Genosha: Hellions Back From The Dead, At Last…

I wouldn’t have bought the Genosha one-shot unless the comic shop had stuck it on my pull list without asking. I'm not one for multi-part mutant crossovers but I'm glad they did since it features the Hellions!

They were pretty cool! One of my earliest Marvel purchases was a New Mutants issue with a pin-up / fact file page pencilled by Bill Sienkiewicz of Hellion Catseye. I became an instant fan! She was an abandoned baby who grew up in the New York sewer system as a purple lion were-beast thing until she was rescued by Emma Frost who discovered she was also a computer genius! Amazing! What a character! Shame she only appeared half a dozen times before Fabian Nicieza killed her off!

That got my goat! In fact it helped convince me not to buy Marvel mutant books for a few years. It was a typical example of a writer trying to make his character look like a proper menace by using other creators' characters as canon fodder. Rude!

Anyway, here they all are again. They don’t look too healthy and Catseye isn’t her bright lilac self but you can’t have it all. Will they all be revived from the dead permanently when this crossover finishes? I doubt it. Still, it gave me a nice frisson of nostalgia, which is what DC and Marvel is selling to us isn’t it? Let’s be honest!

Madame Xanadu: Hair Raising Adventures (hoho)

Just to prove I’m not a non-stop moaning misery guts here’s panel from one of the comics I enjoyed this most this month – Madame Xanadu 16.

Amy Reader Hadley’s art is beautiful and is worth the cover price on its own. Look at that panel! It’s full to the brim with character!

Luckily, Matt Wagner’s story’s pretty good too. The tale is now up to Manhattan in the 1950s. This time, in a rather Mad Men inspired tale, a beautiful blonde housewife called Betty (told you) is plagued by all sorts of supernatural problems pertaining to her appearance and it’s up to our heroine to sort them out (next issue, obv). Xanadu says the magic at work feels familiar – my money’s on a reappearance from Xandau’s newly acquired sister Morgan Le Fay. Stay tuned!

Donna Troy: Baby Killer!

Blackest Night isn’t up to much is it? It’s giving Geoff Johns a chance to have a stab at some nasty sadism (did you notice the quote about Jean Loring taking a flame thrower to finish Sue Dibny off?!) but, thankfully, he doesn’t have Grant Morrison’s natural flair for it.

Still, the Blackest Night Titans mini was a hoot just because it featured a zombie baby! Genius!! To prove how ‘decompressed’ story telling is at the moment these scenes come from two different issues. Yep, it took three issues for Donna Troy to meet her zombiefied baby and then squash its head like a grapefruit. The rest was padded out with fight scenes.

Still, I don’t mind spending the money on something like this because where else are you going to get a zombie baby this month? Nowhere. So hats off.

It was further proof that Donna Troy is an absolutely useless character that needs killing off or sorting out once and for all. Her only function in the DCU is as a walking sob story. She’s like an X Factor contestant. “My beardy husband and alternate-reality future-evil-emperor child were tragically killed! Boohoohoo!” Change the record! And while you’re at it change your costume! There’s nothing wrong with that nice red one you used to wear…

WONDER WOMAN 37: Or why this series is crap

Writer: Gail Simone
Penciller: Bernard Chang

I posted the original version of this rant yesterday but a level-head pal told me I might have gone a bit over the top! Fancy that!

He says maybe Gail Simone didn't actually call me a homophobic bastard on the CBR Wonder Woman board, maybe it was a misunderstanding.

Hmm. You be the judge. Either way my righteous fury was in full swing. Here's a toned down attempt to illustrate why Gail Simone's Wonder Woman isn't very good at all...

Here's the exchange which kicked it all off:

Me: This arc seems to be raising more questions than it's answering and not in a good way. It seems to be taking AGES to get nowhere. What was the point of the Beowulf / Stalker four parter? Why is Achilles gay? Does it matter? I didn't get that from the comic, have I missed an essential plot point?!

GS: Man, I can't believe in this age people are actually asking WHY a character is gay, as if there's some secret reason to it other than the same decisions that go into ALL the character's elements and ingredients. Don't get it, nossir, I don't.

I still think this is a bit sanctimonious, ignoring the rest of the content in my post about why the book is so atrociously paced, instead she gets on her high horse about some imagined homophobia.

But clearly my boredom with WW had set in before GS started flinging unfounded accusations around. Let us count the ways WW sucks with a close look at WW37! Just look at that cover for starters. Crap!

The absence of Aaron Lopresti’s pencils gave me a fresh perspective on this book. With Bernard Chang on drawing duties there was no chance I’d be distracted by pretty pictures!

Things kick off with a scene between Wonder Woman and Ares. She concluded a tiresome 9-part story arc by bonking him in the head with an axe recently (I’m not joking!) He’s back, and looking pretty laughable, like Wile. E. Coyote or something with his head cut in half. And check this panel out, very subtle *rolls eyes* Look out Di! Ares is going to stick his tongue up your minge! It’s five pages of typically pretentious dialogue which goes nowhere, other than to tell us Ares is out to get Di. “One of my best agents unknowingly is betraying you as we speak…not Achilles,” he says.

Presumably we’re invited to guess who the agent is. However, all these plots take 12 issues to conclude, and they still don’t get resolved, so I can’t be bothered.

Next up Hippolyta scampers around Paradise Island (let’s keep things simple) meeting Amazons who have returned from exile in “man’s world” up the duff. They’re all immaculate conceptions!! Apparently, Gail has decided all Amazons are lesbians. Then the Bana-Mighdall Amazons (basically Amazons with machine guns) return to the island, concluding a plot from Gail’s Secret Six which I don’t read.

Bald lesbian Amazon Alkyone and Achilles (who Gail has announced is gay on the CBR board, which she found important enough to tell us but then denied it’s of any significance to the story, ?!?!) have a play-fight. More crap dialogue ensues. Achilles turns out to be taking orders from Baldy. She tells him to kill those crap albino gorillas (Gail’s unsuccessful attempt at introducing a ‘comedy supporting cast’) Diana left on the island (off panel, *rolls eyes*) then tie Hippolyta up and “mark her.” Don’t worry reader, this doesn’t actually happen in the end, making this another overlong and pointless scene.

I’m reproducing the next two pages because they need to be seen to be believed….




“They exposed my Kryptonite” what?! Seriously?!

“It’s that the pain of others shadows my will” – what does that even mean? And how many times have we seen WW endlessly navel-gazing and re-evaluating her place in the world? It happens in every single story arc! Maybe that poster page would have worked if the art was better and the pay off line made sense: "Diana Reassembled!" - er, you what?

Back to the Island. No dead gorillas or scarred Wonder Mum, instead Donna Troy (zzzzz) attacks WW. Hmmm. She’s been busy killing her zombified baby in Titans this month so where’s she come from? Has she just been hanging around the island since we last saw her in this series? The explanation is:

“Genocide created some sort of psychic blowback in her. She now blames me for the death of her family.”

Which isn’t an explanation at all is it? “Psychic blowback”? What does that mean?


They have a punch up. WW comes out with this morsel: “I loved Terry and the kids Donna, I loved them.” Nice bit of pointless repetition there. Do Amazon princesses really say “kids”? It’s a bit common isn’t it? And how many ‘kids’ did Donna Troy have? Wasn’t it just one? I’m sure Donna is thrilled to hear these sisterly words while getting kneed in the schnozz.

The fight ends when Di throws her lasso into the sea. “The lasso, whatever hatebomb genocide placed in Donna’s brain is reacting to proximity with the lasso.”

This is really getting boring. That bloody lasso has become the be-all and end-all of this current run and it’s extremely bloody tedious. It’s another sign of how pompous comic books have become. This lasso isn’t just a crime fighting accessory anymore, no, now it’s "an avatar of truth" whatever the hell that might be.

Check this panel out:

More bad dialogue. Obviously it's supposed to be moving but it’s just a jazzed-up cliché and doesn’t even read well.

That heartwarming (?) scene concluded, Hipplotya pops up, in chains, and says she’s about to be executed but she’s fine about it, honest. Zeus has made Achilles king of the island, Alkyone has married him, so she’s in charge now, meaning Hippo’s happy to be beheaded as it's OK by the rules...

The end!

Phew!

Without Lopresti’s art the underlying problems with the script really shone through. I’ve enjoyed some things about this run – the Black Canary team-up was great, The Circle arc was very good too (but I didn't suspect Alkyone as about to become Genocide Mark II.)

30% of this run has been OK, the remaining 70% has been a tedious slog. The Genocide 9 parter was ridiculously over long then there were arcs like the pointless Stalker four parter and Queen of Fables one shot (I had to ask who the villain was on the DC boards, not a sign of a well told story) which have added absolutely nothing to the book. So that’s over a year of WW stories wasted.

That's me and WW finished for the forseeable future. *Sob*. Let me know if I miss anything good. I’m not holding my breath…

Superman Secret Origin 2: Another LSH Hit!

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Gary Frank

As a Legion fan (see below) my main interest in this series is seeing what Geoff Johns does with the origins of the LSH rather than with Superboy, even so, some things are already proving a bit tricky to keep straight in my mind.

Like, Superboy / Superman’s outfit isn’t a superhero costume. Oh no. It’s a garment that celebrates his cultural heritage. Hmmm. So shouldn’t he save it for Christmas or something? It’s a bit fancy to get messed up rescuing people from floods.

And even though I like Lex Luthor’s dad being an alcoholic, and having his crazy sister kicking around (Lena Thorul? Will he be getting another one? Nasthalthia Luthor?) I’m not keen on Lex being back as a part of the Smallville cast.

I’m also getting really tired of Gary Frank making Clark so closely resemble Christopher Reeve. It’s a bit creepy.

Onto the main event!

Frank does a great job with the Legion. Not used to seeing the LSH depicted as such young kids but it works and makes sense that lonely Clark is so happy to join the team.

The retro-futurist design of 30th Century Smallville is complete genius too. Look at his panel:

Less keen on the xenophobic Smallville residents attacking an alien girl. Johns flogged this theme to death during his Superman / LSH team-up in Action so we could have done without it here. It doesn’t add much to the story although, if the LSH is supposed to be a symbol of galactic unity, I guess it makes sense for them to have something to stand against. I just like my 30th Century a bit less dystopian.

Johns’ relentless urge to stick “foreshadowing” into his stories really needs to stop. He does it at the drop of a cape! So here we have Cosmic Boy making sure the Legionnaires don’t tell Superboy about “the resurrection of Doomsday, Kandor, General Zod and the Earth / New Krypton war, the Super-Sun…the death of Lex Luthor.” SNORE!

More importantly though, with everyone so happy to see Supes it means that the iconic cover to Adventure 247, with the three “no” buzzers, didn’t happen in the new DCU! A disaster!

All in all though this was a nice little tale, if nothing spectacular. And great to see Krypto popping up right at the end. With Krypto and the LSH already here is it too much to hope that Lana Lang will become Insect Queen by the end of the series? Stay tuned!

Finally, Good News For Legion Lovers!

Whoo hoo! Imagine my excitement when I read this interview with Paul Levitz that ran on CBR last week (Yes, we’re always the first with the news here Kanga-fans). My favourite Legion writer back on my favourite comic series! Yes, don’t let the blog title fool you…I like the kitschery of Bottle Cities and Kangas but if it wasn’t for the Legion of Super Heroes I’d have left comics behind at the appropriate age (ie a long time ago).

Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

Do you have a favorite Legionnaire?
It really depends on who I am writing. In the story where Dream Girl won an election on ballot stuffing, but it was the kind of ballot stuffing that we didn't have the sense to identify in the rules as being against the rules, so I felt obliged to do it. I'd never really cared for the character before that, and God, did I have a ball with her. And I think the readers did ultimately, too. So, some of them you just discover along the way.

Genius! That was a great thing about the Legion! Fans could vote for the leader and they need to bring tradition back ASAP! And it’s a testament to the (former) relationship between Legion fandom and DC editorial that even though the fans effed this particular election up for a hoot Levitz turned it around and made a cannon fodder character like Dream Girl a Legion institution. Hopefully we’ll get some of that inspired work again!


There’s more!

"I am hoping to have at least one or two new Legionnaires introduced through the course of my first year. And I'm going to have some stuff blow up real good."

I’m not worried about what he’s going to blow up but I’m intrigued by the new Legionnaires. There have been loads of ‘new’ Legionnaires since Levitz left the book but by and large they’ve all been crap. Gates, Kinetix, and XS were all OK but the likes of Dragonmage and Catspaw or, worse, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them Sizzle and Turtle were just glorified extras. As we all know Polar Boy, Sensor Girl and my favourite Legionnaire ever, Tellus (above, obv) were the last canonical batch of Legionnaires. Tellus was fantastic! A proper alien looking Legionnaire. Overdue! They were dealing with galaxies full of aliens all the time weren’t they? Hopefully we’ll be getting some more of that.

And, best yet, the Legion is taking over as lead feature in Adventure:

"The theory is that it's going to be pre-dominantly Legion material in the book. It's certainly possible that if, either I get into trouble, or the artist gets into trouble, or if someone walks into Dan [DiDio]'s office with some brilliant new idea, that he'll say, "Look, can we have a piece of space to tell this other story for a number of months?" No problem. But most of the time that I was writing the Legion, I managed to con the company into giving me more than 20 pages to do it in. I was on the book five issues before we changed it from 17 pages to a double-sized book back in the 1970s. And then we did the hardcover/softcover, and then we did matching miniseries and all sorts of tie-in stuff. And of course the Baxter book was, I think, 25 or 27 pages for most of its life. This is a large cast. There is a lot of room to tell a lot of stories. And I'll fill as many pages as I can get away with."

Levitz was an absolute genius in the 80s. His run on the Legion is the best team book ever written. He had 25 leading characters and still wrote in a supporting cast of love interests, space cops, villains, Legion Academy students and more. Amazing!

I’m not sure how he’s going to approach this run, his JSA 6 parter was very poor because nothing seemed to happen and it was way too ‘decompressed.’ But it looks from this interview that he’s going to be sticking as much stuff in as he can, so that’s good news!

Finally after years of rubbish like the Archie Legion and the aborted Waid catastrophe it looks like we’re finally getting a decent version of the LSH back. Hooray!

DC Halloween Special

I’m not a big fan of Halloween. When I was a kid trick or treating was still a newish import from the US and was seen as a bit vulgar in certain circles (i.e. my house). So I never had the experience of putting a sheet over my head and begging for Smarties. Sob, still I’ve managed to pick up the pieces of my life and soldier on.

I like these holiday specials though, they’re a chance to see work by new writers and artists and are much better than those clapped out anthologies of yesteryear. Let’s face it Action Comics Weekly was a load of poop wasn’t it?

Some of the stuff here isn’t spectacular and I could have done without Ice telling Guy Gardner she’s up for a lesbian threesome in this issue’s Green Lantern tale. Yes! I’m serious! What are kids supposed to make of that? They’re all on crack and stabbing each other these days though so I’m sure they’ll take it in their stride…

The best thing here is a Superman and Flash story written and pencilled by Billy Tucci. It’s fantastic! It’s beautifully illustrated and has a great ‘twist’ ending which makes for the most charming superhero tale I’ve read in ages.


Mandy McMurray’s Wonder Woman story isn’t bad. It sees WW watch a Blair Witch Project-esque TV show with Miss Martian, Wonder Girl and Aquagirl. It’s a bit flat and not much happens but it’s nice to see WW not over-analysing her place in the world or chopping someone’s head off, which is what she seems to do every issue in her own book.

My other favourite tale was Joe Harris’s Mirror Master and Kid Flash story. Using the old ‘monster in the mirror’ premise it is one of the few stories here that provides a couple of scares and creates a nice horror film-esque atmosphere. And it’s not every week you can read the phrase ‘Haud yer wheesht!’ in a comic book. Hooray!

Meanwhile Michael Siglain’s Outsiders strip sees Halo actually using her powers! Unusual! It’s not a complete success, I don’t know anything about I Vampire…so the ending was lost on me but it makes a change to see the team altogether. Given the short lived nature of this line-up though this is going to date super-quick. Yikes.

Halloween: Etta Candy versus Satan!

Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone asked for suggestions for the scariest WW moments on the comic’s CBR board.

Well here it is! Etta Candy being sacrificed to Satan!!

And it all happened in Diana Prince’s neighbours apartment!!

I’m not sure what the hell is going on here but it was a brilliant introduction to a disappointing three part team-up with The Demon. It actually freaked by brain right out as a child! Look at that evil goat head! And poor old Etta facing certain doom in her nightie! Shiver…

All this plus Mother Juju in her one and only appearance. Bring her back!

From Wonder Woman 279 written by Gerry Conway and pencilled by Jose Delbo.

Supergirl 46: Special Guest Star Greg Rucka

Writer: Sterling Gates and Greg Rucka
Pencillers: Jamal Igle and Eduardo Pansica

All the great things about Power Girl are the essential ingredients that are sorely lacking in Supergirl. Sterling Gates did a great job when he started on the title, turning Supergirl, one of the most obnoxious characters in comics, into a likeable protagonist with a new secret identity and supporting cast.

But all that’s gone out of the window as Supergirl has got mixed up in dismal crossovers like Codename: Patriot and this World Against Superman snoozer. To make matters worse Greg Rucka even writes half this issue as it features boring Nightwing and Flamebird, his boring characters from his boring run on Action.

These two are a couple of huge comic book clichés. Nightwing is a speedy-aged super-kid, Flamebird is bascially Phoenix from the X-Men but with added religious bullshit. The only thing Greg Rucka likes more than religion is lesbians and he’s flogged both of these ‘themes’ to death now (I’ll get onto Batwoman later). And why the hell does Krypton need this new space-religion bollocks? It’s only going to complicate matters. Remember “living goddess” X’Hal from Teen Titans? At least she glowed in the dark and had a nice costume. I guess Greg’s going for something a bit more high falutin’ and esoteric here…


Anyway! The only bits worth worrying about for Supergirl readers are the Lana Lang scenes, which are rather inexpertly drawn by Eduardo Pansica. Now, is Lana supposed to be looking sneaky? Or is it just that Eduardo can’t draw very well? Maybe it’s the former, as chatty Thara Flamebrid tells Supergirl “all about Lana” off panel and the issue ends with Kara giving Lana the side eye. Hmm! Or, perhaps, Eduardo has effed up this panel too. It’s a guessing game!


Fingers crossed Lana isn’t a baddie. I’ve only just got to grips with the fact she isn’t a Manhunter after all. Thara said she’d been “corrupted” but what by?! Drama! Let’s hope this subplot doesn’t drag on for another 18 months.

It’s ironic that DC have been heaping praise Sterling Gates this week as a hot writer to watch. Supergirl readers know he’s a good writer. He’s worked wonders with the title character. If only DC would actually let him write her properly…

Power Girl 6: Cat Bits and Ikea

Writers: Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti
Penciller: Amanda Conner

I forget how much I enjoy this book! The past couple of months I’ve opened the cover and been pleasantly surprised by how fantastic the art is. It’s an island of comic book sanity in ocean of storm of multi-part universe-shaking multi-part crossovers.

This issue Power Girl goes to Ikea. Yay!

Seriously! But look how good it looks! Beautiful art with truck loads of character in each panel, Amanda Connor is the best penciller DC have got at the moment.

She even makes PG’s cat licking his bits look stunning. Behold!

There’s plenty of action though. PG teams up with inept space-cop Agent 7 to chase the rampaging space vixens from last issue around town only discover they’re not really evil, just a bit misguided.

She also finds time to move into her new flat, discovers someone has taken pictures of her changing from Karen Starr to Power Girl, then goes to Ikea with pal Terra (I still have no idea who she is, a bit of explanation would be nice). Hooray!

Then it’s back to chasing the space party girls. They’re having a drink with a mafia Don! PG intervenes, stops the stroppiest space lady from killing anyone and sets them up in a house in Rio De Janiro until they can find their way back to their home planet.

So no one dies, continuity isn’t re-written, there are no villains doing sadistic things, PG doesn’t lose all her powers and gain new ones yet – unsurprisingly – it’s still one of the most enjoyable comics out there. “Just” a solid superhero story, very well told, with lots of characterisation. Remember that word? It was big in the lettercolumns in the 80s! But that’s what helps make this book so great. PG’s a really likable character and her personal problems have lots of reading appeal.

Top work! You should read this!