Hibbs & The Single 11/30 (part 2)

OK, so not "Wednesday or Thursday", but here's the balance of the week... ARCHIE #627: Archie meets Kiss, huh? Can I say that Archie has changed quite a bit since the days of this...

or this one....

The plot in this issue has the Archie Gang hanging out with Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (who has disturbingly off-Archie-Girl-model eyes and nose!), and they decide to cast a spell in order to protect the town from Monsters (this is a Very Legitimate Concern that many of today's teenagers face!). I mean, they literally sit in a circle and cast a spell! Man, I hope for Archie's sake that the Fundies don't get word of this -- I'm a godless liberal from San Francisco, and even I was pretty shocked that the Gang was personally involved in witchcraft. For very poorly motivated reasons, however, Veronica and Reggie instead decide that THEY should be the one to cast the spell, but instead of a "Protection" spell, she reads a "Projection" spell, instead (oh, that Ronnie! How scampish!), leading to Riverdales being infested by Archie-d versions of Universal monsters. Then Kiss shows up to stop the monsters, but you'll have to wait until next issue to see if they do that without inadvertently killed Principal Weatherbee.

Y'know, like how Kevin Keller proved so popular as to spin out from his initial appearance in VERONICA? I'd be oddly pleased if Archie Comics launched an ongoing Kiss comic. I wouldn't buy it (this was pretty AWFUL, and lacking in story logic, even for an Archie comic), but it would still make me laugh.

BOMB QUEEN VII #1: Alternate future story where like a League of Shadowhawks protect the world? And then a gender-bending projection of Bomb Queen's personality takes over some dude? I personally would expect that the usual audience for the pro-camel toe comic is going to seriously dislike this comic. I didn't like it either, but it wasn't for the dramatic drop in the cleavage-on-display ratio -- it's because anything this series had to say was probably said back before the third series concluded. Dramatically EH.

FABLES #111: I haven't read an issue of FABLES in some time (I got really dramatically burned out during that Mary Sue-d War plotline, and this isn't the start of a storyline, so I was fairly lost. But Buckingham can sure draw, can't he? Willingham and Buckingham have to be pretty close to matching Stan & Jack's run on FF, don't they? Despite not being sure what exactly was going on, I still liked this passably: it seemed OK to me, and I was especially pleased to see that it even had a letter's page. Why can't the mainline DC books pull that trick properly?

FUTURAMA COMICS #58: Nice dense issue, with lots of stuff happening. I laughed! low GOOD.

GREEN LANTERN THE ANIMATED SERIES #0: I was fully prepared to hate the cartoon, with it's low-rent CGI animation (I dislike cartoons that inherently look like toy commercials), but Ben and I were both generally amused by the pilot. But it's got a weird-ass setup -- instead of being Hal-specific and doing his rogue gallery on Earth; or being Corps-specific and using all of THAT mythology, instead they decided to essentially do GREEN LANTERN: VOYAGER, sending Hal and Kilowog as the only two lanterns out on the far fringe of the universe away from any support, in a talking ship, while they fight Species 8742 (Or whatever it was called), er, I mean the Red Lantern Corps. Strange premise. This comic is even weirder as it takes that premise, but renders it with a non-CGI look, effectively gutting its value as a tie-in. It was serviceable, but hardly exciting. EH.

LEGION SECRET ORIGIN #2: I don't need to read most of this. It isn't bad, really, but I just don't see the wisdom of having three distinct Legion-based series running at once. The property simply isn't that strong. A low OK

PILOT SEASON THEORY OF EVERYTHING #1: I'm starting to get sick of these, as a reader, because if I like it, there won't be any more; and if I hate it, I just wasted my time. Why do all of the work in building a premise and a world, that there won't be any follow up upon? This one is more in the latter camp, anyway. EH.

SPACEMAN #2: Super terrific work, all around -- Risso draws like a dream. VERY GOOD.

SUPER DINOSAUR #6: Ben loves this book, and I like it solidly, and I have nothing else meaningful to say! Strongly OK.

TINY TITANS #46: I know it's a kid's book, but I boggle when I see that this comics is effectively an inside joke based on this comic:

If you had a newborn the year this was released, that child would be twenty-eight today. Wow, long way to go for a joke! This comic also features the REAL identity of the "Mysterious Purple Lady" from the New52 comics, and, y'know what? I like this explanation Best of All! This is a slight slight comic, but I kinda liked it a lot -- a solid GOOD.

That's it for me for the week.  What did YOU think?

-B

Ben's asleep now!

The best part of him climbing up on the shelf is that he doesn't have the foggiest notion of how to get himself down, so he'll start crying about that, and I haul him to mother earth, and what does he do? Yeah, try to get back there right away. He understands there IS gravity, but he doesn't quite get how it works yet....

Still, I got him down for his afternoon nap, so back at my in-box....

KINETIC #5: There were a couple of books that really REALLY made me wish I had a column during the hiatus -- issue #4 of Kinetic was one of those. Wonderful quiet story about the reactions of his mother as her world shatter and changes around her, and all of her preconceptions are discarded in a moment. Kinetic started really slow, probably too slow, but it has really come into its own now, and is one of the most emotionally satisfying comics on the stands. This is "the next Sleeper" or "the next Runaways" -- the kind of book no one is reading, but they really should because they'd just love it if they did. Very Good.

FANTASTIC FOUR #516: I liked the first part of the arc, I thought the second was OK, but here at part three, I think it should have been a done-in-one. Nothing wasn't said here that wasn't said last issue. Eh.

SUPERMAN #207: This book is running the trajectory almost exactly opposite Lee's Batman run -- started strong (though less so than we anticipated), but it's bleeding readers every issue. I kinda don't even think this will be Top 10 by issue #12. Far too much blabity-blab talking about stuff that only tangentially matters ("faith" is a great topic for Superman to undertake -- setting it in this context robbed it of almost all of it's real-life human resonance). After six issues of Batman and 4 of this I think it's fair to declare what we all guessed going in -- Azzarello really doesn't "get" how to write super heroes. (which is fine, not everyone should / does)  Lee is a great artist, but the underlying material is so unremittingly dull and oddly paced that I just have no interest in this. Eh

SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT #12: And so the stealth reboot ends. I sadly found the whole thing to be a bit preposterous, and largely unnecessary -- this last bit of Luthor's big master plan was just dopey, and wrapped with a real whimper. Plus, trying to fit it into continuity with the offhand "You know Luthor will find a way to beat the charges" just hurt my tiny little head. I really don't think this added anything new or majestic to the legend, so foo. On the other hand, the last two pages, though slightly torturously arrived at, where a really touching bit of "closure" on the K-side. I liked that so much that I'm going to be a big softie and give the whole thing an OK.

FUTURAMA #18: Reasonably funny (Go, Ian Boothby, go -- how come I'm the only reviewer who ever says what a fabulous writer this guy is?), but doing extended storylines in a quarterly comic book is really a bad idea. Good.

DC COMICS PRESENTS HAWKMAN #1: I really thought the first three of these (Batman, Adam Strange, and GL) were really awful, so I'm glad to say this one was pretty charming. The Cary Bates story (w/ Byrne) brought back Earth-Prime (Did Cary "invent" that? I have strong memories of him starring in a JLA one... but I'm not sure if that is the first one) and the Kurt Busiek (w/Simonson) one had a decent Silver Age "feel", and ended on a sweet note. This isn't great comics, but it's decent stuff, and the strongest of the batch. OK.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #3: Joss has, I think, found his legs (fingers?) with the characters -- some razor sharp characterization, and some really fun scenes (Scott and Nick Fury aboard the Helicarrier, or the excellent Danger Room sequence) made this issue crackle. This is the first time I think I've ever found Scott an agreeable personality, because too often "all work" = "boring dick". Not here. This is great stuff, and I think I might even like this better than the mad-wild Morrison run. Excellent.

Right, that's it for the mo... gotta read more, but since Ben is asleep and Tzipi is out, I'm going to go grab an hour of City of Heroes instead. Probably a bit more tonight.

-B