Issue Review: Thor, God of Thunder 12

With the Godbomb story over, in all three times, Thor returns to earth.  We see a glimpse of young Thor with the ancient Norse people, enjoying the simplicity of life on Midgard. And we see old Thor returning to Midgard as well, which has become a desolate wasteland.  Most of the story, however, is taken up with present-day Thor, who visits old friends and makes some new ones as he spends time with mortals.  He visits a man on death row, an old barkeep friend, soldiers and sailors, and a monk in Tibet.   He joins SHIELD agent Roz Solomon for her graduation party (she invited him on the internet, and Tony Stark recommended that he go).  And he spends time with ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who is now battling cancer.  At the end of the story, Thor finds Roz in the Arctic dealing with environmental damage, and offers to help.

Issue Review: Ghosted 1

Our story begins with convict Jackson T. Winters, a man just trying to survive his time in prison.  One night he hears gunfire and the sounds of a riot.   He is broken out of prison by a heavily armed woman named Anderson Lake.  Lake knocks him out and takes him to the mansion of millionaire Markus Schrecken.  Schrecken knows of Jackson's reputation as a thief, and wants him to steal a ghost from the supposedly haunted Trask Mansion.  Winters doesn't have much choice but to agree, since the alternative is going back to prison.  Winters sets about assembling a team, including pickpocket Oliver King, stage magician Robby Trick, ghost hunters Jay and Joe Burns, and psychic medium Edzia Rusnak.  Together they enter the mansion during the day for an exploration, knowing that "bad things" usually happen there only at night.  However, when they ask Edzia to use her psychic powers to detect ghosts, she sees dozens of them swarming around -- but tells the team she doesn't see a thing.

Issue Review: Justice League 23 (New 52)

As the story begins, the Alfred Pennyworth of Earth-3 narrates a summary not just in the Trinity War but events since the start of the Justice League series.  While the JL was battling Darkseid, Alfred-3 escaped his world through the weakened barriers, accompanied by Atom. And while the JL was occuppied fighting normal threats, Alfred-3 was working to bring his master to this earth from Earth-3.  The three JLs, however, are busy fighting over Pandora's box, thanks to the evil leaking out of it. They battle each other in a superhero verison of the old schoolyard game "kill the guy with the ball", until they finally stop as they realize that the box is affecting everyone else mentally but Superman is being affected physically.  Firestorm concludes that there is Kryptonite inside him, and Atom admits that she put it there, inside his brain -- because she is not with the JL, but secretly with the people of Earth-3.  Cyborg's robot parts betray him at this point, and tear themselves away from him to become "Grid," a walking virus.  In the confusion, Alfred-3 grabs the box, which he reveals is from Earth-3, the "birthplace of evil," and the box acts as a portal. He uses it to gate his allies, the "Crime Syndicate" (an evil anti-Justice League from Earth-3) to our world.  Thus the "Trinity War" (Trinity for "Earth 3") ends and the Forever Evil story begins.

New Comic-book night - 8/28

Well, I guess I am going to do another one of these after all.  I will be reviewing many individual issues in the next week, but I wanted to make a comment about my entire haul for the week and why it looks like it does.  This week, as the final week of August, not much new came out, but there were a couple of things I wanted to get my hands on from the previous couple of months, so I got myself down to the shop.  Also, I knew that issue 23 of Justice League was coming out, and that is (for the moment at least) on my pull list.  Below is a picture of the week's haul.

Two of the titles on the left are on my regular pull list (Thor and JL), but the others have not been on it.  I have reviewed the first two issues of Lazarus by Greg Rucka, which I just bought last week, and they were outstanding, so I was very pleased to find issue 3 on the stands already.  This comic is so good that it's already on my pull list (and I haven't even read issue 3 yet).

It's official -- I'm done with JLA

Back in December of last year (2012), I returned to the comic-book reading and collecting hobby after being away from it for 13 years.  As part of the process, I had to decide what to read, and I started with the company that had been my favorite since the 80s -- DC.  In fact, part of the reason I returned was learning about their "New 52" reboot. Although I normally don't like reboots because they erase established continuity, one reason the New 52 attracted me was that I wouldn't have to figure out what had been going on for the last 13 years. I could jump right in with digital copies from just a year ago, easily catch up on my favorite characters like Supergirl, and in a matter of months I'd be "up to speed." Thus, I could shortcut the normal "wading in" process that can, with a long-running continuity, take months, sometimes even years.

Obviously, with 52 titles being put out a month, even limiting myself to DC meant I would have to make some pretty quick decisions about what titles to read.  Historically, even when comics only cost 75 cents, I had always limited myself to 10 ongoing titles per month (with some allowance for additional purchases of one-shots, mini-series, and the like), and I figured to do the same thing this time -- especially with over a year of back-issues to buy even with the reboot.  After a bit of "sampling," as my local comic-shop owner calls it, I settled on a handful of titles, one of which was Justice League.

Early on, Justice League, written by Geoff Johns and drawn first by Jim Lee and then Ivan Reis, was an excellent comic-book that reminded me just why I loved them years ago.  The first story arc, which re-tells the origin of the team and how they all met, was funny, dramatic, tense, and interesting (at least until the last issue, which was a huge disappointment).  By the time I'd read a handful of issues, it was on my "pull list."

Then, just a couple of months into my renewed collecting hobby, and before I'd even gotten completely caught up on Justice League (they were putting out issue 16 or so and I was still catching up on 11 or 12), DC announced the release of a new JL-related book, called Justice League of America.  I'll be honest. I wasn't too thrilled about this to begin with.  Although I was happy to commit to an issue of Justice League every month, I wasn't sure I liked the team, or the premise, enough to commit multiple slots of my pull list to them -- and again, I refuse to allow my pull list to just balloon without limit.

Issue Review: Worlds' Finest 15 (New 52)

Power Girl hurtles through DeSaad's boom tube in search of her friend Huntress.  She arrives in a bunker-like base, where she battles para-daemons and tries to beat Helena's location out of them. Meanwhile, DeSaad usess a lightning wand to try and extract fear and pain emotions from Helena, which seem to fuel his power.  He realizes Power Girl is in his base, and heads off to confront her, giving Huntress a chance to pick her locks and escape.  Huntress defeats a strong-man slave of DeSaad's and joins Power Girl in the fight against him. But DeSaad says he has extracted what he needs from Power Girl, and uses another boom tube to return them to England.  When they arrive, Power Girl says DeSaad has "screwed up" her powers -- her costume is torn and she is cut and bleeding (both of which should be impossible due to her Kryptonian physique).

Issue Review: Lazarus 2

Forever Carlyle heads to the Family headquarters in Seattle for a Carlyle meeting.    Her sister Bethany examines her and provides some medication to help her recover from last issue's shooting, while her brothers Stephen and Jonah argue about what the Family should do to revenge itself against the Morray clan.  Family patriarch Malcolm convenes the meeting, and Forever reports on her investigation of the Morray attack on the Carlyle farm in San Joaquin.  Jonah insists they should go to war, but Malcolm dismisses everyone for alone time with Forever.  When she tells him Jonah made her kill a man she knew was innocent, Malcolm gives her a new, secret assignment, sending her to Los Angeles with Jonah and their other sister Johanna.  The two "J" twins plot against Eve, but she slips away, heading south to Mexico.  There, she comes face to face with armed men of the Morray family, and their Lazarus.