New Comic-book Night - 2/19/13

It's been a couple of weeks since New Comic-book Night for me -- mostly because of the weather.  Once again it decided to snow last Wednesday, and this time a veritable blizzard visited my area.  Since comic-books are definitely not worth getting into an accident over, I waited until this week to pick up my haul. And since it had been a couple of weeks, plus many of my pull list titles come out during weeks 2-3 of the month, quite a haul it was indeed.

Among the list are two of the last three New 52 titles I still collect, and the only two I get in print form: Supergirl 28 and Batgirl 28 (the third, Wonder Woman, I get digitally, and I'm a couple of months behind on that).  Also in the mix was Thor, God of Thunder 19, my only Marvel comic.  Rounding out the list of seven were four titles from the smaller "independent" companies -- two regulars on my pull list from Image (Ghosted 7 and Alex + Ada 4), and one regular (Red Sonja 7) and one one-shot (Red Sonja Berserker) from Dynamite.

I haven't read them all yet, but as soon as I got home, I devoured Alex + Ada 4, and what a treat it was. This series continues to surprise and delight me.  Luna and Vaughn are outstanding story-tellers. I love the clean, simple art lines, and the story is fun, interesting, and definitely leaves me wanting more each month.  I've been quite charmed by Alex and especially sweet, innocent AI Ada. I can't wait until next month to see where this story heads.

Ghosted 7 was a bit of an improvement over the last issue.  After issue 6, I admit I was wavering as to whether I would keep reading this series. I still wish the original team had stayed together instead of mostly dying and the rest going their separate ways (except for Trick).  This issue advanced the story and kept my interest. I confess that I still do not like the style of this new artist, and I miss Goran Sudzuka. Here's hoping either Sudzuka comes back, or Image finds a new penciller for this book, because if not, I'm not sure the story will keep me around.

Then there is Red Sonja 7, which is one of the best issues of that new series so far.  With the inaugural story arc done, Sonja sets off to find six people, in a deal that will cause, if she is successful, a thousand slaves to be freed.  This issue showcases Sonja's fighting prowess, but also has some great humor and a couple of really interesting twists and turns.  Gail Simone is in her top form right now with this series.

The last of these issues that I've read so far is Supergirl 28.  I'm really at a loss over what to say about this issue, or the entire series to date.  We're still early in the "raging Kara" plot called "Red Daughter," and she now has her Red Lantern ring (already teased a couple of weeks ago), but although I may approve of the stated overall direction of this book (using the ring to let Kara "work through" her rage), the writing in this series continues to be just about the weakest on my entire pull list.  The dialogue is awkward. The characterizations are obvious and clumsy.  And watching Kara rage against Earth, and how much she hates it  still, it's just... not remotely attractive.  It would be one thing if Miss Zor-El had strong, intelligent, well-considered reasons for hating the Earth (or more specifically us Earthlings) -- most of us are honest enough to admit that in many ways, the human race sucks.  We're selfish. We do terrible things to each other. We kill. We enslave. We torture. And we're stubborn as hell.

The problem is, Kara Zor-El doesn't know any of that, because she has spent almost zero time on earth, and what little of it she has spent here, has been primarily in the presence of non-human aliens (Superman, H'el, etc).  So how the heck would she know whether she likes the place or not?  She doesn't.  So all we can get is this five-year-old spoiled-brat attitude that Earth is "not Krypton" and therefore she hate-hate-hates it.  There's nothing remotely sympathetic about this kind of behavior, and she once more continues to come across as a rather unintelligent, and extremely spoiled, bratty kid.  There are no words to describe how much I detest this interpretation of Kara.  Will the Red Lantern stint really change all this? It's hard to say. I will keep my fingers crossed. But once again, if this were any other character but Kara Zor-El, I'd have dropped this book about 6 months ago.

Well, that's it for this week. Hopefully my new comic-book days won't be snowed out in the future. Stay warm!