Friday the 13th, part Whatever

Top Ten #2

Another issue of the super-powered cop comic, as bazillions of little subplots happen. Some people claim that they don't like the bopping merrily around between all these little scenes, and continually switching back and forth between silly and serious, but personally, I dig it, and think those particular people must be quite, quite mad. Anyway, here we have several different things going on, as Our Heroes try and track down the 'Libra Killer' who's offing prostitutes, the 'Ghostly Goose' who's simply being extremely annoying, and the sidekick of a minor villain who got whacked last issue for no apparent reason. Well, at least they succeed on one of those goals...

Generation X #56

Mmm. Flashback-a-riffic. Our Heroes, the young and often surly mutants of 'Generation X' are trapped in an apparent flashback from hell -- the events leading up to the deaths of the Hellions. The Hellions, of course, were the previous students of their ex-villainous headmistress, Emma Frost, who's also in the flashback but doesn't seem to be aware of it. This wouldn't be so much of a bother to the kids if it weren't for the fact that in the flashback, they are the Hellions, thus, if they don't figure out what's going on Real Darn Fast, they'uns is gonna die. Naturally, it all turns out to be a villainous plot by someone they trusted. I mean, these ARE the X-Books, after all.

Ninja High School v.2 #2

Okay, let's see. We've got Ricky, the Boy Ninja, merrily bopping around Quagmire High School, trying to be cooler than his older brother was, and pretty much succeeding. We've got Solora, exile from the Salusian Empire, who's been turned into a human with fluffy kitty ears and sent to stay with the Feeple family, of which Ricky is a member. We've got Mrs. Feeple, Ninja Warrior, who puts Solora in her place. We've got Yumei, Ninja Girl, who must defeat Ricky to win control of the mighty Rival Ninja Corporation for her family. Unfortunately, Ricky keeps beating her, even after she doses him with sleeping potion. Even someone as single-minded as Yumei is beginning to see that she was set up for a fall by... Rival-san Mendo, boy heir to the Rival Ninja Corporation, who's merely been pretending to be incompetant while he sets up some kind of nefarious scheme with his... Evil Alien Allies! All this and Steamology, too!

Transmetropolitan #26

It's "a week in the life of Spider Jerusalem", which mainly involves serious levels of wonkiness as we get snapshots of various events in the beeg city. Plus much surl. It wouldn't be the same without the surl.

Warlock #1

Okay. So, let's see if we've got this straight. Once upon a time, there was an alien named Warlock, who managed to gain entry into the team of young mutant kids called, in an amazing example of naming skill, the New Mutants. He made friends with a fellow called Cypher, who could translate things. Warlock being a techno-organic sort of thing, merged with Cypher at one point, which no doubt could have been a cool subplot if the two of them weren't killed off later on in the series. Except, of course, Warlock was brought back, this time as Douglock, with Warlock's powers and the memories of both Warlock and Cypher. Except this time there was some techno-organic thing called the Phalanx created out of Warlock's technology that was trying to assimilate the world by means of a giant, multi-x-book crossover. Then, later, some more stuff happened. And now we've got Warlock playing 'clean up after idiotic Marvel plotlines' as he hunts down the remnants of the Phalanx. While being hunted by a bunch of surly, faceless psionics who're about as competant as the Keystone Kops. Um. I think that's all of it. Head... spinning... must...sit down...

Iron Man #21

Iron Man fights fires with Warbird, who's going through serious alcohol cravings and is even surlier than she normally is. Meanwhile, lots of flashback sequences happen. In the second part of the book, Tony "Iron Man" Stark goes to a dig of yet another ancient ruin, where a surly member of the expedition he's helping is turned into a Kirby-esque supervillainess that promptly motors the book into a crossover with Thor, aka That Other Book I Don't Buy. Uh, yeah.

Forty Winks #1

A cute little indy comic about dreams, storytelling, art and high school. Not really much to surl about, here.

Batman: Harley Quinn

So, just how DO you go about fitting a hexagonal peg into a square hole? Well, in this little one-shot, we get to find out, as animated hench-girl extraordinaire Harley Quinn is crammed into real continuity, which in this case is "No Man's Land". No Man's Land is a sort of Bat-book crossover thing in which the US Government, manipulated by Evil Powers, has thrown up its hands over Gotham continually being destroyed or horribly damaged, and left the city to rot without help after a major earthquake. Somehow, none of the world's superheroes intervene, either. Probably out of fear of appearing in a Bat-book. Meanwhile, we get to see all sorts of wackiness going on inside the urban hell that is now Gotham City. Not that it was any great shakes before... Oh, and so here we introduce Harley Quinn, who's a perky little maniac who loves the complete lunatic known as the Joker. This worked in the animated series because the Joker was more of a gangster type instead of a freaky psychopath, but nonetheless, in goes ol' Harley. Who, after making herself useful, promptly gets set up in a deathtrap by Joker. Which she escapes from, to be rescued by a bored Poison Ivy, who's taken over central park (shock, surprise) and is in a sort of truce with Batman. Ivy listens to Harley's tale of woe, then doses her up with chemicals to make her better, faster, stronger and immune to poisons, and sends her off to wreak havoc. Harley sets Batman and the Joker against each other, which is pretty easy to do, then turns on both of them and nearly pulls it off. Joker talks her around at the last minute though, and they leave after setting up Yet Another Deathtrap for Batman, which he gets out of. It's actually a fairly good story, because they didn't have any of the regular Bat-book writers writing it. Poor Harl will no doubt have her character mangled once those cretins get their hands on her. But, still, the one-shot ain't bad readin'.

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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