I'm tired and I'm sick: Graeme makes it to the end of the week, just, 8/22.

Goddamn, but my ass is getting kicked by this week already. Is this some kind of weird karma for the fact that there's a holiday weekend coming up, or am I just cursed?

BATMAN #668: More than anything else, this three-parter that JH Williams is illustrating makes me very excited for the rumored Morrison/Williams creator-owned book that the two are apparently planning - What makes this Very Good has nothing to do with Batman whatsoever, and everything to do with the way the two creators play around with the comic format and visual identities of different parts of comic history. Which isn't to say that I'm not into this particularly-Avengers-esque (that's Steed and Mrs. Peel Avengers, not the Iron Man and Captain America ones) story, just that it's almost more exciting to imagine what else the two could get up to, in other circumstances.

COUNTDOWN #36: Yet again, the series gets to the point where - for the plot to get where it's supposed to go - the characters have to act like idiots. Zatanna really calls Mary Marvel a brat who needs to get spanked? The Justice League seriously meet with Jimmy Olsen about his joining the team? What? Seriously? Blah and Crap, really.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #15: I love the craziness of this whole comic; I mean, there's a sentient planet that's being attacked by an evil sentient city that manages to disrupt the planet's gravity and tear it apart, which is not something you see every day. It's got the dumb insanity and overwhelming sense of everything-happening-at-once that something like Infinite Crisis had, but without the feeling that you have to read seven different comics to get what's going on, which makes it pretty much the definition of Good superhero emergency comics for me.

THE SPIRIT #9: Just like a Buffy episode as we head into the last third of a season and it all starts tying together, plots from earlier issues come back to haunt poor Denny this time around. It's a shame to think that Darwyn Cooke's leaving the book so soon, considering the consistently Very Good work he and J. Bone put into this series issue after issue - Maybe I'm greedy, but I'd love to see this kind of thing all the time.

SUPERMAN #666: Kurt Busiek really gets the old-school Superman thing even as he updates it, something that this devilish little treat proves handily; it's relatively throwaway and - if you ignore all the murderin' and stuff - reasonably light, but no less enjoyable for all that, partially for the injokes and fun of seeing Mean Superman, and partially for the joy of Walt Simonson's bold and exciting artwork. It's not the kind of Superman story I'd want to read on a regular basis, sure, but as a special Satanic one-off? Hellishly Good.

TANK GIRL: THE GIFTING #3: Who knew that an Ashley Wood/Jamie Hewlett collaboration would look like that, that's what I want to know. And something else I want to know - Just who is Rufus Day-Glo, now credited with layouts on the book? He(?) really has a Hewlettish touch to his(?) stuff, whoever it is... Otherwise, the series continues along the "pretty, but ultimately unfulfilling" road that it's been on since the first issue - Maybe we need some Philip Bond in the fourth issue to balance things out. Eh

Tomorrow: We return and begin again, sadly...