 2 #6

-THE DOCTOR IS IN

Just wanted to take a moment to appreciate how great it is that the first mainline Doctor Strange comic to come out after the movie features a tiny naked astral Stephen Strange fighting Hell Bacon inside his own stomach. I have not seen the movie yet, but I hope that happened there as well.

Reviewed this week, in ascending order of awesome:

Mother Panic #1

Casanova: Acedia #7

Wonder Woman #10

Lovers in the Garden

Invincible Iron Man #1

Captain America: Steve Rogers #7

Poe Dameron #8

Doom Patrol #3

I Thought YOU Hated ME

Power Man and Iron Fist #10

New Super-Man #5

All-Star Batman #4

Clean Room #13

Universe #5

-LIGHTNING ROUND! (BECAUSE THINKING IS HARD SOMETIMES)

The interplay between Poe Dameron and Agent Terex is elevating that book beyond the nothing cash-in that it felt like in the first few issues. Terex is the right amount of cold to be cool.

New Super-Man is also finding its voice and has me looking forward to seeing where everything settles once this initial fracas is resolved.

Wonder Woman continues to be properly charming and well-done, and not much beyond that.

Mother Panic has laid a good, solid base of gruffness that I hope it can build something on top of. So far my least favorite of the Young Animals, but it’s in exemplary company and has room to grow.

All-Star Batman is still an almost Miller-esque level of mess in tone, but the story Snyder is telling has begun to transcend the THE GODDAMN BATMANness of it all.

That Power Man and Iron Fist villain reveal. I had given up hope that we’d ever see that guy again. Welcome back from endless limbo, [REDACTED]!