June 22, 2006 – A Return to Return to Comics

So, it’s been a while. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?

Week 7 already with 52. That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense outside its comic book context.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Montoya & The Question (sounds like a bad 80’s cover band) are carrying 52 right now, although the TO Morrow and the lost scientists thread is running a close second. The Steel storyline is going somewhere, but it’s moving soooo slow (is Brian Bendis plotting that one?), Booster Gold hasn’t worn me out yet, but I can see it from here and the whole Cassie/Conner Cult thing is so damned goofy and from far left field that it’s almost got me interested. Almost.

This latest issue doesn’t drop all the little plot hints that week 6 did -- the two page spread of Rip Hunter’s time lab is my favorite of the series so far -- but it does manage to move the story(ies) along. I can say now that The History of the DCU is an unquestionable failure. What exactly is the point of this? It's incomprehensable to anyone not vested in the DCU and a waste time to those who are. Despite this, the book has me interested enough to follow for another month or two at least. 

One odd thing that occurs to me with this book: there’s a great deal of hint dropping that time and/or reality is slipping or at least not what it’s supposed to be; the scenes with Booster and Skeets in particular hint at a the wobbliness of the current time-line. And yet this book may be the single most clock and calendar driven title in the history of comics. There will be a certain irony if we reach the end of this series and discover that a full year has not really passed in the DCU after all. 

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Speaking of being away for while, JUSTICE #6 was surprisingly slow for a bi-monthly book. Although it had some nice, silver-agey moments.

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I really like what Mark Millar has been doing in THE ULTIMATES 2. Dollar-for-dollar there have been more F@*% Yeah! moments in the last two issues of this book than any five others combined.

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Joe Quesada has a blog now? I give it three months at the outside. Six if it’s not actually him writing it.

And what’s the deal with Marvel’s “Hot Blogs”? (Check the lower left hand corner.) At Marvel a blog seems to be defined as “Press Releases with comments.” 

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Here’s an interesting article in the Detroit Free Press about the increasing attention the big dogs of advertising are paying to comic books. Or rather they’re paying comics to get people to pay attention to them. Product placement, baby. Learn to love it.

DC’s newest crime stopper, RUSH will apparently spin around town in a Pontiac Solstice when he’s not hosting a conservative, daily radio program. I may not have that last part right.

Check out the article if for no other reason than to see the single worst on-line reproduction of a comic book page in the history of the Internet. 

Comments

[hostile17]

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