A Few More Reviews of Old Books....

And then I'll get out of the way of Brian and the new batch of books.

BATMAN THE TWELVE CENT ADVENTURE: There were a lot of typos in this. For example, I think the title is supposed to be SPOILER: THE TWELVE CENT EXPOSITION. Eh.

BLUE MONDAY: PAINTED MOON #2: I like Blue Monday so much more when the humor comes from the characters and not the magical talking leprechauns or imaginary fart-monkeys or whatever. Consequently, I thought this was the best issue I'd read in some time. Very Good.

CATWOMAN #33: A great idea for a story format, and I loved the individual title cards, but at least two of the stories are told so quickly they have no weight to them--it's the classic "telling, not showing" problem. A little less ambition might have actually served Brube better here. Eh.

CONAN #6: The art is shockingly uneven, but I liked the story for what it is. Which is, y'know, Conan. OK.

DC COMICS PRESENTS HAWKMAN: The first story has some of the best Byrne art I've seen in a few years--he really breaks away from his standard panel layouts here. But the second story was just too busy for me--too much going on in Walt's art and too much going on in Kurt's story: I found myself just glossing right over it. Eh.

DC COMICS PRESENTS SUPERMAN: I liked both of these stories, with Stan turning in dialogue that's very, very funny in the first one. And Giffen's artwork was much less--claustrophobic, maybe?--than it's been in some time. Good.

RICHARD DRAGON #3: Probably personal preference on my part, but Scott McDaniel's art seems too weightless to me--I just don't feel any sense of impact from all the bone-crunchings and eye-gougings. And I think Dixon is setting his story up to have his cake and eat it too--it looks like there's gonna be a way to acknowledge the old series and its ties to Bat-continuity and get new characters out of this--but because it's appearing three issues in, it's too late for me: rather than intrigued, I've had time to get distrustful and bored. Eh.

SUPERMAN #207: "They didn't stand a chance, let alone a trial!" Wha? Does anyone "stand a trial?" Don't they just "stand trial?" It seems to me if Jim Lee is going to spend a year drawing your story, you'd spend more than twenty minutes writing it (although to be fair, that line might be the victim of a dashed-off rewrite). I found both stories in the Phantom Quarterback issue of DC Comics Presents more enjoyable than any of the Azz/Lee issues to date, and it's a damn shame. Awful.

X-STATIX #25: It's no Iron Man and Mr. Sensitive fighting nude in a field, sadly. Eh.

Y THE LAST MAN #25: There's a whole long thesis to be written about why Brian Vaughan's dialogue is clever and why Brian Azzarello's is merely showy and fake, but I'm too lazy at the moment to write. Vaughan should be careful though, because his work is moving a bit in the wrong direction. Good.