"'Cause She's The Music MEISTER!!!"

Comic-Con is always a good time, but some years are less fun than others. 2010 was the unlucky year this time around.

I enjoyed myself, and saw some great stuff, but for a lot of it, I just felt like I was going through the motions. Let’s take it day-by-day, shall we?

Join me after the break.

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Oracle: Search for the Cure #1-3

Written: Kevin VanHook
Art: Don Kramer and Jay Leisten(1,2); Julian Lopez and Bit(3)

Issue 1

Cover: Guillem March

I’m not sure this is so much of a review as it is a rant.  The last issue of Birds of Prey saw Barbara Gordon leaving the team to take care of some personal business.  This personal business leads her to Gotham City and, conveniently, her part in The Battle for the Cowl.  Needless to say it seems that DC is also intent on taking a once brilliantly written character down a few notches, both in quality and characterization.  Only time will tell if the character will spiral further into cliche or once again rise to the status she once held.

If you are like me you’ve likely picked up a series or two not because they were great, but because you felt the need to have a complete collection.  I slogged through these issues because of that obsessive compulsive need and I’m here to try and talk you out of doing the same.  If you are curious about the story and want to pick it up: don’t.  If I can’t convince you to do that, at least try the following:

1.  Wait until the trade paperback.
2.  Let someone else buy it, read it, and then immediately take it back to sell used, probably swearing all the way.
3.  Pick up the copied used, after it has been reduced to a ridiculously low price and consigned to the ultra-bargain bin.

All told that if there is any justice in the world you should only have to wait a week for all of that to happen.

Slightly spoilerific review below

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Review Secret Six #6

Secret Six Cover

Writer:  Gail Simone
Pencilers: Nicola Scott and Javi Pina
Inkers:  Doug Hazelwood and Javi Pina

The misadventures of our merry band of malcontents continues this month in an issue that also highlights Origins and Omens for the team.  Gail continues to strike gold and writes the story much in the same way a magician performs an illusion.  You think you know what’s in store when the real plot twist is hidden up her sleeve somewhere.  If you aren’t reading Secret Six then you are missing out big time.  This comic has it all:  drama, humor, character development, and a left-field twist to wrap it all up.

Spoiler free review after the break

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Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kevin Smith. His films “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy” contained oodles of great riffs on classic characters, and just about every year he stops in for wildly popular Q&A’s at the San Diego Comic-Con.

In 1998, Joe Quesada hired him to revive Daredevil, resulting in a popular run that re-established the character and led to mammoth, defining runs from Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker and opening the doors to let Hollywood writers such as Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski to get runs on major comic characters. After acclaimed runs on Daredevil and Green Arrow, Smith became notorious for delays on his other comic book projects, one of which was delayed so long after only its first issue that it was finally canceled years later. But hot of the heels of one of his finest movies, Smith is back in the comic book world with a promising new miniseries, Batman: Cacophony.

*Minor spoilers after the break*

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The mid 80s were a good time to be a geek. In the music world, metal was revolting against its glam stars and producing a host of thrashers who put out the best stuff since Sabbath; Master of Puppets, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, and Reign in Blood were sure to be spinning in the record players and tape decks of every acne-scarred social outcast in the country.

And what do social outcasts read? Comic books, that’s exactly right. We’re a hated and mocked breed, but anyone who read them in this era was about to have their reading material finally “legitimatized.” A new breed of writers was revolutionizing the medium, removing the redundant and intelligence-insulting wordiness that plagued comics at the point and replacing it with more concise and more adult language as well letting the art tell the story. And chief among them were two men, each from one side of the Atlantic: Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

**spoilers after the jump**
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I’d like to invite you all to join Mr. Peabody and me as we hop into the Wayback machine and go all the way back to 2006. It’s January, and I keep hearing about this upcoming film from the Wachowski brothers, directed by their former A.D. (assistant director) and now-puppet James McTeigue. I had been crushed by the Matrix sequels, but still remembered the first installment with devout love, and the news that Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman were the leads only made me want to see it more. However, I don’t like seeing adapted films without reading the book it’s based on (unless it’s just a comic film in general in which case there’s no definitive novel anyway), so I bummed a copy from a friend. So, in 2006, I, for the first time, sat down and read a graphic novel.

V For Vendetta was a deep, complex, question-raising novel that shattered my preconceived notions of comic books and was the first concrete step in getting me into comics. Even to someone who A) had never read more than a few single issues in grocery store newsstands and B) has never understood art and how to interpret paintings/sculptures/etc., I knew that David Lloyd’s art was beautiful and telling, capable of conveying emotions even on a guy who is always wearing a fucking mask. I realized for the first time that comic books–always derided for being for dumb kids who need pictures to read–could tell a story in a way that no novel ever could. It doesn’t make one type of literature superior or inferior to another; it simply means that the method in which comics are moved forward is entirely unique to that medium.

**an outpouring of spoilery venom after the jump**

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Cover Art

What is the dark side of an already-black comic series? That, my friends, would be this graphic collection of Gotham’s nutty collection of delusional criminals titled: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth. Judging the art, no soul can deny the darker approach to various characters, mainly the Joker’s clown-from-Hell appearance. Some of the dialogue (Joker’s, anyway) is so scribbled that you can hardly tell what’s being said, but do not fear; it’s all part of the plunge into Arkham, an experience you’ll never forget.

The funny thing about Arkham Asylum is that the demonstration of villains is darker and sinister, instead of a Joker that sprays you with water. In this feature, the clown’s disturbing humor takes aim at twisting Batman’s sanity into another universe, leading Joker to do things like fuming a joke while shooting a staff-member right in the noggin.

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As I mentioned before, I was reading J. Michael Straczynski‘s Supreme Power and I was damn impressed. Last week, I finished the actual Supreme Power series (issues #1-18) and I moved on to the side stories after the very dramatic and skin devouring ending to the series. I purchased the trade paperbacks back when I went to Wizard World Chicago at some discount booth and I really am glad I bought them. Let me just say that the series ended up being way better than I thought I could have been and I loved Straczynski’s take on the possible craziness of the DC universe.

But enough of that, let’s talk about the greatness of what I read.

**spoilers after the break**

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Hey Kids! This’ll be a short one, but I wanted to talk a little about the current arc in Batman. If you don’t know about what is going on in Batman right now, you really probably should, cause it is pretty revolutionary stuff. I admit that this is the first arc of Batman I have ever read, so I have no idea if this is really amazing Batman stuff or just the norm, but in my opinion, this is really great comic book writing right now.

Grant Morrison has been writing Batman for over a year now and I fully intend to go back and read through his run so far, but R.I.P. seemed to be a pretty good jumping on point in the story. I’m not really going to talk a whole lot about the story, cause truth be told, I don’t understand it 100% as I don’t know a lot of Batman background and I’ll probably just mess some plot points up. What I really want to talk about is the writing and art in this arc, because it is simply top-notch work.

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