Two For Thursday, by Hibbs

I know you don't care about my excuses (why would you?), but, man taking Ben to the dentist in the AM, and following that with a park trip (MAN, was it a god-damn lovely day at Walter Haas today! More cute moms then I have seen in a long time!), then his nap, then work, the home to try and catch up on news-in-comics-today that I couldn't do in the morning, and the big pile of mounting emails, and geez, it's already 10 pm, and I still have 2 hours of work in front of me at least. Sheesh. So just 2 more books here, as fast as I can.

I'm going to keep with a "Dwayne McDuffie" theme today, since it's apparently "Dwayne McDuffie week" since he also had two OTHER (other than my last reviewed FF) comics out this week -- FIRESTORM #34, and ACTION #847.

ACTION #847: If I recall what the original plan we retailers were told about, before they started injecting more issues in before we get the end of the "SUPERMAN III" (heh) story in what appears now to be #851 (4 months of fill in, wow), there was only supposed to be 1 issue gap in publishing, and this was that story. As such, McDuffie tries to frame it as happening concurrently with "S III", and does a pretty good job disguising its fill-in nature. It is big, it is fun and full of Action, and it makes Superman a heavy-hitter bad ass, without necessarily raising things to a "then he pushed the planet out of orbit" state. So rah rah, hurray, and all that. On the other hand, my suspension-of-disbelief meter dipped into the red of the idea of Clark taking an old man with a history of heart attacks (or am I mixing my continuities?) into deep space in an experimental piece of technology (yes yes he says he used it before, but I mislike off-camera stuff). I also really don't like the idea of Superman ALSO having an "invisible plane", y'know? Still, really those are minor quibbles in what was both an action-packed and emotional story, and I'll go with a low GOOD.

FIRESTORM #34: This one, on the other hand, I didn't care much for. Part of it, like I've said before, is my general wariness around the New Gods and their semi-overuse (this week's HAWKGIRL is also a NG story, and clearly NG is a substantial part of the soon-to-be COUNTDOWN), and I also thought Firestorm himself was too jokey -- read more like Ronnie Raymond, now that I think of it, then what I've thought of as Jason's voice. Also, I'm reading this knowing there's just one more issue to go, and there's a lot of inter-personal stuff that needs to be, if not tied up, at least brought to some conclusion for Jason's character. No real progress in this issue for any of that. So, yes, I have my biases, but this still felt tragically EH to me.

Right, back to the Big List of Things That Have to Get Done.

What did YOU think?

-B