Saturday, June 20, 2009

Comics Roundup for 6/17/09

Here are my thoughts on Wednesday's comics:

Captain America #600 - I did an entire entry about this issue alone. You can find it here.

Batman: Streets of Gotham #1 - With the new status quo in the Batman universe, DC comics seems to be flooding the market with new books, and I seem to be a sucker for most of them. At least I can say that I didn't get this for the sake of being a completest though. This one was written by Paul Dini, who wrote Detective Comics for a few years, and those are some of the best Batman stories since I've been reading them. He did a lot of interesting things with Harley Quinn, The Ventriloquist, The Riddler, and more importantly: Hush. (They need to use the Dini version of Hush in the next Batman movie! I'm telling you, it would be awesome!) So, picking up this one was a no-brainer for me. The only downside is that it costs a buck more, but it's an extra-sized issue with a backup story featuring Manhunter. Now, I don't know anything about that particular character, and I wasn't familiar with the creative team. Personally, I would rather just pay a buck less and get Dini's Batman book, but it was interesting enough that I'll at least keep reading that part.

The Trial of Thor - One Shot - Joe Field at Flying Colors Comics once told me something that should have already occured to me. Just like how the big breweries like to flood the shelves with all kinds of products (light beer, low carb beer, light beer with lime, toothpaste beer, ectcetera) that take up room that might be used for the smaller breweries, the big comic book publishers, Marvel and DC, do something quite similar with comics. Basically, this one-shot is just that sort of a thing, but I bought it anyway. The art looked good, and the story seemed pretty interesting. It was a pretty compelling read, even though the ending fell a little flat. Ah well, I see that the next issue of the regular series comes out next week. Maybe I should just stick to that.

Action Comics Annual #12 - Too...much...exposition... I was actually looking forward to this one, as it gives some background information on the characters who have taken the spotlight since Superman's departure from Earth - namely Nightwing and Flamebird. Personally though, I think that I could have skipped this one and been more happy wondering what their origin might have been.

Supergirl #42 - I've been picking this one up ever since it started to have a stronger connection with the Superman books. I wasn't familiar with the writer, Sterling Gates, but I've liked every issue that I've read so far, and I'd probably get it even if it didn't have a strong connection with what's going on in the Superman books. This is one of those series where I'm going to have to go back and reread the last year's issues in one sitting. And somebody who works with teenagers, I'd say that Gates is a good job of handling her personality.

The Flash: Rebirth #3 - Geoff Johns is the writer who got me reading Green Lantern comics when he brought back the Silver Age version of the hero, Hal Jordan. With this series, he's doing the same thing with the Silver Age version of the Flash, Barry Allen. The first issue was decent, the third was really good, and this one falls back to decent. I'm definitely on board for the last three issues of this series, but I'm undecided whether I'll keep up with the new ongoing series that's bound to come afterwards.



I'd also like to mention that I passed up on the following:

Amazing Spider-Man Family #? - For over ten years, Marvel produced a fun comic called Spider-Girl. It told the adventures of the daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker, who winds up becoming a hero in her own right. It existed apart from everything else that was going on in the Marvel Universe, and each issue was pretty reader-friendly. While it was never my favorite, I picked up every issue, as there were definitely some high moments. With her series being cancelled, they demoted her to a backup feature in the Amazing Spider-Man Family anthology, so I started to pick that up. However, it's a huge comic where I have to pay an extra two bucks to get a bunch of uninteresting filler that doesn't have any direct bearing on what's going on in the regular Spider-Man book. I figure that I'll just wait for the inevitable trade paperback where they collect all her adventures from that series.

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