From JSA#20

Not much time I'm afraid. It's one of those days where I try to do a post during my son's afternoon nap. So, briefly...I'm working my way through Geoff Johns' run on JSA at the moment. It's a lengthy old haul which goes right back to the late 90s. Good, traditional superhero stuff, full of folks in silly costumes saying ridiculous things like this...

A metahuman meltdown that could take out the entire solar system? Silly, silly, silly.

Anyway, like I say nice, fun, "disengage your brain" style superhero comics. I was pretty lost in it all last night, until I flipped the page and hit this image...

Seeing The World Trade Centre really does take you outside of the story, especially in this context with the approaching tornado, The skeleton of The Spectre and the cracked tower. The rock formations are all part of some encroaching alternate reality.

I'm reading the series in trade, but this panel is from JSA #20, March 2001. I'm guessing it's one of the last instances, (if not the last), that the Twin Towers were featured in comics pre-9/11.

My son is asleep...cue SPEED BLOG!

Lad's napping, so a brief window for blogging...

Picked up Secret Warriors after hearing some good things about it. I have to say it was a lot better than I thought it would be. For those not in the know, you've got Nick Fury and his team of superpowered nobodies working underground because Norman Osborn has disbanded SHIELD. Blah de blah. It's a fast moving action comic with Fury going all Jack Bauer on a bunch of baddies, before using some sort of cloaking device to waltz into the Oval Office undetected and lay the law down to Barack Obama. There's a massive, great fucking twist at the end AND (because it's that diagram loving nutter Jonathan Hickman on writing duty) you get a bunch of excellent charts and maps in the back which will no doubt draw comparison with his work on Nightly News, but are actually more like a fanboyish tribute to the glory of the 1980s Marvel Handbooks. The art is perfectly nice (by a fellah whose name escapes me) and apparently Brian Bendis was also involved on scripting. All in all a very enjoyable comic. I will buy issue #2!

What else? Read another stonking issue of Green Lantern Corps where Kyle Rayner manages to get hold of a fit alien bird despite the fact that she tumbles to the fact that he's a bit of a weirdo who draws and then hordes pictures of deceased Green Lanterns at the moment of their deaths.

Ploughed through Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham's JSA trade The Next Age. Top stuff obv.

Started rereading John Byrne's short but fantastic run on The Hulk. Oh man, it's good stuff. Hulk smashes a stag to death in the first couple of pages and works his way up the tree of life from thereon in. Woo-hoo! Keep your thinking Hulk, this is the Jade Giant for me!

CHOMP!

You'd scream too if the Star-Spangled Kid bit your penis