Who'd Like A Cocktail? #200

Barry Allen proves he's incapable of reading the situation between two people

DC's September Solicits

I don't normally go through the solicitations with any great detail, just enough to pick out a Don't Ask post and that's about it. With all these zero issues coming out in September, a few things caught my eye:

Written by TONY BEDARD and KEITH GIFFEN
Art and cover by IG GUARA and J.P. MAYER
On sale SEPTEMBER 19 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Where was the Scarab before it merged with the current Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes?

Look - Keith Giffen's writing Blue Beetle again! Couple that with the fact that the story's about the scarab before Jaime and the internet explodes with Ted Kord anticipation in three . . . two . . . one . . .

Four Becomes Three

In all the hullabaloo of Flashpoint, I've hardly mentioned the upcoming War of The Green Lanterns event that's going to be running around the same time as the GL movie will be out.  Specifically, there's been the couple of mentions of losing one of the Earth/Sector 2814 Lanterns.

At the end of Green Lantern #62, after getting his ass kicked, Hal Jordan has some sort of vision of the future:

That black on yellow dialogue fits in with what we've seen of Krona, intimating that Jordan's possession by Parallax was somehow a deliberate punishment from the Guardians. Then we have the Guardians themselves proclaiming how dangerous he is post-War (so he obviously survives - no surprise there) since "the loss of one of the Lanterns of Sector 2814."

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #111

Is it wrong to find a centuries old immortal blue man throwing up funny?

Christmas and New Year delayed me getting hold of my comics hence the bumper delivery today!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #88

Pope Jacko ruins Watership Down for everyone

• CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD: THE LAST BATTLE #4 - as liberal and pro-choice as I am, even I have to admit that finding out the father of your unborn son is the Antichrist is a very, very good reason to have an abortion. And poor old Jimmy . . .
• GREEN LANTERN #55 - Lobo and Atrocitus pull a fast one on Hal Jordan and we get the origin of Red Lantern Dex-Starr! I'm so glad I'm a cat-person!
• JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #46 - once again this title seems to be heading all over the place a bit and can someone tell me when Molly Scott became relatively young again?
• JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #40 - a little too quickly wrapped up, probably to make way for the crossover between this and Justice League but still enjoyable for all that, plus it had the funniest thing I've read in ages (see below)
• PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: CHAPTER TWO #10 - things build up to a good head of steam as the Superpowers and their enemies all combine to take Zeus down with . . . a big metal coffin!
• TAROT: WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE Vol 8 - you know, as cheesy as Tarot often is, it's not that bad when it has a story arc to follow. This volume, though, contains mostly stand alone stories which, honestly, don't really stand up that well.
• TEEN TITANS #84 - you know, I pretty much skimmed this issue - dreadful story, awful dialogue, terrible pacing: all the hallmarks of a Henderson story. I will be so glad when J.T. Krul takes over, mainly because he can't be this bad.
• Co-feature COVEN OF THREE - the three magicians get what they wanted most in all the world and, for some of them, realise it's not all it's cracked up to be.

And what made me laugh out loud:

That entire page just made me laugh so much!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #84

Robotman gets caught out staring at Saturn Girl's behind

• BLACKEST NIGHT DIRECTOR'S CUT #1 - finally got round to picking this up, partly to satisfy the collector in me. The cover gallery's nice, the script to issue #1 gives an insight into how comics are made and the unused scenes - particularly the Rainbow Raiders suicide - were interesting. Certainly not essential to the Blackest Night series, but an enjoyable add-on.
• THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #34 - I'm sure some of us have seen this type of story before: a two parter involving time travel almost guarantees a couple of things 1) that the first issue will have odd, seemingly insignificant details dotted throughout (in this case the moving time sphere and the pink fluff) and 2) that the second issue will explain these as being caused by the same characters working behind the scenes to ensure their present selves don't see them. It's not a bad story, but neither is it anything above ordinary - it seems like an exercise for Straczynski to be able to tie up the various anomalies in an interesting way next month.
• GREEN LANTERN #54 - Atrocitus comes back, along with Red Lantern cat Dex-Star who makes a great entrance. The entities of the various Corps are named and shown to Jordan and the others and the mysterious cloaked figure frees Sodam Yat from Daxam's star. Oh, and Lobo turns up leading to a great next issue caption: Lobo punches people with rings. Hard.
• GREEN LANTERN CORPS #48 - Tony Bedard's first issue as writer isn't too bad; admittedly I don't think he's got Atrocitus's voice down yet but John Stewart's handled well.
• JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #2 - well, I guess those first couple of pages answer the critics who wondered about how Max Lord would deal with the physical evidence of his crimes / existence. Nothing much happens apart from scenes where the main characters are all shown attempting to convince other heroes that they're right and being turned down. But hey, always nice to see Jaime Reyes's Blue Beetle.
• JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE RISE OF ARSENAL #3 - oh, you gotta go down before you can come up or some such other homily springs to mind with this. Arsenal goes back to the dope, then gets forced to go cold turkey and starts hallucinating his dead daughter Lian. One more issue to go.
• POWER GIRL #12 - I know this series is continuing, but this issue for me feels like the end. It's a wonderful, wonderful wrap up issue that still leaves plots not so much hanging as available. Having set the bar so high on this series, Palmiotti, Gray and Conner have almost guaranteed a slump in quality when Winick takes over next month but I don't want to tarnish this last issue snapshot with negativity about the new team. Power Girl has, for just over a year, been consistently one of the best books out there: fun, well-written, wonderful art, and characters that you end up caring about. There's no way Blackest Night could have made a cross-over into this world and as much as I enjoyed that series, I'm glad Power Girl never had to deal with it in these pages. I'm seriously going to miss this book even though I plan on sticking with the title if you see what I mean.
• PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: CHAPTER TWO #9 - okay, so all the heroes are piling on Zeus and after spending ages just growling Catman - sorry, Man-Cat finally gets to tear up the imposter Kid Terror who, paradoxically, may turn out to be just what they need against the mad god.
• TEEN TITANS #83 - oh god where do I start? I've stuck with different titles through rough patches before but I'm seriously considering dropping this until Henderson either leaves or is kicked off as writer. Changeling's yelling out "Raven!" every five minutes; Superboy and Wonder Girl are apparently splitting up because... well, I'm not sure, really; Changeling's yelling out "Raven!" every five minutes; Aquagirl fancies Superboy; Changeling's yelling out "Raven!" every five minutes; two doctors spout more pseudo-science nonsense than ever before; and why the hell would Changeling become a chimpanzee to mend a broken computer?! This is becoming a truly dreadful title with every issue, a car crash that I can't help staring at. Someone please tell me Henderson's going to be fired soon?
• Co-feature: COVEN OF THREE - not a bad start to a tale about three teenage magicians; always nice to see Traci 13 (even if she looks younger than when she was in Tales of the Unexpected a couple of years ago) and I wonder how Black Alice will be reconciled with her Secret Six appearances but this is still better than the main story.

And what made me smile will surprise no regular reader of this blog: Power Girl #12 just delivers so much this month like this -

and this - 

and this -

Once again a big thank you to Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Amanda Conner for their excellent run on this book. Those of you who haven't picked it up can get the whole thing in two trade paperbacks with the second one out this year.

Updates On The Annotated Blackest Night

Going away for a week was good fun but it also means you spend a bunch of time catching up on stuff when you get back.

One of those things was finishing off the Black Power Ring Percentage Level table over at the Annotated Blackest Night - now that the rings are up to 100% it's unlikely I'll need to edit that page again!

Something I've worked on over the last couple of days, though, is a new page over at the site: say hello to the Character Map.

As you can see, I'm trying to chart where the important characters of Blackest Night appear - I can't keep an eye on every character because there's simply too many of them! However, those that I think are going to be important (most of the GL Corps, Sinestro, Atrocitus and even Dove following the events of Blackest Night: Titans #3) will be followed from one issue to the next and the map will be updated as it goes along with those updates being posted to the site.

Interested to hear what you think of this.

Enjoy!