Wonder Woman costume bilge

No mart for me today.

Bah!

Missus has got a two hour driving lesson at 1.30, which pretty much puts the kibosh on my plans to hit the Royal National for decaying comics.

Never mind, I scored some good tat yesterday.

More on that tomorrow.

Now, here's my contribution to the big Wonder Woman costume debate...

Yes!

I say keep the old costume but change the woman inside into a gorilla!

I'd buy it.

If they must change the costume though, I like this idea from Andy Riley...

Spouting guff about some comics I read last night

I read some comics last night. Here's what I thought about them...

Blackest Night #6

At this point in Blackest Night it's become clear that Geoff Johns is more focused on providing his readers with "Fuck yeah!" moments than he is with writing a character-driven story. Thus in this issue we get Barry and Hal outrunning death, a hyper-detailed double page splash of John Stewart being pursued to Earth by a gazillion Black Lanterns, Ganthet strapping on a power ring, and a bunch of established heroes and villains becoming lanterns. There's even a moment when The Atom gets to don his old Sword of The Atom costume - FUCK YEAH!

All that's fine. I can groove on Lex Luthor being an Orange Lantern as much as the next fanboy, but there comes a point where you stop whooping for joy at the cool nerdy stuff and realise that the Fuck Yeah moments have replaced the story itself. Again, that's fine, this is after all a DC event comic not a Samuel Beckett play, it just feels like things are hurtling down a very narrow path with no allowance for interesting character led diversions.

Blackest Night Wonder Woman #2

Ah, I quite enjoyed this. A nice little story that takes place between the panels of Blackest Night #6. Basically, you've got Wonder Woman (possessed again. It's becoming a habit) scrapping with Fish Queen Mera and some other chums before realising that she's all about the love (through some imaginary kiss with Batman) and becoming a Star Sapphire. All utter nonsense, but fairly enjoyable all the same.

Blackest Night Weird Western Tales #71

Not good. Tries to clobber the reader over the head with the aforementioned "Fuck Yeah!" moments, but fails because all of those moments involve characters that nobody cares about. Honestly, is there really anyone out there whooping for joy at the sight of zombie Scalphunter?

It does have a Bill Sienkiewicz cover and the artist (Renato Arlem) does a passable impression of Howard Chaykin, but that's where the good ends. One to line the cat litter tray with I'm afraid.

Jonah Hex #51

OK, so Weird Western Tales did have zombie Jonah Hex, but given that he's got his own monthly book anyway, his appearance really wasn't very exciting. The latest issue of Jonah Hex proper was very good though. I picked it up because I enjoyed the Darwyn Cooke issue so much, but after another strong standalone story I think I'll probably continue to get the book. Bonus Dick Giordano art too. It'd be easy to patronise him by saying he does a great job for a 77-year-old, so let's just say he does a great job full stop. He really does. Alright, so there's not very much to look at in his backgrounds, but he packs a lot of anguish, fear and loathing into his faces.

Sweet Tooth #5

First arc over, and if you didn't read it then I highly recommend that you pick this one up in trade. The last few pages of issue #5 bought a tear to my jaded eye. The preview image for issue #6 had me balling up my fist and wanting to hit the baddies. Now that's a proper "Fuck Yeah!" moment.

Shopping List

No visit to London's magical West End last week as I only had one title on the old shopping list. My brain barely survived the disruption to its weekly routine of course, but I felt better about myself for not dropping a wad of cash. Still, one week without new comics is enough for any emotionally retarded man to bear, and I'm straining at the leash to lash the cash on some overpriced funny books. Here's what I'll be picking up this week...

The End League #5
Relentlessly depressing, deliberately derivative superhero team book by Rick Remender. The End League gets darker and more difficult to follow with every passing issue, but it's well written, cool stuff and I'm a big fan.

Action Comics #870
Geoff Johns' mission to clean up any discrepancies in DC continuity continues apace with part four of his Braniac story, and very well done it is too. He's successfully managed to build a new Braniac out of all the old versions of the character while still telling a rollicking good Superman yarn.

Final Crisis: Revelations #3
Oh dear which one is this again? I'm getting a bit confused by all the tie-ins that I swore I wasn't going to buy but in fact am. Ah yes, the Spectre threatening to kill the Question at some indeterminate point in the Final Crisis timeline, lots of quotes from the bible and some horrible art from Philip Tan. Still, I enjoyed the bit where Dr Light got turned into a candle and I'm now irreversibly locked into buying everything related to Final Crisis so...

Green Lantern #35
More house cleaning from Johns as he retells the origin of Green Lantern. This arc was obviously designed to be a bit of a filler while Hal Jordan gets on with all the Final Crisis stuff elsewhere, but it's turned out to be one of Johns' finest moments on the book. Lots of Sinestro, plenty of Hector Hammond and a plausible fusion of current events in the GL universe and the original Silver Age origin of the character.

Green Lantern Corps #39
How do you follow up the last story where a bunch of evil alien insectoid types dumped a truckload of eyeballs on the Green Lanterns for a laugh? Answer: You can't. What you can do is whet the appetites of your slavering audience for the upcoming Blackest Night story with an origin story for one of the multitude of new Lantern Corps. Yay!

Wonder Woman #25
Hmmm. I'm getting closer and closer to dropping this. The first few issues of Gail Simone's run were really strong, but the glory days of talking apes v techno Nazis on the beach are long gone and let's be honest, it's been downhill since then. Last chance to get good or it's off the list.

Avengers Invaders #5
Yeah, this is shit awful but I've bought four issues already so what are you gonna do? Ahh the mindset of the comic fan.

Invincible Iron Man #6
Eziekel Stane is the best NEW villain to hit the Marvel U for a long time and Invincible Iron Man is as good a reboot of a Marvel property as there's been in recent years. Can't say much more about this book than that. A gem.

Marvel Zombies III #1
Really? It's by Fred van Lente though, so it's might be OK.

The Twelve #8
Given that we're eight issues in and the Twelve still haven't done anything but moan about how shit modern life is, I should be hating this, but for some reason it works. Not only that, it's spawned a fine Big Dave F impression. Really, you should see his Mastermind Excello, it's uncanny.

Sex and violence

If nothing else the title of this post should guarantee a few more hits for this blog. I'll need them if I'm to review Method Man's exciting new comic!

The rapper's publicist contacted LLC to see if I'd give the book a look. Naturally I said I'd love to. Method's PA then asked me,

"Would you happen to know your site's monthly uniques?"

To which I replied,

"Err, I think my mum looks from time to time. Then there's my friend Ben and the bloke who works at my local comic shop. Will that do?"

I haven't heard back. But I'm confident that the former Wu Tang Clan man will be blessing me with his sequential debut very soon. In the meantime I'm planning on inserting random words like blowjob and pissflaps into my posts to boost hits!

LLC ain't nothing to fuck with!

While I wait for my review copy of Method's opus, I've been contenting myself with more conventional spandex based shenanigans. Finished Bullet Points, which was totally worth it for the climactic battle with Galactus. That Tommy Lee Edwards feller can draw the bejiminy out of superheroes. His art makes Bullet Points worth a look, although the Staczynski story feels overly contrived.

I'm having similar thoughts about Wonder Woman at the moment. The latest arc has left me cold story wise, but Aaron Lopresti's art is top drawer. Usually I'm a story first art second sort of person, but sometimes the pictures are so good that they make up for an average script. Having said that, I've enjoyed Simone's previous couple of WW stories, so I'm not about to desert the title just because the last one was a bit of a duffer.

Enjoyed Conan The Cimmerian #0 so I'll be picking up number #1 this week. I read most of the previous Dark Horse series as it came out. Good stuff which did a stand-up job of adapting Howard's stories. I'm all for that and everything, but it would be nice to see a bit more of the Arnie spirit in the new run. Conan was on the telly last night, hadn't seen it for a while and had forgotten what a fine film it is. This moment in particular deserves a comic book adaptation...



llama fucking followed by camel punching! Now that's what I want from my barbarian books!

Tales from the nerd sack

I can't tell you if the latest issue of Marvel Zombies is worth reading because I haven't had the chance to look at it yet, but I do know that Arthur Suydam's zombie Nick Fury looks like Michael Heseltine...

Heseltine

Zombie Fury

Well I thought so anyway.

Elsewhere this week, I enjoyed Amazing Spider-Man # 548. Like I said before, there's nothing ground-breaking here, just good, clean throwaway fun. The kind of stuff I used to buy in my newsagent when I was too young to know that comic shops existed.

I still find it amusing that people are pissing their knickers over the reboot. I mean, I have some sympathy for the ones who are unhappy about the fact that things have changed, but the folk who are screaming that Spidey should just have got a divorce rather than done a deal with Mephisto because that would have been more believable need a good slap.

Wise up fanboys, this is Spider-Man for fuck's sake! It's a comic about a man who got bitten by a radioactive insect, climbs walls and fights villains who dress up as rhinos and goblins. If you want believability and realism you're in the wrong place.

Personally I like my comics silly. Occasionally they are so stupid that they rise above the disposable to become things of absurd beauty. Case in point: Wonder Woman. What a fucking great funny book this is. A book where a scantily clad Amazon leads a troop of apes into battle against a bunch of 21st century Nazis. Truly this is great literature. In the words of Wonder-Woman...

Not 'arf princess! Pass me the tissues.

Other genuinely excellent comics this week include Dan Dare #3 where Garth Ennis gives us his homage to Zulu. Also included is a sneak preview of Glenn Fabry's Gilbert & George inspired cover to issue 4...


Dan Dare also gets bonus points for continuing to carry ads for for REAL space travel on the back.

Also worth a look: Comics Now #1. I could've done without the five pages of recaps on Marvel and DC's current titles, but there are some interesting articles here, not least the exhaustive (and arguably exhausting) 20 page scholarly spectacular on DC's various Crisis events.

As a magazine that seems to be setting itself up as a conscious competitor to the appalling Wizard though, I have to say I was disappointed to see an editorial which disavows "negative reviews" and tells us that "Inside the pages of this magazine you will find positive stories that reinforce your love of comics".

They are correct to tell us that: "If you want negative reviews...you can find that in a myriad of places online", but by being too happy smiley about comics they run the risk of turning into another Wizard.

I don't want a magazine which would have me believe every comic on the stands is AMAZING and that there is no such thing as a waste of money at the comic book shop. I'm all for positive reviews and commentary where merited, but I also want to read bad reviews. After all there's a lot of crap out there.

Hopefully Comics Now will see fit to include some honest reviews further down the line, because it's a promising project. I'll certainly be back for issue #2.

shopping through the pain

"Beer then wine is fine" and, as LLC reader Coach McGuirk says, "Liquor before beer, never fear." BUT, beer at 11am followed by copious amounts of red wine, spirits and more beer until 10pm is just no good at all. It doesn't rhyme, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it makes you puke up and shit fire for most of the following day.

Happy fucking Christmas.

Still, it's testament to my devotion to the power of comics that even with a radioactive hangover I managed to make my stinking way to the comic shop on Friday morning. Sadly I felt too ill to spend long in there and forgot to buy half the things I'd come for, a mistake which meant I had to go back today to fill my nerd sack with more sequential goodies. Bah!

Wonder Woman cheered me up plenty. Basically it's Amazons v Nazis - can't go wrong there folks.

The cover alone is worth the admission price...

Honestly, I'd quite like to buy it.

Elsewhere there's a bumper sized conclusion to the Sinestro Corps War in Green Lantern #25. It's a comic which veers between brilliance and schmaltz and I can't quite make up my mind what I thought of it. There's still plenty to enjoy, particularly in the huge fight scene splash pages. But the whole "go get 'em uncle Hal" sequence in the middle is frankly vomit inducing.

As for the end? Well it's nice of DC to tip us off to their answer to Marvel Zombies a year in advance. I smell variant covers.

Astounding Wolf-man was good again. Building up steam nicely this one. I reckon it'll be massive by issue #10. Wait and see.

I flicked through the bumper sized 2000AD Xmas special. It looked terrible. Sigh. Apparently Rebellion have done some deal to make it available online from the next prog. I reckon they need to sort the printed version out first. Such a shame to see the Galaxy's Greatest continuing to disappoint

Nazis, comic reviews and Elven beaver

Look, I don't want anyone out there thinking I'm a Nazi because, well, I'm not. Don't even think that I think they're cool or anything, because I don't (well not really). BUT, the truth is that by dint of the fact they're an inherently nasty bunch who happen to wear pretty amazing costumes, they do make FANTASTIC comic book villains.

I mean whether we're talking the Red Skull, the green Swastika robot in my new pretty banner (hope you like that by the way) or even old Adolf himself, I maintain that any comic book can be made AT LEAST 25% better by the inclusion of a Nazi or two.

The only group that comes anywhere close to being as good at comic book villainy are apes. They might not be as obviously nasty as Nazis and they do lack a little in the costume department, but for sheer destructive silliness you can't beat a good ape.

On rare occasions, such as in DC's magical Doctor 13 you get Nazi apes...

Obviously this sort of thing ramps up a comic's excellence by an insane amount and makes it an automatic candidate for CGC'ing.

Sadly apart from the aforementioned Doctor 13 and Hellboy, which has featured one or two SS sympathising simians, Nazi monkeys are all to rare. Which makes Wonder Woman #14 a treat. Alright, so there aren't exactly any Nazi apes in WW#14, but there are still apes AND Nazis. Huzzah!

What's more, the apes talk and wear armour while the Nazis are led by none other than Golden age great Captain Nazi who's put together some squad of super teched up Nazis and is launching an invasion of WW's homeland Themyscira. Wow! Great comic, my second favourite of the week in fact.

Which says a lot for All Star Superman #9, a comic that features neither Nazis or apes and therefore starts at a disadvantage to Wonder Woman but wins the day because in all other respects it's damn near perfect. The best issue of the run so far in fact. I dug everything about it from the calculating Kryptonians who break the moon in half in this awesome little nod to Superman II...




...to the Phantom Zone and Jimmy Olsen wearing his Kryptonian overpants in a doomed effort to look cool, it's just chocful of great moments. I've already read it twice and looked at a bunch of the panels until my eyeballs hurt. It glows you know? Really. What's more it doesn't have a single gratuitous sound effect. Not one. It doesn't need any.

If only the same could be said for World War Hulk #5. Like All Star Superman it's got a superstar artist who draws pictures good enough to speak for themselves, and yet it's plastered with...

SKRACRACK

EEEEEEEEESKKRR

RSKKMMMM

SMMRRCCRKKKKK

VJJJWOMMMWWWB

and most ridiculously of all...

JRJRKJCSSSSS

Perleaseeee! I get it OK! This is a Hulk comic. It's meant to be loud, but JRJRKJCSSSSS?! What the fuck is that meant to sound like? A drunk trying to shout "JERKS!"?

It's just a distracting mess. Which is a shame because while it wasn't brilliant (no comic featuring the Sentry could be) WWH5 was a nice end to what's been a decent little mini series. Silly sound effects aside Romita's fight scenes have had a classic energy to them which make for a great looking comic. All things considered I enjoyed it a lot.

I shouldn't moan about the sound effects too much anyway. I seem to remember that Walt Simonson's classic run on Thor was heavy on the old KRAKOOM!'s and THRAKADOOM!'s and I enjoyed that plenty. Talking of which (is that a segue I see before me?) old Walt's back in action on World of Warcraft #1 and errm, what can I say? It ain't Thor.

Nope, in fact it's not even much like World of Warcraft. If Walt had wanted to make it like the game he would just have scripted 10 issues of a little man running around the countryside killing wild boar until he reached level 10, breaking up the tedium with the odd fight against lippy 14 year olds who are far too fucking good at the game for their own good and who delight in making my fucking life misery by endlessly killing me! GAAAAAAAAAHHHH! FUCK YOU!

Ahhem! Sorry. Flashback, flashback.

Anyway, yes errm the comic: Some orc dude travels around Durotar enslaving elves and humans and training them up to be super hard gladiators. He finds some human guy on the shore who impresses him by killing a giant crocodile. Said human guy doesn't remember who he is or where he came from blah de blah de blah whatever. It's pretty lame and looks a lot like Streetfighter and is notable for very little apart from this gratuitous Elven crotch shot...



OH GOOD GAWWD!

Wank away fanboys!

Until tomorrow...

*************************************************************************************

SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE!!

Thanks to Mr Wheatley (Check his blog out in Linkorama kids!) for these newly unearthed shots of the Nazi war machine...

WOWZERS!

Wonder Woman's first mission

Well the first mission in Showcase Vol #1 at any rate.







Holy shit. Exciting stuff!

Let's face it this is on a par with Supergirl and the tree stump of Doom. To be fair though, the story does get a hell of a lot better, (it couldn't get any worse), escalating from a tussle with a faulty gum machine to an encounter with a giant hawk...



through a bizarre interlude where WW takes a somewhat suggestive ride on a polaris missile...

Hmmm.

until finally...

WTF??

Errr...right you are then.

Sickening...

...yes sickening! Sometimes I appall myself. How can a man of 35, with a young family to support possibly consider it right and proper to spend £43.73 on comics?

Seriously, I'm not Paul Gambaccini or Jonathan Ross, I can't justify spending extortionate amounts of dosh on comics every week. Heaven knows I'm rapidly running out of space to store the bloody things. And yet, when I go into Forbidden Planet and see DC Showcase: Wonder Woman volume 1 on "special offer" for a mere £8.99, well let's face it I'm going to buy it. After all, that's a bra-busting 527 pages of black and white Amazonian action, and what red blooded dork can say no to that kind of offer? Not me pal.

Similarly when I see volume 7 of The Walking Dead, I have to buy it. I can't possibly wait on Amazon to deliver me this one, it's going to get read tomorrow and that's that. Walking Dead = best horror comic nay best comic out there. Thankyou Mr spotty goth cashier here's my £8.50.

While we're at it have another £2.99 for 2000AD Extreme, because there is absolutely no fucking way I'm missing out on a magazine that collects the entire run of Mean Team, a future sport spectacular whose roster of characters includes a psychic panther drawn by none other than the mighty Belardinelli. Honestly it's awesome and I would have melted into a pool of man fat had I not come home with this in my grubby little nerd sack.

I probably didn't need to bother with Back Issue #24 or Alter Ego #72 after all they set me back £9.25 for the pair. Really, £9.25 for two magazines? Yes, really, £9.25 to read some fanboy pour his heart out about Amethyst Princess of Gemworld and Captain Carrot. Christ buying that shit officially makes me ill.

No matter, I will make myself better with a fine pile of floppies! Top of the stack and first on the read list is obviously Green Lantern Corps #16 or to give it it's proper title The Sinestro Corps War part 7. It's the best multi-part extravaganza I've read in years, or at least the one which features the most aliens beating shit out of each other in space. I love it, and as soon as I'm finished here I'm going to sit down and read the latest episode.

After that I'll move on to the second of the one shot tie-ins to the series: Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Cyborg Superman. Obviously I realise that the mere sight of me reading a comic with the words Cyborg Superman on the cover is likely to make my girlfriend realise she is living with a deeply unattractive social misfit, but that's a risk I'll just have to take.

Perhaps she will look more fondly on me for reading Action Comics #856: Escape from Bizarro World part two. After all there's nothing childish about reading a comic co-written by the man who directed the Superman films and drawn by adult favourite Eric Powell. Very grown up.

As is Midnighter #12, a comic which features a gay super-hero. Oh yes, nothing frivolous about spending £2 on that, especially when you read it in conjunction with Detective Comics #837.

Mercifully this issue of 'tec sees the return of Paul Dini to writing duties. I can't remember the name of the guy who wrote the last two issues, but after the drivel on offer in #835, I've yet to be able to face #836 and might just leave it to go yellow and unread in the corner.

That's a fate that definitely won't befall either Lobster Johnson #2 or Modok's 11 #4, two titles which pack as much fun as is humanly possible into comic form. I'll be bagging those little beauties up and adding them to the hundreds of other expensive funnybooks which are slowly taking over all the much needed space in our flat.

Huzzah for comics!