Monday Memories #25 - Action Comics #616

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who Was Who Is Who #42

So for want of anything better to write about on a Monday, I'm going to go through all my copies of Who's Who and see if I can predict who will make it over to the new DCU by the end of 2012, who might make it and who hasn't got a Spook's chance.

SONAR - is there anything more terrifying than a villain armed with a gun shaped like a tuning fork? Hmmm, now that I put it like that . . . I don't think Geoff Johns will be revitalising Sonar any time soon.

Cherry Picking Canon

Erin over at Exploring The Time Lab posted a simple yet interesting question the other day:

"What would you change or keep in canon if you were in charge of the DCnU?"

She has her own ideas, most of which I agree with (particularly "Countdown never happened. Countdown happened for no one.") and it got me to thinking about my own choices.

First, I'd keep everything pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even the really weird stuff because by keeping all of that, we get to keep this:

Yep - Crisis... itself. It's a great story and one of my all time faves. You keep Crisis... and you can then get to keep the good stuff that came out of it, principally the revamps of Batman and Superman. But you also get to keep Power Girl (as survivor of Earth-2 - the Arion stuff never happened) and Helena Bertinelli's Huntress which then leads into Birds of Prey which is well worth keeping.

I'm happy with keeping Infinite Crisis as it does form a good sequel to the original, but we can lose both Identity Crisis and Final Crisis from my new DCU. Keeping Infinite Crisis allows us to keep Villains United which means we keep Secret Six so all's well and good there.

I'd keep the Justice Society and, in general, keep most of the legacy heroes as well - Ryan Choi's Atom, Mia Dearden's Speedy, Conner Hawke's Green Arrow and Jaime Reyes's Blue Beetle off the top of my head.

52 would remain canon as well because I like having a multiverse, dammit, though Grant Morrison would not get to keep it all to himself and his long-touted yet never appearing Multiversity which, I suspect, will do for the multiverse what the original Crisis... did to Hawkman: make it so toxic no-one will approach it for years.

Oh and Ice has her original origin restored, though that should go without saying.

This Sounds Promising

Over at the DC Source blog, Dan Jurgens answers a few questions about the new Justice League International series that he's writing along with the Green Arrow series that he's illustrating. Regarding the latter he says:

"GREEN ARROW will see sort of a “Team Arrow” approach. Given the nature of where we are in terms of communications and technology, it’s reasonable to assume that Oliver no longer operates alone."

With Roy over in Red Hood And The Outlaws, who else could be on Team Arrow? Mia as Speedy is a good bet, I think, but my real hope is that Conner Hawke is somehow coming back as a second Green Arrow.

It may be too early to call at the moment as the status of legacy characters isn't exactly encouraging from what we've learned but I'm hopeful.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #76

Quote from Etrigan the Demon in The Brave And The Bold #32

• Battlefields: The Firefly And His Majesty #1 - the continuing story of the Tankies, I can't help but wonder if this relatively light hearted war tale is going to end nastily.
• Booster Gold #30 - Dan Jurgens's run is fast coming to an end with most of his loose ends wrapped up. I like his writing and his art so it's a shame to see him go but at least Booster, Goldstar and Rip will be in good hands with Giffen and DeMatteis . . . I hope! And hey, woah, hold on there - Hypertime?!
• The Brave And The Bold #32 - when did Aquaman go all Star Trek Vulcan on us? That whole "My thoughts are your thoughts... my will is your will." is straight out of a Vulcan mind meld . . . and I know that even without being a Star Trek fan!
• Green Arrow #31 - so here begins the Fall of Green Arrow who, annoyingly, has been turned into the same kind of jerk he was years ago: arrogant and selfish, unwilling to listen to his friends - I thought he'd grown out of that with the whole marriage to Black Canary? Oh, and now we dark Speedy? Poor old Green Arrow . . .
• Green Lantern Corps #46 - something of a holding issue to get to Blackest Night #8 but still a good read; could have done with more Anti-Monitor but that's just me!

And what made me smile:

Big on Star Trek references this week by the look of it! Never thought of Guy Gardner as a Trekkie but I can go with it.

Who'd Like A Cocktail #55

Double Sized Issue!

As I missed last week's comics due to being away I couldn't run through my usual Cocktail posts so here, along with this week's, are my thoughts on what I've been buying.

• Blackest Night #3 - oh, it's all starting to hit the fan now! And poor old Gen - I liked the last Firestorm series and to see her end up like this . . . almost brought a tear to my eye.
• The Brave And The Bold #27 - okay, a rather muted first issue from Mr Straczynski but nothing too terrible either.
• Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape #5 - the best thing about this issue? Those final words on the last page: "To be concluded."
• Green Arrow And Black Canary #24 - Cupid's kinda fun in a yet-another-Harley-Quinn kinda way but it's becoming grating. Nice to see Speedy back as well.
• Green Arrow co-feature - wait a second: Green Arrow thinks something's missing inside him so he has to go walkabout rather than discuss it with Black Canary? Didn't Mike Grell do this storyline years ago?
• JSA vs Kobra #4 - Mr Terrific lives up to his name as this continues to be one of the best mini-series out there.
• Strontium Dog: Traitor To His Kind collection - the second collection of the new stories of Johnny Alpha by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.
• The Walking Dead Vol 8: Made To Suffer - I had to pick this up after the cliff hanger ending of Vol 7 and oh my word, what a story.
• Wednesday Comics #11 - just about all the stories seemed to be pausing this issue as though they're waiting for the final push to wrap up.

And what made me smile:

Nothing like the Flash preparing to punch someone's lights out!

And now for this week's comics:

• Blackest Night: Superman #2 - looks like the Psycho Pirate took no time at all in getting to Smallville straight from the pages of Blackest Night #3!
• Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #5 - no surprises that Rising Sun's being mind controlled but the culprit kinda caught me by surprise.
• Justice League of America #37 - okay, hands up who thinks Amos Fortune's dead? Anyone? Anyone at all? And Mr Wein - can we please stop with all the puns?
• Power Girl #5 - still fun, still funny, still wonderful, still have doubts this will last long. Really - the last book I enjoyed this much was Blue Beetle and I was surprised that got past the year mark. If you're not reading this, you really should be - honest!
• Project Super Powers: Chapter Two #3 - oooooh, didn't see that twist coming - very nicely done, sirs!
• Wednesday Comics #12 - so that's it, all over. Could have sworn I read somewhere it was going to be 16 issues but hey, it was a nice run with, overall, more hits than misses. Hawkman almost got the Cocktail this week for "I had to whittle through."

but the Cocktail this week goes to:

Power Girl shows how to overcome a problem with x-ray vision!

A Little Research Needed

Back in the late 80's, well before the success of 52, Trinity or *cough* Countdown, DC's experiment with weekly comics wasn't as well received.

Action Comics, the one that launched Superman and could be said to have started the whole superhero thing, took their main character and, between #601 and #642, squeezed him into a two page spread while the remaining pages were filled in an anthology style with stories starring other characters. Oh, and they published it weekly.

Action Comics Weekly was an odd title - it had it's minus points like the time when Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show; or there was the laboriously plotted and dreadfully illustrated Black Canary tale Bitter Fruit; but it also had some plus points.

One of them was the gorgeous Mike Mignola cover of #614 shown on the right but there was also that time when Deadman met D.B. Cooper  (who turned out to be the Devil/an alien astronaut); it had Blackhawk doing what he does best (flying planes and trying to pull anything in a skirt); and had Catwoman frame Holly Robinson's husband for the murder of two security guards which she threw out of a hotel room window to their deaths, all in retaliation for him killing Holly.  That's right - Holly died and Catwoman killed people.

Re-reading them recently, though, I did come across something that made me chuckle. I've picked up the woeful attempts of American writers to come up with believable British dialogue before in the Cor Blimey Guv'nor posts and while this isn't speech, it's the same sort of thing:

That's Speedy and Nightwing rushing to save the life of an ambassador who's attending a rally for the Labour party. That's Labour party.

See, over here, we spell that L-A-B-O-U-R.

Don't even get me started on using the Union Flag as a symbol of Labour . . .

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #25

Another Garth Ennis title leads the Cocktail posts this week as Crossed #1 picks up the story a year after where the preview #0 left off. The world's gone to hell, an infection has ravaged the world and most of the population has become evil, depraved sons of bitches, willing to perform any and all types of atrocity. It's certainly not a happy go lucky book with little sign of the black humour that Ennis usually peppers his stories with. This is grim, horrible stuff but it's done so well you can't help but continue reading it. Comparisons to The Walking Dead will be made - a small band of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world - but the titular Crossed, the infected, aren't zombies. There's obviously some intelligence left as they go about destroying the remaining dregs of humanity despite the survivors' best attempts to continue. It's a tough read but well worth it, and the art by Jacen Burrows is gloriously hideous.

Dark Tower: Treachery #2 continues adding to the Dark Tower stories of Stephen King and introduces something that was missing from the original books: a female gunslinger. Or, at least, a young woman who wants to be a gunslinger. Rejected due to tradition, though, young Aileen is unlikely to gain that hallowed title despite her obvious proficiency with a pistol.

The big DC event of the year, Final Crisis, continues with Final Crisis: Revelations #3 with the re-born Cain - lately known as the immortal caveman Vandal Savage - seeks out the Spectre who had been the one to mark him all those years before. The heroes struggle against the people of Gotham who have succumbed to the Anti-Life equation that Darkseid unleashed at the end of Final Crisis #3; Batwoman attacks and almost kills the Question before the Spectre and Radiant arrive and seek sanctuary in a church. Joined by a few survivors, they are soon surrounded by the possessed civilians who wait for the arrival of someone. That, with no surprise, turns out out to be Cain/Savage, who arrives clutching the Spear of Destiny and demands that the Spectre face him so that Cain may have his revenge. Convinced of his powers, the Spectre appears but is more than a little surprised when Cain manages to pierce him with the Spear. Theological debates between the Spectre and the Radiant aside, this is  easily one of the best Final Crisis tie-ins and I can't wait for the next issue.

Talking of "no surprise there," Speedy and Dodger finally get together in the pages of Green Arrow/Black Canary #13 even though Speedy fronts up about her HIV positive status. It's nice to see a genuine romance blossom without Judd Winick feeling the need to make a big deal out of it; both Speedy and Dodger act realistically and while I'm no fan of his drag-a-plot-out-till-it-snaps story telling, he's done well with this. Back at chez Arrow, though, things aren't going that well with the recently revived Connor Hawke who appears to have no memory of himself and at the same time has developed some sort of regenerative ability where wounds heal up in a matter of seconds. That can't bode well.

Love is in the air elsewhere this month, specifically the pages of Green Lantern Corps #29 which really begins to explore the idea of the Star Sapphire Corps. Newlyweds Miri and Kered are heading off on their honeymoon when their ship is attacked by Mongul who raids it looking for food and when challenged almost casually kills Kered before leaving. Guy Gardner and Ice, meanwhile, attempt to find out where their relationship is going but, despite maturing over recent years, Gardner still manages to be a bit of an arse when it comes to Ice. Back at the ship, a distraught Miri plans to kill herself to be with Kered but is found by a Star Sapphire ring and becomes one of, it not the first Sapphire Corps members. Saarek - the Lantern who can talk to the dead - continues his secret mission to find the corpse of the Anti-Monitor while the scarred Guardian who sent him on that mission later has Gardner, Arisia and Sodam Yat head to Zamaron on a diplomatic mission after expressing her dislike of the Zamarons obvious attempt to emulate the Corps. There's a lot going on in this title at the moment and much of it is heading towards the Blackest Night event next year which is shaping up to be really big.

As much as I like Geoff Johns's writing, his secret origin of Hal Jordan which comes to an end in Green Lantern #35 has seemed to drag a little. Still, there's a couple of good points raised in this issue about why the buildings on Oa are all yellow and why the Guardians don't like the Lanterns to fraternise but otherwise the resolution seems a little weak for the length of the story. Still, next is the Red Lantern storyline which ties into Final Crisis.

Ah, I still miss The All New Atom which finished a few months ago, but at least I've now got my Gail Simone fix with Secret Six #2. Charged by an anonymous contact, the team band together to break Tarantula out of Alcatraz prison and escort her across the country to Gotham, knowing full well that every meta-human mercenary will be on their tails. While the breakout starts off well enough, it all goes down the pan fairly quickly and they're left trying to find a way out with a bunch of guards heading towards them. Meanwhile, the mysterious Mr. Junior comes out of his box for once and hires as many mercenaries as he can to capture Tarantula and the Six, offering an enormous bounty. And framing all this is the long-awaited fight between Catman and Batman which has been brewing ever since Simone revitalised Catman in the pages of Villains United. It's peppered with wonderful dialogue with Catman trying to work out why he can smell Mexican food and at the same time Batman attempts to help him and the Six by warning them off the Tarantula gig. This is Simone doing what she does best and I really hope her run lasts longer than The All New Atom.

With The Stand: Captain Trips #2, the adaptation of one of Stephen King's best books continues apace and while I'm enjoying it, it still has the same problem as the first issue - condensing such a huge book means cutting a lot out and it still feels a little rushed. If it's going to be done, why not do it right? But hey, that's just a fan of the book bitching about it as opposed to any complaint about the book itself which still looks gorgeous.

Trinity #19 switches focus this week, with Tarot and Gangbuster stepping up to the main story rather than being the back-up. In the new and alternate world that's been created recently, they need to find a way to bring back the heroes that they now only vaguely remember. On the way they meet a very different Alfred Pennyworth who gives them a little something to pass on to "the head of the J.S.I." - a scroll from the reing of Khufu who (notwithstanding Jim Starlin's recent retcon) was a previous incarnation of Hawkman. The world, meanwhile, struggles to remember the heroes of the trinity with a young woman becoming obsessed with drawing Wonder Woman, convinced that she was real despite the condemnation of her abusive husband. It appears she's not alone as Firestorm briefly arrives - due to him investigating the Cosmic Egg at the time of the reality warping, he still knows things shouldn't be like this.

Not The Dog's Bollocks

I decided to forgo a Cocktail post this week, despite the large number of candidates: Justice Society Of America #14 would easily have won out if only for the best next issue box ever ("Next: Someone gets beat up. Bad."); Booster Gold #8 saw not only the return of Wild Dog and Pantha but promised the return of Justice League International as well; having missed The Punisher #55 last month, I got that and #56 this week; Green Lantern Corps #23 put the pieces in place for what's shaping up to be a really good story; and even Countdown To Final Crisis #3 provided me with a laugh (see the previous post).

Green Arrow And Black Canary #7, however, is what I want to talk about, and not necessarily in a good way.

Judd Winick's writing has been critiqued all over the net this week, primarily because of Titans #1 which I didn't bother picking up. I'm not a huge fan of Winick's but I've tended to cut him some slack over the years. I knew next to nothing by him when he took over Green Lantern back in 2000 but by the time he swapped over on to Green Arrow in 2003 he hadn't exactly endeared me to him. However, I stuck with him primarily for the characters - these are comics I've been reading for God knows how many years - even through the interminable Trials Of Shazam which finally ended a week or two ago with the most obvious reveal of where Zeus had been hiding all along.

Though it may seem like sacrilege to some, I was never into the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans and despite picking up the Titans East Special a couple of months back, thought this was the perfect time not to pick up another Judd Winick comic. Having read several reviews of Titans #1, particularly Newsarama's, I'm kinda glad.

As I've mentioned before, the glorious artwork of Cliff Chiang is one of the main reasons I'm still reading Green Arrow And Black Canary and with the negative reviews of Titans ringing in my ears and Mike Norton taking over on art, it was with some trepidation that I opened #7 (though if that is Norton's work he's doing a damn fine impression of Chiang.) I was pleasantly surprised, then, to read the first five or six pages with Green Lantern gently taking the mick out of Green Arrow just like the long time friends they are. This was banter and dialogue worth reading and I found myself thinking that Winick's not bad every once in a while and that maybe I should have picked up Titans after all.

And then the story moved to London and yet another American take on English dialogue.

Mia's exuberance and cry of "Pip, pip! Cheerio! Bob's your uncle!" are perfectly understandable as is her demand for "fish and chips and whatever the hell bangers and mash are," (for the record, they're sausages and mashed potatoes, usually served in our house with baked beans but they can be dished up with gravy and another vegetable) so I've no problem with that.

No, it's the "Cor blimey, guv'nor!" words coming from the charming villain of the piece, Dodger, that set my teeth on edge.

To Mia: "Geez, luv, isn't it a bit early for a bird like you to be bellying up?" What? Who refers to a woman as "a bird like you" direct to the woman's face? "Bellying up?" What the hell does that mean?

"Lemme buy ya a round." Close, but no cigar. You don't buy an individual person "a round" you buy "a round" of drinks for several people. If there's a bunch of friends in a pub, the general rule is that each person takes it in turn to buy a round for everyone else rather than everyone buying their own drinks.

"Watchin' like they're gonna nick your coat off the rack." It's completely redundant to say "off the rack." I don't think I've ever been in a pub which has a coat rack, and certainly not one in London - neither have I been in a pub in London that had so few customers, either. The place is the capital city of England and is packed with people but team Arrow appears to have found the only country pub in the city.

"Keep your gob shut or it'll be six inches lower." Judd, trust me - no-one has used the term "gob" for "mouth" since about 1988.

Oh and it goes on, as well, more than I can stand.

I really wanted to enjoy the rest of this issue after the excellent first few pages, but it just headed downhill once more. I like the characters and I want to know what happens to Connor but I can't help wishing someone other than Winick would take over as writer.