Say it, don't spray it: Hibbs on 3/14 part 1

A couple of quick reviews is all I have for you today, leaving out "event" books until later: TEEN TITANS #44: No, sir, I did not like it. Lots of "Torture the Titans" scenes, without any real depth to them, and a big really badly paced and -stage battle around that. There's a bunch of hand waving and a magic potion to "explain" why Batgirl's been Out Of Character lately... and that's about that. THe next issue blurb says "The Wilson Family Reunion", as though that isn't the program that we JUST saw, and there's some painfully bad dialogue (esp the "contact" sequence -- that never was something that was SAID, it was a narrative caption device, sheesh!). It just made me wince all the way through, from start to finish. AWFUL.

WONDER WOMAN #5: On the one hand this was kind of a nice story about symbols and how abused women can use them to get help, but on the other, it really devolves into Wondy punching a horrifically cliched character. It's pretty much filler material. I'd've hope they would have abandoned the "Diana has to hunt Wondy" element, since it really just doesn't work, isn't compelling, and makes everyone involved look really really stupid. BUt I think what pisses me off the most is there's no mention, NOTHING about what happened to part 5 of the opening story, or anything related to that. Does DC now just assume that 100% of their audience reads Newsarama? They're wrong. This was very EH.

JLA CLASSIFIED #36: Wow, I don't think I could have come up with a shittier (and more confusing) ending if I had tried. AND, its double-szed to boot. CRAP.

BLADE #7: This is really becoming one seriously strange book, you know that? Blade's lost his hand, and he's fighting a uber-Vamp in a priest's outfit, and it flashes backwards and forwards, and (*boggles*) Howard Chaykin is still drawing it (but turning in what have started to become lovely examples of his work, at the same time), and there just isn't an audience for Blade, yet they still keep trying. I'd have liked it a lot more if it didn't seem like it was seriously cribbed from Buffy, with the uber-vamp, and the necklace that prevents you from staking one, and all. I can't recommend this book, at all, but it has its charms, and is growing on me little by little... let's call it barely OK.

ANT-MAN #6, MOON KNIGHT #8, MARTIAN MANHUNTER #8: All of these books have thoroughly unlikable protagonists, and I dislike all of them for it. EH, EH, and AWFUL, respectively.

GRIFTER & MIDNIGHTER #1: More like "half a Midnighter comics and half a Grifter comic" -- there didn't seem to be any readily apparent connective tissue between the two, and nothing here had be thinking "Wow, better come back for #2!". Unrelentingly EH.

CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #2: There's some Ennis-being-Ennis here, but I'm not feeling any affection for the lead. Which is what you really need when six shades of nasty shit is going on all around them. Still this is highly OK work anyway.

Right. More tomorrow (my heart wasn't in this tonight, can you tell...?)

-B