The Doomino Effect for Nov 26, 2008

With comics being delayed until Thursday this week, I contemplated delaying this a day too. But I’m on a blogging roll, and you don’t stop a blogging roll.

Much of the talk this past week was about Batman #681, the conclusion to Batman RIP. It was our Book of Doom this week, and though both Doom DeLuise and I liked it, Fin Fang Doom did his best Fallen Son: Wolverine impersonation and ripped it apart without reading it.

I think it’s totally fair for someone to dislike this story, but a lot of the haters I’ve seen on the web tend to fall in the “I didn’t read it but I know it’s crap” camp, much of which seems to stem from Morrison hatred; check the comments on this recent Comics Should Be Good post, as just one example. Even a negative CSBG review can’t help but litter the criticism with ad hominem Grant Morrison insults.

Any regular reader of this blog will know that neither DeLuise nor I — the two who liked it — have ever been Morrison apologists. The mutual Doomkopf disgust at Final Crisis #3 earned this blog its biggest brush with celebrity (though admittedly not due to the reviews) and those reviews weren’t the first bits of Morrisonian angst expressed here.

I don’t think that it’s simple enough to say that all the non-readers who were turned off by what they heard were motivated by an anti-Morrison bias, though, so it has made me wonder what was so “You had to be there” about this series. It definitely wasn’t the art. Readers had to endure Tony Daniel’s post-Image rigidity, which non-readers could only imagine. My best guess is that whatever worked was the subtlety that leads readers to want to think about what they just read.

Poorly written stories have a way of broadcasting that they’re not worth thinking about on any deeper level. Honestly, that’s how I feel about Final Crisis. There might be a deeper level there, but I’ve been so frustrated by so many stupid things that I no longer feel motivated. So I’m guessing there was some confluence of little things that made DD and me a couple of converts. That’s something that would make us care more about the benchmark plot point “big things” that would be lost to anyone who just read a summary.

This is all probably really boring, so speaking of comics that won me over after some skepticism, that leads me to Daredevil #113, part 3 of the Lady Bullseye storyline. I just realized they’ve dropped the dual numbering. This would be issue #493 if they had. Maybe they’ll bring it back for #500. Anyway, the Hand victims have all gathered at Matt Murdock’s pad to discuss what’s going on while centuries-old Master Izo speaks in riddles and steals all the booze.

We learn Lady Bullseye wasn’t supposed to mess with Matt, so she solves that problem by messing with him further and killing the witness who claimed to have seen him murder somebody. This leads to Daredevil and LB’s first rooftop scuffle, which is basically a draw until some Hand goons show up and then Izo cleans house. Then Matt finds out Milla has been secretly stolen from the loony bin and the new White Tiger gets murdered. It’s a whole lot of bad stuff going on at once, and it’s great!

Daredevil is good again, and I think a lot of it has to do with a renewed focus on the spandex side of Murdock’s life. The supporting cast has also been refreshed for the better. I’m especially glad that Ed Brubaker is writing a story with Iron Fist in it again.

Speaking of Brubaker and iron fists, that leads me to Captain America #44 — he has a metal arm! It’s part 2 of “Time’s Arrow,” a story that reveals Bucky is not immune to his past just because he now wears the Red, White and Blue. It took the bad guys all of NO TIME to figure out that the new Captain America was a Soviet assassin from several decades ago. These guys are good.

Luke Ross does a good enough job of subbing for “The Captain America Style,” but the art on this book falls apart midway through. It’s either a case of Fabio Laguna and Mick Magyar, the two inkers credited, having very different styles, or somebody got behind on their deadlines (or both), because the highway chase and rooftop fistfight are kind of a visual sore thumb.

The bad guy looks to be a spooky man in a hat and cape. I hope it’s Alec Baldwin. Art issues aside, the mystery here is exciting enough that I’m still as in love with this comic as I have ever been. Cover artist Steve Epting appears to still be in love with last week’s cover.

Speaking of flashes back in time, that leads me to Guardians of the Galaxy #7, which has flashbacks to the previous Guardians of the Galaxy timeline, which is technically a flash forward since it’s the future. It also features an homage to one of its own previous covers from not very long ago. Ah, May 2008 … a more innocent time. But back to the flashback-forward, it was really cool to see those future GotG characters again and kind of striking when you think about the contrast between what passed as standard comic book art back then versus what you get now. Paul Pelletier and Rick Magyar are awesome.

So anyway, Starhawk explains that the future keeps falling apart and everyone dies because “an error has occured in the coadunate pattern of time,” and the error has been tracked to 2008. That’s now, and unless Starhawk gets this sorted out next month, it’s going to be 2009!

After the Guardians dissolved last issue, Rocket Raccoon put together a new team from the leftovers in order to go out and fight the battles the team was formed to fight in the first place. One of these battles is with the early stages of the Badoon, the lizard race that will emerge in the future to conquer the galaxy and eliminate the human race. They’ve engineered themselves some kind of space Reavers, except they’re built around dead tissue instead of injured Hellfire Club employees.

Meanwhile, Adam Warlock is on the other side of the galaxy declaring his intent to become the new leader of the Universal Church of Truth — another hugely powerful force in the future Guardians of the Galaxy series. Drax and Quasar are on the other other side of the galaxy looking for a girl called Cammi, and Star Lord Peter has apparently been sent to the Negative Zone where he’s come face to face with King Blastaar.

Speaking of alternate realities identified as Zones, that leads me to Superman #682, part 6 of New Krypton. Those pesky Kryptonians hatched themselves a plan in which they would round up all of Superman’s enemies and toss them into the Phantom Zone. Apparently, Flamebird and Nightwing went along with this, since we last saw the Phantom Zone projector under their protection. The problem is, the Kryptonians killed some cops in the process. I hope Supergirl is starting to realize that she was better off as an orphan.

The big shocking conclusion to this issue struck me as a bit dumb, though. All the supervillains were put into the Phantom Zone, but that’s where poor Mon-El is! He’s a sitting duck, right? Well, wasn’t he in there the whole time General Zod and the gang were there? How is this so much different than that? Seems to be a bit of contrived drama if you ask me.

I probably should have warned you at the beginning of this column that I liked everything this week.