Worst to First: 4/25/07

How best to describe this week in comics? Well, paltry fits pretty well. I read a handful of books and a few lucky fellas were buy worthy. Also, for some reason my shop didn’t have Crossing Midnight or Shazam, which certainly would’ve helped things out. So, here’s my very brief and more-than-mildly-disappointed recap of the week, from utter detritus to grand champion…

Worst: City of Others #2

Ummm, wow. This book is horrible. The characters all are drawn like the worst of the mid-90s generic crap. The plot is absent. The dialogue and monologues are cringe-worthy. If this book were just this much worse, I would think it was a nicely done parody by the folks at Boom! Studios. Sadly, that is not the case.

Confusing, irrelevant and terrible: Amazons Attack #1

What in the flying Samuel Adams is going on here? I know this may sound shocking, but Wonder Woman has been the most poorly managed character since Infinite Crisis. And no, I’m not forgetting the turdball that was Bruce Jones’ run on Nightwing. Agent Prince, as she’s being called, has bounced between writers with little coherent plot entering the picture. She’s apparently in fed custody now, which has prompted the Amazons to Attack. But didn’t they disappear in Infinite Crisis? How did they mobilize in the middle of D.C. without claiming a single victim, and why then did they randomly decide to whack a couple tourists?

Apparently war is in the air for all our favorite comics publishers. Call me when Gail Simone comes in and we can all pretend the past year didn’t happen.

Jury’s out till Saturday: Fallen Son

This is our Book of Doom. So, as usual, you have to wait to see my thoughts on the matter.

The song that wouldn’t end: Justice #11

I’m pretty sure I was getting bored with this book about eight months ago. It’ll really just have to wait until I can sit down to read the whole dang thing straight through before a final verdict. Anyway, it seems like we’ve had six straight issues of fighting and I don’t even begin to remember everything that’s going on. I like Alex Ross as much as the next guy, but I think this will end up being one of his more forgettable works.

The song that’s almost done: 52 #51

The penultimate chapter is here, and for a full recap, head over to Doom DeLuise’s weekly review. I liked most everything here, aside from the hero gathering that seemed like far too non-meaningful of an event following what was supposed to be one of the biggest events in the history of the world. Half the world died at the hands of a lunatic super villain. So it goes.

First: Daredevil #96

Sure enough, Mr. Brubaker (yes, he deserves the title) has risen back to the top despite my doubts about last issue’s arc-opener. I realized that what Brubaker is doing with this Gladiator storyline is pulling things back into more of a smaller-scope story. I’d grown so accustomed to the grandiose events of the past several years of Daredevil that the sudden change in tone caught me a bit off guard. Now, I see it as a good move made better by the fact that the story is really interesting and is superbly done. Of course, with Brubaker and Michael Lark involved, that’s somewhere far short of surprising.