BT03 – When Comics Reviews Collide!

When Margie and Katherine came home from the swimming pool, during the power outage, the garage door, obviously, wouldn’t open.

Katherine’s comment: “The batteries must be dead.”

Smart kid.

Review code format: writing (3-1, faboo to mediocre), art (3-1), suitability for jumping on as a new reader (3-1), suitability for hooking a a non-comics reader (3-1), and eagerly waiting the collected TBP (Y/N).

Avengers #68/483 (Marvel) [3/3/2/1/Y]
Geoff Johns, as is his wont, has brought a darker tone to the Avengers. I have a few problems with that, but it’s not working badly. Along with Olivier Coipel and Andy Lanning on the art, he’s telling a truly scary tale of a biowarfare plague spreading out from Mt Rushmore — a plague that seems to have been unleashed by Hydra forces trying to break into a secret US biowarfare lab. But it’s a lot worse and a lot darker than that, though the final panel (which will have you doing a big “D’oh!”) not only gives it a marvelous and truly fitting twist, but keeps it from being just another annoying Deep Dark Government Conspiracy Story. This is going to be a really fine TPB when it comes out.

Strangers in Paradise #58 (Abstract Studio) [3/3/2/3/Y]
Terry Moore’s long-running soap opera (celebrating its 10th anniversary!) takes some further complicating, horrible, and profound twists, and further pieces fall into place leading toward our intial, and final, tableaux. I sometimes wonder whether Moore (a very nice guy) has let the story get away from him sometimes, but issues like this, which leave my jaw on the floor, reassure me. There are hardcover collections, softcover collections, and you can just dive right in with the book any time, despite its being continuity-heavy. Just do it.

JLA: Welcome to the Working Week GN (DC) [2/1/1/2/-]
What would happen if a civilian somehow got into the JLA’s headquarters and just watched them for a week. Patton Oswalt’s tale starts slow, and it’s quirky as all hell, but in the long run, it points out ties between heroes and civilians that most folks never think of, and it gives us some glimpses of JLA “downtime” that are run and illuminating — and, again, quirky. Patrick Gleason and Christian Alamy’s art don’t help things any, I suppose, but overall, I’m not sorry I got it, which is more than I can say about a lot of comics.