Meaningless Awards of the Week- 12/20/06

Book with “Criminal” in the Title of the Week- Criminal Macabre: Two Red Eyes #1

Yes, there was more than one this week. Ed Brubaker’s Criminal also came this week, and was good enough to merit me buying another issue. Criminal Macabre, the continuing series of mini-series starring supernatural freelance detective Cal MacDonald, has also been inching its way towards the chopping block recently. In fact, Two Red Eyes was going to be the last mini I bought unless it turned out to be something great. And wouldn’t you know it, it turned out to be something pretty great. It was just the right mix of humor, horror and noir for me to really get a kick out of it. It looks like Cal’s even getting a bona fide villain this time around, instead of a having some non-specific monster/mobster as an antagonist like he usually does.

Line of the Week- The Thing, from Fantastic Four #541 by J. Michael Stracynski

“I’m okay [wiping a tear from his eye]. It’s just..it’s just like the old days. Back when there weren’t all these conspiracies and you knew who the good guys were, and the bad guys were, and there wasn’t this…this…freaking Civil War!”

Amen to that, brother.

Superhero/Lawyer of the Week- Manhunter

Edging out She-Hulk by a nose, Kate Spencer emerges as the top crime-fighting double threat of the week. I’ve read a grand total of three comics featuring Manhunter (the last two issues of Birds of Prey and the last issue of Manhunter), but she’s quickly becoming one of my favorite characters. In BoP #101, Manhunter stages another assault on the prison that the BoP infiltrated last issue, and looks damn cool doing it.

Writer of the Week- Gail Simone

Every since One Year Later in March, Birds of Prey has ranked up there with Supergirl & The Legion of Superheroes, Superman, Detective Comics and Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis as the DC titles I most look forward to every month. The new direction Gail Simone’s taken the title (after she was assumedly ordered to remove Black Canary from the team so she could be in Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America) has been great, especially since it spotlights non-A-listers like Judomaster, Big Barda, and the aforementioned Manhunter. Secret Six finally wrapped its 6-issue run this week, and was a really fun read. It certainly helps that more than one person on the team is quite clearly insane. Mad Hatter was a great addition to the cast, and I’m interested to see how he’ll operate as the villain in a future mini-series or maybe even an ongoing.