Comics!



Young Justice #10: Sidekicks of the world, unite! Everyone's favorite second-stringers take on SNUCCI...er... the Acolyte, a very, very patient villain who's going to succeed in raising one of those evil dieties... one of these days... Er, anyway, Superboy, Arrowette, Wonder Girl, Impulse, Robin and Secret take on the Acolyte and his fiendish Teletubby riffs that are mind-controlling children to execute a mass sacrifice of adults to raise Kali, the goddess of destruction. Much fighting happens, and Impulse goes temporarily insane... apparently having fallen partly victim to the child-controlling rays due to the fact that he's a force-aged construct or something of that nature. Despite the Acolyte's delighted exclamation ("Finally, a plan that WORKS!!"), he breaks a zillion rules on the Evil Overlord List, and is summarily defeated by Our Heroes. Funny, surly and angstful at the same time!

Vext #5: The incarnation of Murphy's Law is loose on Earth... and then things get REALLY strange. Vext, lesser god of things going horribly, horribly wrong, is in trouble. His 'fiancee' from the pantheon he was evicted from due to lack of worship, Paramour the Goddess of relationships gone horribly, horribly wrong has come to visit, and promptly reveals the secret that she and Vext are minor dieties to Vext's hallmate, a young journalist who was just starting to warm up to the fellow. The journalist is impressed, but not awed, as this IS the DC Universe we're talking about here. Much discussion of metaphysics happens, and the journalist, upon learning all Vext's secrets, also learns that this fact will make her a target of the 'Zone Monitors', the group whose task it is to 'police' the Gods. The penalty for revealing so much information is, of course, immediate termination... but messy death is postponed by the fact that Vext's curse rubs off on everyone who has anything to do with him... including the Zone Monitors! Also, the subplot with the God of Flatulence (Ritpa Gud'n) continues to its explosive conclusion. Weird, wild stuff.

Gotham Adventures #14: Whod'a thunk you could get so much mileage out of the Batman Adventures universe? Harley Quinn, sidekick girl of the Joker, was declared sane and released, then wrote... a romance novel? The only problem is it sucked, so now she's loose, surly and looking to drum up publicity by making trouble. Harley's not afraid to use a few borrowed gimmicks from a villainous friend of hers to help out her fiendish plan to sell really bad novels, either! The bat-crew are certain to stop her now that she's resumed a life of crime... but the fact that she's basing her crimes on her novel means they have to read the wretched thing first... The art's a bit off-puttingly cartoony, but it's intended to be, and the story's aeons better than the 'real' Bat- books.

Birds of Prey #7: Hmm... 'secret agent'/heroine Black Canary and her 'handler' Oracle continue tackling real problems that the JLA is too busy fighting the weekly cosmic-powered idiot to deal with. In this case, Black Canary is out to rescue a fiendish ex-dictator who was arrested in a foreign land and who faces assassination from the many foes he accumulated while in power. Black Canary would rather smack the fellow around... but it turns out he's not quite as evil as he's "supposed" to be. The world's media making a super-villain out of someone who's at best a surly nationalist? Egads, say it ain't so! Birds of Prey isn't high on the comedy scale, but it does have good art, good writing, and interesting subject matter. And things going boom!

Luftwaffe 1946 Technical Manual #2: Hmm. Still on my pull list, I see. I continue to be astounded that Ted Nomura's stuff is actually still printed by Antarctic Press. This isn't because it sucks, but because it's thick, meaty, and basically requires reading every episode in order to fully grasp. This is even more hard-core alternate history stuff than the regular issue I got last week, this time focussing on the minutae of possible Nazi technical developments, and how much worse they would have made the war. Beefy, beefy comic book. This is one of those things where there really ought to be a middle ground between comic books and novels. Ted Nomura's not happy unless he can put a lot of art in... but neither will he let us off without vast quantities of expository text and voluminous technical detail. Oh well. Ted Nomura put way too much effort and research into this one. Interesting for alternate-history detail freaks like me, but no doubt enough to make the average person run screaming for the exit in short order.

Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or small woodland creatures of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Squeeze the lemon.

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