Hopefully you all made it through any storms okay, my American friends! If you did I've got some rubbish about comics for ya.Content! You might not want it, you might not like it but it's there!

G.I. COMBAT #5 Featuring The Haunted Tank Art by Howard Victor Chaykin Story and Words by Peter J. Tomasi Coloured by Jesus Arbutov Lettered by Rob Leigh The Unknown Soldier Art by Staz Johnson Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray Coloured by Rob Schwager Lettered by Rob Leigh The Haunted Tank created by Russ Heath and Robert Kanigher The Unknown Soldier created byJoe Kubert and Robert Kanigher DC Comics, $3.99 (2012)

First up, I have to thank Corey (Ottawa) for bringing this comic to my attention. If it wasn't for our Canadian Contingent I'd not have known the art chores on this were by everyone's favourite filth peddler Mr. Howard Victor Chaykin! I wasn't expecting much here to be honest, I thought he'd probably be busy drawing comics too frisky for the UK to have any electrolytes left over for a book about a, well, a haunted tank. I don't know if it's being able to clip art the shit out of this book due to its emphasis on hardware but the bits that aren't hardware have Howard Victor Chaykin pounding the pages with a barrage of highly entertaining images. Unlike, so I hear, the pounding he's giving the pages in that other (banned) book.

Tomasi gives him a totally stupid story to illustrate involving a nutty veteran clad in The Flag being tank-napped into a supernatural rescue mission while being pursued by Wonder Woman's high-tech ex Steve Trevor. It is nonsensical stuff but, I don't know if you've ever given it much thought but, the whole concept of The Haunted Tank isn't going to win any awards for realism. So why not go wide on the goofiness. Chaykin seems to be enjoying himself and it all comes together a lot more successfully than some of his recent efforts. Not once did Jesus Arbutov's colour work have me reaching to ring the police and at times I was tempted to throw back my head and bellow Blessed-style "CHAYKIN'S AWAKE!!!" Maybe he just enjoyed ringing up his russety pal Russ Heath and irritating him by going "Pop! Just drawn a tank! Pop! Just drew another! These computers are great! Now how long did it used to take you to draw these tanks, Russ? Pop! Drew another! Hey, I ever tell ya I can see the beach from my window?" I don't know, I just really enjoyed his stuff this time out. It was GOOD!

WOLVERINE MAX #1 Art by Roland Boschi & Connor Willumsen Written by Jason Starr Coloured by Dan Brown Lettered by VC's Cory Petit Wolverine created by Len Wein, John Romita Snr and Herb Trimpe Marvel, $3.99 (2012)

While Jason Starr is a good writer of novels and I have also been known to enjoy the work of Roland Boschi the real reason I picked this up was because of Connor Willumsen. He does not disappoint! Boschi's pages seem somewhat rushed and concern the present day Wolverine fighting sharks and having no memory of why he ended up doing that. Also, his legs grow back and everyone is only slightly perturbed by this. Perturbed's too strong a word actually. I know health care professionals are rushed off their feet and are basically the busiest people in show-business and The Japanese are a modest people...but I think two legs growing back, bones and all, would cause more than a raised eyebrow and a muttered aside, suggesting such an event is more a case of exhibitionism than it is straight up miraculous. Jason Starr's handling of Wolverine's talents but in the real world is off to a choppy start is what I'm saying.

Willumsen, however, burns rubber from the off with his flashback scenes which portray Daniel Day Lewis from There Will Be Blood stepping into the original Claremont/Miller mini-series but in a grubbily humming Underground Comix stylee. So amazing are his inky doings that even the writing seems elevated with Victor sounding especially characterful in his disdain for the normals. I would buy this series purely for the further expansion of these elements. I would but Marvel seem to have upset Connor Willumsen so much that he has jumped ship. His work will not be appearing in any subsequent issues of WOLVERINE MAX and so I will not be buying them as without him this comic will be less than GOOD! Well done there, Marvel! Yes, that is sarcasm.

DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS #1 Art by Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz Written by Brian Michael Bendis & David Mack Coloured by Matt Hollingsworth Lettered by VC's Joe Caramagna Daredevil created by Bill Everett and Stan Lee Marvel, $3.99 (2012)

I asked my LCS why they sent this (you're darned tooting I did) and they said it was because I liked Janson and Sienkiewickz, which is true. What they failed to factor in is that ladling the steaming hot writing of Brian Michael Bendis over the top of their efforts is, at this stage in the game, like climbing a stepladder to fart repeatedly right in my face as I admire a Vermeer. It's distractingly puerile and pretty quickly spoils the whole experience. The best bit (i.e. the very worst bit of very many bad bits) is when Ben Urich's (very long, very, very fucking awful) monologue accuses his audience (his readers, geddit!) of not appreciating words. This is super-awesome because he's being written by someone who treats the English language with all the care and attention of a hungover abattoir worker placing his bolt-gun to a steer's head.

This is a writer who seems to have a working vocabulary of, maybe, fifty words and whose solution to every writing conundrum (an introduction to The Incal, an introduction to a HVC art book, a recipe for quiche, instructions on how to install a Norton Commando Boyer ignition etc) is always a chatty, faux-conversational, uninformative, space devouring style which smashes grammar's head in with a brick and is in no way to be taken as an indication of a complete inability to write anything approaching a joined up sentence. Christ, this is why I ask my LCS not to send his (dismal, dismal) stuff. This comic is smug, vacuous, inane, pandering, complacent ineptitude par excellence. This comic is CRAP! I did not like it.

THE INFERNAL MAN-THING #3 Art by Kevin Nowlan Written by Steve Gerber Lettered by Todd Klein Also "...Man-Thing!" from Savage Tales #1 Art by Gray Morrow Written by Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas Man-Thing created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow Marvel, $3.99 (2012)

And so we close the comic and close the curtain on one Steve Gerber as he defies the laws of nature and reality to bow out of comics for the final time, some four years after his physical death. As we bite back the tears lets allow a manly clap on the back for Kevin Nowlan who did Gerber proud twice over with beautifully considered art to which he then applied a thoughtful and innovative colour palette. Together with this final VERY GOOD! chapter of Gerber's playful, humane and imaginative end-song Marvel have also included Manny's first appearance. Whether placing an ending with a beginning together in such close proximity is Marvel's way of acknowledging the Cycle of Life or just another attempt to squeeze a property until the pips squeak we'll probably never know. (Steve Gerber would have known.)

FATALE #8 By Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker With colours by Dave Stewart Fatale created by Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker Image, $3.50 (2012)

I've not been impressed with this series so far but I will admit that while this issue still wasn't terribly good it was a whole lot better. Maybe it had something to with a sudden upswing in the density of incident or the fact that Phillips' art seemed more lively since he was given a couple of occasions on which to strut his stuff style-wise. I still don't find it to be convincingly evocative of a time and place; it'll take more than some beards in a VW van to make me swoon at the authenticity of the '7os vibe, man. At times I can almost smell the spirit glue holding all the sideburns on. Most deflating of all is the fact that the series is still hamstrung by bizarrely conservative and old-fashioned sense of horror (tentacles! men in robes with daggers! cemeteries!) which means the horror is never actually, well, horrible.

The humourlessness of the whole thing has also struck me recently; this was unfortunate because I then realised I couldn't recall one incidence of humour in all the work I've read by this author. That's a lot of pages in which to not crack a smile. Maybe it's me. Senses of humour are personal after all but still the funniest thing in FATALE #8 is when the rather tasteless competition in the lettercol results in one John Cleaver out writing this whole series with just one paragraph. Mind you, if any readers do want to send me pictures of them crying while they remember horribly traumatic events from their lives they are welcome to do so(*). Get really close in there so I can see the fat bulbs of those tears bloating from your sad ducts, kids! The winner could receive a pen! So, yeah, this issue was OKAY! and you can buy it from The Savage Critics Digital Shop...here! (Although if more than 10% of the comics reading audience do so a big red light starts flashing and Brian Hibbs starts rushing everyone to the shelters as AROOOGA! AROOOGA! echoes rounds his shaggy head. It's a true fact, cats and kittens!)

(*) Don't do this. It's a joke.

ACTION COMICS #13 Featuring... Superman in..."The Ghost In The Fortress of Solitude" Art by Travel Foreman Written by Grant Morrison Coloured by Brad Anderson Lettered by Steve Wands Superman in..."A Boy And His Dog" Art by Brad Walker (p) & Andrew Hennessy(i) Written by Sholly Fisch Coloured by Jay David Ramos Lettered by Patrick Brosseau Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster DC Comics, $3.99 (2012)

It's strange the connections your mind makes. In my head Morrison's recent callous remarks regarding the treatment of Siegel and Shuster and the portrayal of animals throughout his work suggests to me one of those lovely people who care more for the feelings of animals than those of people. Which is all really cuddly on the surface until you press them on the issue and they suddenly hiss at you that people deserve what they get! Which I find a less than generous rationale and more than a little confusing in its mix of sentiment and insensitivity. Almost as confusing as this comic which I have a strong suspicion makes no sense but as I too have a soft spot for tales of the gud dog I'll let its muddled nature pass this time and say this comic was OKAY!

So yeah, those were certainly some words about what I believe scientists are now calling COMICS!!!

Four superhero books below that cut!

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #12: Man, it would be nice to have a Marvel crossover once that ended right. I don't know what frustrates me more: Captain America's extraordinary hypocrisy in the face of the breaking point he engendered, or why no one is asking about what happens with all of the *good* stuff that the Phoenix Five engineered (food, energy, water, worldwide). but, these are superhero comics, and superhero comics don't like dealing with ramifications, do they? Like I said back at the review of #1, this comic clearly is reviewer-proof; nothing I could say or do would impact it's entire success as a commercial juggernaut -- I'm certainly selling twice or more copies of AvX than I do of either of the component characters any longer.

The thing is, I'm afraid that this series fundamentally broke the X-Men -- what are they any longer?

With Xavier dead, the mutants no longer an "extinct race", Cyclops considered a super-villain, what's presumably the world's stock of Sentinels melted down (along with all of the battleships and nuclear weapons in #6) "Uncanny Avengers", and so on -- well, what's next? Where can you go from here? The core metaphor might still have need today -- but can the X-Men still be the spirit of alienation in any clear way when mutants are now responsible for bringing peace and food and water to Africa, y'know? I have my doubts, especially because the first new x-book off the blocks this week is actually an Avengers title, and the "flagship" X-comic is going to be a time-travel story, which doesn't even sound remotely sustainable to me as an ongoing monthly.

At the end of the day, I thought AVENGERS VS X-MEN #12 was pretty AWFUL. Though I doubt that's any real surprise to anyone out there. I also thought that the X-Men "won", in that Cyclops was right, and his species is now viable again... even though they're left at the end as being a largely irrelevent concept in the Marvel Universe. Funny how those things work out.

AVX #6: As a modern piece of comedy, I thought this was generally pretty darn GOOD. "Captain America is level 15 in Guilt Trips," indeed! Though the Hawkeye sexploitation dream was pretty dang grody, and prevented the book from scoring higher.

DAREDEVIL END OF DAYS #1: I was originally looking forward to this, because on paper, at least, it sounds good: Bendis, Mack, Janson, Sienkiewicz all back on Daredevil for one final story. Too bad the result is a gory mess, with multiple scenes of people beating each other to death. Yay, comics? Overall the art, mostly Jansen being inked by Sienkiewicz, has the worst of each artist's tics, though there are a few nice and painted panels that entirely work. Seeing those lovely panels make the rest of the book look that much worse, sadly. Pretty AWFUL.

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #1: So, this is a collection of Batman stories that, as far as I know, ran as digital content before being collected here. This is the fourth (fifth?) "re-purposed" digital comic, and, at my store at least, sales have all been uniformly awful on these books, but I can't tell if it is the chicken, or if it is the egg. Batman, in serialization, is going through a pretty nice period right now -- BATMAN itself is my top selling DC comic. and all five of his monthly books are selling at least 25 copies a month for me. This one? I sold 2 copies in week 1, and I'm not expecting that to grow in any manner I'm willing to carry the risk on. So, is LDK flopping out because it is digital first, and people don't want leftovers? Or is it flopping because it's Batman-led comic #6? Or is it flopping because it is shitty?

There are three stories here, one by Damon Lindelof & Jeff Lemire which is close to the worst Batman story I've ever read being, I think, a "what if?" of "What If Batman was an arrogant drunk?" Hrf?!? The second two stories are kind of NEW TALENT SHOWCASE teaming newer writers with solid artists (JG Jones, Nicola Scott) -- but the stories aren't any great shakes, neither rising above what you might hope for in a new talent anthology series: not shitty, exactly, but not so great either. At least not for $4.

The bigger problem, for me, is that these comics are kind of the "proof of concept" for the problem of what you do for natively-digital work when the iPad landscape/computer monitor being different proportions from the printed page. Mark Waid was the first person I ever heard who said, "Duh, just plop the two screens on top of each other, and your back to normal proportions", and I thought he was genius when he said that.

Except... now I've seen what it looks like in practice. It is... not very good.

So, first, if you're even slightly aware of it, you can "see" the weld made on each page as writers are aiming the "beat" for the bottom-rightmost panel of each "page", except each page now has two of THOSE, and it TOTALLY blows the "rhythm" of the comics page.

Second, because you have to present the page smaller than it displays on monitor/iPad, it feels oddly cramped, with too-small lettering.

Third, it really shows just how limited the landscape format is for density-of-content -- It is hard to cleanly fit more than 4 "panels" on any "page", then, which gives you an extremely limited number of choices of page layout and panel arrangement. then you see that twice on each printed page, and it is kind of a mess.

So, I guess now I really don't think that digital comics can be reformatted to print in this way without kind of crashing out the beauty and strength of the real unit of comic books: the page. I thought the Lindlehof story was AWFUL, but the rest was decent enough it could drag the entire book closer to an EH.

That's me, what did YOU think?

-B