Apr 21
Housekeeping
Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2026 by Paul in Uncategorized
Annotations won’t be until Friday at the earliest this week. Just in case you were wondering.
Annotations won’t be until Friday at the earliest this week. Just in case you were wondering.
Sad no reviews until Friday. But means we can go wild in the comments section!
What do people think of the Psylocke mini? I think it’s actually worked pretty well as a retroactive insert. Gives some much needed interiority to Betsy which we never got at the time.
How do people feel about the similar upcoming Outback mini?
I’ve enjoyed the Psylocke mini. Still think it’s a weird choice to focus on ninja Betsy given the current status quo. But I agree it’s nice to get her perspective on things at the time. I wish they didn’t include Elektra in the narrative. She doesn’t add much and more page space could be used for the Betsy/Jubilee relationship. All in all, it’s one of the better minis from this era so far.
Looking forward to the Outback mini. Great x-team lineup. Wish Claremont were writing it though!
I think it’s a good thing that they’re actually dealing with the ramifications of Betsy violating the X-Men’s consent by forcing them through the Siege Perlious. It’s odd- when Logan finds out in Uncanny X-Men 251, he’s angry. But then there’s only two more brief scenes where it’s mentioned. In issue 258, Betsy says that it’s her fault the X-Men went through the Siege Perilous and Logan says then you can amends by helping me find them. And in issue 271, Betsy finds out Alex has been brainwashed into hunting down mutants for Cameron Hodge and says it would have been better if I let the Reavers slay him. That’s it. You’d think the X-Men in general would be distrustful of Betsy as a result.
I always thought that Claremont was writing Betsy with a hint of malice, perhaps with a sinister motive, during those issues. Silvestri often used her hood to cast her eyes in shadow, and sometimes she had a malevolent grin. As a reader at the time, I thought there was a subplot brewing that never came to fruition.
These types of minis I find to be rather pointless…but some of them can be entertaining if done well.
I am enjoying the CYCLOPS mini out now, though it helps that it’s set in current or recent continuity. I also think it’s selling better than expected. I doubt anyone at Marvel expected a Cyclops mini to sell the first 2 issues within the top 50.
The plot works and is well executed. I do think 5 issues is too decompressed for a “Scott lost without his visor for a solo mission” thing, but if the worst we can say about a comic is, “it’s a little decompressed,” then it’s doing well. That’s like saying a pizza is “a little greasy.”
As long as we’re shooting the breeze…
The current arc of Absolute Wonder Woman is really pretty. Sure, that book started out pretty, but I think Hayden Sherman is actually getting better. Plus, Zatanna!
Also, now that Nice House by the Sea is back, I’m really digging the high school drama of it all. I’ll have to go back and reread the whole thing once it’s done. That hiatus was long enough for me to forget a few details.
Anyone reading something well-written, gorgeous, and self-contained that they would like to recommend?
I will continue my intermittent “books I’d rather read this week than any current X-titles”.
For this week, it’s In Your Skin #1 (Image). A nice look at celebrity culture in India. Very nice art (although sometimes the art can get cloudy, making it hard to tell what is going on and which character is involved, but I’d say it just takes some extra concentration, as I did like the art, overall). A feminist social message. Also, body horror (but nothing too gruesome). Nice authenticity. I like seeing more like this being done in the comic book medium.
I’m giving almost every IGNITION book a first issue pick-up, just to see what they’re doing. They’ve got a lot of good creators – Leah Williams, David Baldeon, Tim Seeley, Cullen Bunn, etc – and the comics themselves are well put together. (Not a compliment I would think needed mentioning, but as Al has pointed out a few times on the show, the state of Marvel’s paper for both covers and interiors is dreadful.) And most of the books are minis, so more often than not you’re getting a complete story. I’m eagerly awaiting the final issue of VOYEUR, and I just picked up the last issue of NoPlace and the first of EVERYONE LOVES A JEWEL THIEF.
I don’t follow DC much. I kept up with The Flash until Carmine Infantino left the book, Green Lantern while it was Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, and Swamp Thing by Alan Moore.
I picked up single Batman issue by Frank Miller, and pretty much abandoned them with disdain ever since. Even when creatives that I loved such as Louise Simonson went there, I didn’t follow.
Recently, I started becoming desperate enough to start checking them out again. It is mostly Al Kennedy’s fault. He sold me on Fire & Ice, which was good. Now I am cautiously scoping them out. Poison Ivy by G. Willow Wilson is my only current DC title but I am hooked.
You should go back and check out the Alan Grant run on Detective Comics followed by Batman (you can stop with Shadow of the Bat though). Those are the best Batman comics and will definitely change your opinion on the character after Miller (well, unless you really just hate Batman). Also, check out the Anarky mini-series by Grant, which may be Alan Grant’s best comics work. Skip the ongoing, which got cancelled pretty quickly anyway. It might not have been outright terrible, but editorial forced Grant to try to make the series have broader appeal by forcing in lots of superhero guest-stars, and it took away from what made the mini so special.
DC had a lot of really good comics. Starting post-Crisis, the quality of DC’s output, overall, was higher than Marvel. Marvel has better characters. Characters you might follow even with less-than-stellar creative teams. DC had always done a better job with creators post-Crisis until the “New 52” fiasco. I did stop following DC altogether after Grant Morrison left and the final Hellblazer series, as they seemed to have completely lost the ability to put out readable comic books for a few years, until the “All In” initiative.
The July X-solcits are out. In X-Men 33, the X-Men are trying to rescue someone but his powers risk causing a “gravimetric disaster”. So it looks like Schwarzchild did survive.
In non X-news, the Mortal Thor is shipping twice in July. Mortal Thor 12 features Blake revealing the truth to Sigurd about Sigurd’s origins. Mortal Thor 13 is solicited as “a final tale of… Asgard?” and has Magni accepting the throne of Asgard just like the Enchantress planned. It seems like it’s building up to a climax. And Queen in Black is ending in September. So it seems like Mortal Thor is ending and the real Thor will be reborn. So we’ll see a relaunch of a new title… the Mighty Thor?
Yep. Just in time for the new Legacy anniversary issue. As soon as I saw how close Mortal Thor was to the next anniversary issue, I knew where Ewing was going with Thor.
On the subject of the Spider-Books, does anyone else think introducing a new cousin for Peter Parker is a really stupid idea? I guess we’re supposed to assume he’s Uncle Ben’s illegitimate son. It seems like an especially dumb idea since after Teresa Parker was introduced, the writers went back and forth on whether she was really Peter’s sister before finally deciding that she wasn’t.
@Chris V- Not all of the problems with the Anarky series came from editorial. The idea that Anarky was the Joker’s son who he fathered sixteen years before No Man’s Land after working with Two-Face on a heist made no sense but it was Grant’s and Breyfogle’s idea. (Denny only agreed to let them do it if it was later revealed to be a hoax but the series was cancelled before it could be revealed to be a hoax.) Among other problems,. Joker and Two-Face being active 16 years before No Man’s Land would really screw up Dick’s and Tim’s ages.
Ugh. You’re right. Breyfogle did say that was their plan. I always thought that was editorially mandated too. I also thought Grant and Breyfogle planted it in the final issue as a hoax, as there was no proof offered, like they were forced into doing it so they threw it in the last issue as a sort of joke. Although, Lonnie saying he believed it was true was kind of disconcerting. I have no idea why Grant or Breyfogle thought it was a good idea for that character (O’Neil was right). It adds nothing to his character and detracts from the original point. Anarky works better not knowing his biological father, and if Grant did feel he had something to say about mental illness running in families (no idea if that was the intent), he could have introduced a regular person as Lonnie’s biological father.
“I picked up single Batman issue by Frank Miller, and pretty much abandoned them with disdain ever since. Even when creatives that I loved such as Louise Simonson went there, I didn’t follow.”
Just the other day I read the Zero Hour issues of Superman Man of Steel where Simonson had the Dark Knight Returns version of Batman appear, somewhat tongue in cheek. As early as 1994 people were having a laugh at Frank Miller’s Batman. I don’t think Miller was as influential on Batman as people say he is.
Sure, DKR is a perennial seller, no denying that, but have creators really been following in his footsteps? I’m not sure they are.
@New Kid- On the one hand, it was O’Neil and Adams who returned Batman to his roots in the 70s.
On the other hand, it really is embarrassing how low Batman was selling before Batman: Year One. It was being outsold by Power Man & Iron First and Dazzler at various points. Miller helped revive sales. And Miller did help to create the modern interpretation of Alfred.
Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at aspects of Miller’s Batman, especially if you try to import him physically into a normal superhero comic.
But I think it’s undeniable that Miller’s style of writing on Dark Knight Returns and Year One was incredibly influential: the dark, brooding protagonist who internally monologues in text boxes; the genius strategist; the over-the-top, military-grade toys he pulls out to win fights; his truly psychotic version of the Joker.
Along with Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns ushered in the “adult” era of storytelling in superhero comics. And it was the first time I can recall anyone even suggesting that Batman could win in a fight against Superman.
Absolute Batman must owe *some* debt to DKR, right? And it’s the hottest thing going right now.
In addition to Nice House…, the other new Vertigo books have been enjoyable. End of Life, by Kyle Starks & Steve Pugh, has been my favorite so far. It’s about a hitman who has to go into hiding with his elderly father, but it’s hilarious. Bleeding Heart, by Deniz Camp & Stipan Morian, is about a zombie whose heart starts beating again. I’m zombied out, but this is a new take on the genre- it presents zombie culture in a way that works!- with funky art. The Peril of the Brutal Dark, by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips, is a noir with supernatural elements. It’s more of a straight noir than Hellboy, but there’s some tonal overlap. I recommend trying any of them that sound interesting as they’re all well-executed.
Bleeding Heart read like a poorer version of the movie Warm Bodies to me. I didn’t feel it really worked, outside of the elements which seemed awfully close to aspects already done in Warm Bodies*. I was really disappointed. Camp is my favourite writer working in comics currently, and I felt this was by far his weakest work. It put me off of the new Vertigo. I was going to give the Si Spurrier series a try (even though it sounded similar to the series he recently wrote for Image), to see if it changed my mind about this new Vertigo.
*I’m not a fan of zombies, but Warm Bodies was a very strong attempt at making a zombie story for people who don’t like zombies.
@Chris V: dude, same. I love Camp’s output, but I didn’t make it past the preview pages for BLEEDING HEART. I’m pretty disappointed to hear it’s pretty much exactly what it sounded like, which was “warmed over WARM BODIES.”
Huh, never even heard of Warm Bodies. I might have to track it down to compare to BH. I’ve been enjoying the comic, at least.
Someone up thread mentioned how much they like Absolute WW, and I feel the same. Sherman’s art is gorgeous, and Thompson writes with such empathy.
I’m not a Firestorm fan, but I liked the first issue of the new series. Horror is an interesting direction, and I’m curious to see where Lemiere takes the story.
Leave Now has been a good super-hero/time-travel/post-apocolypse story. Can the lead character change the past, and what will happen if he does? I’ve enjoyed most of Bad Idea’s recent output, and this series continues their hot streak.