Actually, two weeks’ worth, since I was away last week:
- Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups vol 2 TPB (DC)
- Fables #58 (DC)
- 52 #44 and 45 of 52 (DC)
- Sandman Mystery Theatre: Sleep of Reason #4 of 5 (DC)
- Wonder Woman #5 (DC)
- Fantastic Four: The End #6 of 6 (Marvel)
- Incredible Hulk #104 (Marvel)
- Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange vol 75 HC, collecting Doctor Strange #169-179 (Marvel)
- newuniversal #4 (Marvel)
- Athena Voltaire: Flight of the Falcon #2 of 4 (Ape)
- Captain Clockwork Special (Captain Clockwork)
- B.P.R.D.: Garden of Souls #1 of 5 (Dark Horse)
- Castle Waiting #5 (Fantagraphics)
- Boneyard #24 (NBM)
- Evil Inc. Annual Report vol 1 TPB (Lulu Press)
The Team-Ups volume are really for hard-core Justice Society fans only, really. That said, one of the Atom stories herein is a longtime favorite of mine: Ray Palmer starts aging backwards and Al Pratt has to save him. As Gardner Fox gimmick stories go, it’s pretty good. It’s also interesting that many of these stories are treated as just one more adventure for our heroes, and not the “event” comics that JLA/JSA team-ups would later become.
Wonder Woman #4 ended with a cliffhanger, leading into the final part of the “Who Is Wonder Woman?” story. But #5 doesn’t complete the story, it was released with different content than originally solicited, and the conclusion will appear “at some later date”. The story that actually shipped is a pretty mediocre piece about the impact Wonder Woman has on the world around her, beyond her material deeds. It basically explores in depth what Kurt Busiek simply implies with his Winged Victory character in Astro City, but doesn’t really say anything more. So, shrug.
Fantastic Four: The End concludes the ho-hum series by writer/artist Alan Davis. He sort-of brings a science fictional sensibility to the FF in the future, but it’s really just a standard superhero yarn.
Athena Voltaire #2 actually shipped some time ago, but my shop didn’t get a copy for some reason. So they ordered me one and it arrived this week. Now I can catch up…
Captain Clockwork is a little black-and-white book by Glenn Whitmore about four generations of heroes named Captain Clockwork, who work to save chronology from the 1930 to the 2010s. Whitmore’s plotting and dialog is a little shaky, but his art – though not very detailed – is clean and polished. There’s some promise here, but I don’t think I’m up for “yet another superhero book”. Future installments will need to indicate that they’re going somewhere for me to keep buying. (The web site has a preview from this issue.)
In many ways I enjoy B.P.R.D., but the story has been going on for an awful long time, and with no end in sight. I’d like them to wrap up Abe Sapien’s background and deal with… heck, I can’t even remember exactly what the ongoing threat they’re dealing with is. Or else I’m getting close to losing interest.
Boneyard wraps up their current story with an adorable ending. What a great comic book series.
Evil Inc. is a graphic novel assembled from the first year of the popular webcomic about a corporation run by supervillains. It’s entertaining, maybe even better read in collected form than serially, although I kind of wish it were a more straightforward collection. Apparently there’s already a second volume, but I don’t think it’s yet been solicited through Diamond Comics’ Previews catalog.