Timely Publications exploded onto the comics scene in late 1939 with Marvel Comics #1, a book that introduced two of the most popular and unusual characters of the Golden Age: Carl Burgos's Human Torch and Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner (who still gets the occasional mini-series today). It also had a pretty solid range of backup stories, from the ( Read more... )

I did not ever expect to encounter the term "sex club" in an issue of Uncanny X-Men.

That is all.

This week we came to the long-awaited Uncanny X-Men #500. Long awaited not just because it's a very impressive anniversary number (despite issues 67-93 being reprints), but because this issue finally delivers the new setup we've been waiting for since Messiah CompleX. The timing was a bit odd, there, but I guess they felt like they needed the ( Read more... )

It's no secret to those few folks who read this LJ that I was, all in all, not a fan of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. It had its good moments. The dialog was snappy. John Cassaday and Laura Martin's art was gorgeous (although I still prefer Quitely's design for Beast). But the pacing was dreadful, some of the plots were dodgy, the big ( Read more... )

I have started reading Digger by one Usrula Vernon. It's about a wombat who gets lost and surfaces somewhere very far from home. I'm about 50 pages into it (it's approaching 500, although around 450 it stops numbering and starts titling arcs, so maybe something changes around there). So far the plot's pretty meandering, but I just love the voice ( Read more... )

In which Joss Whedon's much delayed (and overly prolonged) storyline comes to an end. Looking at this issue purely on its own merits, this is really quite good. Snappy dialog (of course) and, within the framework of Whedon's own viewpoint, good character work as well. The beginning does feel a bit indulgent in a "let's have Joss Whedon write ( Read more... )

It's been forever since I posted anything resembling a comic book review, so here are a few comments on recent releases:

Action Comics #863 Geoff Johns wraps up his tale of Superman working with what appears to be the pre-Zero Hour / pre-Crisis Legion of Superheroes. This whole story has been eight kinds of awesome, and the finale does not ( Read more... )

So this week the 13-issue "Messiah Complex" storyline that finally set about pulling together the aimlessly wandering x-books and imposing some direction on the franchise, not to mention finally doing something about that whole Decimation mess, came to a close. It started off very strongly, with a real sense of Something Happening and an immediate ( Read more... )

Mr. Terrific is one of my absolute favorite Golden Age DC comics superheroes. He's almost certainly my favorite among the 2nd-string DC heroes who never got their own solo book and just barely qualified for membership in a super-team (in this case, the venerable Justice Society of America). Fortunately for fans like me, DC finally came up with a ( Read more... )

If you're one of many who has been mad about the deaths and treatments of certain characters at DC over the last few years, you might want to ( Read more... )