What You Should Have Read #45

Last Week’s Comic Book Awesomeness

Action Comics #2 – This is my Superman. I don’t care if it takes place “five years ago,” this is a Superman I can like. Cocky, smart, not God-like in power. He can be taken down and bound, at least for a bit. He can’t fly yet, but he can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I think I’m really going to enjoy watching him grow in this series. We’ve also got Steel and Metallo and a Lex Luthor who doesn’t quite know everything yet. This is also the Grant Morrison that I like. His writing is smart, but it’s not weird like all his other stuff lately. This is just a good book.

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #3 – Wade’s little rant to Jonathan Standish was the basic plot of a joke: “A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says ‘Get in, get in!’ The religious man replies, ‘No I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle.’ Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in god and god will give him a miracle. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again because God will grant him a miracle. With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in, mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help for the faith of God. He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, ‘I thought God would grand me a miracle and I have been let down.’ St. Peter chuckles and responds, ‘I don't know what you're complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter.’” I’m viewing Standish as a stand-in for a certain conservative religious zealot whose name I don’t even like saying.  It’s not that he’s got a Voldemorty, ominous name, it’s just that it makes me nauseous. This book ended up being tangential to Fear Itself, not necessary at all to the main mini, but it was a good story with some beautiful (if not a little dark) art.

Swamp Thing #2 – Scott Snyder has really become a writer to watch. Between this, Batman and American Vampire (I’ve got Severed but haven’t read it yet), the guy has some great stories under his belt. But while I enjoyed the explanation of Alec Holland’s place in this new DCU, it’s not what I liked most about this issue. Wrightson Diner. Bissette Motors. Totleben’s Motel. Three artists who are almost synonymous with Swamp Thing, immortalized and honored in this issue for their past contributions. I like it artists do things like that. Makes me smile.

X-Men: Schism #5 – Well, this is the start of a new era for the X-Men. We’re finally getting the Wolverine vs. Cyclops battle we never really wanted, with each character heading up a new team of X-Men on opposite sides of the country. I tend to like shake-ups like this in the beginning, as with Spider-Man’s “Brand New Day” event. I hope, as with BND, I end up enjoying these new mutant stories once the shine has worn off. I enjoyed this mini for the most part. I liked watching the divide between Logan and Scott grow, especially after Idie’s actions. My biggest problem had to do with the action. Those bratty, super-smart kids are just random, interchangeable villains…and I hate them. It’s not that they’re not good villains, I just don’t like bratty, super-smart kids as uber baddies. It just doesn’t click for me. The briefcase Sentinel was never really portrayed as a scary threat. It was talk up a lot, but almost all of the action against it was off panel. I thought the most effective use of action in this mini was Quentin Quire’s scheme in the first issue.

Probably for the rest of the month I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit it out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But my experiment this weekend proved to me that I actually AM making a spot of cash whenever the ads are clicked. So I’m going to put this little disclaimer on the bottom of all my posts for the next month or so, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. Thanks so much!