Monthly archives: August, 2007

Aug132007August 13, 2007August 13, 20071Commentby Fin Fang Doom

Meaningless Awards of the Week- 8/8/07

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Black Adam 1Confirmation of the Week- Black Adam’s still a badass, Black Adam #1

Writer Peter Tomasi showed us this week that despite getting his powers taken away by Captain Marvel (and despite his lackluster appearance in Countdown), Teth-Adam is still a frickin’ badass. First, we see Adam ordering his loyal followers to pummel him for two days straight so that he would be completely unrecognizable. Then he and his crew sneaks back into Kahndaq, and take out a heavily armed UN force with knives and a crowbar in order to retrieve the remains of the extremely decomposed Isis, which he straps to his back for a trek into the Himalayas. While on said trek Adam kills his last remaining follower and feasts on his uncooked lower half, before reaching his destination, a Lazarus Pit, which he uses to bring Isis back from the dead. Even without the powers of six Egyptian gods, Teth Adam is not someone you want to be messing with.

Line of the Week- from X-Factor #22 by Peter David

M, to Siryn: “You have a deep streak of cruelty, Theresa. I’m starting to think we could be friends after all.”

New Excalibur 22Worst Book of the Week- New Excalibur #22

New Excalibur has never been a great book, but it’s always been pretty enjoyable. Chris Claremont’s comic about this England-based superteam has never made headlines at the House of Ideas, but I’ve never once read an issue that made me question whether I should continue to buy the series. Until now.

I’m not sure what happened this issue, but it was just all kinds of bad. Several times characters repeated exactly what they had said in a previous panel almost word for word, once even in the very next panel. After an extremely lackluster fight scene between Excalibur and a bunch of Captain Britain clones, the absolute worst part of the book occurred over the last three pages: there are 17 panels of just Shadow Beast’s face as he’s trying to not die from a clearly fatal sword-through-the-chest wound. There are three reasons this didn’t work: (more…)


Aug122007August 12, 2007August 12, 20071Commentby Doom DeLuise

Book of Doom: Black Adam: The Dark Age #1

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black adam 1I’m not really sure what to say about Black Adam anymore. When we saw him last in 52, he was a faceless drifter, alone and seething with anger over the deaths of his brother and wife. During World War III, he was unable to hold those responsible fully accountable for their actions. He was stripped of his powers and left wandering the cities of Egypt, mumbling magic words to himself in the hopes that he could regain the powers of the gods and avenge those deaths, as was demanded of him by his wife Isis’ final words.

Then, some weeks later, we saw him in Countdown. Still alone, still angry, but this time, he had his powers back, and he seemed more crazy than anything else. Crazy is something that Black Adam has never been. He’s always had a firm understanding of right and wrong, and, more importantly, justice. What happened to his family was unjust, and he would be willing to kill those responsible in order to uphold that virtue. He’s a classic “eye for an eye” type of character, neither good nor bad, but firm in his ability to decide what is just and unjust. He has that ability, because, frankly, he has the powers of gods within him. But in Countdown, he was just plain bonkers, and he gave his powers away to Mary Marvel with one word and disappeared. It was hinted at that his magic word, which Captain Marvel changed during WWIII, was “sorry.” And now, we’re given this six part book to explain to us how he went from hellbent on revenge to completely remorseful to crazy and killing for no reason (another thing he’s never done). This story has some ‘splaining to do!

Yet, in this first issue, we’re presented with a Teth-Adam who is more interested in playing hide-and-seek than he is in standing up for himself. We’re given a man who is more interested in bringing back his dead wife than seeking vengeance against her killers. It just doesn’t add up. I don’t like seeing him smiling in the face of his enemy and calling him, “Sir.” That’s not something the Adam I know would do. But, I’m willing to hold off on any further critique and let them tell their little story, which I will no doubt buy up.

What’s the rest of the Legion have to say about this? (more…)


Aug112007August 11, 2007August 11, 20075Commentsby Doom DeLuise

Countdown: Thirty-Eight: The Podcast

Posted in 52 / countdown / trinity, reviews by

countdown 38[SFX: Podcast of Doom theme music]

DOOM DELUISE: Hello, and welcome to the Legion of Doom’s latest installment of the Podcast of Doom. Welcome to the show. I am your co-host, Doom DeLuise, and this week, we’ve decided to do a very special podcast focused strictly on “Countdown.” Please give a very hearty welcome to my fellow co-host, Jim Doom.

[applause]

JIM DOOM: Thank you, thank you.

[SFX: Music fades out]

DD: I think we can all agree that “Countdown” has failed to live up to even the most mild of expectations, so perhaps we should just get right down to the brass-tacks. What do you say, my fellow Doom? Did you read Countdown this week? It’s actually really, really great. Oh, wait, whoops, I meant the opposite.

JD: I didn’t think it was as awful as usual, but still not any good.

DD: Oh, so you liked the hacker fight?

[audience laughter] (more…)


Aug082007August 8, 2007August 8, 2007NoCommentby Doom DeLuise

Book of Doom: Black Adam: The Dark Age #1

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blackadam1Remember back when Black Adam was the baddest man alive? Public Enemy #1? The cause of World War III? Well, so do I. This new mini-series is supposedly going to fill in the gap between the last time we saw a very angry, hell-bent on revenge, de-powered Teth-Adam in Week Fifty-Two of 52, and when we caught back up with him to find a wimpy, mopey, fully-powered but not wanting to be Black Adam that gave his powers away to Mary Marvel in Countdown: Forty Seven.

I have high expectations for this series, because, if you recall, when they changed his character completely for Countdown, all of the people involved who were interviewed by various media responded by saying that it’ll all be explained in the Black Adam mini-series. Hope they’re right. Come back on Saturday for a roundtable discussion where you can throw in your thoughts on the first issue. Here’s what DC has to say:

Spinning out of the weekly series 52 comes an epic 8-issue mini-series that follows Black Adam, the new über-villain of the DCU!

With the power of the gods stripped from him, Teth-Adam is on a quest to find not only the magical word that will restore him as Black Adam, but also the one thing that always kept his heart from turning completely black with rage.

Black Adam is a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Bialyan citizens and wide spread destruction across the globe. He is a man on the run from Earth’s heroes, who want to see him brought to justice. Some want him tried before a world court, while others want retribution; to exact a pound of flesh for the lives he has snuffed out. And some simply want him dead as quickly and as quietly as possible.


Aug072007August 7, 2007August 7, 20073Commentsby Jim Doom

The Doomino Effect for the week of August 1, 2007

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Hello my little white dots on black fields, and welcome to this week’s Doomino Effect. This week was the first week at my new comic book shop. Last year, I had to find a new comic book shop, and the winner of that search was a great store that I really liked shopping at. Unfortunately, though, they moved to a new location that’s even further than the already long-distance I had to travel, to the point where I couldn’t justify a trip all the way to the other side of the city.

Instead, I now shop at one of the losers in the aforementioned quest. It’s a store that foolishly (in my opinion) buries its new releases in with the older comics, so that it’s a chore to figure out what is new this week and what came out within the previous three or four weeks. They also don’t order nearly as many comics, so this means that the Doomino Effect is likely to be shorter, as I will inevitably miss out on books I would have otherwise picked up. BUMMER.

Speaking of bummers, I’m an idiot and I keep buying Countdown! This week was #39, and I think I finally figured out what we are counting down to. At this pace, the books keep getting progressively stupider and more poorly-drawn, so I’m predicting that issue #0 will be some crayon drawings of what I can only assume are potatoes or rocks bumping into each other.

In this issue, Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl break into Oracle’s hideout. In one of the stupidest moments in home security history, Oracle hides the secret door to her “well-guarded” headquarters behind a giant and very-breakable computer screen. For your next hideout, Oracle, I suggest putting the computer screen on a wall and putting something a little more sturdy than glass in front of the actual door. Granted, that would be more secure, but it wouldn’t allow Master Crapwriter Paul Dini the opportunity to have Karate Kid dramatically crash through the final barrier! Also, Captain Boomerang is simultaneously in the Outsiders and the Suicide Squad and Jimmy Olsen is running around fighting crime in pajamas, which is such an ironic, post-modern take on superheroes!

Speaking of superhero deconstructions, that leads me to Metal Men #1, in which a team of superheroes has been literally broken down into a cast of elements! I kind of thought it might really suck, but I ended up really enjoying the action and interplay between the metal people. I also cracked up at Will Magnus’ presentation. I’m a big fan of robots, but along with pirates, zombies and ninjas, they’re about as camped- and kitched-out as anything could possibly be. I have a feeling that this comic will be a good read based on the premise that these robots have personalities and a purpose and aren’t just riding on that wave of “Hey, look! They’re robots! Robots are so ironically cool!” Substance, baby. Substance is the new irony.
(more…)


Aug072007August 7, 2007August 7, 20079Commentsby Doominator

Warren Ellis is on Astonishing … and it scares me.

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Warren Ellis seems like a decent enough guy. His WarrenEllis.com blog is really entertaining, and full of useless but awesome crap (random pictures, etc.). He’s got a niche fanbase that may not be the size of say, Grant Morrison or Neil Gaiman, but certainly warrants some golf applause.

But here’s the thing. His writing is dense. Not just “dense” dense. Unreadable dense, the kind where fourth or fifth time is a charm trying to read something like “Global Frequency.” On an accessibility scale, Ellis is somewhere around Alan Moore writing in ancient languages.

In books like “Global Frequency,” this served him ok, in a strange way. He writes science fiction based comics. Most of the genre of science fiction isn’t all that accessible. Arthur C. Clarke is pretty dry, and Philip Dick is the author you have to look past the writing for (Kilgore Trout, anyone?) A lot of people like a good science fiction. But what Ellis offers may be a bit too much for “Astonishing X-Men.”
(more…)


Aug062007August 6, 2007August 6, 2007NoCommentby Fin Fang Doom

Meaningless Awards of the Week- 8/1/07

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I just spent the last three days tiling my parent’s basement, so I’m not really feeling up to a long Meaningless Awards this week. Thankfully, not a whole lot of spectacular comics came out this week. There were a few things that deserve recognition, though.

She-Hulk 20Book of the Week- She-Hulk #20

Dan Slott’s She-Hulk has been one of the comics I most look forward to over the past few years. Slott’s been able to mix humor with superheroics and practicing law into a truly unique comic book. She-Hulk #20 was a fitting end to that unique experience.

Slott has a lot of dangling plotlines in She-Hulk that I’m sure he would have eventually gotten to addressing if he hasn’t been giving that gig on Amazing Spider-Man. But instead of leaving those threads for the next writer (which I’m sure incoming writer Peter David could have picked up and ran with), he decided to wrap up almost everything in one issue. This issue wraps up the Artie Zix mystery, the fate of Stu Cicero, the She-Hulk-is-a-space-lawyer saga, the She-Hulk-gave-Hawkeye-a-note-so-he-wouldn’t-get-killed-by-the-Scarlet-Witch paradox, the She-Hulk/John Jameson marriage, the “whatever happened to Awesome Andy?” question, and the mystery of where Southpaw has been for the whole of the second volume. There’s even a few bonus stories, including Stu in Duckworld, the Two-Gun Kid and Hawkeye going for a ride post-House of M, and She-Hulk convincing the Living Tribunal to not replace the 616 universe with a “cleaner, simpler, and more elegant” universe, “the cosmic equivalent of a hot trophy wife,” aka the Ultimate Universe. And it’s all delivered with Slott’s trademark wit.

Much like Gail Simone’s final Birds of Prey from a few weeks ago, She-Hulk #20 was a very satisfying end to a very satisfying creative run. It’s a shame to see Dan Slott leave a title that would have never lasted this long without him, but much like Simone leaving to take on Wonder Woman, Slott’s heading for bigger and hopefully even better things on Amazing Spider-Man.

Splash Page of the Week- Asgard, Thor #2 by Olivier Copiel

Asgard

Old/Sad News of the Week- Irredeemable Ant-Man has been cancelled

Apparently people have been hearing about it for a while now on these wacky internets, but I didn’t realize until reading the letters page in Irredeemable Ant-Man #11 this week that the series will be ending with the twelfth issue. I’ve really been enjoying the series, because there just aren’t enough series out there were the lead character is an irredeemable prick (outside of Iron man, of course), and Robert Kirkman’s sense of humor has worked really well in that situation. Irredeemable Ant-Man will be missed.


Aug062007August 6, 2007August 6, 20072Commentsby Doominator

The X-Men Toys

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For months, Doom DeLuise has been trying to get me to post again. And again. Finally, after he had gone through the blog to correct some transfer troubles, he said to me tonight that I knew too much about X-Men not to post. And it’s true. After a break-up in 2003, I went through and rediscovered the X-Men comics. I had started to read Grant Morrison again, but this jettisoned me into needing something to do, and X-Men comics seemed like the thing to do at the time.

In my hometown, we had a store, briefly open, called Smokey’s Cave. It was neither smokey nor cavernous. But it did have at least three years worth of the Claremont/Silvestri X-Men. Being the only customer (other than the “punk kids” from my school I dragged there to check out the records), these were at my disposal at every paycheck, and cheap to boot. We’re talking a dollar an issue cheap. I bought out what he had, and ran out of things to buy so I started the Ann Notcenti Daredevil, just to support this kindly old man, and my own comic habit. So now, I stand four years after this breakup, and seven years after Smokey’s Cave, and I have a bunch of X-Men comics to show for it, along with an obsessive back cataloged knowledge.

The Claremont/Silvestri run was the consummation of characters I had only read about. I had played as Dazzler in the X-Men arcade game, and knew of all the other members of the Australian team. Quite a few of these were through an X-Men board game with little figurines. In the early days of my comic collecting, circa 1993, the X-Men toys were first coming out. This meant that the characters I saw in the board game, and a few others I had only heard of in the Marvel Universe Series Three cards (which were the paramount of cool at the time) were coming out in figures.

But when you dig through the old toy box of your youth, you realize something – the X-Men figures, so cool at the time, kind of sucked. But you bought every damn one of them. Banshee, who I came along too late to read his actual exploits, was a figure I owned twice. In fact, it was after having owned the figure once that I finally was able to even put him in a place with Uncanny X-Men #304. This was the beginning of Fatal Attractions, and a four dollar issue. Luckily, my cousin had it, and she later gifted it to me. But there he was – Banshee. I owned this stupid whistle toy twice without knowing who he was, because he was THERE, on the shelves with Forge, eight editions of Cable and a Wolverine in Weapon X costume AND jumpsuit edition. (more…)


Aug042007August 4, 2007August 5, 2007NoCommentby Fin Fang Doom

Book of Doom: Thor #2

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Thor 2Earlier this week I remembered this idea for a new Thor series Marvel had right around the time House of M was going on. I’m almost certain it was Mark Millar’s idea, possibly with help by current writer J. Michael Stracynski and some other member of the Illuminati. It involved a group of teenagers being given the powers of the Norse pantheon, operating out of some sort of research complex called “Asgard” in Oklahoma, built around Mjolnir after it fell to Earth. At the time, Marvel was making a habit of using old character names for new teenage superheroes, and the result was almost always bad (anybody read Amazing Fantasy? didn’t think so). Thankfully that idea never got off the ground.

However, it looks like JMS is going with a version of that story for his new series. Most of Thor #2 centers on Thor rebuilding Asgard in the middle of Oklahoma, where Mjolnir fell to Earth way back before all that Civil War nonsense. And at the end of the issue, it looks like the God of Thunder is off to find a bunch of normal folks who have the powers of the Norse gods. So in this version, it’s not teenagers who have the powers, it’s probably the actual Norse gods anyway , and it’s actually Asgard instead of a science complex. They’re somewhat minor changes, but they seem to add up to a much better idea.

Unfortunately, this issue didn’t feature a big fight like I was hoping for on Wednesday when I posted the preview. It did seem like quite an improvement over the previous issue, because stuff actually happened. There were some pretty cool interactions with some of the local yokels, and Olivier Copel got to draw Thor in and around Asgard this time instead of inside a black void. The series seems to be ramping up a little speed already. And the “Next Issue” page has me pretty excited to see what happens in #3. Something tells me Thor’s not going to be very happy with a man that cloned him, made that clone a murderer, and got Captain America killed.

Let’s see what out guest reviewer, CalvinPitt of Reporting on Marvels and Legends, had to say about the issue: (more…)


Aug022007August 2, 2007August 2, 20076Commentsby Doom DeLuise

Countdown: Thirty-Nine

Posted in 52 / countdown / trinity, reviews by

countdown 39Earlier today, I was sitting around thinking of something that I could compare Countdown to, so that even the lay-person who reads these reviews would understand how crappy it is, and I came up with a really creative, totally original idea, all on my own! Have you ever seen the show Big Brother After Dark? It’s on Showtime each night for about three hours, and it follows the lives of the people who live in the Big Brother house. There’s no editing, no storyline, nothing of interest. It’s just a voyeuristic look into these people’s lives with nothing of consequence happening. It’s basically like reading Countdown. There will eventually be a story, I hear, where all the main supervillains are sent to their own private world so that we no longer have to deal with them here on earth. It’s supposed to come out in November, and it will be a lead-in to Final Crisis. Eventually, the storyline with Piper and Trickster will probably wind up leading directly into that series, and that’s where the actual story will take place. Right now, we’re just getting them After Dark. Watching them drink wine and talk about how the Penguin is giving them a place to stay, without anything ever really happening. It’s the same across the board with each character. You could ask me what happened in this issue, and I could tell you the specifics, but, if you really want to know, the real, truthful answer is, “Nothing.” Still, though, let’s break it down “story” by “story,” so that I can tell you the nitty gritty of what “happened.” (more…)