Create Your Own Kanga

Time on your hands this Christmas holiday? Why not beautify your home with your very own Kanga?
You will need:

One Kenner Super Powers Wonder Woman figure.

A Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back Tauntaun figure.

Directions:

Stick the Wonder Woman figure in the Tauntaun’s back flap.

Now stand back and admire this action packed diorama. It will surely bring hours of happiness and excitement into your life.

Batman 683: Whu?

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciller: Lee Garbett

Three cheers for baldy brain boggler Grant Morrison – his run on Batman has finally ground to a halt, leaving a trail of confusion and bemusement in his wake. Business as usual then! You can depend on Morrison to provide a couple of things:

1) A load of ambitious but ultimately unsatisfactory mumbo jumbo; obscure literary references, intertextuality and impenetrable metaphors. What the hell was the ‘Phoenix egg’ at the end of his X-Men run about? And I needed an instruction book (highly recommended) to decipher The Invisibles.
2) A streak of quite nasty sadism.

Both have popped up in this run (personally I’m getting a bit tired of them) – along with a heavy dose of DC marketing hype! Just look at these stories in the Sun and on the BBC website promoting the ‘death’ of Batman…but actually (surprise) he isn’t dead at all. He’s spent the last two issues having his memories re-written by a big psychic lump called, er, Lump, and isn’t actually killed off / dispensed with until Incomprehensible Crisis issue 6. So it looks like the entire RIP arc has been massively hyped up to be something that it isn’t. Now, as a grown adult who still reads comic books I’m not surprised DC feel entitled to insult my intelligence…but enough’s enough!!! Stop dazzling me with your marketing magic DC supremo Dan Didio! You’ve gone too far this time!

The Last Rites two parter has been more enjoyable than the whole high falutin’ aneurism-inducing mess that was RIP but it feels like a stop-gap until they hit the next ‘main event’ that is the Battle For The Cowl ‘saga’. I know I’m a bit old fashioned but wouldn’t it be nice if a multi-part epic, whether it be RIP or Countdown or Final Crisis, actually had a pay-off and satisfactory finale rather just lurching straight into the next ‘nothing-will-be-the-same-again’ 30 part money spinner? I’m worn out! And it wouldn’t feel like such a rip off if not for Morrison’s portentous prose and promises that RIP would be a highly significant story line which would change 50 years of history for the character. Hmm. It all looks pretty much the same from here…

Supergirl: Super Pesky Mother

Supergirl 36
Writer – Sterling Gates
Penciller – Jamal Igle

SPOILERS!!

What a shocker!!

Following last issue’s cliffhanger poor old Zor-El (who’s been out of comic book limbo for about five minutes) dies in Supergirl’s arms!! Hats off to writer Sterling Gates, who has single handedly reinvented this series in three issues - we didn’t see that twist coming. We thought Kara’s Kandorian parents were back for good.

But no! Grief stricken Super-mum Alura, doesn’t beat around the bush. “If ‘Superman’ had done a better job keeping your enemies from running wild ‘Supergirl’ your father would still be here” she rants before threatening Earth with a bit of violence. Rar! We suspect Alura’s blood thirsty rabble rousing is a result of Kryptonite poisoning (she was exposed while curing Kara a few issues ago) which would make for a touching death bed scene should she come to her senses in a couple of issues time, recant her ways and cark it. We also suspected the poisoning may have given her multiple personality disorder, making her a prime suspect to be the new mysterious Superwoman – but a scene in which Alura rallies the troops while Supergirl chats to Superwoman rules her out. Meaning Superwoman is Kara’s old pal Thara! If not it’s a disappointing ‘guess-the-identity’ game as we haven’t met any other female Kandorians. Don’t monkey with us Gates!

The protracted fight scene means ‘Death in the House of El’ is better read as part of a collection than a single issue. Never the less, the New Krypton storyline is shaping up to be the highlight of Supergirl’s current run. Hopefully her sudden bereavement won’t send her back to the insufferable ‘stroppy teen’ persona with which she began the series. Things were just looking up!

Wonder Woman: Shame About The Villain

Wonder Woman 27
Written by Gail Simone
Pencils: Aaron Lopresti

Wonder Woman is at death’s door. We know this because Troia (aka Convoluted Continuity Lass) and Wonder Girl are both very upset. However! They don’t call in the JLA to help out as “Diana wouldn’t want them to see her like this”. Hmm. A flimsy writerly excuse!

Instead the sidekicks and WW’s new boyfriend – the useless Nemesis – whisk her off to Themyscira (the Snickers to Paradise Island’s Marathon) while the JLA finally sticks their oar in when villainess du jour Genocide kills people at the Department of Metahuman Affairs. There’s also some flim flam involving the Olympian gods – in snazzy Star Trek-esque space suits (why?) - reviving the Amazons from their amnesia. (They were dumped into ‘man’s world’ at the start of this run as punishment for something or other…we’ve forgotten). Despite her prominence on the cover Troia does little more than call an ambulance for WW. Wipe Troia out of existence!!! She’s a waste of time!!

Ho-hum!! There are a couple of problems here:
1) We’re expected to believe WW is dying but she’s only been beaten up in a shopping mall by a very lame villain…
2) The villain is very lame! She’s called Genocide and has a spiky eye visor! And she isn’t supposed to be a 90s parody!

It’s all part of a storyline which sees the male Gods create a race of male warriors to rival the Amazons, complete with their own ‘Wonder Man’. That’s a neat idea but the past couple of issues haven’t been up to much. A lot depends on which mad Goddess Genocide is supposed to be…but at the moment she’s the lame sort of cannon fodder that popped up every month in X-Force.

Editorial goof corner: Etta Candy refers to Nemesis as a ‘guy in black’. So why has colourist Brad Anderson coloured his costume in red?! Tut!!

Challenge of the South Park Friends!

I love a bit of South Park so imagine my amazement when I beheld this nifty clip of the SP characters done up like the Justice League of America.

Below the original title sequence of Challenge of the Super Friends:



And here's the South Park version featuring Timmy as Aquaman. What a hoot!



Happy Christmas!

Santa Versus Superman

Hooray! It’s Christmas time and DC bring us a Holiday Special. It has its share of inventory type stories that may have once found their way into Showcase or Action Comics Weekly – the Teen Titans, Blue Beetle and Nightwing stories are all a bit weak - but there are a couple of nice things here. Firstly, the Superman tale which is basically ‘What If…Kal-El became Santa Clause instead of Superman?’ It’s nicely told by writers Matt Chermiss and Peter Johnson and given considerable charm by artists Ivan Ries and Joe Prado – the candy cane Fortress of Solitude is an inspired touch.

The Aquaman tale deserves special derision as it highlights DC supremo Dan Didio’s shortcomings as a writer. The set up sees Aquaman rescuing a pregnant woman called Mary (Yes! That old chestnut!) from pirates. The dialogue is atrocious (Pirate: ‘Quiet! I care nothing about you or your wife! Your ship, your lives, are mine now. Now where is it?! Where is the treasure?’) the plotting is a bit expedient (I’m no Aquaman expert but does he customarily go around drowning people with his giant squids?!) and the whole thing is laughably portentous – who are the ‘two kings’ that pop up at the end? What’s going on?! Rubbish!

On a chirpier note Alan Burnett’s JLA tale – about the Shaggy Man finding the Christmas spirit during a super-hero knees-up on their satellite – is a lot of fun with some great Kevin Maguire art. Shame then that colourist Frank Martin nearly overwhelms Maguire’s work. His clean pencilling style is nearly obliterated by Martin’s over-eager contouring – everyone’s got shaded noses, cheek bones, neck veins etc. Colourists, sometimes less is more!

The Huntress tale lives up best to Christmas comics conventions – featuring a misunderstood bully, a couple of disabled children and a few moral lessons learned. Writer Amanda McMurray forgoes the opportunity to stick Huntress in a ‘saucy Santa’ outfit, providing a well-rounded take on the character which makes a change from her usual role of DCU psycho. And it has a nice heart-warming conclusion too. Hooray!

All in all a nice yuletide offering from DC. Happy Christmas!