Best Surprise of 2007
Doom DeLuise says: ASSBAR!
The Goddamn Batman started “regularly” shipping, and now that I have accepted it for what it is, I’ve found it to be wildly entertaining. This ain’t your daddy’s Batman, fanboys.
Jim Doom says: ASSBAR!
ASSBAR is good.
Upon reviewing ASSBAR #5, I got my first glimpse of thinking that this awful series might end up being something worth reading.
I said at the time, “I think we’re all guilty of loving Batman a little too much, because I think we all go through a phase of where we want to be Batman. He’s rich, he’s a ladies man, he has awesome gadgets and he gets to go out and fight crime. But what we often overlook is the fact that he puts on a bat costume and spandex and leaps through the night.
There’s a necessity for a certain maniacal side to him that is usually left out of comic books because I don’t think many writers want to treat him that way. If Batman is ever written with any flaws, it’s that he’s too paranoid or too judgmental. Basically he’s too much of a tough guy. But really – think about it. Batman may have some good excuses to do what he does, but ultimately he decides to put on a funny costume and fight crime. Frankly I love that someone is taking the character to the extreme that I really don’t think other writers have had the courage to do…
I’m not saying it’s the way Batman should be written, but I do think that Miller is writing him in the way that most other writers are too afraid to write him, in spite of the fact that it’s just as believable take as the cold detective we get in the mainstream DCU. Whether it’s the All-Star universe or Miller’s celebrity status that allows it to happen, I’m actually kind of excited to read this take on the character.”
That only continued to prove itself throughout the rest of the year. We only got 4 issues in 2007, but I am really looking forward to wherever this goes. I would have never guessed that after dropping the book in disgust after issue 2 or 3.
Honorable mention: Messiah Complex is pretty good.
Considering the abundance and insignificance of the X-Men crossovers in the 1990s is what motivated me to just give up on comic books, it’s nice that an X-Men crossover is not only readable, but pretty good. The New X-Men chapters are weak, and surprisingly, the Uncanny X-Men chapters aren’t that great either, but Peter David is doing well on X-Factor and I’m surprisingly pleased by how well X-Men is propelling the series, considering my disappointment with X-Men #200 almost kept me from trying this crossover at all.
This has the feel of an X-crossover from the 1980s – Fall of the Mutants or Mutant Massacre or Inferno – in which the events are serious and meaningful. I suppose it’s no surprise that the Marauders and Mr. Sinister are in center stage.
Doominator says: the death of Captain America!
That Captain America is dead. Dead dead. Not just comics dead. For now. They should let him stay dead. Barry Allen dead. Forever. Not because I hate Captain America. This just makes things more interesting.
Fin Fang Doom says: The Sinestro Corps War Special
I wasn’t really expecting a whole lot of the Sinestro Corps War when I first heard about it. I knew it was a sequel to the stellar Green Lantern: Rebirth. But since One Year Later, Green Lantern had been suffering a little in quality, and DC wasn’t promoting this thing very much. After the disappointing Countdown and the over-hyped and (from what I hear) under-delivered Amazons Attack, I was unsure of DC’s ability to tell a decent crossover story.
But the issue that kicked the whole storyline off, The Sinestro Corps Special, got rid of any doubts I had. The Anti-Monitor was back. Cyborg Superman was back. Parallax was back. Superboy-Prime was back. And the Green Lanterns were getting massacred. All the seemingly unrelated events that had been happening to Green Lantern since Hal Jordan’s rebirth turned out to be not so unrelated after all, and they all came to a head in this issue. It may not have been the best single issue of the year, but it certainly was the most exciting.
Perhaps most importantly, this issue came at a time that I had really gotten down on comics in general. The Sinstro Corps Special really picked up my spirits and got me excited about comics again.
Hey! Check out what we had to say about this categroy in 2005!