Comics For 10/25

[Gray Lensman]

Yes, it's that time of the week again. What did everyone get?

My all-DC stack today consists of...

Action Comics #844
Boys #3 (Overdue, but finally got in)
Seven Soldiers #1
Secret Six #5
52 Week Twenty-Five

Not much today, and I still have my doubts about The Boys, but overall a good stack.

[Venom65437]

Amazing Spider-Girl #1 (I'm going to see why everyone who reads this loves it so much)
Ultimate Spider-Man #101
Ms. Marvel #8
Wolverine #47
New Excalibur #12
X-Men: First Class #2
New Avengers #24
X-Men: Civil War #4

[Elliot Kane]

Two weeks in one, as usual:

52 weeks 24 & 25. Excellent as usual.

The Boys 4. I'm still not sure where Ennis is going with this, but it's not his best work, so far. There's not enough to it. If all I wanted was puerile shock value, I'd go out and buy a lot of Mark Millar's old stuff.

Seven Soldiers. Epic end to an epic series, yet curiously unsatisfying. Too many loose ends untied, though I am glad to see Misty remain with Zatanna. She was my favourite supporting cast member in any of the series. Much remains yet to tell with all of these characters, and I hope Morrison takes up their stories again soon.

Cable/Deadpool. Great issue of what is definitely Marvel's most under-rated title.

UFF - I love this, I must admit. Ult Thanos looks like being pretty cool.

Justice. Still good. Not much more to say

The Authority. Well, I had to check it out. And I really like it. Great first issue. Intros the character who is clearly going to be the 'normal guy' who will draw us into the world of The Authority.

7 Brothers. Garth Ennis writing a story idea by John Woo. Is there any way this can be bad? Judging from this issue, it will in fact be great.

[brett]

52 has really picked up for me. I am loving the Crime Bible stuff, absolutely loving it, and am really digging the way they're handling Intergang, after being a bit worried how they were coming across earlier in the series. The Book of Moriarty? Fantastic. Really starting to gather momentum as well now that they've got all the balls juggling in the air.

Seven Soldiers: to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, great comic or greatest comic? As the kids say thesedays, this was off the hook. A little disappointed there wasn't a bigger role for Frankenstein and the Bride, but otherwise it was everything I was hoping for and more. The Klarion bits were great, especially the last shot of him, and I thought the end of Mr Miracle's confrontation with Dark Side was brutally great. The metatextual reading of it is fascinating: I'm undecided if GM's offering an olive branch to Alan Moore ("I bet if we shaved that beard off we'd look the same. Like brothers even") or having one last shot at him. And I am convinced that I, Spyder = Ultimate Marvel. Oh, and JH Williams knocked Quitely off as the God of Art for mind.

I thought both Wildcats and Authority were good as well. Bit surprised at the critical backlash they're taking, especially Wildcats, which has so much jammed into it that more pops out on each read. Love how Grifter wasn't 'down & out' rather being covert and 'in character'. And that bit where he gets back into the Grifter character, "Grifter ist verwirrung! Grifter ist tod! Grifter ist verwirrung! Grifter ist chaos! Unt tod! Unt tod! Unt tod! Das ist Grifter!", may possibly be my favourite scene of the year. Just brilliant. Really liked Kaizen Gamorra being back as well. Only Wildstorm I've read is the Ellis, Moore, Millar and Brubaker stuff, so if we get the best from that canon remixed with revamped WS stuff I'll be more than happy.

Authority, I can understand the backlash over, but I don't agree with it. Yes it's decompressed, but decompression is not a bad thing necessarily. Morrison had to sell the 'real world' here, if the plot of Authority coming to our world is going to have any effect. Look at JLA Classified which had almost the same plot, with the JLA in Qwewq. In JLA he told that the reader it's the real world rather than showing (there was about 5 pages of the JLA in Qwewq from memory, and we're told it is the real world rather than shown), in Authority he's showing us rather than just telling us it is the real world. I think the real world comes across more convincing in Authority than in JLA:C, even though both do use similar techniques like the 12 panel grid page to make everything feel tight and compressed. That may be due to Gene Ha being able to sell the mundane real world better than Ed McGuiness is, though.

And if the next issue teaser of "Be here for the first historic meeting between man and superman" didn't get you excited, well you're not human.