What better way to spend a day of vacation than to go to an auto shop to get your coolant changed? I’d have paid for privilege. And I did. It was over $100 even with a $10 coupon. What better way to get that taste out of your mouth than to go to Day’s Hamburger in the Downtown Mall for a delicious Great Day Burger with an order of Sweet Potato Fries? It did make me feel better. Their burgers are malformed and thin with not the freshest bun and yet, every time they are delicious. Just looking at it, it has no business being any good. I even turned down finally trying a pub burger at the Rad Retrocade for another Great Day.
What better way to further numb yourself than to buy some
comics? I’d been planning on going to Coas Used Bookstore for some time and
had a box full of books to trade in. I
was glad to finally move that out of my apartment. I noticed a DCU Justice League movie right off the bat in the DVD section and
picked it up. At the register, they
mentioned that they were selling their DVD’s 3 for $10, but I didn’t bother
going back to look for more.
They’d rearranged the used comic bins there by title,
which made them easier to search. I just
kind of skimmed them and instantly found four interesting-looking comics. They’d moved the trades to a shelf
nearby. On a day when I hadn’t just
spent $100, I might have picked up the $40 Dungeons
& Dragons Fell’s Five Compendium.
I’ve read several of these and they are easily the best of the D&D
comics, but had the misfortune of being tied to Fourth Edition. It was big and thick and I think I hadn’t
read half of it. I’ll keep it in mind
for the future, if nobody else snags it.
The actual main reason I was at the Downtown Mall was to
go to Zia Comics. I wanted the next issue of Wonder Girl, since I’d enjoyed the one
I’d gotten last month. I thought
it was supposed to come out today, but it hadn’t. A couple of other things I was looking for
weren’t there either. They were
rearranging their trades when I was there, which was a good thing because they
were badly arranged, but I wasn’t able to look through all of them. I thought I was going to get shutout, before
I noticed a new Wonder Woman issue
done by the Wonder Girl artist. Close
enough.
With that setup, we’ll start the reviews.
Guardians
of the Galaxy #10
I looked at this twice before I was convinced that I
hadn’t read this issue before. With
multiple covers on some of these issues, it’s easy to get confused and buy the
same issue twice (as I’ve done). I’ve
had so little luck buying Guardians of
the Galaxy books. Apart from Communications Breakdown (which gave
me exactly what I wanted from a Guardians story), it’s been nothing but
disappointments otherwise.
This issue continued that streak. Angela
and Gamora beat some aliens. That’s it.
That’s the whole story. It’s
almost in real time, too. The less than
10 minutes it took me to read this is about the amount of time it took for the
beat down to happen. Very
efficient. The artwork is good, but for
a comic starring two hot chicks, I’m not seeing anything in here I plan on
trying to draw myself. That’s bad. I am told Brian Michael Bendis is a great comic book writer, but all I’ve
seen out of him is decompressed crap.
The guy can’t write dialogue to save his life.
Green
Lantern #75
And on that note.
“I’m going to live up to the name Green Lantern. If I truly want to be a hero, this is my
chance to prove it . . . I will save this city . . . I will . . . Because I
believe in myself . . . Because I’m a hero . . . When I was a kid, I never
could decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Now I know.
I’m Green Lantern. I’m a hero.”
Stunning, isn’t it.
Never in all literature has a fictional character had more internal
motivation. I enjoyed this issue for all
the wrong reasons. I’m not really
familiar with the Kyle Rayner Green
Lantern, so I wanted to check this out.
I know he’s fan favorite.
Flipping through this before reading it, it certainly looked comic
book-y cool. There’s Green Lantern, Adam Strange, and the Darkstars involved in some big
fight. I know of the Darkstars, but
nothing about them, so I can learn something about them, too. Cool.
The story is as promised.
Ranagar is being attacked by Darkseid’s here-to-fore unknown
son. (I’m sure the only person more shocked
by this revelation is Darkseid himself.)
He actually does have motivation to attack Planet Rann for own plans. There’s
a big dramatic fight scene. The ending
is reasonably clever and makes sense.
There are consequences as the Darkstars appear to disband at the end.
What went wrong? It
was the dialogue mostly. Kyle had this
continuous internal monologue going where he’s explaining himself and his
motivations. No, that’s what villains
do, but they do it out loud. They also
do it better than Kyle was doing it. Spider-Man is about the only character
that can get away with this kind of Shakespearian monologue. When he does it, Peter is remembering his
motivation to be a hero. Here’s a clue,
his motivation to be a hero isn’t just because he tautologically wants to be a
hero. I feel like I actually wish I knew
less about this character now, while simultaneously not understanding anything
about him.
A few other notes. The
artwork is great. No problem there. I’m not a fan of the Green Lantern uniform
change. This story apparently takes
place during some interlude where Kyle was the only Green Lantern. I think we could all guess that wouldn’t
last. Adam Strange, even though he’s
Rann’s defender, just basically cameo’s in this. Ron
Marz, the writer (snicker),
didn’t seem to know what to do with him.
John Stewart, former Green
Lantern, led the Darkstars. (I still
know nothing about the team.) Donna Troy was also on the team in yet
another twist in the original Wonder Girl’s tortured history. (She was Wonder
Girl on the Teen Titans. It made sense, then somehow, it all went
wrong and weird.)
It’s not like I haven’t written some embarrassing, cringe-y,
things (all the time). But . . .
“Save the city. Be
the hero, Kyle.” “I’m . . . not sure if
I can, John. Saving an entire city. It might be more than I’ve got left . . . but
I’m sure as hell gonna try.”
I feel better about myself, now.
Magnus
Robot Fighter & Nexus #1
Here’s where I regret that I only flipped through that bin
of used comics, instead of carefully going through them. (I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten lunch yet.) This is an easy review: It’s a comic book
with Steve Rude’s artwork. Need I say more? I have no familiarity with the Magnus Robot Fighter character, but Mike Baron has written him and his
girlfriend a lot like Nexus and his
girlfriend, Sundra. It works for me, since I don’t know any
better. This reads like a good Nexus
morality tale. Nexus himself doesn’t
show up until the end. This leaves me
hoping Part 2 of this story is somewhere in the bins or I’m not going to know
how this thing ends.
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