kingandy | Proper Update, with comics

I never mentioned my Monday night cookery, did I? Well, on Monday I cooked for the Monday Night Boltonian Meal for the first time. Apparently it went down quite well. I'm not sure what I'll make the next time, Spaghetti Bolognese is really easy (chuck things in a bowl and cook) but pretty much the extent of my repertoire. Must dig out one of those many cookbooks that people bought me when I became a student.

I also did not mention what I did when I went home briefly last week. While in town, I decided to pop into the Travelling Man to pick up my comic order. What did I find there? OMG Comics! I've not done a comic review for a while, so this will be less about specific issues and more general titles.

Green Lantern: Rebirth is proceeding interestingly. DC are taking the cop-out route of declaring that it wasn't Hal Jordan's fault that he went evil, as he was posessed all along. I'm not having as hard a time with this as I might be, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it does sort of explain the sudden shift in costume and name. I can see the argument that he wanted nothing more to do with the old corps, but thinking up a new codename and giving himself a makeover really shouldn't have been his top priority at the time. He was halfway through his plot to rebuild and repopulate his old town (by destroying and rebuilding the universe, which always seemed to me to be a pretty elaborate way of doing it to me). Sure, stop calling yourself Green Lantern, go around as Hal Jordan, but invent spanky new armour - with a cape - and declare your name is Parralax now?

Let me be absolutely clear on this point. Yes, I had a problem with Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour. No, it wasn't that a great hero could cross the line into insanity and persue noble goals through questionable means. It was the damn shiny costume and stupid name. It never made sense. And now, it kind of does.

So Geoff Johns - did I mention how much I admire his work? - ties Jordan's fall in with the "Necessary Yellow Impurity" from back in the day, which was apparently an ancient imprisoned evil made of fear energy (which is yellow in colour, naturally). Which also explains why Kyle's ring never had that weakness, despite it being "necessary". And now Parallax - evil yellow Parallax - is controlling other GLs through the rings, explaining the sudden removal of Guy Gardner's Vuldarian side. (It also sort of explains why Hal, in Emerald Twilight, put a ring on each finger - maybe Parallax wanted to cement his control?)

So, I'm not as annoyed by the whole thing as I could be.

Have I spoken of JSA: Strange Adventures yet? It is quite cool. Reanimated nazis in lightning-powered zeppelins in the 1940s. It's not the finest example of its genre I've seen - it's becoming a bit of a standard modern super-hero tale transposed to another period, not nearly as "pulp" a I'd have liked - but still enjoyable. I'm usually wary of nostalgia tales like this one, as I can't escape the feeling that they can't make any significant changes or advancements. But this is at least keeping my interest.

Only one paragraph. You can tell which series I'm emotionally invested in here, can't you?

JLA: Classified is an interesting beast. It is good to be reading Grant Morrison again (and I'm kind of ashamed I've waited till he came around to JLA again, rather than seeking him out). The art is inordinately reminiscent of his run on the "proper" JLA title; I think it's the inking and colouring that's doing that. Of course, the plot is mainly to show off Morrison's own team of hyperpowered freedom fighters, set up way back in his JLA run, and how very powerful they are. (Continuing the writer's fascination with the "writer as god" element of comic books, one of the characters actually has writer powers - he taps an invisible keyboard and things happen. I would file him under "too powerful to appear in every episode".) This plot arc is up next issue, and I'll be interested to see whether the title is going to carry on with the Ultramarines (seriously) or instead focus on the JLA in such "interesting" situations.

Legion of Super-Heroes. Hh. Well, there's no question that it's well-written, and there are some great twists on the mythos: Colossal Boy, for example, wants to be called Micro Lad because he's actually from a race of giants and has the power to shrink to only six feet tall. (As Sun Boy puts it, "he thinks he's on some grand adventure with the 'little people'".) And Kitson's art is something I've liked for a while. But ... but.

It's not my Legion.

My Legion is off stuck between parallel dimensions somewhere, awash in the time stream. I want to know what happens to them. Abnett and Lanning resolved their plot threads very well, leaving their story at something that could be considered an end, but I've been following that comic for ten years now and damn it stings to have the whole thing brushed aside. I can console myself that at least they didn't invalidate the entire timeline (as they did back in 1993 with the Zero Hour event) - those stories still happened, it's just we're not following that universe any more. Still, it seems like a criminal waste.

I still have faith in Waid, that he's going to tell a fine story whatever, and I can hope that maybe he'll tie the old in with the new (depending on where Shikari actually ended up in the Titans/Legion Crossover - the implication was that it's this new world, but it was only an implication). This is, after all, only issue 1 and you don't want to pull too much out of your hat at once. But this first issue left me a little whistful for the old times.

Teen Titans has wrapped up its time travel plot after only two issues, and it felt just a little bit rushed - far too much was resolved with a whole-page single-panel fight scene. I get the impression that Johns had a whole big thing planned, then found out about Identity Crisis and War Games and decided it was probably a bad idea to keep the team (particularly Tim) involved in their own thing for too long. I'm also reasonably sure he had to draft a last-minute replacement for Spoiler to take the role of Batwoman in the future... though, you never know, she does carry Flamebird's colours. All in all a lot of fun, but I would have liked to see more of the future Titans.

Nice to see future Kid Flash and future Ravager together. I'm not sure, but it feels like a backreference to The New Titans back in the early 1990s, led by Arsenal. Bart and Rose spent some time together there (though she was never on the team other than as babysitter).

The mainstream JLA continues to impress; I can't stress how much of an improvement Busiek is.

... That's actually all I have to say on the matter. It's good. But look, two paragraphs!

Meanwhile JSA continues its unblemished record. The "JSA/JSA crossover" arc is another nostalgia trip like Strange Adventures, but because it's a time travel story involving the current team there's room for development. Even the "past" team gets some interesting screentime, as somebody's been meddling with history bla bla bla etc, so we see them in new and interesting situations. So far it's been an interesting tale of coming face to face with your heritage, and the actual plot isn't too bad either. Time travel can be done so badly, but so far it seems to be hanging together. And let's hear it for asylums!

To continue on a positive note, Justice League Elite continues to build momentum. Kelly's bringing in old elements like the Whorlogog, and playing mind-games with the cast ... I figure Vera-Lynn's not of her right mind, being either posessed by the spirit of her dead brother or at least manifesting him as a secondary psyche in some sort of multiple personality disorder. (Admittedly I wouldn't have got that without help from the next-issue box, since I'd completely forgotten that thread was quite blatantly set up back in issue 2.) The villain is entertainingly deranged and each of the characters are getting a goodly amount of development. Top marks, can't wait to see where it's going...

Finally, on a whim I picked up the first issue of Hero Squared, a jolly multiple-universe romp from the pen of Giffen and DeMatteis, who I remember from Justice League International back in the eighties. They do have this unfortunate tendency to degrade into comedy conversations in the middle of serious situations, but in this title they've more or less managed to keep a straight face where it's required and the banter to less critical scenes. It's an tale of a Superman-type superhero - lone survivor of his home universe, aside from the horde of villains that massacred every other being there - who finds himself cast into an alternate world. Naturally, the first thing he does is look himself up, on the assumption that two superheroes are better than one. Unfortunately this world has no superheroes, and its version of him is ever so slightly flabby.

The scripting's easy on the brain, and takes on a sort of "Sliding Doors" emphasis at several points. The art's a bit off, though. I think what they've done is removed the inker from the equation, and just scanned and coloured the pencil art. The colourist does a great job, but if at any point you look past the colours to the lines it seems just a bit sketchy and unfinished. Maybe it's a matter of personal taste, but I doubt it's going to catch on.

While I was there I also picked up the Pocket-Sized edition of the Babylon 5 RPG. Because it was pocket sized. So cool.