Six sentence comic book reviews

Figures.

On my first day without my school time-suck I get sick and have to spend the whole thing sacked out on the downstairs couch. Thank God for the Chronicles of Riddick and a girlfriend unafraid to brave the halls of the Silver Snail, where the only female presence is behind the cash register. Seriously, she went in there once in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and that just gave men an excuse to stare at her chest.

But I digress.

This week, the DayQuil infused ramblings of a diseased germ bag, where I promise to limit my reviews of your favourite titles to exactly six sentences.

No more.

No less.

Because that’s just how we role……in short six sentence increments.

Final Crisis #2

It’s impossible to credibly summarize the plot of any Grant Morrison work in just six sentences, much less review the entire issue. But I’ve never been one to let quality stand in the way of meaningless promise. Reading FC is like jumping into your time machine and reading the first forty odd issues of JLA all over again, there’s always hints at a larger evil just off page. This time it’s the Machiavellian machinations of an Earth bound Dark Side and co. I like the idea of making Kirby’s biggest DC creations more accessible to the DC Universe at large. It takes a wonderfully constructed epic mythology, which was previously accessible to only the most powerful of off-world traveling heroes, and transplants it into an urban here-and-now environment which will allow it to interact with just about any hero DC has on the books.

No Hero #0

The creative team behind Black Summer (Warren Ellis, Juan Jose Ryp) return for another look at the personal, political and social repercussions of self made super hero teams let loose in the real world. The series will follow a chemically enhanced 60’s era super-team as they metamorphasize from a bunch of young street-wise idealists, known as the Levellers, into the institutionalized government style group, The Front Line. The driving question behind this title is “How badly do you want to be a superhero?” The idea being that regular people are willing to engage in all sorts of ethically suspect activities and behaviour if it means having an opportunity to grab that brass ring. Parallels can quickly and easily be drawn between these heroes and high paid sports celebrity-types. With issue 0 Ellis has done an admirable job of laying the foundation for an interesting Legacy-hero style story and I look forward to seeing where he takes it.

Green Lantern #32

Finally, a secret origins issue that doesn’t concern itself with re-telling information the reader likely already knows verbatim. In this issue Hector Hammond’s supervillian back-story gets ret-conned. No longer does he gain his enormous intellect and misshapen head from deliberately exposing himself to a mysterious meteor. Instead Hammond is now the victim of an explosion from within Abin Sur’s downed ship. This explosion exposes him to some sort of gas\radiation and he begins to develop the telepathy and the over-sized cranium we come to associate with the character. Coupled with some additional ‘Origin of the Red Lanterns material,’ this is the first time this particular plot-arc has gotten interesting.

Thunderbolts #121

So long Warren, we hardly knew ye. And with Ellis’ swan song on this title I can officially move Thunderbolts into my drop pile. The ‘bolts continue to fight each other, under the influence of some powerful psychics who’s motives are never really explained. After the team manages to neutralize each other into unconsciousness, Bullseye pulls a Deux Ex Machina and shows up to finish off the offending telepaths. An anti-climatic end to a title that was consistently a step or two above average. Rather than impose any lasting change or growth upon the team Ellis returns everything to status quo by writing off the recent throw down as the fault of the powerful psychics.

Ultimate Spider-man #123

I’ve noticed recently that the Ultimate titles have taken a step backwards in terms of the physical quality of the comic book. Gone is the heavy card stock covers and in its place is the familiar glossy pages that I see on every other title I buy. I guess with the news that the Ultimate line is being folded\canceled means Marvel no longer has to splash out on fancy paper. Which is unfortunate. Ultimate Spider-man is the only Spider-title I’ve bothered to keep reading. Bendis, Bagley and now Immonen have managed to take a hero I’d gotten slightly bored with and made him new and interesting again, without having to resort to magically dissolving his marriage.

That’s it for me. Now get off my lawn.