I am Very Disappointed in you Ms. Quinzel

Funds have been short. I haven't picked up my comics from the Outer Limits in a couple months. Today I had 3 bucks and bought one: Issue #21 of Gotham City Sirens. This is not a full review, just a short comment. It contains spoilers, so if you want to be surprised by the ending of a 3 months old issue of a C-list in terms of fame and sales comic book read no further.


I liked the initial premise of Harley breaking in to Arkham to kill the Joker. It was high time she did something like this. I was disappointed in the ending where Joker says he misses her and all is forgiven. Way to be a strong woman there Harleen... Not! Of course, this could be an attempt at a realistic depiction of Stockholm Syndrome or Battered Woman Syndrome or something.

Review of The Young All-Stars Issue #5

Review of issue # 5 of Young All Stars



What Is It? A comic book in DC's “New Format”. Approximately 24 story pages, all color. Cover date is October 1987.
Plot Summary: It's 1942. World War II is happening. Some youngsters adjunct to the All Star Squadron are in Hollywood/The Los Angeles area for a dance/bond rally. Intragroup squabbles cause a pair of them to leave early. They end up at the closed Santa Monica Pier Amusement Park.

Another pair of these Young All Stars tail them. Axis America, a group of super-powered saboteurs, fight the four All Stars. Three of the four All Stars are knocked out and captured by fight's end. This leaves Dan the Dyna-Mite to lead the rescue effort. And there's the cliff-hanger ending.

What's Good About It? Writers Roy and Dann Thomas write stories that combine a Golden Age feeling with certain Modern Age sensibilities. Just to bring up, a random example: Internment Camps for Japanese-Americans. Today we can look back at them as a mistake. At the time, very few dared to speak up against them. Well, Roy and Dann Thomas do try to bring up some of the moral points against Internment Camps, yet the script still conveys a sense of World War II patriotism.

The letters page is another small point in the book's favor. I like to read them. It gives a sense of what the fan community was like before the rise of the World Wide Web.

What's Not So Good About It? Some of the WWII-era patriotism comes off weird to my sensibilities. Maybe it seems a bit jingoistic or something of that nature.

What The... Moments: I'm not sure as to whether it was the massive ret-conning of the history of the DC Universe in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths or something else, but the casting seems to involve rather a lot of knock-off characters. There's Flying Fox (a Batman knock-off), Iron Munro (a Superman knock-off), Fury (a Wonder Woman knock-off), and Neptune Perkins (an Aquaman knock-off).

Who Needs It? Superhero fans, fans of DC's 80s-90s Secret Origins series,and fans of Roy Thomas's writing should find this book to be worth their time.

Rating: 5 Stars (out of five)

Review of Arion Lord of Atlantis Issue #1

Review of Arion Lord of Atlantis Issue #1


What is it? Arion Lord of Atlantis issue #1
Comic book. Glossy cover. Non-glossy interior. Color throughout. Written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Jan Duursma. Lettered by todd Klein. Colored by someone credited only as Tatjana, I'm assuming Tatjana Wood. Co-edited by Ernie Colon and Laurie Sutton. 23 story pages. Dated November 1982.

This plot summary contains spoilers for a 28+years-old c-list DC sword and sorcery title that I picked up from a fifty cent box. You have been warned.
Plot Summary: The story kind of picks up in media res from the Arion backup stories in Warlord. Arion is astrally projecting, and fighting the embodiment of a star. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Arion's body is possessed by his enemy Garn Daanuth.

This presents Wyynde, Arion's loyal sword-swinging companion, with a dilemma. You see Garn/Arion is threatening the female member of the group, who does not seem to be named in either dialogue or caption boxes throughout the entire issue. Wyynde stabs Garn and Arion's body receives a near-fatal wound.

By issue's end: Arion's body and soul reunite, and he recovers form his near fatal injury; Arion defeats the star; and Arion's mentor Caculha dies.

What's good about it? There was definitely plenty of action. The artwork was crisp and clean with as much realism as you can get in a sword and sorcery book where a giant woman made of fire appears. Todd Klein's lettering is always beautiful and this book is no exception. While there was no letters page, as such, there was a text page asking for letters and explaining how the creators of the book came together to create it.

What's not quite so good? I am not incredibly familiar with the Arion backup stories in warlord, having read very few of them, and I was somewhat confused by the events of the book. This could have been fixed with a few recap captions or dialogue balloons.

What the ....? moments: It's 45,000 B.C. more or less and the king of Atlantis has situation room with a giant television screen: archaeology and evolutionary biology both say this absurd.

Who should get it? Sword and sorcery fans.

Rating: 3 stars

Method Of Acquisition: I believe it was the fifty-cent box at Apparitions.

Review of Darkseid one-shot

Review of New Year's Evil Darkseid One-Shot


What Is It? Single Issue of a comic book, glossy paper for both the cover and the interior, color throughout. Cover dated February 1998.
Plot summary: Darkseid is missing, presumed dead by some. Desaad is trying to hold together an interim government until Darkseid returns. Virman Vundabar attacks this government, hoping to usurp Darkseid's throne for himself. During the inevitable fight, a giant statue of Darkseid animates and holds the combatants in place, while delivering a stern lecture about how New Genesis is the true enemy.

What's Good About It? The artwork, layouts by Sal Buscema, pencils by Keron Grant, and inks by Ray Kryssing, with letters by John Workman and colors by Noelle Giddings; looks rather sharp. John Byrne is the credited writer and he delivers some dialogue that has wonderfully cheesy melodramatic comic book villain qualities. It also showed off two Apokolips natives, that I'd heard of from Who's Who entries and RPG sourcebooks and similar, but had never actually seen in action: Virman Vundabar and Kanto, the Assassin.

What's Not So Good About It? I have no idea where this Darkseid is kind of, but not really dead storyline comes from. Other than cover date of February 1998 giving me a clue to an approximate era to start looking for back issues from. Nothing in the book mentions what longer-running series this one-shot spins off from or ties into.

What The... Moments? It's a one-shot titled Darkseid, yet Darkseid himself does not make an in-the-flesh appearance onscreen, as such.

Who Needs It? New Gods completists. John Byrne fans. People that want a slightly less complicated take on the New Gods character's than Grant Morrison's handling of them in Final Crisis.

Rating: 2 stars

Civil War & What's Wrong With Comics These Days

I recently read the Black Panther: Civil War trade paperback collection. I found it to be an engaging read. I'd recommend it to others who like political thrillers, espionage, and/or superheroes. I also read the Checkmate: A King's Game trade at about the same time. My overall enjoyment and evaluation is the same.

Despite the excellence of these two collections, they seem to perfectly illustrate a trend I don't especially like in comics: the post-90s, post-9/11, grimmer, grittier superhero comics. It probably started in the 80s with grim, deconstructionist superhero tales like Watchmen, Bat Man Year One, Bat Man The Dark Knight Returns, Miracle Man, and, depending on your definition of the superhero genre, V For Vendetta.

It went further in the 90s, with companies finding ways to make superheroes grimmer and grittier by either screwing over their marquee characters (Knightfall, The Death of Superman, Emerald Twilight, Age of Apocalypse), increasing the prominence of or introducing grim, psychotic vigilantes (Lobo, Azrael, the three regular Punisher books plus his guest appearance every month in someone else's title, Ghost Rider and Wolverine's similar omnipresence in the 90s), and turning villains into not quite heroes (Venom, The Thunderbolts).

Now after experiencing a bit of a slow down, the grim superheroes trend has kicked back into high gear again. I can't say it definitely started with Avengers Disassembled, but that seems to be a pretty key point. Since then, Marvel's House of M and Civil War and, on the DC side of the street, Identity Crisis and Infinitie Crisis have kicked it up another notch.

It's not that these are bad comics. They're not. They're intelligent and well written. The trouble is, these comics are too reminscent of the troubles of the real world.

Do I really need to read about a superhero civil war, spured on by a superhuman registration act precipitated by a disastrous explosion that resulted in numerous civilian deaths, when we've got two real wars and are heading for a third, while the nation is deeply politically divided, and the Patriot Act erodes our civil liberties, all precipitated by the real 9/11? No. I want to see the JLA and JSA team up agaisnt the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3. I want the bad guys caught. I want the world to be a bit more idyllic than our own.

I'm also tired of morally ambiguous superheroes. I like superheroes who do what's right. The Powers make them super. Morals makes them heroic.

Final Crisis- Really?

Okay, so recently DC has let out the "big reveal" that what the series Countdown is counting down to is something that's going to be called Final Crisis.

I liked Crisis on Infinite Earths. I like the old JLA/ JSA crisis crossovers from years gone by. I liked Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. The cynic in me, though, says that this Final Crisis will not live up to the hype.

For starters, in what way will it be a final crisis? Is it really going to be the last time DC uses the word crisis in a miniseries title? Is it going to kill the DC Universe as we know it? Is it going to mean more Man of Steel and Year One- type retcons?

I guess I should just suspend the cynicism and see what happens. We will be in the able hands of Grant Morrison after all.