I didn't have a chance to write up last week's books, so it's another two-for-one this week.
Legion of Superheroes 40 With each passing issue, this seems more and more like the Legion I love. Good balancing of main plot and subplots with lots of face time for lots of Legionnaires. I hope that the upcoming Johns/Perez event (which I am looking forward to) doesn't screw this book up.
Spirit 15 Aragones and Evanier turn in another fun, Eisner-esque tale. This time, it's illustrated by the incomparable Paul Smith. Nobody will ever match Will Eisner on his signature character, but this is definitely a book worth reading.
Marvel Atlas 2 What can I say -- I'm a sucker for these handbooks. This one covers the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East, giving us profiles of such fictional countries as Santo Rico (Giant-Man and the Wasp fought El Toro there back in Tales to Astonish), Halwan (from the pages of the 1970s Iron Fist series), and Canada (home to Alpha Flight). Interestingly, Wakanda is in East Africa, nestled among Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and about a dozen fictional countries from a dozen different Black Panther stories. I had always thought of it as being in southern Africa, but I think the reality is that it moves around Africa based on the needs (or the geographic ignorance) of the writer.
Amazing Spider-Man 555 Spider-Man and Wolverine versus ninjas. The story works much better than that short description makes it sound like it would. I'm not sure Bacchalo's art is right for Spider-Man, but it sure is pretty to look at.
Clan Destine 2 & 3 Somehow, I missed issue 2 when it came out, so I"m playing catch-up here. Clan Destine is probably the best thing that Alan Davis has ever done. It's a great book. You should be reading it.
Jonah Hex 30 It's Die Hard in the old west, with Jonah Hex in the Bruce Willis role. Palmotti and Gray have done a great job with this book, consistently turning in great single-issue stories. It helps that Jonah Hex is such a great character.
Buffy 13 Continuing Joss Wheedon's "Wolves at the Gate" arc, this is mostly a moving pieces around issue. We spend some time with Dracula, see an Andrew lecture (as seen on TV in Season 7), and find out a little more about our villains. This isn't a very exciting issue, to be honest.
Angel 6 In this issue, we jump back in time to just after the finale of the TV series. We get three tales -- one of Spike, one of Connor, and one of Lorne. We don't get too many answers about how we got from there (the Season 5 finale) to here (the opening of the comic book series), but we do get some. I liked the Connor story best and the Lorne story least, but they are all worth reading.
Project Superpowers 2 Continuing the rehabilitation of various public domain Golden Age characters. Lev Gleason's Daredevil has been rechristened "The Devil," which puts him in the same good company as Billy Batson as a victim of trademark law. This is a pretty enjoyable book. How could it not be when one of the main chaaters is a floating American flag?
Twelve 4 Continuing the rehabilitation of various Marvel Golden Age characters. Straczynski moves ever so slowly toward an actual plot, still giving us healthy portions of people sixty years out of their time adjusting to the modern world. Which is fine with me -- I'm really enjoying just watching the characters. But the main plot does look like it's shaping up to be pretty interesting, too. Chris Weston's art continues to impress.
She-Hulk 27 When I pulled this book out of my bag after I got home from the comic shop, I sort of thought to myself "Why am I still reading this? I should drop it. I liked Slott's run, I gave Peter David a chance, but this just hasn't grabbed me." But then I read this issue and it grabbed me. David surprises me by going back to the hapless guy whose wife got killed last issue and giving us a realistic look at the aftermath. Well, realistic for the Marvel Unvierse, anyway. Along the way, David provides some solid character moments with the title character (and with her sidekick, Jazinda the Skrull). I'm sticking with this book.
Detective Comics 843 Boy, Paul Dini really has a thing for Zatanna, doesn't he? I think she's appeared in his run on Detective more than Alfred, more than Commissioner Gordon, more than Robin. Here, she teams up with Batman to take on the Ventriloquist. I like the new Ventriloquist, although I miss the old, Wexler version. I also like Paul Dini's run on this book, which has been one solid Batman story after another. No flash, no razzle-dazzle, just good comics.
Casanova 13 Remember when Cornelius Quinn got killed by Zephyr Quinn last issue? Well, he's back. EMPIRE's got a plan, the Bendays have a plan, and Casanova himself is still AWOL (though we get to see him in some flashbacks). How many times do I have to tell you people that you should be reading this book?
Posted by Jason Fliegel at April 4, 2008 10:26 PM
A lot of the fictional neighbors of Wakanda are also thinly veiled South Africa pastiches anyway. The Voortrekkers in the Marvel U did a LOT of trekkin', apparently.
Wow, Mr. Fliegel, you have taste. Zeb Wells knocked it out of the park with ASM, I thought. This felt like a good old Marvel Team-Up from the 1980s, written by Marc DeMatteis (who's coming back to Spidey- FUCK YEAH!!!).
Agreed wholeheartedly on She-Hulk. Apparently the whole thing with Iron Man was an editorial directive to make up for the fact that Jeph Loeb can't be bothered to pay attention to what his fellow creators are doing for fifteen seconds (ie why is Shulkie working for Iron Man in Hulk) but David really pulled it off.
Project Superpowers isn't quite at the level of Earth X but it's getting interesting. Carlos Paul is a find.
Casanova is brilliant, as always.
Actually, didn't Don MacGregor do a Panther story in Marvel Comics Presents (the late 80s bi-weekly anthology) in which T'Challa crossed the border from Wakanda into South Africa to rescue his mother? Oh well. Wakanda is a place of many mysteries, including (apparently) the mystery of how it shares a border with South Africa.
Dan Coyle is a very smart man. I endorse everything he said in post #2 -- including that bit about being excited about DeMatteis coming back to Spidey. I really enjoyed the run he did in the late 80s/early 90s with Sal Buscema. Whatever happened to Tombstone, anyway?
Fliegel: You are correct: that was "Panther's Quest", hands down, one of the best stories Marvel has ever published. Oh, if only I could lock Reginald Hudlin in a room with it and tell him he can't come out until he reads it three times. At least.
Er... Tombstone was created by Gerry Conway, who was writing Spectacular before DeMatteis. When Conway split comics for a career in television, DeMatteis took over with the "Child Within" storyline. But Tombstone's still around: he faced off against Daredevil in Brubaker's second arc.
I wonder if the resurrection of Harry Osborn was what enticed DeMatteis to come back, bizarrely enough.
You're absolutely right. I confused Conway with DeMatteis (something that happens all the time, I'm sure). Now that I think about it, I stopped reading Spider-Man before DeMatteis took over. I've heard good things about his run, though, and I've always liked DeMatteis's other stuff (with the exception of the Legion of Super Heroes story he did, but that should go without saying).
DeMatteis wrote Spectacular from #178-203, and then Amazing from #389-406, and then back to Spectacular from #241-257. His second Spec run- post Clone Saga, Pre-Byrne- is HIDEOUSLY underrated. It was really one of the few good runs on the character in that fallow period post-Salicrup and pre-Alonso.
Paul Dini married Zatanna. That's why he always tries to put her in the book.