Meaningless Awards of the Week- 10/22/08
Most Pointless- Birds of Prey #123
A few weeks ago, I said that the ending to Birds of Prey #122 was the Best Ending of the week. It ended with The Joker entering BoP HQ with Barbara Gordon all by herself. Well this issue started with the cops showing up and scaring The Joker away, and ended with The Joker going back to confront Babs. So essentially we’re exactly where we were at the end of last issue.
But surely something else must have happened, right? Nope. The Birds go pick up the Calculator, which was pretty uneventful. All he does is tell the ladies about the different villains in the Silicon Syndicate. And man are they boring. Gizmo shoots cool guns. The Matchmaker helps pedophiles use Myspace. The Caretaker has a people zoo. Evil, yes. Interesting, no.
Best Writer- Ed Brubaker
Is it just me, or does it always seem like these big name writers always have all their books come out on the same day? A couple of weeks ago, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and Invincible came out on the same day. The same week, Geoff Johns’ Action Comics and Green Lantern both dropped. Well, it’s Ed Brubaker’s turn this week, with Captain America #43, Daredevil #112 and Criminal #6 all released on Wednesday.
There’s a good chance that Ed Brubaker’s going to earn Best Writer standing anytime he writes something. But when three of his books ship the same week, there’s not even a contest. There wasn’t even anything too special about any of his books. Criminal was a Part 3, Daredevil was a Part 2, and Cap featured Batroc Ze Lepaire. Not exactly newsworthy. But damn, they were still probably the best three books of the week.
Least Expected- The Amazing Spider-Man #574
This week’s issue of Amazing Spider-Man was a little strange. It focused on Flash Thompson instead of Spider-Man, a character that hasn’t been seen since Brand New Day started. It was a story of an incident involving his squad in Iraq. Flash is retelling his story to a general, and is constantly using moments from Spider-Man’s history as inspiration to his own heroism. At the end, it’s revealed that Flash lost both of his legs in the battle.
I’m not really sure how I fell about this story, though. It was a decent enough narrative, but it really didn’t fit into Amazing Spider-Man. It reminded me of the 9/11 issue of the series, which was just a one-off issue that was used to address current events but was never referenced again. I can’t imagine legless Flash will be making many more appearances in the immediate future. So why even use Flash? For that matter, why use Spider-Man?
I understand from the letters page that the creative team was inspired by the story of a soldier that visited the Marvel Bullpen several months ago. But this story could have worked just as well as a Cap story, or a Marvel Universe story, or what have you. I guess I don’t understand why Marvel would sacrifice one of the most important characters in Spidey’s history for this story when anyone could have filled his shoes (sorry, bad choice of words). If this was meant to be a tribute to Sergeant Jeff Guerin, then why not just put Guerin himself into the comic?
Maybe the Spider-writers have a plan to bring Flash back in the Spider-verse at some point in the future. Or maybe they’ll use the inevitable de-Brand-New-Daying to say Flash never lost his legs. But at this point it seems like a waste of a long-standing character.
Long-standing? Ouch. You gotta work up some new descriptions.
Let’s pretend that was an intentional pun.
I think the idea was nice, that Joker has killed and injured so many people he doesn’t remember one from the other. And lets be honest, why would he care to remember?
Honestly this would of worked far better if Oracle had felt totally broken that the man who has ruined her life, left her in a wheelchair for ever… forget about it the second after he did it.
Instead she just went “Sheesh! That was lucky”
I’m with Crimson. It, unfortunately, reminds me of a line from the awful Street Fighter movie, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Chun Li explains to Bison that he’s responsible for destroying her village and killing her father. Bison says he can’t remember, and, after she responds incredulously, he says, “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me… it was Tuesday.”
I actually agree that the Joker not remembering Babs was good. But it seems like a copout that this issue ended practically the same way the last one did, with The Joker about to confront Oracle. It seemed like a waste of 22 pages.